The Rich Roll Podcast - The Need For Speed: NASCAR Driver Landon Cassill’s Plant-Based, Triathlon Fueled Success Equation

Episode Date: May 18, 2015

It's time to explore what it takes to be competitive in one of the most popular professional sports in the United States — NASCAR. Meet Landon Cassill. Driver. Triathlete. Husband. Plant-based. Racing as far back as he can remember, at just 19 years of age Landon burst onto the national scene as the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year. In 2013, he broke the track record at the famous Gresham Motorsports Park track. Now 25, Landon pilots the #40 Chevrolet SS for the Hillman-Circle Sport LLC team and the #01 Flex Seal Chevrolet for JDMotorsports in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Beyond Will Ferrell's turn in Talledega Nights, NASCAR (make that auto racing in general) is a world I know close to nothing about. So it was really fun to sit down with Charlotte-based Landon to explore his personal story; the very specific and peculiar culture of NASCAR; what it really takes to professionally toe the line at prestigious races like the Daytona 500; and how diet and triathlon have come to play a crucial role in Landon’s daily success equation. Extremely likable and humble beyond expectation, I think it's fair to say this Iowa-bred young man is a fine living example of solid midwestern values and what can transpire when lifelong passion meets true drive, keen focus and a Malcolm Gladwell-esque 10,000+ hours of very hard work, sweat and determination. This is a great conversation that explores: * the athleticism, skill, technology and funding required to excel as a professional driver; * myth & reality behind NASCAR stereotypes; * the nexus between mindfulness and driving; * how triathlon informs driving performance; * swim training with Olympians Ryan Lochte, Cullen Jones & Tyler Clary; * his decision to go plant-based; * plant-based fueling for athletic performance; * strategies for optimal nutrition when traveling; and * what he drives when not racing (the answer will surprise you) On May 24, Landon will be racing the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. After competing in NASCAR's longest and most challenging test of man and machine, Landon will pioneer an entirely new form of endurance multi-sport when he jumps out of his car post-race, laces up his running shoes and tacks on an additional 14 miles for the day with a run from Charlotte Motor Speedway to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The Cassil 614 will kick off Snap Fitness’s “Snap Serves” summer campaign, which honors those who have served in the military and encourages people around the country to start their fitness journey. Between now and Landon's big day, do me a solid and let's pump him up for this challenge by giving him a supportive shout out on Twitter at @landoncassill. I genuinely hope you enjoy this glimpse into the passionate life of Landon Cassill — my version of Talledega Nights. Peace + Plants, Rich

When I started seeing my physical fitness and looking at my athleticism and my performance as a human, not just on the racetrack, and then seeing the difference between eating vegan and eating Chick-fil-A and just kind of how that was affecting my body, I started to realize the difference between food as a pleasure source and food as a fuel. difference between food as a pleasure source and food as a fuel. That's NASCAR driver Landon Castle, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show or welcome back. My name is Rich Roll. I am your friendly neighborhood podcast host, and I am on a mission, and the mission is simple, to help you live and be better. So, each week, I sit down with the best and the brightest across all categories of life,

health, and excellence to educate, inform, and inspire you to unlock your ultimate potential as a human being in this brief three-dimensional incarnation that we find ourselves in so that you can unleash the best, most authentic version of that self on the world at large. So thanks for sharing a little time with me today. Thank you for subscribing to the show on iTunes, for spreading the word on social media, for subscribing to my newsletter, and for clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richworld.com for all your Amazon purchases. Before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank everybody for all the great feedback on last week's show with Tom Harden, aka TipperX. I'm really proud of Tom for showing up for that interview. And I'm really proud of how I conducted that interview. And I'm really glad that you guys

enjoyed it. And most of all, I really appreciate all the love that everybody sent Tom in anticipation of his 24-hour run, which was just the other day. And I wanted to update you guys. I just got an email from him yesterday. and unfortunately, not everything went according to his plan. The good news is that he was in the lead of this race for the first seven hours, but then his Achilles started to flare up, and it started to flare up in a really bad way, and he was basically compelled to drop out of the race at just over 11 hours just to protect himself from any kind of permanent injury. But no doubt he will be back soon. And again, thank you for all the support that you

guys showed him. Today on the show, we've got Landon Castle, who is Landon Castle, NASCAR driver, triathlete, and quite surprisingly, you might think, given the very specific culture of NASCAR, a plant-based athlete. So let's run down a couple things that he has accomplished. He was the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year. In 2013, Landon broke the track record at the famous Gresham Motorsports Park track. And he currently pilots the No. 40 Chevrolet SS for the Hillman Circle Sports LLC team. And on top of that, he also pilots the number one Flex Seal Chevrolet for JD Motorsports in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. So NASCAR, or I guess I should say car racing in general, is a mysterious world I personally came into this interview knowing very little about. So it was really fun

to explore Landon's personal story, the culture of NASCAR, and what it takes to toe the line at races like the Daytona 500 and how diet and triathlon and specifically triathlon training plays into Landon's daily success equation. I found Landon to be a really humble guy, a great guy, an extremely likable guy. And I think it's fair to say that he is a living example of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours edict. And at only 24 years of age, 24, this guy's so young, Landon exudes a life led by passion. And he's an example of the amazing things that can happen when that passion meets drive, focus, and many, many years of hard work and determination. A little fun aside, since we sat down for this conversation, next weekend on May 24th,

Landon's going to be racing the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. And as if racing this 600-mile race wasn't enough or wasn't taxing enough, after completing what is NASCAR's longest race of the season, that same day, right after the race, he's going to tack on an additional 14 mile run. He's going to go from the Charlotte Motor Speedway all the way to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. So I guess you could say he is pioneering a new form of multi-sport, and I think that's super cool. He asked me to join him, and I so wish that I could fly out there and do it with him. But alas, I'm going to be in Sun Valley for a speaking event, and I couldn't do it.

