The Rich Roll Podcast - Remembering David Clark

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

On May 21, 2020, the world lost a treasure. A beloved, 2-time RRP alumni, David Clark was one of the most courageous, resilient and authentic human beings I've ever met. A force for positive change. A model of service. The epitome of transformation, embodied. A loyal friend to many. And a man blessed with a preternatural gift for igniting the best in everyone he touched. Succumbing after complications incident to a herniated disc surgery, a chapter ends far too soon. But the story behind this accomplished ultra-endurance athlete, bestselling author, and father of three is a legend that will continue to be told -- and will never be forgotten. Today we honor the life and legacy of Dave Clark. Dave's steel was forged from hardship -- periodic homelessness and a poverty both financial and educational. Adulthood found him descending into the firm grip of alcoholism. He ate recklessly. He drank and drugged himself into oblivion. And continued his downward spiral until he was utterly lost. Completely alone. And hopeless. Tipping the scales at 320 pounds, Dave finally met his breaking point. Summing a will of superhuman proportions, he ushered the courage to finally face his demons. Hence began a process of implausible personal transformation. It's a staggering journey that would ultimately lead to breathtaking feats that defy possibility. And a laudable call to service that rivals anyone I've ever met. Dave didn’t just drop 150 pounds on a plant-based diet. Nor did he celebrate with a simple marathon. Instead, Dave would go on to on to crush a relentless list of the world's most challenging ultra-marathons, from Badwater to Leadville. He ran the Boston Marathon course four times without stopping. And he even ran across the entire United States. With uncompromising vulnerability, Dave recounts his inconceivable arc in his first book, Out There. In Broken Open, he faces the dark side of taking athleticism too far. Released just two weeks ago, Eat Sh*t And Die boldly tackles food addiction head on. I can't bring Dave back. Nor can I begin to measure his positive impact on myself and countless others. What I can do is honor his life and legacy. So today, RRP alums Mishka Shubaly and Josh LaJaunie -- both close friends of Dave -- join me to eulogize him, followed by a re-release of my first conversation with Dave, recorded in November, 2014 (RRP #113). More Dave Clark: If Dave's message resonates with you, check out RRP #290, my 2nd podcast with him published almost exactly three years ago. It's a banger. Dave was a sober warrior unlike any other. He wrung every last drop out of life. He was deeply loved and will be terribly missed. Let his story be a beacon. A reminder that when the body, mind and spirit align with faith, human potential is truly boundless. Run free, my friend. Run free. Peace + Plants, Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, it's Rich, and I'm coming to you today with a heavy heart. Somebody who I cared for dearly has suddenly passed away. His name was David Clark. He was a good friend of mine, and he was a two-time podcast guest. And in honor of his memory, I wanted to do a couple things today. First of all, I wanted to re-release our first podcast, which we recorded back in November of 2014. That was episode 113. It was the first time that I met him.

And also, I wanted to spend a few minutes remembering him with two very good friends of mine who also have graced this podcast platform in the past. Mishka Shubali, who's been on the show many times. You guys know Mishka. I was first introduced to David by Mishka. And also Josh Lajani, who's been on the show a number of times in the past, a big podcast favorite as well. So let's talk to these guys. Mishka, Josh, how are you guys doing? Doing good, considering. I made sure I ate something before we did this, so I felt like I would cry less if I had food in my stomach, and so far not working.

Yeah, good luck. Yeah. So for those that don't know, David Clark was an incredibly inspirational man. He's somebody who is known for this incredible weight loss journey that he went on. I think he lost something like 130, 150 pounds. He was pushing 320 or something like that at some point, was able to overcome that obstacle as well as overcome alcoholism. He reinvented himself wholesale. He adopted a plant-based diet and went on to become this incredibly accomplished ultra runner, somebody who ran Leadville. He ran Badwater. He did this thing called the Boston Quad

where he ran the Boston Marathon back and forth four times. He ran across the United States with Charlie Ingle and a couple other guys. And just yesterday, we're recording this on Friday, May 22nd, but yesterday on the 21st, he went in to the hospital for what was intended to be a fairly routine herniated disc procedure and due to complications, passed away very suddenly so this news is quite jarring and upsetting and uh you guys knew him well better than i knew him as a matter of fact so i just thought it would be nice to kind of remember him and share a few thoughts on on what this guide meant to you. Yeah. Shoot. You know,

Dave was the first person I had, like I had, I had been following a bunch of ultra runners and I had also seen weight loss success stories, you know? But Dave was the first one where I had seen someone like i had seen both of those things together that made it seem possible to me not just to become a runner but to actually be like you know a prolific ultra runner you know and it made it, it gave me permission in a way to like, Hey, I can do this. I'll be okay. Dave did it. And that podcast in, in, in 2014,

I had just been on not, you know, what a year before that and i was thinking like i was something like oh man i've never like i've lost over 225 pounds and i'm you know i was about to run my first ultra in 2015 i had signed up for it in it in febru. And I was thinking I was like leading the charge of ex-fat guys, you know? And I hear this podcast with Dave and I'm just completely blown away. Like he's already there. He's already done it. He's doing it. And he wrote a book about it.

And he wrote a book about it. And it was just a profound night listening to that podcast and learning of Dave Clark for the first time. And I'm lucky enough to have been able to meet him several times and share the mountain with him in Leadville and just visit and have heart toto-hearts over the phone, talking through my back problems. He's just a good guy. Yeah. He was a deeply soulful guy. And if there's one thing about David that I think stood him apart was that he always was available. He always gave back more than he received. And he never forgot that call to service.

Like he just showed up for so many people and was such a massive inspiration to just thousands and thousands of people. What's ironic is like, I was actually podcasting rich when you called me yesterday about this. And, um, and one of the things that I was talking about, and this is one of those things that I would think of all the time when I thought about Dave, was possibility. Right?

Because it just takes one person to do it, to do a thing, whether it's losing the weight or whether it's running the race or climbing to the top of the mountain. whether it's losing the weight or whether it's running the race or climbing to the top of the mountain or, um, it just takes one person to do it, to change the thing from being impossible to possible. And Dave did that again and again for not just for us, but for so many people that we know. And so many people we love and like a part of this community around the podcast, you know, that like, you know, with, oh, it's impossible to take that much weight off and keep it off. Well, Dave Clark did it. And, you know, it's impossible to run that far that long. Well, Dave Clark did it. It's impossible to, to invert your ego to just, you know, exactly what you said of like, Dave did effortlessly the

thing that I have such a hard time with of just posting up and just being there and embracing that challenge of being there for your fellow human beings and giving and being generous. He was just a bottomless well of generosity. He always had time for people. He always had energy to listen to them. Yeah. I think you said to me, when people say to you to listen to them, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I think you said to me, you know, when people say to you, Mishka, you're an inspiration, you say, yeah, that's only because you haven't met David Clark. He was one of the, like before I'd written or published anything when I was like, just getting my shit together, like getting sober

and running and stuff. And I was like doing these races and starting to tell, like, maybe offer up to people like, oh yeah, you know, I used to drink a lot and now I don't. And I was like doing these races and starting to tell like, maybe offer up to people like, Oh yeah, you know, I used to drink a lot and now I don't. And somebody said his name to me and they're like, you should check out this guy, Dave Clark, you know? And so like he was, when I met him, dude, it was like meeting Superman, you know, that's exactly what it was like. I was like, Oh shit, you're real. And he was relentless. No matter what mountain he climbed, he was always I am the next thing. Like, you know, part of his disposition was that there was no rest for David Clark.

Like, no matter what obstacle he was facing, he was always finding that glimmer of positive opportunity. You know, whether it's, you know, look, I've been injured in running, so now I'm going to get on the bike or I'm going to go into the gym and learn how to be an MMA fighter. Like there was just no stopping this guy. And he was also prolific in his writing. He wrote this amazing autobiography out there. Then he wrote Broken Open, which is more about of biography out there. Then he wrote Broken Open, which is more about the nature, like sort of this dark secret in endurance and ultra endurance sports where our relationship to this sport becomes unhealthy and his reckoning and kind of wrestling with that. And he just released this brand new book, like last week, May 10th, called Eat, Shit, and Die, which everybody should pick

up, especially if you want to support him and honor his legacy. I mean, three books and while he's doing all this other stuff and facing the kind of obstacles that we all face as athletes and humans. I had a relationship with Dave that was sort of like my relationship with stephen king you know where it's like stephen king has to write everything and i would go on facebook and see and like dave had just wrapped some insane challenge donating all the money he raised to this charity and i would log back in and and he'd have another fucking one lined up like right after it. I was like, God damn it, Dave. Like, you're just going to run everything? Like, are you just going to raise all the money?

Are you going to help all the people? Like, damn it, dude. That's so funny. He was persistent, man. And I think that has a lot to do with like the, you know, I looked up to him really, you know, obviously as a human and as a person who's lost a lot of weight, but really is an aspiring ultra runner, man, I, you know, I've been wanting this for so long, you know, to be one of those things. Um, it was, it, and, and he was not, he was just a guy that, that was there for me, not only as an experienced ultra runner to offer advice,

but as one who was also morbidly obese at one point in time and could relate to me in ways that other people just can't. People just don't, can't, you know, it's a really weird twisted club. These like, I don't know why my heart's broken so bad. Like these, um, formerly morbidly obese. I know how bad you had to hurt to get there. And, uh, it just makes a certain bond. And to have one of those humans whose Venn diagram also overlaps in the area of what we do for fun, like what we do for camaraderie and pleasure and community, ultra running, and pleasure and community is ultra running is like, it was, it was especially unique relationship with, uh, with, with, um, with the runner, although we didn't get to meet in person often.

Um, I did, I did look up to him, uh, in a, in a very unique and specific way. And he is, there's going to definitely be a void um in my life yeah i i think i think what's interesting too josh is that like the way you describe it that's exactly how i feel about him you know but i didn't have the experience of being morbidly obese and then losing all that weight you know and it's it's like's like, it's a small weird club that we have, you know, had lost all this weight, as an ultra runner, as an aspiring writer. Motherfucker was a check in every box. Every time I saw him, I was like, man, you know me. And he did from the instant I met him. And I feel like

we all have that experience of Dave, that we feel like he was very specifically ours. Yeah. We're finishing each other's sentences the first time I ever met him. I think that there's something really special and unique about his arc in that it's not just this massive weight loss story. I've known people that have lost tremendous amounts of weight. I know many, many people that have battled with and overcome their addiction turmoil. But with David, it's sort of like you said. He checked all those boxes.

Like you said, he checked all those boxes. But, you know, when you look at these images of him before, he wasn't just a large guy lost in the throes of alcoholism. There was a darkness to it, like a deep darkness, you know, I struggle to even think of anyone else who comes close to, you know, that kind of example that he set for so many people. It's just a deep and profound loss for all of us. And the experience that he had in his life, you know, struggling as an alcoholic and an addict and somebody who was addicted to food and then addiction to the racing to all the

crazy shit that he did to see him in person he just had those beautiful big blue eyes like a baby you know so it was like every time I saw him looking at his eyes,

it was like he was getting younger, you know? And he just, he was so, so hungry for experience and for understanding and for knowledge and for empathy. You know, he just, dude was like a heart in running shoes you know he cared about everybody well he left us too soon i believe he was 49 when he passed um and he will be uh deeply deeply missed yes he will leadville will never be the same yeah not for me you know excuse me he was loved by many and mishka you said when we talked on the phone the other day you said you know i will i will just you know that guy is just tattooed on my soul like i will never forget him like and i think he lives boldly within all of us and will forever.

Absolutely, man. I didn't sleep great last night. I dragged myself out of bed this morning and I was thinking about what Dave used to say about every day it's a new opportunity to go for a run. And I was like, you know what? He can't today, but I can. And so i dragged myself out there and was just had him in my head the whole time you know and i was thinking about him and he was he he wasn't fearless you know he had he had tons of fear and i'm sure he would tell you that he was mostly fear but courage is feeling fear and doing the fucking thing anyway and that was his special you know and i i i feel like you know at the end you know that he was probably like oh man so so this is it right this is you know the the great race right the one thing i haven't done yet yes and like well fuck it let's go man i've been curious my whole life what this was about. Let's go for it.

And I feel like in my heart that at the end he was like, all right, this is the next big thing. This is the next big adventure. I agree. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to put a pin on it. But before we get into this conversation, two more things I think we need to talk about. One is we decided to set up a GoFundMe for David's family. Mishka, you're actually the one who set it up. Yeah. to raise money to help cover the costs associated with his passing. And I'll put a link in the show notes to that. If you have the ability to contribute, please do. I'm sure it'll be appreciated and much needed by his family.

He's left behind by Courtney, his girlfriend, and three kids, right? Yeah. So they can use all the help that they can get. so they can use all the help uh that that they can get and the second thing is we were talking about trying to figure out some kind of uh community run challenge that uh we can all do together to help keep them in our hearts so mishka you want to tell us a little bit about what you were thinking on that note so what i was i was doing on this, you know, today too while I was on my run and thinking about Dave and thinking about the person that he was. And, you know, his handle on everything was, we are Superman. It wasn't about I.

It was about we. It was about us. It was about community. It was about all the strugglers. It was about, you know, about all the strugglers. It was about the whole human race. And he had no ego about anything that he'd done. He just said, oh, it was fun. It was beautiful.

How are you doing? How's your running been? Your left foot was bothering you. How are you doing with that? So I feel like now it's time for us to take the light that he shone on us and shine it back on him. And his birthday was February 5th, 2-5. So I say a week from tomorrow, that's what, May 30th, let's all go run out and run 2.5 for Dave. Whether it's, you know, and I wanted, it seemed, it felt important to me to make it a challenge that's open to everybody

because Dave, when he started running, man, he could only make it a couple of steps because he was so fat and so out of shape, you know? So go out and run 0.25, go out and run 2.5, run 12.5, 22.5. Go out and run 2.5, run 12.5, 22.5. You know, whatever it is for you, go out and do it. Keep Dave in your heart. Keep him in your head.

Post about it. We want to hear how you remember him, how he touched you. And I think we're going to use the hashtag WeAreDavidClark, you know, the hashtag we are David Clark, you know, because he gave that we are Superman to us. That was his gift to us. And I think we should give it back to him. I agree. Yeah, I love that. So with heavy hearts, we're going to bid you adieu now and, uh, hopefully, uh,

listening to this conversation or revisiting it, if you heard it prior several years ago, we'll, uh, bring him more present into your conscious awareness. We are all David Clark. That's true. We miss you, Dave. We love you. And you will not be forgotten. So thanks, you guys. I appreciate it. And without further ado, this is me and Dave Clark. Thanks for coming down, man. I'm glad to be here.

Dude, you made the trip all the way from Colorado down to LA to sit with me, man. I'm so honored by that. I really appreciate it. I thought I had more time on the run. Yeah. A little bit more time, right? What have you been doing since you've been in LA? I've just been kind of hanging out a little bit. I got a chance to go down and meet some folks at a running store, Front Runners, and do a group run there. The one in Brentwood? Yeah. Oh, no. Actually, I showed up at the one in Brentwood, but I was supposed to be at the one in West Hollywood. I ended up making it to the right one, though, and got to talk about my book a little bit.

Oh, that's cool. Do you have a nice turnout of people? Or what was it? Usually those things, like whenever I do that kind of stuff, like five people show up. You know, yeah, I've had both spectrums of the experience, you know, the five and the 50. This one was like, I think it was like 20 people

there. It was a pretty good turnout. Oh, that's cool. Did you do a run also or did you just talk about the book? No, we did a run and I got a 100 miler coming up this Saturday, so I was supposed to do a nice little taper run and it turned into be like a five mile race with everyone. Yeah, usually that's what always happens when I do the group runs like uh a lot of people that

don't you know they're not ultra runners so they go they run a lot faster than i run when i'm training i always get intimidated yeah you know yeah i think it was just because like you know i don't know some guy no one knows who he is shows up from colorado so everyone wants to just kind of flex and test yeah here comes sc comes Scott Jurek, right? You know? Yeah, and it's hard to not just, you get caught up in it and you end up running fast. Of course. Feels good.

What's the 100-miler you're getting ready for? I'm going to go out to Javelina. Uh-huh. Yeah, down in Arizona. Nice, man. That should be good. Yeah. So what races have you done since Badwater 2013?

Well, I did Badwater this year. Oh, you did? I didn't know that. Well, actually, it did me. But, yeah, I got, I had, last year was just such a dream come true to get a chance to line up out there and to do it and finish it. And then this year, even with the new course, I wanted to go out and see if I could test myself a little bit against it. And I went out a bit aggressively. Oh, you did, huh? Yeah. A little ahead of yourself. I seem to learn the same lessons over and over again in life. Yeah. Well, I could tell from reading your

sobriety story, it's not a linear trajectory for you, nor is it for me, but nor is it for most people. Yeah, that's true. I know, I was with, I just got back. I was up in the Bay Area for a week. And yesterday afternoon, I did a podcast with Dean Karnazes, who gave you a wonderful blurb for your book, by the way. Yeah. And we were talking about Badwater. And he's like, man, I just can't figure that race out.

Like some years I go in, I think I have it totally dialed and it kicks my butt. And other years I feel like it's not going to go well and then I have my best year. So he's like, I can't crack that nut. Yeah, it's tough. Certainly he knows a hell of a lot more than I know about that kind of stuff. But I've experienced the same thing. I mean I was fitter and in better shape and I think even more prepared mentally than I ever was. But, you know. That's the way ultras go, though.

It is. It's humbling. It'll smack you down. That's sport. I think it's a sport in general. And, yeah, I mean, one of the things we were talking about yesterday as well is the importance of failure. Not just the willingness to fail, but the failure itself. Because that's the place from which you can learn and grow.

Like, if you had a great race, then what do you take away from that? Better than I was last year? That's so true. I mean, it's good for the ego, right? You go throw down a PR and you have a good day, but I don't remember ever saying, wow, everything went great and I learned so much. It usually happens when everything goes really, really bad. That's when you learn. You're right. Absolutely.

I'm like a good, stubborn alcoholic. Yeah. You know what I mean? How has the process of kind of getting the book out there been for you? You know, it's been incredible in every possible way. And, you know, the finish line for me was always finishing the book, writing it. And I never really looked very much beyond that. So everything that's happened since then over the last couple months has been definitely something that I hadn't anticipated and hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about.

But I've been very blessed, as usual, to have some guys like Dean endorse a book and Marshall all right to write the foreword. So that's definitely helped get my foot in the door a few places. Yeah, you got some big... You got Tim O'Donnell too gave you a blur. Marshall wrote the foreword. So you're in good company with those guys, right? Yeah. A blessing living in Boulder

too. Of course, right? You throw a rock and you hit a training partner. That's right. I always say that in Boulder, if you tell everyone you did an Ironman, they won't be impressed. They'll just ask you what your bike split was. I'd be scared to live there. Too many super fit athletes. Yeah. How long have you lived there? I've been in Colorado for about 20 years. Right. But most of that was not in Boulder, right? No, mostly in the Denver metro area. And I still live outside of Boulder in Lafayette. I

live about eight miles outside. But do you find people in Boulder to train with or are you like a solo guy when it comes to training? You know, I'm not surprisingly a man of extremes when it comes to that. Shock. Yeah. But I can spend a lot of time just running by myself and I can be very social too. I like it all. I like both of them. I like to be out there in my own head and stuff

and also it's good to just I've definitely benefited greatly from being able to run with guys and girls a lot stronger than me. Yeah, that's what's great about that community. I still, I keep telling my wife, I'm like, let's go live in Boulder for a summer,

just for a summer. I'm sure I would get just epic training in. I'm more of a lone wolf though. I like to go out by myself, get the quiet time away from the kids and everything. But it's good to mix it up with the company, I think. Let's play a little game that I know you know well. It's called What It Was Like, What Happened, and What It's Like Now.

Okay. You know that game, right? Yeah. Well, What It Was Like, man, that's tough. It was pretty bad. It got really, really dark and really, really ugly. And I just kind of created this place for myself where this whole image of who I was. And of course, I found a way to put alcohol and using in the middle of that identity.

And so it never seemed odd to be in that identity. And so it never seemed odd, you know, to be in that place. And I had, you know, I had like all of us, a tough childhood and a lot of things that were, you know, disturbing me in there. And I was running away from it. And, you know, at first it was chasing the kind of the concept of normalcy, you know, and just wanting to feel attached to society and owning a home, which seemed really almost impossible to me at one point in my life. And then starting a business and being successful in that. And all these things I was chasing just never really made me happy. So I tried to silence those guiding voices, if you will, from the outside in.

those guiding voices, if you will, from the outside in. And as I did that and as I went along, my chemical abuse, my substance abuse, it just got darker and darker. And it went from partying and having fun and goofing off to just sitting by myself in the dark at night and drinking. And it's funny. It's like all these things that I used as, you know, levels or barometers to gauge my drinking and how I was normal. Well, at least I'm not drinking in the morning. At least I'm not, you know, waking up in the bushes somewhere, you know, and one by one,

all those things kind of ticked off. Like, well, yeah, but, you know. But there's always somebody lower. There is. And you can spin that wheel forever. And I found reading, you know, that aspect of your story to be, There is. What really touched me the most was how you described the sort of, you know, the drinking in isolation. You know, I think that's something that a lot of people can't really grasp. I think a normal person will read these stories in your book and they'll think, you know, how does somebody do that? Like, I don't understand, you know, and I'm reading and I'm right with you, you know. It's like, you know, I couldn't wait to get home from the party so that I could really start my drinking, you know.

So I could, start my drinking. That's when the good drinking starts and all the kind of shame that comes with that and that progressive withdrawal from society. And as you sink down, then you start surrounding yourself with lower companions. But you always surround yourself with the other people that are doing the kind of same thing that you're doing. So you never have like an objective mirror to reflect the reality of your behavior. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's funny because, I mean, how could you expect someone who's never been there to understand when even going back and reading it and reliving it, I go, how the hell did I not know that I was just totally out of control? But you did know. I mean, you knew when you were 13.

You knew on some unconscious level that this was probably going to be a problem down the line. And I remember sort of harboring that kind of semi-conscious thought. Like you're not really aware like, oh, I'm an alcoholic. But you have that little tickle like early on where you're like, yeah, this might not go so well. No, you're right. It wasn't so much as not knowing, it's like just how could I not be actively aware of how destructive it was. But no, you're so right. No, I always knew that what I was doing wasn't exactly normal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Drink when it's good, drink when it's bad. And what's also interesting is that, you know, in the midst of like a pretty insane drinking career, you're still able to like put together this amazing business and succeed and make tons of money. I mean, you must be an unbelievable salesman.

outsider perspective would be, if you're drinking like that, there's no way you can function. But the alcoholic is a very resourceful individual, you know, very scrappy. And I thought it was, I thought it was very interesting how you described how you were able to kind of keep all the plates spinning for as long as you did. Yeah. I think that the picture that a lot of people have of the alcoholic is woefully inaccurate. Like you said, it's not the bum sitting on the street corner drinking and sitting around in his own filth, although we can all end up there if we stay on long enough. It's heading that way. But no, it's the guy that's doing a pretty reasonable job at creating an illusion of what his life looks like, you know, and getting farther and farther away from that illusion as he goes, you know,

deeper and deeper in. Right. There's this great disconnect and there's this growing awareness that, yeah, I'm going to, this is, this is a problem. You know, you're getting into trouble all the, I mean, you know, you know, you know that this is not good. You're powerless to stop. And to compensate for that, you go overtime on work and all those other things because that helps put the facade up that your life is actually functional. Yeah, and it gives you proof that you are okay. It's like, hey, well, at least I'm doing this. I'm okay. Right.

this, you know, and I'm okay, you know? Right. And that kind of feeling of the ego, like there's that episode in the book where you go into that huge pitch meeting, right? And you have, you know, brass balls and, you know, you kind of like throw down the gauntlet on this deal, like in a pretty risky way and you get what you wanted out of that. So, what I took away from that story is sort of this weird thing that I think only the alcoholic can truly understand, which is having this huge ego, like thinking you're more entitled and better than everybody else, but also simultaneously harboring this horrible shame that you're a piece of shit and you're worse than everybody, completely worthless and shouldn't even be breathing air. Only the alcoholic can entertain those two thoughts at the same time. Yeah, the egomaniac with the

inferiority complex. Exactly. Yeah, and the funny thing is looking back and reliving it and writing it. And I think maybe at some point I thought I was doing a really good job at controlling other people and circumstances and manipulating my environment. But really it was just me that I was manipulating and controlling. And those other things, those could have happened no matter what just because I was creating value in the industry that I was in. And I didn't have to go in and totally try to manipulate and control. But you don't know any other way when you're in alcohol. I have to control everything that's going on right now. Obviously, it's bullshit.

It's impossible. You can't even control it yourself. How are you going to control everyone else? Right, let alone controlling 9-11 and then the market crashing and everything that happened to your business as a result. All of these kind of things that happen to you, things are progressively being taken away from you. You're holding on stronger and stronger to the drinking, but also developing this awareness that, you know, you're going to have to stop.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was an interesting time, you know, it would have been really, you know, I've always had this kind of alarm bell that can go off. Even when I was falling farther and farther down the hole, there's all these levels where these alarm bells would go off. And I would sense that I was dropping down another level. And that was certainly one of them. And it was really tempting and alluring to blame the loss of my business on 9-11 itself and what happened in the economic aftermath. And it was something that I just couldn't really let myself do

because I knew it was going to crush me and send me even farther down. So I just tried to move on. Well, playing the victim is always the easy way out. And the alcoholic is no stranger to playing the victim. No. No. But I thought that your wife showed tremendous, or now your ex-wife, but your wife at the time showed tremendous patience with you. I mean, she had to be just coming unglued while this was going on.

Yeah. That's a tough subject. She was. I mean, she was and is an amazing person. She's incredibly patient. But our relationship was very odd and very hard to really put in perspective. We grew apart, no shock there with my behavior over those years. But we never had any arguments about my drinking. There was never that place.

It was obviously pushing us apart. It was obviously creating a lot of damage in our relationship. But it wasn't presenting itself as a problem. It wasn't a topic of conversation. I think probably, if I had to be really honest, it was because she was afraid of engaging me in the debate because I'm a reasonably good debater, especially when drunk and passionate. And I think she just had to step back and try to let me figure it out. And she's amazing. And we're still really good friends today. But yeah, she's, she's something else. Yeah. I think that the most heart-wrenching part of the book for me was the night that you stay up

on Christmas Eve drinking super late and you're just out of your mind. And then you realize like you haven't wrapped these presents and, you know, you're just unable to kind of get that job done. And the presents end up with, you know, masking tape on them or just kind of looking like a mess and to kind of shame the next morning of that dawning on you and realizing that. I mean, I think if there was ever a moment where your wife would be like, I can't, I can't, you know, I can't have this anymore, that would have been it. Yeah. You know, It's funny.

You know how it is. When you go about – when I started to write the book, I made a deal with myself that I wasn't going to hold anything back that I thought would be too embarrassing or things I wrote about like driving drunk and stuff like that. I didn't want to put that in there because I know the stigma that's attached to that and I didn't want people chasing after me. I'm going to put what's in there and then if it's too much, I just won't release the book. I'll have an accurate product when I'm done. You go through all these moments, these low moments. I chose a handful of thousands. I tend to choose the ones that were, for whatever reason, I was present enough at that time to remember it. But the reality is most of

them I didn't remember and I had no idea what happened the night before. But of all the things that I talked about in the book, the other addicts that I talked to always point out the Christmas present story and not some of the other ones like, you know, it's that one. And I think because we've all just been in that place where you're so drunk, you're so out of it that you can't do this stupidly easy task. And your brain knows you should be able to do it. And it becomes more and more frustrating and more and more shameful and humiliating and everything all wrapped into one. And if I would have written the story as a script, that would have been my low. That would have been the moment that I rose up from the ashes and

created a new life because I don't know that I've ever felt less of a human being than I did that Christmas morning, but I kept going. Well, I think it highlights – well, there's this idea that the alcoholic will harbor that, hey, leave me alone. I'm allowed to do what I want to myself. I'm not hurting anybody. But that episode really sort of punctuates the fact that there are other people involved, in particular like young children on a very important day, which I think elevates the emotional kind of impact of something like that. But I related to the kind of roller coaster ride of saying, yeah, I got to get my life together. It's time to get sober. And then just not being able to do it or that memory so quickly fading.