So I'm really hoping that it goes well and he does it again so that I can join him in the future. Before we get into it, here's a question. What might you imagine Landon drives around town when not on the track? You're going to have to listen to find out. His answer might surprise you. So let's step into my version of Talladega Nights and sort out the fascinating life of Landing Castle. Yeah, this is super cool for me to talk to you

and we get to delve into a world that I know little, very, very little about, but I'm excited to learn about. Am I the first NASCAR driver to be on the podcast? Definitely. Yeah, definitely. I'm pretty sure I knew that answer already.

Yeah, that's for sure. Certainly the first vegan NASCAR driver. You've got to be the only one, right? Is anybody else? Well, that I know of, yeah. There's another driver in sports car racing named Andy Lally uh huh

he's a vegan um and there's a female driver in the Arca series which is a couple steps below NASCAR right um

she's a vegan and she makes a big difference Leilani Mueller yeah Leilani Munter Munter that's her name right I know cause she

like didn't she drape her car with blackfish when they moved yeah I remember that yeah she does a she does a pretty good job and and um and then uh some some of my training friends that are that are drivers i've been able to kind of inspire them to check out their lifestyles and and eating habits but

nobody's fully committed. At least not publicly. There's a few vegans and vegetarians just in the industry that I really didn't find out until just like eating at the track. There's a service and a lady that runs what's called the Garlic Garage, and she's inside the garage at the racetrack, and she feeds all the race teams. And she has a handful of vegan and vegetarian. Does she travel to all the races so it's the same person? Yeah, so she's got like a trailer, and she's got cooks and grills

and all kinds of stuff, and they feed a bunch of sweaty men and women and workers and greasy guys. But then she sees you coming. Oh, here comes Landon. She knows what you want. And she does really well. She takes super good care of me. She just has to cook for so many people on a weekend for me to, for me to be like, I'm plant-based, so, you know, I don't eat that. But she's the thing that really helps me out the most.

And, like, my wife and I, when my wife became vegetarian, like, eight years ago, my wife Katie is sitting here with us, and she's been vegetarian for eight years. Yeah. So her biggest thing was like, I'm not going to be a pain in the butt vegetarian. I'm not going to sit at an Applebee's and annoy everybody. And so I kind of adopted that myself as well, especially in the environment that I'm in

and the people that I work with. It's like I'm not going to drive my my peers crazy so Jackie at the garlic garage just helps me out a lot with that just because she focuses on buying like organic foods and she's really good at like making quinoa salads like the easy stuff you know hummus and things that like if I just got to eat at the track i don't have to worry about like hey did you make some super food you know right right right put what you put in that you know i don't really have to worry about that usually if there's a quinoa salad or something i can that'll hold me over till i get back to there's always like strategies you know for that

like to be discreet so you don't have to be that person who's paid in the end like you could pull her aside and slip her you know a couple 20s or whatever every other week or whatever just to keep it on the down low and you know like make sure that she's taking care of you yeah yeah she she does good i mean it's when we've had we obviously i've i've been so i've i've been vegan for a little over a year now and um and so i've been eating with her at the track for a little over a year now. And, um, and so I've been eating with her at the track for a little over a year. And I would say it took eight months of like, oh, that looks really good. What's in it? You know? Oh, you're really going to like it. It's vegetarian, you know, it's feta and I might skip the feta today. Is there anything else, you know? And so it's like, it took a long

time of that. And now she kind of, for her And so it's like, it took a long time with that. And now she kind of, for her to like wrap her brain, right. Right. Exactly. But, but she, and like I said, she cooks for so many people and she makes so many different dishes and they've got chickens and sandwiches and other, you know, all kinds of stuff that they're making for guys that it's like, I just try to come in and be like, Hey, you got anything, got anything good for me today? Right. And, um, it's all good. So what all good. So you've been doing this for a year. I mean, what inspired you to check out this way of eating and living and everything? So like I said, my wife has been vegetarian for eight years.

And we had always kind of talked about, well, I say we. She had talked about always thinking about going vegan and kind of cutting out those last two. And she didn't really drink milk or anything like that. We never had milk in the house. And we got to the point that when we first got married, she was pretty much cooking vegan in the house. We just weren't eating that way outside the house. And me, certainly not. You married a NASCAR driver, you know that, right?

You know, I got a reputation. I got to be seen with my Mountain Dew. So we, we got married in December of 2012. And, and I, we were talking about it earlier today, and I think our plant-based kickoff was Super Bowl of 2013, which is kind of funny because that's become a tradition for us. It was like we have a big old vegan Super Bowl party to ourselves. So far we've had three years of a – we've had three Super Bowls together? Three. Two. Two.

13, 12. I disagree. 13, 14, and 15. The unmarried couple. Three, two, 13, 12. I disagree. 13, 14, 15. The unmarried couple. 13, 14, and 15. We've had three Super Bowl parties together and two people at each Super Bowl party. Right, like no comers. You're inviting a lot of people.

They're just like, yeah, I don't think so. No, no, that's just us. No chicken wings? No, no, we've got cauliflower, buffalo wings. So it started out with a big vegan Super Bowl party, and she's just always cooked vegan. And 2013, 14, or 2013, you know, was eating vegan at home. But not, like on my side of it personally, not, no interest in plant-based diet, really

no knowledge of it, just like that's how I eat at home. And fortunately, I'm a pretty flexible, like not very picky eater and she's a great cook, so I just loved it. Right. But I, you know, go on the road and I mean, my favorite thing in the world is Chick-fil-A, like Chick-fil-A sandwich like that's just, you know, so delicious, right? favorite thing in the world was Chick-fil-A, like Chick-fil-A sandwich like that. It's just, you know, so delicious, right? And so towards the end of 2014 or 2013, I'm sorry, I'm getting my ears mixed up. I was, you know, just, we were racing and I drive for small race teams and we

struggle. I mean, our teams don't have a lot of money. We don't have a lot of resources. You know, it's hard to compete with teams like Jimmy Johnson's who spend a million a week, right? We spend a hundred thousand a week. Sounds like a lot to me though. Right. It's, it is a lot, but it's in NASCAR. I mean, the more employees and more people, the better your car can run. And, uh, I just got to that end of the year and was kind of, you know, Jimmy Johnson won his sixth championship out of the last seven years. And I kind of looked myself in the mirror and was like, am I doing all I can as an athlete?

And I couldn't say yes to that. Couldn't tell myself that I was being the best race car driver I could be for my team, for myself. And so the first inspiration was, you know, my fitness and what kind of athlete am I. And I had always kind of worked out, tried to stay in shape, but was never committed to it for my job. And my dad at the time was doing duathlons and running a lot, which is really funny. My dad turns 50 this year. He's like my age.

He's always kind of pushing me. Right, so he's always kind of pushing me. And so I made a commitment to, well, it wasn't even a commitment, I had to. I needed to invest in myself and my career. And so I started working out. And at that point, when I started seeing my physical fitness and looking at my athleticism and my performance as a human, not just on the racetrack, and then seeing the difference between eating vegan,

a home-cooked meal from my wife, and eating Chick-fil-A, and just kind of how that was affecting my body, I started to realize the difference between food as a pleasure source and food as a fuel. And actually, that's when I picked up your book. Oh, cool. That's cool.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, it is kind of an elementary thing, but also a revelatory thing. It's like, oh, no duh. You know what I mean? But then when you actually experience it, you're like, oh, wow, this whole world kind of opens up to you. Yeah, I mean, and it's, for me, if I had to sum just everything up,

athletic performance and food and whatever it may be, it's about fuel and how you fuel your body. And you really, I mean, if you want to put yourself on the edge as an athlete, like I do, you know, in a race car, in training for triathlon, you have to be treating the food that's going in your body as rocket fuel. And you can't be putting garbage in your body and expecting rocket results. Right, right, right. And for me, it was like one step was eating cleaner, right?

But then I'm doing homework, and I'm just like, you know, the meats and the animal protein that's going in my body is kind of counteracting some of the things that I'm trying to accomplish here. And so we decided in early 2014 to just try it. You know, it was easy for her. She was most of the way there, just not, you know, we were wine and cheese people and things like that. But it was kind of like, hey, let's actually go for this and see what happens. And I was reading books and doing my homework, reading, read, you know,

You To Run and Brendan Brazier's book. Right, right. Read your book, and it was just like, man, there's a lot of people out here that have legitimate stories that are, you know, and just doing the homework and, like, it kind of reached a point where the only thing left to do was to try it ourselves. Right, and so you jumped in. I mean, was it a hard, was it hard? I mean, hard i mean what was hard like getting what was the hardest part for you making

the switch um the so i've got the same experience that a lot of people probably have where it's like oh man the first week was amazing the second week was you know it's tough right the third week was, you know, it was tough, right? The third week was a struggle, man. The pink cloud. Right, exactly. And so, like, I definitely have that. But the unique thing in my experience was week two for me, I started traveling. And I had, not only was I new to eating a plant-based diet, I was going to strange places. Yeah, that's making it super hard all of a sudden, like right off the bat. The first week was easy. You know, my wife was making smoothies.

I mean, gosh, this was beautiful. It was a honeymoon stage for us. I mean, my run, my, I mean, instant results as an athlete, recovery. I mean, especially when you go from what I was doing, you know, eating just completely as a pleasure source to a plant-based diet. So I started traveling and it was like, I mean, my first trip was in Daytona, Daytona Beach, Florida, right? You know, plant-based central, just a mecca of plant-based meals and everything. No, I had a trip to Daytona Beach, Florida for three days, and I'm pretty sure I didn't eat for a day.

Wow. Just because I was so determined and I was so committed, but yet there was nothing. Nothing there. I didn't know what to do. So I just didn't eat for the day because i was eating almonds you know i'm just like eating raw almonds like this in a banana like that's all i can think of you get some crappy salad or get like a pasta dish or something like

that's about the best you're gonna be well and the other the other funny thing about the first especially the first six months like not only were we was i on board it was like well i'm gonna say first i can't remember how long but i'm looking at my wife right now and she's she doesn't know what i'm about to say like the first part of it was like you know raw plant-based like as clean as it gets right like i had pretty high standards for myself at the beginning and that's's tough. I mean, that's a hard thing to do. So, I mean, we went to Daytona and I found a little health food store called Love's Whole Foods. And there's two of them in Daytona. And I mean, I pretty much lived there.