And then you're back to doing what you're always doing and how long it took before I was really able to get to that place to really surrender and be willing to accept help and do the work. But, you know, my lowest moment was a year and a half before I got sober, you know? And if I was writing the narrative, you know, in the movie script, that would have been the moment, you know, but that's not the way it works. You know, that's not the way it works. You're ready when you're ready and it doesn't always make sense and it's not always logical. And then, you know, absolutely right. And then there's that other aspect too, that I think like a lot of my friends who, who haven't dealt with addiction in their own lives, I think that, you know, my, my sobriety date was August 5th in 2005. And that they think that maybe if it wouldn't have been that day, it would have been August 10th or maybe in September. But I was, you know, that

everything was pushing towards that point. But you know, the reality is that if I wouldn't have jumped off then, I could still be there now. You might be drinking now. Yeah. Or you might be dead. Yeah. Yeah. It's those little cracks in the door, those precious moments where you have just the slightest sliver of willingness, you know, but if you don't act on that, then who knows if you're ever blessed with that opportunity again. It really is a precious thing. The other thing that I thought was really impactful was this idea that the alcoholic is always trying to solve the problem with their mind. But they're not aware that their mind is being poisoned by chemicals, right? So your perception of the world is altered and you're trying to solve a problem from a place that's not healthy,

but you don't have the objectivity to see that because everything you're processing, everything that you're taking in through your eyes and your ears is going through this machine that is broken. Yeah. Right? And so it's impossible to have any objectivity on the reality of your situation, which makes it all the more crucial. Like, you know, in recovery, you hear about surrender. You hear about that willingness to ask for help. And, you know, without the intervention of a third party to kind of come into that equation,

it's extremely difficult. It's like a miracle that anybody ever gets sober. Yeah, absolutely. Like you abusing your brain over and over again and killing your brain cells and then trying to use your warped brain to convince yourself to not keep drinking. It is an absolute miracle. And we all know, those of us that have made it out, that we got lucky. We just – I don't know why, but why it happened on that day, but it did. And along with that comes a huge sense of gratitude and a huge sense of, bewilderment, you know, I mean, I, you look at it and you're like, I don't know how I ever, I don't know how I ever got that low. And I don't know how the hell I ever got out. The other thing that I loved was how you describe, uh, sleep and the lack thereof.

And I don't hear that really discussed that often, but for me, like I can remember so vividly, like I never just slept. Either I passed out or I was tossing and turning with bedspins and throwing up or, you know, trying to go a couple of days without drinking and the sleepless nights that accompany that are some of the most painful nights I've ever had. Like the hallucinations and the, you know, the sweating and the sheets and just never ever being able to just get a legitimate night of sleep without being altered. Yeah, there comes this like crazy time warp, right? Where you feel like you don't have enough time to adequately abuse and worship your

drug and you don't ever just retire for the evening. You just run out of time. Or your body just shuts you down before you get to wherever it is you're searching for. And yeah, it's like you said, there's no sleep. There's no like, okay, the night's over and now I've had my fill and I'm going to just go in and go to sleep. When I watch movies and TV and I see people drinking and then they just go home and go to bed, I'm like, how does that work? Yeah. Even the friends are out there and they get home at 2 a.m. and go to bed. Yeah, yeah. I don't understand how that works at all.

I have to drink enough until I completely black out to go to sleep. The last thing I would do, no matter if it was 3 o'clock in the morning or what time it was and how much I had to drink is I would pour. I would take like a rocks glass or a juice glass and just fill it full of 90-proof something and carry it up to bed with me. And I'm not going to feel any benefit or effect of that. It was more of a possession thing. I just needed to have it with me. And half the time, I didn't even drink it. I'd go and set it down in the nightstand next to me and I could sleep because I knew it was there. But it was nonstop drink until the moment that

consciousness left. And I was so aware of, and I talked about in the book, of that first time when I just slept. Right. It's a miracle. Yeah. Like when you're like, oh my God. I have never done this. Yeah. Since I was like 12. I didn't know what this was. Yeah. Yeah.

That was very palpable the way you described that. I mean, when you go out and like yesterday, when you talk to people or, you know, you kind of interact with people that have read the book, you know, normal people, non-alcoholics, non-addicts. I mean what is their reaction to reading the kind of trunk-a-log aspect of the book? You know, it's a mixed bag, but I think – the one thing I hear a lot is I'm glad you're still alive. And it's an interesting thing to hear from people, especially people that don't know you and have never met you. And it's quite common. And it just drives home that point of

looking from the outside and how destructive and how terrible that behavior was. And I think one of the most surprising things that's come out of this, you know, I kind of expected that just very much in the same way when I read your book, I knew where you were, you know, and it triggered that, those emotions in me and I could feel like the weight of the glass you were holding or the thoughts that you were thinking. I expected the book to reach other people who'd been in similar circumstances. But what I haven't expected or didn't expect was some of the family members. And I had a lady, I recently ran a road marathon in Leadville.

And a lady came out to the finish line and was waiting for me to finish. And she wanted to tell me about her son who had just passed away. He had an OD on heroin, and he was 26 years old. And she just wanted to tell me that the book, reading it, gave her some insight as to what her son might have been feeling and what he might have been thinking. Because from the outside in, a lot of people just think it's indulgent behavior and it is. And it is. It's selfish and it's indulgent. But we could talk for hours and hours on whether it's a disease and all these things that are such hot topics.

But the bottom line is once the addict's in, he's in and it doesn't really matter how you got there or what happened. And I had the same exact thing happen at a gym. I own a gym in Lafayette. And I had someone just show up whose wife had back surgery. I talk about my back surgery in the book. And she was prescribed a whole trough of narcotics. And she got addicted and she overdosed and she died. And it left her family just –

Like Oxy or what was it? I never asked exactly what they had her on. But yeah, I think that – and it's my hope that it continues to go that way and it continues to offer some sort of understanding or peace for people who are trying to figure out why a loved one is so lost and so much struggling. Yeah, I think it accomplishes that. I mean, you did a very deft job of describing the powerlessness and the desperation, the desire to change, but the inability to and the shame that accompanies that. Because I think if you haven't had a close encounter with somebody who's struggling with this disease or condition, however you want to qualify it, it is easy to go, like, why can't they just snap out of it? Like, what's, I don't get it, you know, just stop.

But it's so much more complicated than that. And you really painted this, you know, pastiche of the emotional landscape that accompanies it. And it was painful to read, but I also, I'm like, yeah, I'm right there with you. But I remember very, very vividly going to see that movie, Leaving Las Vegas with a buddy of mine. And I'm just watching Nicolas Cage do his thing. And I'm like, yeah, man, let's do it. Like, it looks like a good time to me.

Like, I'm like, yep, I'll do that too. Yeah, I could see. Yeah, I could see why he'd make that decision. You know, like my friend is just horrified at the whole thing, you know? And I was like, oh yeah. Like, and this was before I got sober, you know? It was very evident.

Like, oh, I think differently, you know? I'm seeing the world through a different lens. Yeah. Did you watch Flight? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My friend, John Gatins, wrote that book.

Oh. I mean, wrote that script. And he's a friend that I know from recovery, obviously. I mean, he's writing that from probably based on some of his own experiences, but very, very powerful. People think it's about an airplane crash or whatever. No, this is an incredibly potent story about what it's like to be an alcoholic, a story very well told.

Yeah, I was honestly one of those people. I was absolutely blindsided by the movie. I went with a friend, and I was expecting a movie about it. No, I had no idea. I had tears spilling out of my eyes, rolling down my cheeks the whole time. It was very emotional. I think they did a really good job at showing that, you know, it's not a matter of what you're going to do.

You know, you're going to drink. It's going to happen. It's just a matter of what you're doing at the same time. Right, right, right. And also the way that you describe kind of your trigger situations, like that first time you had to go to the airport, you know, and what airports represented for you. I mean, for me, it's like hotels or like going to a foreign city where no one knows me, you know, and you're like, you know, I could get away with something here no one would know. And like that demon on your shoulder is right there. And trying to kind of prepare for those situations, the amount of like work, you know, recovery work that has to go into getting ready to, you know, walk through a scenario that you're so programmed to drink or use and is, you know, is challenging. And like,

just, you know, just reading you, feeling you like going into that airport and the guys that you're with are at the bar and they're encouraging you to drink. Like, so it's so brutal. I honestly have no idea how I made it through that first two weeks. Right. I mean, of all the times that I had everything perfectly aligned for me to get clean and I didn't do it. I had the time. I had the time away from work.

I had no stress. I had all these things and it just didn't matter. And then once I finally did make the decision, everything kind of aligned to screw me up and knock me off track, and it just didn't matter at that point. But that's the way it works. It reminded me of the story in the big book where Bill W. is newly sober, and he has to go out of town. And he's in this hotel, and he's so close to drinking. And he just goes to that payphone and calls the hospital and says, do you have any alcoholics that I can go talk to? And that saves him. And he's like, if that payphone wasn't there hospital and says, do you have any alcoholics that I can go talk to? Right.

And that saves him. And he's like, if that pay phone wasn't there, he was a goner. You know, and it's funny because I'm talking to family members and stuff who are just really struggling. And the whole enabling addicts and stuff like that is something that is just so hard and occupies so much of my time in talking to other people. And I'm dealing with it right now with my own brother. Yeah, I wanted to get into that a little bit.

And, you know, you have to be there for them and you have to love them. But the point being that once the alcoholic truly makes up their mind that they're done and it's real, ain't nothing going to stop. You know, so we have this tendency that, you know, the family members are like, oh, if I say the wrong thing, if I do the wrong thing, if I look at it the wrong way, it's going to screw. So we have this tendency that the family members are like, oh, if I say the wrong thing, if I do the wrong thing, if I look at him the wrong way, it's going to screw it all up. And the reality is, no, no, there's nothing you can do to make him use. He's going to do that all by himself. And there's nothing you can do to get him better. Once he makes up his mind, he'll need support, he'll need help, he'll need all these things, but nothing's going to stop him. That has to come from inside. So your brother is out there still. He is, he is an older,

older brother, right? Younger brother. Oh, younger. Oh, 10 years younger. I have, I have three brothers. I have one older and two, two younger. And, uh, two of us have the addiction demons chasing us around and two of us don't go figure go figure. And so how do you navigate that? What is your communication like, if any? For somebody who's out there listening, who's dealing with the same thing as a family member. It's fucked up, man. I mean, it's really hard because I hear my own advice echoing in my ear. And I know it's right because other people have told me it.

And it's just part of the truths of addiction. But I feel the same thing other people feel. I want to help them out. And I want to believe that I can send him $20 and he's not going to buy heroin with it. All those same things. But I know I can't. Yeah, all those same things, but I know I can't. But honestly, it's almost like you would think that being an addict would give you a certain amount of insight in helping another addict, and that's true.

But really, it's almost unrelated. I feel like what I'm going through as a family member trying to help my brother is almost entirely unrelated to what I went through as an addict myself. It allows me a window to understand what he's thinking and to have some empathy, but it's such a difficult experience. And it's up there with one of the toughest things I've ever gone through in my entire life. Yeah. Well, that's interesting that you say that because the cornerstone of recovery is one alcoholic talking to another. And certainly you've endured enough to be able to have common ground with your brother to have that dialogue. But what you can't do is gift him with the willingness that's required for him to even listen to you, let alone take action on anything that you're telling him.

Yeah, and absolutely true. And maybe I should be a little more clear. It's like, um, I don't in dealing with just me and another alcoholic, it's an entirely different dynamic in me dealing with my brother because I'm feeling that emotional component bond and all of that. Yeah. And that's definitely clouds it and makes it really hard. And it's given me a whole new way to understand what the family members are going through with their loved ones. Because it's real easy to just be in that sponsor role and say, well, yeah, I know what your problem is.

You haven't screwed up your life enough yet. It's not bad enough for you yet. As soon as it gets bad. You need to go out and drink a little more. Right. And to do that with your brother is really hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially when they're calling and they're saying, I'm going to be on the street and can you take me in and all this stuff.

And you're thinking, if I don't and he dies or something happens, I have to carry that with me. Yeah, you can't be that dispassionate sounding board because, yeah, you're dealing with other people at an arm's length. You're like, here's what you do. Do it or don't. I'm not attached to it. Here's the solution. And then you're not thinking about it the rest of the day. Yeah. And it's been a process because that's kind of the way it's had to go. And so our relationship isn't real good right now. But I was just telling my mom that he's got to be the architect of his own recovery.

And when that happens, there's nothing we won't do to help him. But I can't tell him how. I mean, I can tell him how I did it. I can share with him how I did it. I can tell him what I thought, what I felt, and point him in the right direction. But ultimately, the truth comes from within, right? It's not something we find from the outside and bring into our lives.