Right. They had a little pre-made stuff. And that was kind of my intro to like these grocery stores and what they carry and, and, uh, and what you can buy. And then, and then for me, just what gets me through the day, you know, my first trip was like, Oh man, this is awesome. I got a few things here, you know, and I eat them and I'm hungry two hours later. Right. Right. So, so then I'm, you know, I'm going through this stage in the first couple months of, okay, do I need to be like counting calories? Do I need to be measuring things? And, um, yeah. And you really can't afford to be off like you're racing and you've got to be at your peak, right. You know, you can't afford to not eat or, you know, go eat something crappy

and you're trying to balance all of these things. I mean, you know, that makes it very different from somebody who's working a nine to five job going home every night and you're freewheeling it and you're brand new to it right you can check out a day of work or something and and that's a i mean that's a great point because that that kind of segues into our first real experience so that that first three-day deal was was our pre-season thunder our our spring training so to speak in daytona and then we come back two weeks later to daytona for the real thing, for the Daytona 500. And so I felt like as I'm fueling my body and learning the traveling ropes of being plant-based, I failed.

I was going to Smoothie King and basically cutting out everything in their smoothie and just getting the fruit mixed up. And so we came back to Daytona, and I had to qualify my car into the Daytona 500. I had to race my way in. And I was trying to kind of hold myself to this new standard, this lifestyle that we really wanted and how it was just going to be cleaner and be healthier. And so we did really well while we were down there and did the right amount of grocery shopping. And by then I had kind of figured out that like, I'm not a measuring person. I'm not a counter. I'm not, you know, carbs this and protein that. Like I kind of,

I was a month and a half into it and I could actually kind of eat by feel. And I think that's an important thing. I kind of tell a lot of people that, that, that asked me, you know, like, okay, so how much protein do you get or how much this and that do you get? And for me, it's like, I just learned what I need, you know? And I, I know that before a workout, I'm not going to eat, you know, a giant almond butter, whatever, you know, I'm not going to make a huge oatmeal smoothie with, you know, peanut butter and everything before workout. I know the fruits and the, the sugars I might need before and the protein and the carbs and whatever it may be. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's an important point, you know, when you're

beginning and also throughout, like it has to be sustainable, you know when you're beginning and also throughout like it has to be sustainable you know you've got to learn how your body reacts to certain things and when people ask me about ratios and stuff like that i'm like i don't know i just eat really clean as most as best as i can as often as i can and you know nature kind of takes care of it the rest of it because if i get into over analyzing everything and measuring and all that kind of stuff care of it, the rest of it. Because if I get into overanalyzing everything and measuring and all that kind of stuff, like I'm going to burn out. Like I can't do that for every meal all the time, every day. Yeah. I mean, and you really, you really have to listen, like you have to listen to your body and that sounds, it's such a like buzzword thing to say.

But, but your, your body will tell you if, if you, if you pay attention to what you eat and how it makes you feel like your body will tell you over time what you want and what it wants. And, um, and like I said, I mean, I, I know the things finally, especially a year later, um, if, whether it's a run or a bike ride or a swim and, or, or, or a race in my race car. I mean, I know what my body needs now, and so I can kind of feed it that fuel, and I don't have to worry about it. So how did that Daytona go for you?

It went well. It was actually one of the best ones for us. I was properly fueled up, and I had my wife down there with me that time too. Maybe that was why I was properly fueled up because I did the first trip by myself. And I made the Daytona 500 with a team that had no sponsorship. Wow. And we had no, like, locked-in pedigree to get into the Daytona 500. We had to race our way in.

So explain how that works. In a minute, I want to get into kind of like the whole NASCAR culture and all of that, but like, what does that mean? You had to race your way in. So, um, at pretty much all the races, but especially the Daytona 500, which is our first race of the season. And it's the most prestigious race. Um, there's more cars show up than they're going to get to race. And NASCAR has a sort of points pedigree similar to like a franchising system for 36-ish, 35-ish of the cars of the 43-car field. So those last seven spots are open for kind of an at-large type position. And so the goal of a, you know, if you were to start a race team tomorrow,

your goal would be to get one of those at-large positions, but you've got to earn it in every race. Right. So how do you earn that? You just race a bunch of other races? Well, you've got to qualify at that specific race. In a lot of races, your entire company relies on how your driver does in one qualifying lap.

And in Daytona, it's through a qualifying race. So the goal as a startup race team is to, okay, let's get into Daytona. If we can make Daytona, we run well. If we can get ourselves high enough in the points, we can be in that top section of teams. But there's no set franchise. There's nobody who's in there for life. So we were, at the time, we had's no set franchise. There's nobody's in there for life. So we were at the

time, we had no pedigree. We had no, we had nothing. And so we raced our way in and we finished 12th in the Daytona 500. We made like $350,000. You know, it's a huge payday for the team. And it kickstarted our year. That's really exciting. That's cool. So let's take it back a little bit. Racing is something you've been doing your whole life. I mean, according to Wikipedia, you're winning races when you're three years old. So you've put in your Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. I mean, this is not something you decided at age 20 you wanted to get into. This is running through your blood from probably as far back as you can remember in your life.

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I read his book, and she read his book first and gave it to me, and I read it. And The Owl Liars, right? Right. Is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I read that, and let's read about him talking about 10,000 hours, and that's how long it takes to be an expert at something.

It was actually a time in my career where Katie and I were dating, and it was tough, and I was like, it was kind of a confidence booster for me to think about how long I had been racing because I was struggling at the time. Like, man, am I supposed to be doing this? I'm not doing too well in racing. You know, NASCAR is pretty hard on me right now. And then I realized, man, I've put in my 10,000 hours. I am an expert at this, and I can do this.

And you're, I mean, what are you, 24? I'm 25. You're 25 years old. Like, is there anybody younger than you in NASCAR? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Are there? Yeah, there definitely are.