It's something that was always there that we just kind of discover. Yeah, and I think that it's important for family members out there who are dealing with this to understand that that's very different from trying to conjole a family member into getting sober to get you off their back. That's not willingness. That's a temporary band-aid that will not hold ultimately. I mean, of course, there's the occasion where you do an intervention and somebody begrudgingly goes into rehab and then they get it when they're in there. But the more typical case is it doesn't stick because they're not ready because it's not being driven by their own desire. It's being driven by the fear and the love of family members who are desperate. Yeah. Yeah. So it's complicated. It's hard, man. It is. I mean, we're crazy creatures. So what was that moment in August that tipped the scale for you? so what was that moment in august that tipped the scale for you you know um it was just uh i think it was we kind of talked about before you know alarm bells

you know and i kind of was aware of each time my my drinking and my my use was uh going to a new level of destruction and and um that morning there was just something really heavy about it. And I think that that was going to be a significant day for me one way or the other. And I think I was going to either entirely give up and just go about the process of ending it, maybe slowly, maybe quickly, or I was going to stand up and start to fight. And I just felt like I had that one shot, that one little glimpse, and I just jumped on before I could think about it. I've related it to jumping out of a car, you know, like I was driving in a car and I thought I was driving the car and taking it to all these nice

places. And one day I realized I was in the passenger side and I had no control over where the car was going. And I kind of hung out there for a while too. And it's like, okay, well, I'll just see where this thing's going. And then that day I just opened the door and I jumped out. And before I could even think about it, like all the times I tried to, you know,

wrap it into this perfect thing that made sense and, you know, wrestle every demon down to a perfectly, you a perfectly understandable thing. And it never worked, obviously. So I had to trust the process. And it's kind of just like talking about running 100 miles or something like that. You can't get to that place where you're doing some run and trying to convince yourself why it's a good idea because it's not a good idea.

You just got to run. And that's what I did with the recovery. I just took the moment and kept moving forward. Right. And what you learn in recovery is that you're always in the passenger seat ultimately. And it's when you think that you're in the driver's seat or you try to take the wheel that you end up veering off into the wrong direction. And that's kind of an's a, you know, kind of an ephemeral idea that we could spend hours talking about, but, but just that's part of the surrender of realizing like, not only am I not in control, like there are very few things

that I actually can control. One of them is whether I drink or not today, but most things, you know, are pretty much beyond my reach. And it's interesting that the day that you had that moment was not, you know, after a car wreck or being put in jail. I mean, it was similar with me. Like, it was a really uneventful morning, like, in terms of, like, events that had happened to me. You know, nothing, you know, I was hungover, but it wasn't on the heels of anything super traumatic. But there was just, it was different. You know, I woke up and I was like,, but it wasn't on the heels of anything super traumatic, but it was different. I woke up and I was like, I'm ready. Yeah, like I'm ready or yeah, there's no turning back. It was very inexplicable.

It wasn't unicorns and rainbows and angels, but I still would qualify it as a spiritual experience. No doubt. Because it as a spiritual experience. No doubt. Because it came out of nowhere. It wasn't triggered by any particular event. It was triggered by the accumulation of many years and terrible things. But that little gift of willingness just sort of materialized. It's funny because I asked for help that day.

And I probably asked for help before. But it was always just some sort of exercise and melodrama and wanting to be pitied more than anything. Alcoholics are good at that. Oh, yeah. But I meant it. I meant it that time. I felt that the realness that I was not able to do this anymore. And I was totally powerless. I was in over my head. I was getting my ass kicked and it wasn't going to get any better.

And I felt myself giving up. I think that was the most scary thing is I felt myself like I always kind of had a little bit of fight. I'm going to figure this out one day. And I always had envisioned that there would be a big intervention and they'd send me off to rehab and I'd come back and everything would be great. But I felt all of that was gone. I didn't even have any visions of getting better anymore, and I didn't like that feeling. I didn't like the idea of giving up.

But you had never been to an AA meeting before. It wasn't like you had kind of made fits and starts or tried. Oh, no, I'd been to a lot of AA meetings. Oh, you had? Okay. In fact, usually what would happen is I would – there would be one of those bad days that should be your bottom. I'd wake up and not remember where my car was and just have all the – That's not so bad.

That's every day. No, it really wasn't. Or like the time I talked about in the book where I was vomiting out of my truck window driving home. That should have been my last day. I should have said, oh, shit, I didn't kill anybody today. That's good. Let's jump off this roller coaster now. But I would have one of those mornings and I would wake up and I'd go to AA that night and I'd go, see, I knew it.

I don't have a problem. I don't have anything in common with any of these people. These are the guys with the problem. And it was like an affirmation or an excuse to go drink some more. And I briefly do talk about it in there where I talked about the time I really did go to a meeting. And I found what I did have in common with all those guys, which is alcohol, obviously, namely. It was the same experience we're talking about with sleep it's like how could you do something over and over again and never experience it and i've been to

probably 15 or 20 aa meetings and they just never meant anything to me and i mean i think i tried to do the 90 and 90 like five or six different times oh yeah and i think i made three or four days and then i'd be like what am am I doing? I own a company. This is fucking bullshit. I was court ordered. So I did it for that reason. And I was just, you know, it was okay. And I was well-intentioned when I went.

I was going to get sober, you know. But then it just, I was kind of a tourist. Like I intellectualized the whole thing. Like I get it. I understand. Like I'm not going to do all this writing stuff down. I don't need to. you know but then it just i was kind of a tourist like i intellectualized the whole thing like i get it i understand like i'm not going to do all this writing stuff down i don't need to like i can make that list in my head so i've done that yeah i've done that on to the next thing like i've solved this problem and of course that didn't work you know but you have to have your you know you got to go through all those experiments i think yeah and And I think people, a lot of people out there, they don't know that.

They don't know how nonlinear the journey to recovery is for 99% of the people that are sober out there. They think, oh, they go to rehab and they're fine or they go to AA and everything changes or a therapist or whatever version it is. But it's usually a lot of ups and downs and relapses. People are always surprised when somebody relapses. But that's the natural state of the alcoholic. The miracle is that all those days that they didn't drink, they're wired to drink. they're wired to drink. Yeah. We're wired to drink.

So every day that you don't is the gift. Absolutely. I just had nine years and it's a good start. It's amazing. Congrats, man. It's a good start. Yeah, that's fantastic. Congratulations.

Very cool. So let's talk about the weight thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you got fat. That was fat as hell, man. 320 pounds. 320. Yeah. Yeah. And I can't, I mean, looking at you now, it's really hard to picture that. I mean, I saw the pictures in the book, but you know, you were a big boy. Yes. I was ultra before I knew it had anything to do with running, man, eating, drinking,

whatever, man. And it's funny because I have people say anything to do with running, man. Eating, drinking, whatever, man. And it's funny because I have people say to me, you know, isn't all that running bad for your knees? And I always say, you know, waiting in line for my third Big Mac weighing 320 pounds was bad for my knees. But yeah, you know, food was the same thing, you know. I mean, the process was pretty much identical, you know, between what was going on with my weight and what was going on with my drinking. I didn't think about food as anything other than making me feel good.

That's what it was for. Even though I knew better, intellectually I knew better. I could have written it out for you and told you exactly how all this stuff works, but it didn't matter because that's not how I saw food. all this stuff works, but it didn't matter because that's not how I saw food. And it's funny because I talk a little bit about there and that I had this concept of food and who was thin and who was fat. And I had it all, of course, figured out. I had everything figured out. I knew exactly how everything worked, right? Let me tell you how it is.

Standing at 320 pounds and like with a fifth of bourbon. I got this figured out. Well, you know, that's interesting because I remember telling my dad, and you know how it works, like your family members, they want to let you off the hook, right? They don't want, you know, a lot of times, you know, for the high bottomers, if you will, the ones that didn't end up on the street, you know,

especially if you've had a level of success at some point in your life, your family wants to believe they want to let you off the hook. And they don't want to think you have a problem. And you drink too much, obviously. You need to stop that. But there's nothing wrong with you. Well, because then it becomes a reflection of them. Yeah.

Yeah, but I told my dad once, I was like, you know, I used to have this concept of like, well, yeah, I'm overweight. And yeah, I drink too much. But other than that, I got life figured out. And I realized the stupidity and the insanity of that now. And I like to say I wasn't overweight. I wasn't an alcoholic. I was broken.

I was a broken human being. The food, the alcohol, that was a symptom. I didn't know how to live life at all. I had no idea how to live life. I had no idea how to live life. I had no idea how to be happy. I had no idea how to sit and just be still. And the food and the drugs and the alcohol was just something I could do in the meantime because I couldn't be still. Yeah, that's the other thing that I think a lot of people aren't really fully in touch with, that alcohol is the solution for

the alcoholic until it's the problem. And the alcohol and the effects of alcohol on the alcoholic are a symptomatic manifestation of a disease that's really kind of a spiritual malady. It's like there's something wrong with this person. Drinking alcohol or taking drugs with this person. Drinking alcohol or taking drugs solves that temporarily until it stops working. And the drive to use is the kind of confused path of the diseased individual to solve this problem because they don't have any other answer. And recovery is about blazing this frightening trail of trying to repair this broken soul. That's what it really is. Absolutely. And the running and the journey that you've been on, I mean, those are kind of outward manifestations of this path towards healing, this path towards wholeness, this path towards self-knowledge, self-understanding of putting those pieces back together.

Yeah, yeah, undoubtedly. And that's what I see. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people are like, well, the running, you just transferred all your addiction to the running. So, all right, what's your take? So many times I have people in recovery who have become ultra athletes. So I have to ask the question. I had Charlie Engel on.

We talked about, you know, it's going to come up. So I'm interested. Everybody has a different answer to the question. So how do you answer that? Did I trade addictions? That one? Yeah, that one. You know, I get that one. That's the one I get. That's the second most popular with me. The first one is where do you get your protein? Well, yeah. You know, first of all, as you know, addiction has a huge destructive component to it. You know, you can't be addicted to loving your children. You can't be addicted to, you know, trying to be more spiritual in your life. You can't be addicted to anything that is overall improving the quality of your life and making you a better human being. Can you be addicted to anything that is overall improving the quality of your life and making you a better human being. Can you be addicted to running?

Sure. I think that's that point is when it transfers over, you know, is when is it becoming destructive? When are you engaging in the behavior compulsively despite all these negative consequences? I tried to switch addictions a million times. In fact, it was my preferred method of trying to find sobriety, right? I'd go, you know what? I'm going to become an outdoorsman, you know? And I'm going to give up drinking

and I'm just going to go fly fishing and I'm going to go camping and I'm going to go to Alaska or I'm going to go to the gym. And I tried working out and all that stuff. Or moving cities, pulling a geographic. I tried running. I tried to switch my all that stuff. Or moving cities, pulling a geographic. I tried running. I tried to switch my addictions to running.

And I always kind of wanted to be that runner person. It was appealing to me for whatever reason. But as you know, that was just changing the symptoms. I may as well have been trying to switch from beer to wine or from whiskey to cigarettes. I mean, it just didn't matter. It wasn't going to work that way. When I finally addressed the spiritual problems, what was causing me to live this way, and once I had to tackle some of those issues, I had this tremendous amount of mental energy

and time available to me that I could have chosen to do anything with. I could have chosen to write music or poetry or go camping or go running. And that's what I chose, but it was very much after the fact. And that's the only way it would have ever lasted for me because I could go to the gym. How many times have I sat on a piece of equipment at the gym, reeking of alcohol and still smelling like Big Macs because I vomited when I woke up in the morning. And that's real. And that wasn't going to work.

Yeah. It was never going to work. I have to remain diligent in my sobriety to remember that training is not the same thing as tending to my sobriety. Like going out and riding my bike and running, no matter how long that run is, that does not take the place of actually working a program of recovery because that's what I forget.

You know what I mean? I think I'm fine now. And now I go get my meditation when I'm running. No, that's not it. That is not the solution. The minute I start to think about that is when I start to regress back and move towards that relapse. Start feeling some of those old behaviors.

You know, running, triathlon, all these things, they can become addictions. You hear about the Iron Man widow. Or like when it starts to be this thing that someone escapes into because they're not happy with their life or they're avoiding other things in their life, then I think you have to have a hard discussion about what the addictive aspect of it is or what it is that you're running away from. But as Mishka Shubali said on the podcast, he's like, running is hard, drinking is easy.

Yeah, that's profound. He's like, I don't want to get out of bed and go run, but I always want to go to the bar. Right. And so I think that's something to think about as well. But I think running is really this platform of self-discovery, and that's what I found. And from reading your book, I mean that's clearly – I think – I gather that that's your approach to it. It is very much so.

That's your approach to it. It is very much so. And I also think that we were talking earlier about that feeling of being lucky, that why was that moment the moment. And once we arrive at that moment, once I was there and I put forth this journey of figuring out who I was and trying to trust the process and allow myself some time to heal while I was trying to figure these things out, it took a tremendous amount of faith and discipline and trust and all these other things that fit into running nicely. And when I'm in a 100-mile race and there's always going to be a moment for me, I hear other people say, oh, I never wanted to quit, never once. I'm like, well, good for you, man, because when I'm out there, I want to quit all the time.

And to be able to access that place where everything is uncomfortable, everything sucks, and there's an easy way out, and you don't take it, is very valuable. And it brings me back to that place in my early days of sobriety. And it actually gives me that feeling that I'm going to be okay as long as I can continue to identify those things in myself and realize that I'm not just a victim of the moment, that willingness to, you know, go beyond the self-imagined limits of your capabilities that is so important to this idea or this feeling of being alive? You know, I can answer it for me, you know, and I think that discomfort is a huge part of the addict's problem is that, you know, life can be uncomfortable. Just the normal living of life is uncomfortable. We do all kinds of things we don't want to do, you know, whether it's following up with customer calls or, you know, doing things. That's part of life. And the addict has nothing to do with that,

right? I'm not going to be uncomfortable in my life. There's no such thing I'm going to use if I'm uncomfortable. I'm going to use if I have a second that's, you know, that's available to me. And so I think being in that uncomfortable place is a thing that most people are okay with and addicts aren't. So I think that for me, it appeals to me in that place that to be, not just to be able to deal with discomfort but to deal with it on a big level is empowering in a way. And it's an affirmation of life and of recovery and of sobriety. Yeah, well put. and of sobriety. Yeah, well put.