In fact, I'm kind of one of the veterans right now. Really? But I started, there definitely are. In fact, I'm kind of one of the veterans right now. Really? But I definitely started young. So my background, I started at a young age. I'm from Iowa. I grew up in a car dealer family, selling used cars. So a bunch of gearheads around you from the get-go. Yeah, a bunch of gearheads.

My dad's a gearhead. I mean, like fixing old cars on the weekend and that kind of thing? Pretty much, yeah. It's like right out of a movie it really is and we didn't like you know my dad didn't grow up racing stock cars or anything on oval tracks but he dragged race and was a car guy and and just from a young age i loved nascar i loved racing and so my parents kind of got me into go-karts well they got me into four-wheelers and we rode those on weekends together but of got me into go-karts. Well, they got me into four-wheelers, and we rode those on weekends together, but then got me into go-karts and started racing competitively.

Right. And your dad's psyched, right, because he's already into this kind of thing. Oh, yeah. And he was – my dad's a really good leader, and he's a really good kind of opening the door and turning the light on, you know, and kind of – but not pushing you in type thing. And so I moved into go-karts, and, you know, my dad taught me to work on them and to build them.

And his rule was, you know, if you wreck it, you have to fix it. You know, he helped prepare them and things like that. But if I wrecked it, I always had to fix it. So that kind of was ingrained in me early on. And through that, I learned how to build my cars and moved up to full-size stock cars where we were racing around the country and traveling. How old were you when that was going on? I was like 13, 14.

Wow. Yeah. So traveling around like out of school and racing cars instead. Yeah, missed a lot of school. Wow, that's amazing. And that's got to be, I mean, is that usual that like the drivers like know that much about how to build the engines and all that kind of stuff? Or are you unusual in that? No, I mean, it's probably 50-50. It really depends on your background. I mean, there's a lot of drivers coming up that have really good resources behind them. And racing, like the late model racing, when I say late model, that's like full-size stock cars but at a grassroots level.

And that's where we were traveling the country with a truck and trailer and racing and really hitting big money events, like just trying to win 10 grand. You're trying to win this famous race. These are like, and you got to, I mean, it's expensive to do this, right? Like how are you like pulling it together to get the trailer and like all that? I mean, it's like not a small, like if you're in, you got to be in all the way. Yeah. I mean, you do. And that's where, so like to do what we were doing in those races now i mean there's it's really competitive and you have to have a team behind you so so what what we were accomplishing then was you know me and my dad and and we had some volunteers that helped us and and then once it got really serious and we had some sponsorship and we actually hired a guy we

paid him 25 000 a year right. And he was my crew chief. He helped me build the race cars. And that was a tough thing to do back then. And we didn't win all the races. I mean, we weren't the biggest team. We didn't have the best stuff. But somehow I caught the eye of, well, first of all, an agent when I was 15. Wow. And he was kind of a talent scout at the time, was representing some big drivers, and he got me in front of the right people to get an opportunity eventually with Hendrick Motorsports, which is like the New York Yankees of NASCAR.

He's like, I see something in this kid. Yeah. This kid's got the goods. He's bringing the heat. Yeah, pretty much. Uh-huh. And a lot of that at the end of the day a lot of that opportunity a lot of that uh allure comes from

knowing my race car building it working on it like you know they they liked to see me win races but to win races in my car and they all knew what i had you know the scouts out there the people that are paying attention to young drivers, they knew what I had. They knew what I was working with. And I wasn't in bottom-end equipment. I had good stuff, but I had to put it together myself. And they knew what we had, and that played a big part of it.

So I got this opportunity to be in front of GM Racing and Chevrolet against a bunch of other drivers. And I did really well in that event and got a contract offer from Hendrick Motorsports. Wow. And the offer from Hendrick was to be Jimmy Johnson's test driver. Wow. And you're 16 at this point?

Yeah, I was just turning 17. And so I moved to North Carolina. You're technically not even supposed to be driving a car at all. I know. By the way, when you're 14, are you driving on the street illegally? No. You're racing cars. You're not allowed to drive on the road.

No, I got my license the regular way like everybody else did. I sat through driver's ed and failed my test the first time and passed it the second time. That's great. You failed the test the first time. Yeah. But I moved to North Carolina from Iowa when I was 17. I finished high school early, and my grandmother and I moved down together. To Charlotte.

To Charlotte, Charlotte yeah that's like that's like racing Mecca right yeah it's pretty much where you have to be you gotta go there it's like like having to move to Hollywood or something if you want to be an actor and so from there when when does NASCAR come into the picture so right then and there um I was I was working for Hendrick Motorsports I was young and was getting paid to drive race cars for a living, and I was Jimmy Johnson's test driver. Right. So what does that entail? I mean, you get in, you drive the car around before he gets in it and say, work on this. This doesn't feel right. Yeah, there's a lot of scenarios there. A lot of it had to do with the rules that

NASCAR has around their testing. Because in NASCAR, you can't just take the car to the racetrack. It's against the rules. You have to kind of get creative. You have to take it to other racetracks. At the time, the rules have changed since then. But at that time, you could kind of take it to some tracks with an unlicensed driver, but you couldn't take your primary driver to certain tracks.

And conveniently for me, which I love telling people this, my driving style is very similar to Jimmy Johnson's, which is a nice thing to say when he's probably the greatest driver to ever walk the earth and he's still racing, right? So my driving style was very similar to Jimmy's. So I kind of fit right into his car. What is that style? Like technically in the car, we're both very smooth with the throttle we're not like jamming the gas you know you're not gonna hear pounding of shifting gears and just slamming on the brakes into the corner we're very smooth we we drive a term you could use is like we

drive the throttle with the pedals rather than the steering wheel so we kind of keep the steering wheel straight and let the car steer itself um so because of that similarity my feedback is similar to his so when i feel in a car he'll also feel it's a good fit so there i mean i did a ton of different types of tests but in the in the general scheme of things um i could take take a list of 100 things that the crew chief might want to see. They've got 100 ideas that might make their cargo faster. And I could narrow it down to 10 and then give it to them and say, okay, all those other 90 things were garbage, but these 10 you guys need to try. things were garbage, but these 10, you guys need to try. And then from that point, Jimmy could, Jimmy and his crew chief, Chad could figure out what the best things worked for them.