I think that being ultra-sensitive, to continue to use the word ultra in every context possible. I know, I'm sorry, I do that. Yeah, I think in general, addicts and alcoholics tend to be people that, not everybody, but I think it's fair to make a generalization that they tend to be sensitive people. And when you're talking about when you were a kid and being kind of ultra, said it again, you know, compassionate towards some other kid that you thought was having a hard time, that heightens everything, right? So as you grow older, that becomes more painful or more

difficult to bear. And then it's the easy choice to use to numb that. And then you get sober and suddenly you're just, your emotions are charging, you know, firing in all different directions and you have no skills for how to manage that. And you honestly think that these emotional impulses that you're experiencing are going to kill you. You know, It feels like you're going to die. No, that's perfect. Absolutely. And so the process of getting sober and recovering is learning how to manage your emotions

because your coping mechanism gets shut off when you start your drinking career or your using career. And so you've got whenever you started, career, 13, whatever it is, until, you know, 33, right? 33. So you're a 33-year-old man and you have the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old. Yeah. And you're in the world, right? And you have responsibilities and, you know And that leads to panic attacks and freak outs and all sorts of things that without really having a solid foundation for sobriety, you're going to return to using ultimately.

Yeah, I mean that's the perfect analogy. And we all see those kids that can't cope and they're throwing tantrums and they're doing all this. And that's like our behavior. That's the addict right there. That's a stereotypical addict. I can't have it my way. You know, I'm going to freak out and take everybody down with me. Yeah. What I always hear is emotions are just emotions, man. You can feel them and they change and you'll get to the other side of it. They will not kill you. Like, so I have to think like, it's not going to kill me.

It's not going to kill me. It's not going to kill me. In some sense, the pain of running an ultra is much more tolerable than some of the emotional pain that I've experienced. Yeah. Physical pain is a lot have to learn to divide physical pain from mental pain or emotional pain because you have what's going on in your legs, which is actually kind of the smallest part of it. It's the emotion and the meaning your mind is putting into that and telling you, hey, this could all be over really quick. You're probably injured. You need to sit down and you need to go on. This was a bad idea. And being able to separate those is exactly like what you said. It's okay. You're probably injured. You need to sit down and you need to go on. This was a bad idea, you know, and being able to separate those exactly like what you said, it's okay.

You're okay. You know, just slow it down, breathe a second and it's going to be all right. Emotions, there's no such thing as an inappropriate emotion, right? Just inappropriate times to feel them. And I think that was the big thing for me is I never had the emotion and the occasion aligned up to be appropriate. Right. It's the wrong moment. Why am I experiencing anger here? Yeah.

Well, being able to create that divining line between physical pain and emotional pain, particularly in the context of sport or running an ultra marathon, I mean, that's the keys to the kingdom. You know, when you're talking about a hundred mile run, it's not the physical that's going to bury you. It's the mental, right? I mean, as David Goggins famously said, when you think you're done, you've only accomplished about 40% of what you're truly capable of. So it's all about your mental state your emotional state you know your spiritual connection and whatever form that takes that is either going to carry

you across that finish line to some kind of triumphant victory or just bury you yeah my take on the the cliche the yogi ism about how much of it is mental and how much of it is physical and you know there's there's a thousand of them out there. Mine is, um, it's all mental, even the physical. I'll take you, I'll take it one further. Okay. It's all spiritual. All right. There you go. I like that too. You know, cause it's not supposed to be anything, right? Well, it's like, look, I'm going to come off like a woo woo new age guy. But the truth is like, it's all spiritual journey. You know, all the things that I'm doing, the things that you're doing, we're all born that day that you made that decision to get sober and, and get in the passenger seat. And it's taken you on this remarkable, amazing journey.

Some of which, you know, you've played a small part through the actions that you've taken, but on some level, you know, you're, this is your, this is your path, man. You know, this is your path, man. This is your divinely inspired journey that you're on. And it's a beautiful thing to see. So when people say to me, oh, what do you think is your strength and your weakness? And how do you do these things and all that? I'm like, dude, I have no idea.

I mean, I can give the flip answer. You know, I can give the five things you can think. I can do all that. But I'm like, the real truth, like the honest truth is, I don't know because it's about, it all began when I threw my arms up and said, I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. Your weakest moment was your strongest moment.

Yeah. And I think that that's tough, especially for guys. You know, we're not reared to say, I don't know, or to say, I need help, or will you help me, or, you know, I'm lost. These are not the characteristics of the successful man in Western culture. No doubt, man. I mean, it was an absolute, the biggest obstacle that I faced in trying to, what I called, get sober. Because as you know, there's such a big difference between sobriety and recovery and not using. Not using is not even remotely related to being sober. You know, you're just not using anymore.

And that's where I was, is like, I was almost, I was willing to kind of do the work. If someone would have given me, you know, here's what you need to do. I think I was willing to try to do that and make it happen. But what I wasn't willing to do was admit that I wasn't capable of doing the work. You know, like, well, I'm a man. I can take care of this. I'll do this. I'll fix this. And I could never get to the first step because that was the problem right there. Until you can get to that place where you will literally do anything and you will take direction from somebody, even if you think that person is crazy or has no business telling you what to do, because don't you know who, who I think I am,

you know, until you can get over that and really destroy the ego to get to that place. You know, it takes, it takes destroying the ego to get to that place where you can actually grow. And it's completely counterintuitive, but yeah, it's the greatest feeling when you can actually grow. It's completely counterintuitive, but yeah, it's the greatest feeling when you can finally let go of that. I think there's a lesson in there to competing and stuff like that is giving over that control. Even when you get to a place

where you want to be competitive, I have to accept any possibility in a race. I'm going to accept the two extremes. I could win or I could not finish. And once I'm okay with either scenario, then I can just run. I can just be in the moment and run. You're not attached. Yeah. Yeah. That's freedom. Yeah. That's freedom. All right. 320 pounds. Okay. Yeah. All things being equal, I used to use a lot more soap. No, you didn't. A lot more of a lot of things, I think, right?

Yeah, 320 pounds. I mean, the only other person I've had on the podcast who was pushing the scale at that level was Josh Lajani. And it was fascinating to hear his story of how he finally kind of came to grips with it and got on top of it. And I saw similarities in your story. And one of the things that really struck me actually highlighted it. You said, changing your body and losing weight long-term is not about willpower. And you go on and then you say, you have to change the way you think and change the way you perceive the world, right? So it's not about a diet or some kind of short-term goal. It has to do with doing the inside work to change your entire kind of orientation about how you're interacting with the environment around you.

Yeah, absolutely. And we started talking about that earlier when I was like I used to have this weird perception of food and what people are. And I would think, you know, like I would see some, you know, fit looking person and they're, you know, eating a salad or something and they're eating some really healthy. And I go, what the hell are you doing, man? You're thin and fit. You can eat whatever you want. Why aren't you eating a Big Mac? I had it like totally screwed up in my head. I wasn't thinking, wow, that person is healthy and vibrant looking because they eat well. I thought, that's just who they are. And it has nothing, you know, that was almost a byproduct of it. And I certainly... Yeah, like if I look like that,

I'd eat a Big Mac. That's the same. That's like saying, if I wasn't an alcoholic, I'd get drunk every night. I'd drink all the time. Exactly. Well. So, I mean, so much of it is image, right? And how we see ourselves. And I didn't see myself as someone who needed to lose weight at that point. I saw myself as a fat person. And I was always going to be a fat person. And if I was going to not be a fat person, I had to figure out a way to trick my body or trick the universe and trick the world into getting me skinny. Let's sit there for a minute.

What is it like to be that heavy? Just the day in, day out, like shopping for pants and getting a belt and sitting on an airplane and standing in line. Just the simple things of navigating a typical day. Yeah, absolutely. The airplane's a big one because I used to, you know, I was traveling a lot and I would get on a plane and I would walk down the aisle and I could see everybody looking at me. And they're just going, oh, fuck, shit.

No, please, please, no, no, no. And then, you know, someone would lose the lottery and I'd plop down next to them. Oh, no, no. And then someone would lose the lottery and I'd plop down next to them. Do you need that extra, like they have that little thing for the seatbelt with the extender on it? You know, I never needed that. But I would definitely spill over into the chair next to me. And that person would have to twist sideways a little bit.

And I was not the type of person who could let something like that go. I would have to joke about it. I would start the conversation right. I'd go, oh, what did you do in your past life? Sorry, you lost the lottery today. If you'd have waited 10 more minutes, you would have got a different seat on the plane. You shouldn't be in such a hurry. That kind of stuff.

But all of that is just reaffirming this sense that you're a piece of shit. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I hear that from people all the time. They go, you know, I'm just this way and I'm happy. And, you know, I can't presume to know exactly what another human being is really feeling.

But I can say, well, I used to say that too. And it wasn't true. It wasn't honest. You know, I wasn't happy with how I looked. I would joke about it, I used to say that too, and it wasn't true. It wasn't honest. I wasn't happy with how I looked. I would joke about it. I would talk about it, but I wasn't happy. It's a defense mechanism. Absolutely.

And when I first started losing weight, I was wearing size 50 pants with a 30-inch inseam. That's as big as it got for me. I had the stretchy waist pants. I had to have the little elastic bands in them size became much more of a concern than fashion, just finding things that

fit was hard to do if I could find something that fit and I liked the way it looked, that was a bonus so you end up kind of looking like you eventually end up looking like a clown, no matter what, because you're wearing like a flannel shirt and plaid pants and, you know, because that's

all you could find in your size. So I noticed when I lost the weight, I went and played golf and I hadn't played in a long time. And it was the most strange sensation because when I went to line up a putt, my hands were right up close to my body.

And it felt so odd because my hands were way out here past my belly before when I was putting. And it actually changed my entire golf swing too because I wasn't slicing the ball as much. But I digress. It changed more than that, I would imagine. And at the time, what's it look like? McDonald's, Hardee's, Burger King, Pizza Hut. I mean, what's the daily routine? You know, yeah, fast food, lots of fast food.

I would, towards, you know, my weight gain and food consumption was really getting worse in the same way that my drinking was. You know, it was. It was progressing. And towards the end, I was eating fast food three or four times a day. And I would go to McDonald's and I'd get two sausage McEggs with biscuits, sausage biscuits with egg and cheese and hash browns and, of course, a Diet Coke. And then I'd drink. That's just the way it is.

You don't want to spike that blood sugar. Yeah, I know. I don't need that extra 200 calories but you know and then in the afternoon I'd go to you mentioned Arby's I'd go there a lot but I'd always get the potato cake things they have and I'd get like four of those to go along with whatever

sandwich I had and then that would usually be it because then I'd start drinking and then usually the last meal of the day came whatever sandwich I had. And then that would usually be it because then I'd start drinking. Right. And then usually the last meal of the day came late, you know, where it was just, you know, just gluttonous. I mean, just, you know, I'd go get a double quarter pounder with cheese, a filet of fish, French fries,

and those French fries would come back the next day like in whole french fry pieces like not the way the way that would work for me is i uh you know i didn't want to eat because that would interfere with the buzz yeah so i would go as long as i could without eating when i was drinking because i didn't want that in my stomach because that would make me feel tired or it would take longer to get drunk. And inevitably at the end of the night, you're starving. So you do this massive binge and I would wake up. I'd wake up with a pizza box open on my bed and Big Mac wrappers in my sheets and just the worst. Terrible. I can almost smell it.

Yeah, it's really pathetic. But that's why they invented like 100 proof schnapps. So if your stomach was really full and it's dessert-like, it's peppermint. Maybe I should go back and start drinking and try that. So, all right. So you're getting sober and you're realizing like, I got to now, this is the next thing that I have to address. And you take a very interesting kind of approach. I mean, first you try all these diets, Mediterranean diets, whatever it is, all of them. And then you kind of, you know, flick the switch and say, I'm going to put my scientific hat on because you have this background and approach it from a different perspective. So walk me through that. Yeah, so the main thing I was cognizant of was behaviorally

that whatever the process I used to get me to where I wanted to be had to be sustainable. And I knew I was never going to be able to eat all protein for the rest of my life or I was never going to be able to restrict my calories for the rest of my life. And you, cause you, you'd lost weight and gained a back. You'd done the yo-yo thing. Bunch of times. I lost 50 pounds at least eight or nine times, you know, and, and I'd always do it on some crazy, you know, diet. And, and usually it would, you know, come undone because number one, I didn't want to just, you know, keep eating that way. And number two, I wasn't drinking and that wasn't going to last very long. So yeah, I had to figure out a way to have a

healthy relationship with food and I had to eat. And that was really difficult because I totally linked up losing weight with not eating, obviously, or just eating or eating in some extreme way to trick my body. The Atkins thing is 100% protein is what I use the last five or six times. And it's funny because- Which is very effective at losing weight, but people have a hard time staying on it. Oh, absolutely. And I talk a lot about weight loss now. And whenever I have a group in front of me, I say, how many people have been on a successful diet? And people raise their hand.

And I'm like, good, keep it up there. So your idea of a successful diet, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight. Because if it's not, you should put your hand down. Right. But just the word diet alone sort of infers temporary. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so I changed the way that I ate. And the glycemic index to me made a lot of sense just because I knew that there was a way that food was affecting my body outside of just calories in and calories out. I knew that there was something bigger in play. And we used to,

I think, 50, 100 years ago, whatever, or longer, that the way that you would be overweight is by being gluttonous, right? I mean, you had to just eat all the time. And certainly, I was guilty of that. But it seemed like there was so much more in play now with the types of foods that we have that are causing us to crave things that we wouldn't normally crave and that we're just kind of in this cycle, you know, that our biology wasn't working for us. We were kind of working against us. And so I became a real student of the glycemic index and how my blood sugar was affected

and I became an absolute stickler on it. And I mean, I wouldn't have anything with sugar in it at all. And just to paint the complete picture, I mean, when you were tipping the scales at 320, not only were you overweight, you had a heart condition, you had extremely high blood pressure, and you had been diagnosed with diabetes, right? So this is not just fat guy. This is like sick fat guy. Yeah. No, when, when they took my, the last time I was at the doctor and, and my blood pressure was so high and I wish I could remember the numbers. I'll have to, I'll have to go back and get them, but there was a two in there.

And, uh, but they didn't want me to leave the doctor's office. I mean, they were like, you're going to have a stroke. I'm not telling you you might have a stroke. You are going to have a stroke. It could be in three minutes. You need to be on medication. You need to be on now. And I didn't like that. So I never – and my reasoning was I never went on medication because I had read that medication is unhealthy.