And how did Jimmy like treat you? Like, what was that interaction like? Good, good. He's, and he's actually still a friend. He's, he's also a triathlete. So, so we, we do train together and, and things like that. But he's really good. Jimmy's a really, really good guy, and he would treat anybody well. But we worked together well, and like I said, our feedback was good. And there was a lot of times that I definitely learned from him. And being that my driving style started similar to his, like after working with him and being able to watch him, it probably adapted even more. So right, right, right. And what an amazing experience for you to go from what you were

doing and literally be inserted right into the middle of probably the, the best, most well-oiled, you know, highly funded, best equipment, best crews, like, across the board, and to be able to observe and learn from all of that. Yeah, I mean, at the time, like you said, I mean, they, and they still are, they're still one of the best funded teams, and I had, you know, within that team, I had my own engineer that worked on, like, our projects when we went testing, engineer that worked on like our projects when we went testing and um and it was pretty cool like i i was able to kind of that that was my resume builder because there was a lot of young drivers at the time that were getting chances to race and other things and i wasn't racing as much i was testing more and kind of running part-time race schedules which was a good and bad thing for my

career i mean on the bad side of it if i were just racing my own car, I mean, man, that's, you know, how can you replace that opportunity? And I could have had a chance at winning races and really showing people what I can do. But the good side of what I was doing was I was apprenticing. Yeah, and I had this resume that when it was time for me to pursue racing opportunities, because obviously I didn't want to be a test driver forever, I was able to go to these small, struggling race teams that had no pedigree, that couldn't get their cars into the race.

They would show up at the track with their employees and all their, you know, they're bedding the farm on one qualifying lap. Right. And couldn't go fast enough to get in. And so I was able to go to these teams and say, like, you know, I don't know if I can do it or not, but look at this is what I've been doing for the last five years. And it started out,

there was a team that had DNQ'd for the last six weeks in a row and they put me in the car and we never missed a race from the rest of the year wow and uh and it saved it saved their company i mean kept them from going out of business right that's amazing so that was how you just inserted yourself into the driver's seat and started yeah moving on and going from there and it was really um it was kind of an interesting route for me because young drivers like myself always picture ourselves showing up as the hot rookie and winning our first race and kissing the trophy girl and taking all the sponsors home with them and just making all the money. I kind of showed up and was driving for these small Spr small sprint cup teams with no sponsors we didn't have any money they didn't you know the and and the the job wasn't to go win the race the job wasn't you know we we in fact we knew we couldn't win the right you're going to the racetrack knowing

you can't win the race you're not going to win the race our goal was because the equipment is just not yeah it's not going to happen to happen with what you're living with. In a lot of cases, I've started races knowing we couldn't make it to the end of the race, let alone win the race. Our goal was to make the race and get last place prize money so that we could pay our overhead.

That's a reality check on what it's like to really be just like a yeoman driver. It's kind of the journeyman story a little bit. But what really worked for me and what built my foundation in my career as a race car driver, when I actually became a professional race car driver, it wasn't when I was 17. It wasn't when I was 18. I won the Rookie of the Year in the Nationwide Series when I was 18.

I was getting paid to drive cars, and that's how I made my living. But I became a professional race car driver around 2010 and 2011 when I had to drive for small teams that relied on my performance and relied on my communication with a team to, to put together a fast car and get into the race and pay our bills. Right. And so tell me how it, how it works with these teams. I mean, basically it's all driven by getting sponsors, right. Who can fund these teams and, you know,

what is the difference between, you know, what Jimmy Johnson has going on with, you know, just kind of like one of those teams that's struggling? It's just sponsor dollars, and what do those dollars buy that gets you on par, at least with respect to your crew and the car that you're driving? So really, I mean, you're right. It's very sponsor-driven to get the performance you need. I mean, we're not just all walking around with our hands out going, well,

we can't win until we get sponsors. You know, we need a sponsor. Like we actually do have a product that's valuable to sponsors and, and, and it's, but it's difficult to sell that. I mean,

it's a sales job. Because of the visibility. Yeah. I mean, you know, the better you do, the more you get seen, the more you get seen,

the more you can offer your sponsors, things like that. So, um, so there's a chicken or the egg type thing of like how you're going to, you know, sell these deals and how you create value. But, you know, you look at a team like Hendrick Motorsports and Jimmy Johnson's team who probably, you know, spends a million a week. You know, there's been documents out there and things with other teams that, you know, a lot of industry people know what these teams' budgets are. And, you know, that 48 team probably operates on a $30 million to $50 million budget. It could be anywhere from there. And where does that money go that translates into speed?

Like what's the difference between, you know, the cars? that translates into speed. What's the difference between the cars? It's, I mean, people and just, it's a manufacturing company at that point. At the level of Hendrick Motorsports, it's a manufacturing company. I mean, they've got 600 employees and it's just every ounce and every millimeter

in those cars makes a difference, especially when you can pour that much into it. I mean, they're at the wind tunnel every day. They have their own carbon fiber shop where they're building anything you want out of carbon fiber. The crew chief calls and says, hey, there's a component on my car that's aluminum that doesn't need to be aluminum. It needs to be carbon fiber. Wow. They can make it, you know, and it makes it that much lighter.

But once the car is dialed in, isn't that the car? Why does it keep going? It's crazy. It's so hard to imagine, but all those things kind of just add up and just make a faster car. And you still have to go to the racetrack and dial them in. And that's where like, okay, so we've built this fancy car out of carbon fiber and all the lightweight components. And there's 50 guys that built it and they massaged every corner and it's been in the wind tunnel you still have to dial it in right well they've got an engineering department and they have written their own computer simulation software that can track every movement of the suspension and before they even unload the car off the trailer, they've spent hours on the simulation software running laps on the racetrack.

And they'll type in a setup, right? You know, springs and shocks and suspension geometry and everything. And they'll hit enter and it'll make a lap. It'll tell you how fast it went. It'll tell you what it handled like. It'll tell you, you know, it'll tell you you know it'll tell you all the optimal aero positions of the body and everything and if it wasn't good enough well i mean it's never good enough they're gonna make an adjustment and they'll just keep working on it and they'll

find trends in the setup and all those things to where finally when it comes to friday when we're ready to practice and qualify they've worked on their car for hours, you know, days and weeks, just getting to that unloading setup. That's amazing. I feel like if you channeled that, all that brain power into like NASA or something like that, we would all be living on Mars. You know what I mean? Like, that's really amazing. So how do you like get into the right frame of mind to race, getting in a car that's obviously, I'm sure you're racing an unbelievable car, and you've got incredibly skilled, devoted, dedicated people working with you, but knowing maybe you don't have that, but you still got to get your head in the game and you're racing. Yeah. game and you're racing yeah so um so a big part of my kind of life transformation in the last couple years has has included that thought process because there was a point especially like in that

2010 2011 i was driving for these small teams i was making races but i was looking at the greener grass like it was man if we could just have that sponsor, you know, if I could just drive that guy's car, he's not even as good of a driver as me, you know, or if I could just have that. But none of that's productive. None of that is helping you be a better driver. It's not. And it's not proving it. I realized, I got to a point where it's like, I'm not proving to Roger Penske or Rick Hendrick that I'm a superior driver or person by looking at the greener grass of what I don't have. And I kind of set a goal for myself starting in 2013 that is like, you know what, I want to show myself, but I want to show this industry what I can build, you know, and what I can be a part of. And, and I kind of felt like,

you know what, if I get a, an opportunity to drive the, the Lowe's car, you know, or the Home Depot car, those, you know, those well-funded cars, then so be it. But I want those, I want people to look at me 10 years down the road and say, wow, look what he built. You know, look what he was a part of. And, and that was, that was when I started with the team that I'm with now, which is Hillman Racing. And when we started together, and like I told you, we had no pedigree, we had nothing, right? It was, we had one race car, the owner of the team, myself, and two employees.

Wow. Yeah, it's like the bad news bears. Yeah, exactly. And we went to, so 2014 was when that whole daytona thing in 2013 somebody ran daytona with our like kind of program but then our first official race together was on the west coast and we had a west coast swing we had phoenix and then fontana so we went 3 000 miles from north carolina to phoenix with one race car like Like if we crashed it in Phoenix, we could do the next race. Right, right.

I mean, how many cars do these other teams have? I mean, 20. Oh, really? They're building them every day. Oh, I didn't know that. Wow. At a company like Hendrick, I mean, so we go down the path of like building them light and all that stuff.

Like they're building these cars so light and so sleek that they only race them once or twice, and then they throw them away and build another one. Oh, wow. They don't throw them away. I mean, they rebuild them or they'll sell them or whatever. And when they go from race to race, we're talking about fleets of 18-wheelers. Yeah.

Yeah. They're taking them and they're loading them up with a primary and a backup. So we went out there with one car, and we had to use that one car for the first four races of the year until we could generate enough money from our prize money, because we didn't have any sponsorship at the time. We were able to generate enough money from our prize money

to buy us another car. So we bought another car, so now we had two cars. Just bootstrapping the whole thing. So now we had two cars, so we're doing good now. And so we just kind of like built, you know, as a company together. And that was my goal as a driver was like, I'm tired of trying to be the best race car driver in the world. Like, you know, I'm tired of looking at the greener grass. I want to see what I can build.

Well, that's laudable. And I think that that must give you a tremendous sense of pride because rather than just plopping into the driver's seat into a machine that's already fully ramped up and just driving the car, you're part of something that wasn't, that now is, which is pretty cool. And it's mine. You created something. It's mine. It's part of me. It's part of my team. It's mine. It's mine. It's part of me. It's part of my team. It's ours. You know, the hard part is I could sit here all day and say, man, I just wish if I was in Jimmy Johnson's car, right?

I could say that all you want. Well, everybody except Jimmy Johnson can say that. Every other guy. Exactly. But you look at the situations and just at the caliber that they operate, I could be a better driver than Jimmy Johnson. But I still probably couldn't get in Jimmy Johnson's car tomorrow and do as good as he's doing because it's his team. It's his – those are his guys. He's been with them for 15 years. And so it was like I kind of reached a point where I was like, man, as great as that would be, I don't even know if I want to be plucked into somebody else's deal. It's like I – Just build your own thing and grow into that. Something I can be proud of.