And I didn't want to be on that blood pressure medication and that shit will kill you. Your brain, you're still perceiving the world through a warped brain at this point. Absolutely. So, of course, I left there. The smart thing would have been I'm on that medication right now. I'm going to work my way off it, but let's not have a stroke in three minutes. Yeah, I was not capable of the smart thing. In fact, I was meeting my friend at the bar, and that's a fact. I had someone, my buddy Dan was waiting for me at the bar while I was at the

doctor's office. Yeah, I can't hang out in the doctor's office. And of course, I told him, yeah, we sat and laughed about it and drank ourselves to it. So yeah, I was really, really unhealthy. But yeah, I became a science or a student of the glycemic index. And that was kind of the end all be all for me while I was losing weight. And it was like everything else, a progression that eventually led me to adopting a plant-based diet and all that. But during those initial stages, it was really no sugar, no breads, no processed foods. And I just – I went into it with that mentality that my body is going to heal and I need to give it time to do that. That I'm going to trust that this is kind of part of the same process I was on with alcohol, that I was sick and unhealthy. And as time went by, I was going to get better.

And I looked at food being the same way, that I crave all these things that are killing me. And if I just give it enough time that I'm not going to crave those things anymore and I'm going to get to a better place and I'm not going to be in war with myself the whole time. Yeah. The analogy with, there's a couple analogies with Josh's, Josh Lajani's message. And that is this place that you came to, that he also came to, which was, I'm not doing this, I'm taking my focus off the scale. I'm taking my focus off of losing weight. I'm looking at this from a perspective of how can I be healthy and how can I be an athlete? And there's this thing in the book where somebody says, well, if you're trained for ultra marathons, who cares what you eat, right? But you're saying, I want

to be a healthy human being. And that's very different from, I want a slimmer waistline. Yeah. Well, and I mean, there's a big difference between a slim waistline and even health and even fitness. And there's no shortage of people out there now who are extremely fit, but they're not healthy. They eat poorly and they have high cholesterol and they have high blood pressures and other things, but they can run five and a half minute miles. They don't usually work that way, but usually if you're taking that much time to train your body, you're trying to treat yourself right. But we know that they're not mutually exclusive. Right. So you adopt this approach. And so what happens?

How long before you get to a place where your blood pressure starts to normalize and the weight's coming off? Walk me through the evolution a little bit. So I logged every workout that I've ever had since I was started at 320 pounds. And I have these notebooks, these little day planners where I was writing down my calories in there. And typically what I'd have is I was eating a carbohydrate restricted diet, but I said that I could eat as many carbohydrates that I wanted as long as they came from vegetables. But I wasn't having any starches or anything like that. And I wrote down everything in the little journal on each day. And I was weighing myself religiously. So no rice, no potatoes, no fruit?

I didn't really restrict fruit, but I was avoiding it at times. But if I wanted it, I needed it, I had it because it was on a healthy list. What about potatoes, sweet potatoes? Sweet potatoes I would have for sure. Again, it all boiled down to the glycemic index. So I kind of had this pass or fail grade, you know, it's like, I think it was 50. If something was higher, you know, than a 50 on the glycemic index, I wouldn't have it.

And if it was close to that 50, it would be something I wouldn't have very often. And then the lower down the spectrum they went. Interesting. But you're still eating meat and dairy at this point? I was. Yes, absolutely. And as weight does, my weight started bouncing around a lot. I'd lose...

When you've been out of shape and you're drinking a lot and you're just living so horribly, you're going to see a dramatic result at first. And I was no exception. I want to say I lost 40 pounds the first month, you know. In one month. In one month. Wow. And then it leveled off.

So that's like 80%, 90% booze, right? Right. Well, and the bad decisions that come with booze, like all the late night McDonald's and all that kind of stuff. But interestingly, actually I need to back up one quick second because for the first couple weeks after I stopped and maybe even 30 days after I stopped drinking, I was eating really terribly still. I just quit drinking and that was enough. That was enough. I hear you. And in fact, in my hotel room, I looked at my refrigerator one day and I just started laughing because it was like Pop-Tarts and the little chocolate-covered donuts and Frosted Flakes and Wonder Bread. I bought a loaf of Wonder Bread.

I had a Wonder Bread until I was like eight years old. I was just craving sugar. You need like a little comfort. Yeah, I was definitely looking for comfort. Because you just broke up with your best friend. Absolutely. My abusive marriage came to an end, but I still missed my partner. And so then I kind of – I was in that place where I'm like, okay, I need to address these things together.

But I stopped weighing myself because I was that old addict brain, you know, and I was just trying to control that number and it wouldn't listen to me. And it kept sending me back into that place. And you know what addiction feels like. And it felt like that. It felt like that ugly place to me again where I was obsessing about it and I was thinking about it all the time. So I just had to let it go and I eventually thought, you know, I'm in this for health. I'm in this because I want to live. And I eventually thought, you know, I'm in this for health.

I'm in this because I want to live. And if I ultimately can do the things I want to do and I can look the way I want to look and feel the way I want to feel, I don't care if that number ever changes. If it stays 320, that's okay. That's okay. So I started another surrender. Yeah, yeah, absolute, total, complete surrender. And it was, once again, very empowering to me. And it gave me a new focus. And it allowed me to put more energy into what I was doing instead of less.

And I still threw the measurements on occasionally to just make sure everything was moving in the right direction because there's not that emotional component to a measurement, right? If I see a movement, and this is what I try to do with people that I help lose weight, is go with the emotion, the scale, man. If you want four pounds of weight loss and you get three, it's a failure. But if your measurements go down an eighth of an inch, it's success. Because there's not that emotional part to it. And I could obviously see my clothes changing and I was feeling better and then I just kept going. And so how does it continue to evolve? You have this, you know, it's pretty rigorous kind of glycemic index approach. And then how did it kind of morph over time into what you do now? So I was becoming fitter and fitter. I decided I was going to run a marathon somewhere along the

way. I did a 5K, which was the scariest decided I was going to run a marathon somewhere along the way. I did a 5K, which was the scariest thing that ever happened to me in my life. Right. Yeah, and this is not an overnight thing. This is running for 15 seconds because that's all you could do. And that description of the little bump on the sidewalk that elevated the sidewalk a foot was the big terror. It was, man. I could see that thing coming, man. It was like an eighth of a mile loop around the park and I could just feel the weight of that 10-foot rise coming

like it was Hope Pass. What was it that you think clicked in you that said running? Or I have this dream of running a marathon. Why running? this dream of running a marathon? Like why running? Why not? I mean, what was it? Do you, is there anything specific that you think made you gravitate towards that as this litmus test for growth? Yeah. Yeah. It seemed impossible. I mean, and I really think that was it. And, you know, I think that, I think all human beings to a certain extent kind of have that thing that will rise to the occasion. And I felt like if something didn't seem impossible, it didn't seem like it was worth doing.

And I wanted it to be big and I wanted it to be meaningful. I wanted it to be something worthy of creating a whole new life. And I don't know. It was running and I do firmly believe that it could have been something else, you know, as long as it had those same components to it, but. The state, the emotional stakes had to be high, very high to get you out of bed and to really kind of, um, be powerful enough for you to really restructure how you were living your day every day. Yeah. And, and because I'd tried to do it in the past and I couldn't, it almost became this thing

where when I ran the first time for 20 minutes nonstop, I mean, that seemed like a really big success and kind of proof that things were going in the right direction, that I wasn't just spinning my wheels, even though I was running on a treadmill. So technically I was exactly spinning my wheels. So from that first 15-second run and panting to the first marathon,

how long are we talking? August of 2005 to October of 2006. So a little over a year. A little over a year. But that was a very focused year. It was. And when you ran that first 15 seconds, what were you weighing then? 320.

320. And at your first marathon, what were you clocking in at? 180. 180. And it was very important. Which is still 20 pounds heavier than where you ended up at Badwater. Yeah. And it was really important to me.

And we're all on our own journey and everyone has their own kind of thing they're trying to do. But for me, it was really important that I approached the marathon. I wanted to be a runner when I got there and I wanted to run it. I didn't need to run it really fast, but I wanted it to be my victory lap. So I wanted to achieve all of my weight loss goals and my health and fitness goals along the way. And I didn't want it like the old me would have just been like, okay, what's the minimum amount I can do and still get this finisher's medal? You know what I mean? And can I fake it? Can I walk it? Can I get through it? And yeah, because that's about saying you did it as opposed

to really embracing the experience and what it actually means to tackle that and give it your best go. Absolutely. I didn't want to run a marathon. I wanted to be the type of person that could run marathons. Yeah. Say that again. That's an important distinction. I didn't want to run a marathon. I wanted to be the type of person who can run marathons. To be a runner, not somebody who did a marathon. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That was, that was a really big, really big part of the journey for me. And it kept me motivated and it kept me going out there. And, um, I did the 5k. I was, it was when you, but hold on a second. All right. So when you're three 20 and you have this idea

that you're going to run a marathon, I mean, how long before you said, said those words out loud to another human being? It didn't take too long. So what's the reaction you're getting? Oh, they would look me up and down. Yeah, all right, buddy. Yeah. Okay, Dave. Ready to go back to Arby's? Yeah, I remember last time you said you were never going to drink again.

Seriously. But, you know, I think insanity is an amazing tool. You just gave me the tagline for this episode. RRP episode whatever. David Clark, I think insanity is an amazing tool. It is because it can create leverage to produce anything you want. And you got to be afraid of the person that's too crazy to know better. And so I didn't mind.

I was just like, you know what? Screw it. Go ahead. Laugh. And I went and I had these little silicone bracelets made up that said 26.2. And I just thought that was like really archaic and obscure and like no one would know what it meant or anything like that. I thought it was so original, right? And that was it. What is that mysterious number? What is that number? I feel like I lost it was so original, right? And that was it.

What is that mysterious number? What is that number? It's the same number in that white oval sticker on the back of every car that you see. I know, and I still lived in Colorado at the time. Right, right, right. But yeah, so I decided I was a runner, and I wasn't going to live to reality, get in the way of that. Get in the way of that. You redefined yourself.

I mean that is a transformation, a mental and emotional transformation that precedes the physical transformation. Yeah. Right? Like you stepped into this identity before it had been manifest and assumed the role. Yeah, I think that that's a big thing. And I think we pigeonhole ourselves and we create these images of who we are. And rarely are they based in facts. They're just emotional attachments that we made, you know, somewhere along the way in childhood, we were told you were the smart one or you were the stubborn one or you were the fat one

or whatever it is. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it's really important, I think, for human beings to be in a place where how you view yourself and who you are matches with what you're doing. And I think I talk a little bit about it in the book that we create this conflict. And with the addict me, whenever I tried to stop drinking, that was my behavior. I was trying to not drink, but I knew I was a drinker. So that wasn't going to ever last very long, you know, because I was at battle with myself. And I had to look at myself as someone who wouldn't dream of drinking alcohol, who would never consume recklessly and destroy myself like that. And once I did that and addressed that spiritual part of that and was able to get myself to buy into that, then the behavior changed a little more naturally. But what is the process of changing that identity?

Insanity. of changing that identity from saying, yeah, because you're saying, going from knowing you're an alcoholic to saying, not saying, but believing I am somebody that doesn't drink or I am somebody who, I am a runner. I am somebody who runs marathons. What is the process of that? Because I think, listen, the truth is most people who are

alcoholics don't get sober and most people that weigh 320 pounds don't lose 160 pounds. So what is it that was different about you and how, you know, how did you kind of create that, you know, create that new path for yourself? I mean, I guess I'm looking for, you know, I'm looking for you to be able to articulate the process a little bit for somebody who's out there who's like, please tell me how you did this. Yeah, and I was joking about it when I said the insanity thing,

but there's actually a modicum of truth to that. And you have to, I had to drink the Kool-Aid, right? You had to believe it. It's not about like looking in the mirror and saying, you know, trying to convince yourself of something you actually don't believe. Right. So that meant moving forward. Once I decided that I believe that, I had to only engage in thoughts and behaviors that supported that view of who I was. And anything that would come up because all kinds of things would come up to show me and prove to me on a daily basis that I wasn't that person.

I'd be like, I've always been that person. I'm just off track now. I'm getting back to where I'm supposed to be. This was who I was supposed to be all along, and I screwed it up. And so I think there's so much information that comes into our daily lives, and we tend to grab onto the things that support our predetermined ideas. Even if it's like, oh, that guy's a jerk. That guy can do something really nice and you're going to go, yeah, but that's not real. He's an asshole.

I know him. And it's the same thing I think with our behaviors. And there's a big difference between being someone who needs to lose weight and someone who's a fat person. And so I started deleting all of the information that came my way that supported that I was supposed to be overweight, that I was supposed to be an addict, that it was just genetically wired into my DNA sometime. I was like, bullshit, I'm not even going to entertain that idea, store it, throw it away. And I would shift my direction over to something else. I would take a physical action like getting online and looking up marathons and reading about marathon training plans and reading about running shoes or just go for a run.

There's no greater way to prove to yourself you're a runner than going for a run. And I would do that and it's like everything became an affirmation. It's like, okay, this is it. This is real. And I believe – But I would imagine it starts with a little fake it till you make it damn right what would a runner do well i don't know a runner would probably go running yeah a runner would probably go on a website and try to learn something about running shoes yeah you have to be willing to be a little stupid you know and a little crazy at first. And it's hard and you'll try to talk yourself out of it. I certainly did, you know. Yeah, there had to be those moments where

you're kidding yourself. You're like, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I just, I figured, you know, that I wasn't a 320 pound alcoholic addict by accident. Right. And, and it was all of the crap that I'd put in myself that got me there. So it was that surrender thing. It was like, it's really easy for me to say, I don't have it all figured out. I don't know. If I did, I wouldn't be here. So I'm going to say that this is the way it is. And I have no proof otherwise, because I don't have anything figured out. Interesting. And did you try to surround yourself with a community of people that could teach you and support this dream? Or are you going lone wolf on this?

At first, I was very much alone. I think the first outward action I took into the running community was going to a running store in Boulder. Which could be an incredibly intimidating thing. It was really intimidating. thing it was really intimidating and it was really hard I sat out in front of the store for a long time and it was like it was a little better buying my shoes

at the sports store yeah you go to Sports LA or something where you know it's easier but you know again it was like all those things I was like you know the old me would have just left and gone somewhere else. I'm going to do things differently now.

I'm going to go in here. A real runner is going to go to the real running store and is going to ask the real questions. Yeah, and not only am I going to go in, I'm going to just tell them who I am and why I'm here. I'm not even going to candy coat it. I'm like, hey, I've lost 60 pounds and I want to run a marathon. And it was almost like daring him to laugh or scoff. It's like, this is it. How'd that go? They were incredibly supportive. And now I know that it's a great community of people.

But yeah, they were incredibly supportive. He asked me questions about what speeds I was running at and how many miles I was doing. And I shared all of that willingly. And he was very encouraging and said, hey, you did a great job and good for you. And that was important for me because it was an affirmation that I hadn't gotten before. So I think it was very – He's looking at you like you mean business. He's not questioning you. Yeah. So it's another little like notch.

And it's interesting that once it came full circle and I'd done the marathon and then I was getting involved more in the running community and doing more group runs with people and things like that. I never hid my story ever, but I didn't willingly share it. And I think you talk about part of the process. There was a growing process along the way. In that first two years, I was kind of fumbling my way through my sobriety. I was fumbling my way through the weight loss. I was fumbling my way through everything, and I hadn't really put it together yet. I was certainly better than I was before.

But I thought somehow if I shared where I'd come from that people would think less of me. They wouldn't accept me as a real runner. So that was like the last little bit that was holding on. Interesting. Yeah. So that was like the last little bit that was holding on. Interesting. Yeah.

And the great irony is that the story is so powerful. And it's a journey towards willingness, another level of willingness and surrender to be vulnerable enough to share the story. Yeah, because I felt like I worked to get to a certain place and I didn't want anything to detract from it. Right. And I felt that ego coming in. Yeah, I don't want people to see me as that other guy because I worked so hard to be this new guy. That's in the gaps and really fleshing out the details of your story. I mean I know I experienced that when I was writing my book, but I also was very aware that that was the only thing that was going to make the book work was whether I was willing to do that.

Yeah, it was definitely a test, if you will, of how much you're willing to put yourself out there. I mean, there's so much went into that title, from just the crazy part of just, you're out there to putting yourself out there to, as you know, what we call people who are still out there struggling. We can say they're out there.

But it was the most incredible journey of self-discovery that I've ever been on. And I still, I've been asked a couple times if I do a little book event or something. I'll say, do you want to read something from it? And I'm, no, I can't. I can't. And there were just times where I was literally laughing out loud while I was writing it. And other times I was just bawling and crying and I'd have to walk outside and pray

and thank God that I made it out. Because when you relive something, as you know, from the writing process, I just couldn't believe the amount of emotion and detail that would come back when I sat down and started to write. Yeah, you start remembering stuff that you forgot about or it just comes back in technical. Yeah.

And it's not always welcome. No, no. But there were certainly times where I was like, this is just too much. And I really wasn't sure until probably, I'm not even sure when the exact moment I was 100% sure I was going to actually release it or publish it or anything like that. I knew I had to write it for me. And then I figured, hey, I knew my mom would buy one.

I couldn't imagine anyone would want to read my crap. But I was like if someone does, then that's just a bonus. Well, when you make that decision, though, you're like, all right. It's a scary thing. It's a scary thing. And when I was writing the drunkologue part of my book, listen, I could – like yourself, I could tell stories all day long. And I have a lot of – I have plenty of stories that are a lot worse that are in the book. But it's like, what is the purpose of this book? I need to establish that this is my past, but, but you also, you can, you can attach your ego to those stories. Like,

look how crazy I was, you know? And it's like, it's not about that. You know, it's not, it's not for shock value. It's like, okay, I need to, people need to understand that this is the place that I'm coming from. But, you know, I didn't want, I didn't want to freak people out either. Like you can go too far with it. No doubt. You have to find that balance. For me, I went after the stories that I had the most humiliation attached to because they're the ones I didn't want to share

because they're the ones you're talking about, the ones that you talk about with your buddies and that are kind of funny. You laugh about them and they're the crazy rock star kind of stuff. But, you know, I didn't want, like you said, I didn't want to glamorize it. And I figured, well, I'll share the ones that would. It can be like romanticized. Absolutely.

Yeah. Absolutely. But sitting on a park bench and shitting yourself in L.A. is not romantic. That's not so romantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing about it, though, is by making that decision to say, okay, it's out there. I mean, that's freedom. Yeah.

You feel that though, right? Yeah, yeah. I've told this to some friends. If you ever want to experience true freedom, you write down every piece of shit moment you've had and put it out there for the world. And you will experience – You want to feel like you're walking through Times Square naked. That's what it's like. Yeah.

And there's such a difference between telling your friends or even a group of 100 people some of your personal things and actually putting it in print where people can reread it and pick it apart and analyze it. And criticize it. And criticize it. And that was my kind of deal with myself or whatever. It's like once the book is done and once it's actually published, it's not mine anymore. And anything that anyone wants to think about it, how they want to interpret it is up to them. They bought the book. They read it.

They have their right to what they feel about it. It's theirs now. Yeah, and part of the deal also is criticize away. Sure. But if one person out there reads it and gets sober, like it's all worth it. Or one person out there changes their diet and does something that they didn't think that they could do, then that's great because that's what it's about. They just stop giving up on themselves.

And I have no doubt that that is the impact of this book. Oh, thank you. Whether you've experienced it directly or not yet, you will. How long is it? When did it come out? It's been out for two months now. Okay, so brand new. Yeah.

It's just starting for you, man. You know, it's been more than I could have ever imagined so far and it's just starting hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, with it comes, I think a little mantle of responsibility now because you kind of carry this inspiration torch, you know, and people are going to look to you and say, how did you do it? Help me, you know, help you. Can you, can you help me? And, and, and you're going to find yourself in this position where people are going to be, you know, wanting you to guide, guide them. I mean, have you started to experience that? You know, I, I have, and I mean, I know you're training and coaching people and all of that. So you're So you're already engaged in that professionally.

But just sort of the emails will come in and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm always thankful for those emails. But it is tough. It is tough because you don't always have the piece of advice that people want. And I'm never going to tell someone what I think they want to hear. I spent my whole life doing that kind of shit so i'm just gonna let the truth light the way you know some sometimes the truth just demands to be said so right you know because

i you're right like a lot of people you know they have these passive passive aggressive reach out for help kind of thing and i did it you know i remember i called an aa meeting one time and i was like you know when is your next meeting? And they're like, I don't know. Let me find someone who knows and this and that. And I was like, you should be ready to take someone's fucking call when they call you. And I hung up and now they were just laughing their ass off at me.

They're like, look at this drunk. But I think a lot of people do that. They'll reach out and they expect you to be able to you know like make something happen it's like i'll share with you every corner of my soul and everything that i've ever been through but that's all i can do i don't have any secret pieces of wisdom it's it's it's on them to actually you know take what's in the book or what's out there and actually implement it into their lives and that's that's the hard piece. Right. I mean, looking back, you know, put yourself back at 320 pounds at the end of your drinking career and, and, and just imagine that you would be somebody who had not only run bad water,

done all these crazy races that you've done, have written this book, you know, be a source of inspiration to other people, be actually, you know, coaching and training other people. I mean, is that, could you have possibly imagined that? No. Well, I don't know. No, no, no. I mean, where did you, you know, what, what would have your, what would your dream have been? Like what was the farthest I could see? Yeah, like where did you, what were you aspiring to? I wanted to run the New York City Marathon one day,

I thought. And it's funny because I remembered seeing the Ironman Triathlon when I was a kid. And I couldn't quite get to the point where I could ever see myself doing that. But I had this idea like, I wonder if I could train for it. Like not actually do it, but could I just train for it?

Do the training. Could I just like- Like what a weird thought though. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think that's about? Like doing the race would actually mean that you would be accountable to other people or- mean that you would be accountable to other people or i just don't think that i could put it out there i i think that i saw that as a certain type of person that could do that and i wasn't that person but maybe i could be the type of person who might be able to train for training yeah

interesting all right so you get the marathon done and then where does the idea of like taking it to the ultra level start to creep into the consciousness? I read Dean's book. And actually before that, even right after I finished the marathon, my ex-wife, I was sitting there. I was still like still jacked up, you know, walking downstairs backwards and stuff. And I don't think I'd taken my blue Denver Marathon hoodie off yet. You know, I think it was like 30 days before I stopped wearing that every single day. My ex came down and said,

oh yeah, there's this guy. He ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days. I was like, no he didn't. I didn't even hesitate. Are you trying to make me feel like shit? I was like, no he did not. I just ran a marathon. You read that wrong.

There's no way. I just remember being just like, there wasn't anything more insane someone could have said. I don't even know how to respond to that. So I Googled Dean Karnasas and I read Ultra Marathon Man and I saw Running on the Sun. And Running on the Sun just, man, I don't know. It's a documentary about Badwater. Oh, yeah. For people that don't know.

Can you, is it online? Can people? Yeah, I think it's still out there. If it is, I'll find a link. I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, sorry about that. But no, go ahead. Yeah, it, man, it just, it really, it really touched something like that scared me.

It scared me because I thought that I was probably going to want to do that one day. And that scared the shit out of me. And – So that seed was planted. It really was. That documentary and Pai Dean's book. Yeah. And interestingly enough about that, I talk about full circle and just my life has just tipped so far the other direction that I mean I'm just – I can't even believe what my life is today.

And I saw Marshall Ulrich on that film and he wrote the foreword for my book and I met Marshall at Badwater when I did it, and it was just so insane. I was like, my life is – I have the most bizarre life in the world. It just seemed – I mean, it really does feel like – I actually put it out there on a Facebook post the other day. I was like, you ever just realize you're absolutely 100% living your dream life? And that's the way I feel. I feel it's just... I felt that yesterday when I was sitting up in Dean Hernandez's house doing a podcast with him. And he's talking to me and I'm looking at him and I'm not hearing anything that he's saying because I'm just thinking,

what am I doing here? You just described the first five minutes of the show. here. You just described the first five minutes of this show. For me. How did my life get to this point where I'm sitting here having a conversation with this guy? It just hit me like a ton of bricks in a beautiful way.

It's a heavy way too. Like you said, there's a certain amount of responsibility that comes with. But it did not happen because I plotted it out or I made some goal and said, I'm going to do this. Like there's just no way. No. There's no way left to my own devices that it happens.

No. No. You'd screw it up. Oh, for sure. Big time. You know? I'm trying to derail it every day. Right.

You know? So you see this movie and you read Dean's book. The movie is about just how insane this bad water race is. The seeds planted and this is 2007? Yeah. No, 2006. 2006 still, right? Yeah.

And your first badwater is 2013. Yep. So we're talking about a seven-year span here during which period of time you run the Leadville 100 twice. Yes. And a bunch of other crazy stuff too. Yeah. So you're creating this – it's not – the easy narrative is 320 pounds to Badwater. That will probably be the title of my blog post

we could have a subtitle I know because it sounds so crazy dramatic and it is but we're talking about many years of brick by brick a lot of miles

yeah I had never really exercised any level of patience in my past life. So I've been trying, you know, and I didn't want to do the same thing and just say, just like with the marathon, I didn't want to go, okay, well, how can I go fake Badwater? You know, I didn't even know that you couldn't fake Badwater. That was really hard just to get in it. They won't let you fake it. They'll weed you out. How much is race day registration? But yeah, and then reading about Dean's book and just reading about such a thing as an ultra

marathon, I found out that the Leadville 100 was right in my backyard. And it just seemed kind of shitty to get on a plane and fly somewhere else to do an ultra when you have one of the most iconic ones right in your backyard. Right. And respects maybe even i mean harder in a different way with that crazy elevation and yeah it's thin air and everything else i mean what was that what was that first lead though like it was you know when i wrote the book um the the finish line of my first Leadville was the finish line of the book. And I actually – I had to – it was a huge process of – I'm getting ahead of myself. But Leadville, my first Leadville finish was really the true birth of me as a runner. of me as a runner.

Not that anything else I did before wasn't running, but it was that moment that I really accepted that I wasn't going to dismiss anything that I'd ever done or that I did and that I wasn't going to live that life anymore. Because up to that point, I did the marathon and I was like, okay, what's next? And then I started doing triathlon, like, okay, what's next? And I was like, okay, what's next? And then I started doing triathlon. I'm like, okay, what's next? And I was still searching.

And so I think I stopped searching at that point. I decided that I was here and then I just needed to be here as much as I could. I needed to be in that moment and be. And just own it. Yeah. Well, in a tangible way, I mean you went from running a marathon, which is something that hundreds of thousands of people have done, to running Leadville, which very, very few people have done or are capable of doing. And the process of getting – thank you for saying that. The process of getting there was – it was wrought with lots of complications along the way, including back surgery.

Yeah. You have the two herniated discs. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot, you know, we don't want to have too many spoiler alerts. Yeah. But there's a lot. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of ups and downs.

You're going to have to read the book. Yeah. We could be here for eight hours. Yeah. And I could, I could talk to you forever. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah.

This is another example of how cool my life is listen it's cool for me you know this is awesome I'm fascinated so but walk me through the Leadville I mean like you know paint the picture of just how difficult that race is

well training for the race was more difficult than I had imagined in fact it smacked me down and humbled me in a big, huge way. And there presented a moment where I was either going to walk away and just go back to doing triathlons or I was going to step up and do some things differently. And it's where I got serious, the next level of serious. And I changed my diet. That's when I adopted the plant-based diet. I went from 180 to 160.

What was the decision that drove that? A dare. Pretty much a 30-day challenge by a friend. At that point, I was eating really clean. I ate

fruits, vegetables, lean meats. I really didn't eat much other than that. I mean, I had my occasional thing. I would have a treat here and there. But I mean, 90% of my diet was what most people would call super clean. Right. And training a ton and you just kind of stabilized at 180. Yeah.

I'd been there for a few years and I felt fit and able to do big runs know, big runs and things like that. I'd done some 50 milers and stuff like that. But, um, and then a dare, like what, like no way could you possibly eat a plant-based diet or not? No, just, you know, from a friend like you who got tired of me and asking him where he gets his protein, you know, cause he was a vegan. And then he's like, why don't you just do it for 30 days you know what are you afraid of just try it see if it works for you and i'm like all right i got nothing better to do it's like but if i'm going to do it i'm going to do it and and i'm going to do it and i actually did it like more strict than he was doing it because he

was telling me like well every once in a while i'll do this or that i'm like well if i'm going to do it i'm just going to do it and i'm not going to have anything i'm not going to consume anything that has animal any trace amount of animal products. You were very alcoholic about it. Yes, of course. I was very addict about it, exactly. And so I did it for 30 days and, I mean, I felt like I was on drugs. I mean, I felt so crazy good.

I felt aware and light and fast. I was recovering from my workouts better. And lots of things were changing at the same time. I was changing the volume of training. I was changing my mental focus. And I changed my diet all at the same time. And it was just like the perfect storm, I think, for me as an athlete. And I just never look back.

I've said all along, the day I feel I'm missing something from my diet, I'll go have it. The day I feel I'm missing something from my diet, I'll go have it. I'm not on a moral mission to make the world vegan. It's just about feeling better and being healthy. I understood a whole new level of what health was. Interesting. Yeah. And how long ago was that?

Four years. Four years and still haven't gone back. That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, I like that, that I like the openness, you know, the idea that you're listening to your body and this is working for you. And if it, if it wasn't, you would change. You don't seem to have a dogmatic approach to it, but rather a pretty, you know, scientific kind of rational perspective on it. And Hey, if it's, if you think it's making you know, scientific kind of rational perspective on it. And hey, if you think it's making you faster,

certainly you dropped an extra 20 pounds. So there's something right there. But that's cool. I try to apply my insanity in very logical ways. You do. How to apply insanity to improve your life. I'm going to grapple with this over the next couple days. There's a difference between crazy and chemically

imbalanced. It's the chemically imbalanced you don't want to shout for. After the podcast with Dean, it wasn't a nutrition... I was talking to him about how his nutrition has changed, but he's certainly not vegan. He eats kind of like... It's what it sounds like

you were eating before you made the switch, But after we were done, he's like, really, you know, like, how does that work? And he was inquisitive, like he's interested, but he was also very like dubious, like, I want to see your hematocrit, you know, right. I'll send it to you. But yeah, I mean, I feel the same. I feel the same way in the sense that if my body started to feel like things weren't working, then I have to be open enough to reevaluate. I have to be willing to step outside the label and the dogma. I've kind of painted myself into a corner here with this thing. I'm the plant-based athlete guy, but the truth of the matter is it's been eight years and it's been fantastic. So I have no reason to, to, you know, second guess it unless something changes, but so far so good.

And it's encouraging and cool to hear that that's been part of your journey. Yeah. Yeah. A big unexpected part of it. That's, you know, just, I think made my life better in lots of different ways. I mean, what, what was, uh, you know, when you were going out and you were, you were able to recover better, I mean, you know, is there anything more specific just being able to bounce back between big runs? Yeah. Like, um, just really tangible things of, of noticing, you know, that I'm increasing my level, my volume, overall volume of training. I started doing, you know, two three-hour runs several times a week, and I was okay, and not just okay, but getting stronger.

And a lot of the trails that I was hiking up, because they were super steep, like this one route, Bear Peak and Boulder that I go up, and I was running things that I couldn't run before. And that's a real difference. It's like I struggle from this section to this section, and now I'm pushing it faster. I'm going faster.

That's always like the big fear, especially if you dealt with injury in your life, that you're going to increase your training volume and you're just going to go backwards. So I had to learn the hard way that if my brain's tired, if it's my brain pushing back at me, that I keep going. But if it's my body pushing back, I listen to it. And that's a, that's a hard thing to balance. Have you, do you work with a coach? How do you come up with your training protocol? Yeah, I do. I think coaching is, is a very valuable tool, you know, and, you know,

Michael Jordan had a coach and everybody has a coach and you just, I, I. I can't trust myself to manage me in that way. So yeah, I've benefited greatly from having Marshall Ulrich in my Rolodex. He doesn't have time to be full-time coach, but I certainly bounce all of my training by him or through him and get his input on it. Like when I was, I did a 12-hour treadmill run recently where I tried to set the world record on that.

And I bounced it by marsh. I didn't know that. He's like, you got to do your back-to-back long runs on the treadmill. And I'm like, damn it, he's right. But I would have never done that myself. You know, I would have. Hold on a second.

You tried to break the 12-hour treadmill record yeah how'd that go when did you I said the American one oh you did well it depends I mean there's there's two a couple different sources that track you know all of the different stuff right so I was going for the Guinness record and it was um quite honestly kind of a soft record so I knew it was kind of some low-hanging fruit it was like 63. And I was going to try to run 72, 73 miles, which was, you know, decent. And what happened is two days before it, somebody else broke the record. And so they reported that he had run 90 miles. So I was like, you know, I had all my friends out at my gym and I had this big thing set up and I was like, that's all right. I'm just going to go do the best I can.

I wasn't doing it just for the recognition. I was doing it to test myself. And I ran 74.5 miles. It turns out that the numbers were reported wrong, and he'd only run 76 miles. So, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, that kind of sucked.

You've got to do it again. I am in January. You are? All right, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, that kind of sucked. You got to do it again. I am in January. You are? All right, cool. And when you want it to be Guinness certified, that's a whole thing, right? It is. They make you pay a ton of money and they want all sorts of people out. that most weight carried, it was a whole thing to make sure that it was all copacetic and it was going to meet the requirements

to qualify for that because it's pretty stringent, right? It is. It's really strict. You don't have to give them a bunch of money if you don't want to, but it speeds the process up. You know what I mean?

They'll certify the record right away and they'll send someone out and you can use their logos and marketing and all that. I see. But no, we had to have like – the whole thing had to be video recorded and I needed witnesses and judges and obviously the treadmill. You had to calibrate the treadmill and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So there's another place called like recordholders.org that tracks it.

According to their information, I think I ran like the third best time by an American. Nice, man. According to Guinness, it was. That's insane. Yeah. That's so cool. For a former fat guy. Right. That's incredible, man. But I mean, there's so many other people who have run so much farther than that out there. Listen, there's always somebody who's done some crazier thing, especially now in the ultra world, like, you know, look, man, you know, there's no end of nutty. There's always someone crazy. You know what I mean?

If you can find, you know, a stone that's unturned in that world, then that's a stone worth overturning, I think. So, all right. So a couple Leadvilles, Badwater 2013, and then you went back to Badwater this year. Yeah. Things didn't quite go as planned. I mean, what's next? Like what's getting you out of bed? What's motivating you?

Like what is that stone that's left unturned out there for you? Well, to me, it's to stay in the game and to keep in the process, right? I would say, you know, my running, my journey, it's not supposed to be anything. It just is what it is. So I just want to keep going, whatever that means. So I'm always aware and looking around for new things to do. And I do have something kind of big planned for next year. It's my 10th sober birthday.

So I wanted to do something kind of special for that. Something I wasn't prepared on. You're like, you got a little smile. I can tell you don't really want to tell me, but you kind of do. I'll tell you. So, I decided that I was going to go try to run

the Leadville 100 twice. I was going to do the double. And the reason why I haven't put it out there is not because I'm afraid of it it's out there now I've talked to people about it but people have done double bad water

triple bad water, quad bad water but no one's done Leadville so I'm sure someone will come along and do it really really fast but that's okay I'd like to be will come along and do it really, really fast. But that's okay. I'd like to be the first person to do it. But if someone comes up out there and does it at the same time I do, then we'll just shale the trail together. But I hope no one does it.

That's pretty cool, man. That's a big deal. Yeah. Exciting. Yeah. So wait, when is Leadville again? August. August.

Okay. So you got a little time. Exciting. Yeah. So wait, when is Leadville again? August. August, okay. So you got a little time. You must be training pretty hard right now, though. I've got Javelina 100 in a few days. I got the treadmill run planned, too, in January. In January. And I'll be back at Badwater, too. We're a little unsure exactly when it's going to be with the new new changes to the park but

yeah interesting yeah um yeah in 2013 you ran what is probably the last time that anyone will run that original course i think it actually is going to be back in the original course oh really yeah it's just going to be different because the the new study they did and everything won't let them do it between june and and July or something. I don't want to misquote the study, but they can't have it in the hottest part of the year. So they could have it in August then instead or something? Yeah, they're going to do something and no one really knows what yet. It's kind of hush-hush.

I don't know. But hopefully it's not the week before Leadville or something like that. Right, right. I mean what was the biggest difference that you noticed from the course change from 13 to 14? It was just a different race and it was a great race. It was put on really well. It was really challenging, super challenging, but it was hot, but not bad water hot. And the heat came late in the day, which definitely posed different challenges. And the first like 23 miles is straight, you know, different challenges. And the first like 23 miles is straight uphill.

Right. That was the thing. Yeah. Well, that's kind of my problem is I ran the first 46 miles in like eight hours this year and then just kind of fell apart like at the worst possible time. There's another big climb that goes up like 5,000 feet over 7 miles and there's no crew access or anything. You're just kind of out there and that's when I was really suffering. Just another learning experience.

Gotta go back. Unfinished business. That's right. I want to get back to this idea of transformation, of reinvention. You went from this place of complete despair, complete disrepair in your health to attempting Guinness Book of World Records, holding runs. I mean the arc is just mind-blowing.

you know, holding runs. I mean, the arc is just mind blowing. So for somebody who's out there listening, you know, what is something that you could leave us with to try to help that person out there who's stuck, who can't take that first step or just is paralyzed, you know, knows that there's a better life for him or her out there and can't see their way through it? My advice would be that you don't have to see it. In fact, you probably won't be able to ever see it from the views obstructed. You can't see it from where you are. You have to trust that there is a way out

and that it's not always going to seem hopeless and you just have to take that blind first step forward and that's that's why this ultra thing speaks so well to me because the process is the same you know the process was the same to wake up on my bathroom floor and say i'm gonna i'm gonna give this all up as it is to line up for bad water you know if you if you try to hold the weight of it, it will crush you and fold you up. You can't do it. So you've got to trust the process and just be willing to not wrestle every single voice, every single thought down into the ground

and just keep moving forward blindly. That was the process when you talked about that arc. I became a runner and did all these things after I found sobriety. And I did that because I changed kind of my image of who I was. I decided I was a different person. But then I realized that I had also pigeonholed who I was as a runner too. And I was – I'm just doing this because I'm always going to be slow. I used to joke I start out slow and then I taper off and all this kind of stuff.

And I was like, well, maybe that's not true either. Maybe that's just a bunch of crap I sold myself too. So I'm going to put it out there and just see what happens. And if I can't be any faster, that's fine, but I'm not going to not be faster because I decided I was before I ever tried it. So don't decide who you are because of where you are right now. That's beautifully put. I think that the approach that I take to sobriety is the same approach that I take to food,

is the same approach that I take to training. And what you learn in recovery is, as stupid as it sounds, and it's really fucking stupid, it's one day at a time, man. It's about making sure that my head hits that pillow tonight sober, and that's all I got to worry about in the context of food. What am I eating right now? What's my next meal? In the context of training, what's the run or the ride that I'm doing today? If I start thinking about some crazy race, you know, you just get scared.

You get stuck. You start running stories and scenarios in your mind that, you know, probably are not productive. stories and scenarios in your mind that, you know, probably are not productive. So I find it super helpful to just be in the moment of what you're doing and getting comfortable with the idea that you don't know where it's going, nor should you, you know, it's like part of that surrender is saying, I'm not going to drink today. I don't know what that means, but that's not what I, you know, I'm not somebody who drinks. I'm not doing that today. And it's not what you say.

It's what you do. Absolutely. And when you wake up every day and you go running or you wake up every day and you don't take a drink, then you string that together over a little period of time. And the story about who you are begins to change and the way that people interact with you begins to change and how you start to feel about who you are begins to change absolutely yeah it's beautiful and then a whole new journey takes place right you learn something you don't know about yourself david clark you are an inspiration man this was awesome thank you so much thanks man for coming down i really appreciate it uh the book is called out there and you can find it everywhere it's on amazon right yes in bookstores i highly recommend it

it's amazing uh it's an amazing story of like i said before despair to triumph it's pretty cool i can't wait to see what you're going to do next man thanks bud you You know, I've said all along that ultimately the most power that the story has is if it's not just me. You know, I'm not the only one with this story, especially sitting here talking to you. There's lots of people with this story. I just get lucky enough to be able to talk about it a lot. If it's just one person, you know, it's, oh, that guy's special. You know, he's just stubborn or whatever. He's got something that I don't. But that's just not the way it is. You know, there's a oh, that guy's special. You know, he's just stubborn or whatever. He's got something that I don't,

but that's just not the way it is. You know, there's a lot of us out there. And so the more the merrier. If you're out there running and doing crazy things and experiencing life and you want some other people to do it with, you know, we're there. Very cool, man.

All right, David. Thanks so much. Right on. Peace. Yeah. Plants. That was tough. Dave, you will be deeply, profoundly missed.

But you are loved immensely by myself and so many people. So run free, my friend. Run free. If you want to support Dave and his family, pick up one of his books out there, Broken Open, or his newest book, Eat, Shit, and Die. I think that's a great way to keep Dave in our hearts

and also support his family. In addition, as we mentioned in the intro, Mishka and Josh and I set up a GoFundMe. I'll put a link in the show notes to that. Please support if you can. And remember, life is short. Life is precious. So let's make the most out of every moment that we can, my friends.

And on May 30, let's try to get outside, run whatever you can to honor this beautiful man's legacy. See you back here in a couple days with another episode. Until then, peace, plants, grace, and namaste. Thank you.