So what do you think it is that – what distinguishes an average driver from a great race car driver? I mean what is it that makes Jimmy Johnson great? Other than the car, I'm just talking about the actual skill set of driving. It's really – it's kind of a quarterback-like atmosphere. It's just the overall leadership and, and how you conduct yourself, how you handle yourself and, and the mental game of it. That's why Jimmy Johnson is who he is. I mean, he's got the mental side of it just so in tune. I mean, he doesn't blow up, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of drivers that have all the

talent in the world but they can't handle you know the high pressure situations and they got their crew chief in their ear and they got their spotter in the air telling them to pit now no wait pit next lap and just you know pick it up you know and it is they blow up and then then they come in and they have a bad pit stop when they're leading and they come out in third place oh that's so terrible right right oh it just they'll melt down for the whole for the rest of the race they'll they'll you know they'll they'll throw away a chance at a win just because they had one setback jimmy johnson doesn't do that you know and there's a lot of guys that that don't do that they have the mental clarity and they have the leadership to get out of the car after a bad day and the microphones in your face and what happened out there and say,

my pit crew sucks. No, no. It's, hey, we had a rough day. It doesn't – you can't win them all. And it's that ability to kind of put all that together. And so much of that is not what's happening when you're behind the wheel, right? Exactly. It's like how you're sort of handling all the people that work underneath you

and the day in, the day out, leading up to the race and after the race. Yeah, because at the end of the day, I mean, if that little bit of mental clarity can help you from making a smidgen of a mistake every third or fourth lap on the racetrack, helps your car go a tenth of a second faster for those laps, you're going to beat the more talented driver that can't keep his head anyways. Right. What do you think is your strongest suit as a driver? Like what distinguishes you from the other guys?

I've found that I perform well under pressure. And I think a lot of that came from when I was having to drive for the teams that didn't have a way into the race, and we had to race our way in or qualify our way in, and it was kind of a do-or-die situation. I've kind of had to learn to just bite the bullet and get focused. And I feel like I've had a lot of instances in my driving career where it's just like that out-of-body experience where it just happened and you don't remember making the decision. Right, you're in the zone.

You're in the zone. And you're not consciously thinking about shifting, accelerating, all those kinds of things. You're just on some kind of autopilot where it's flowing know, there's that feeling sometimes you get where it's like, you don't even feel your arms. You don't even, you know, you're just, you're in the zone. I mean, that's, that's, that's truly what it is. And, and, and I've, I've kind of found that and I, I've even read a mind body sport and it's, Sport, and it really talks about that and kind of trying to figure out how to harness that. And that's one thing that I've kind of focused on.

I was like, man, I, and staying stable for my team and keeping them, you know, positive and being a good leader on that. Right, right, right. Yeah. There's a book called, I think it's, I forget the guy who wrote it. It's about flow states or a flow state project or something like that. I'll think of it later. Um, but that might be one. Is mind body sport the one that's with the seasons? And that's the one that I read about. I can't remember. And I did a, I don't know if you've listened to it, but I did a podcast with this sports psychologist named Michael Gervais,

who's here in Los Angeles, and he's unbelievable. You might want to check that out. He had so much valuable information about that. And he works with the Seattle Seahawks, and he's the guy who got Felix Baumgartner, the Red Bull Stratos guy. Oh, we listened to that podcast. Yeah, he's the guy who got him comfortable in the suit and all that kind of stuff. But he's, like, packed full of knowledge.

And that's really, like, you know, the final frontier of athletic performance, I think, beyond nutrition. It is. That people really need to start dialing it up as things get more and more competitive. nutrition that people really need to start dialing it up as things get more and more competitive. And I think racing is unique and distinct in the sense that it's an athletic event, but I think the mental aspect of it is so much more forefront. Like, you know, you look at basketball or track and field or whatever it is, and you see the athletic aspect of it, and it's easy to overlook the mental aspect of it as important as it is, but you're spending so much time just with yourself. Yeah.

And it's not about how strong you are or anything like that. It's like, where's your head at? You know, how can you be more focused and present with what you're doing? Exactly. I mean, our races are anywhere from three and a half to four and a half hours. And then if you want to break it down like comparing it to football or something you know if a football a play lasts seven seconds ten seconds and and then even from there you know the quarterback is off the field for a few minutes can put himself together and go back out but in a race

i mean there are breaks in a race when the caution comes out or there's a crash but you'll go you can go 30 minutes having to race lap after lap after lap. And if your car is crappy for that 30 minutes, you can get so far off mentally because it's just like, Oh my God, when is this stint going to be over? When can I come and put tires on? I need fuel. I need an adjustment. I need to quit. You you know what i mean it's like i want to get out of this thing um and and you can't afford to lose that you know because in in our race tracks i mean you know when we race out in fontana you're in california um the track has six grooves i mean if you're you can have the worst car in the field trying to race it on the bottom. And there's a groove out there 100 yards to the high side

that if you just would go up there and try it, you'd have the best car. It's just so everything's different, and it changes constantly when your tires get wore out and it starts sliding around. So you kind of have to overcome each lap. Even though you're not stopping, you don't get a chance to breathe. You have to go through a corner and miss the corner and almost crash, but think, I know I can do that corner better next time. You know, so. And just having to be so focused for such a long extended period of time without a break,

you know, under excruciatingly high pressure circumstances where it's literally like, I mean, you know, it is kind of life or death. I mean, before we were recording in the kitchen, you were saying, well, we were talking about Senna and Rush, these movies, and you're like, when everyone was dying in these cars, you're like, oh, it's so safe now. And I'm like, is it really? I don't know about that. Yeah. I mean, it feels safe. It feels safe compared to what it used to be. I mean, Kyle Busch broke both of his legs in Daytona just a couple weeks ago, which was a really bizarre accident. But there's a lot of concussions out there on drivers,

and I've had a concussion as a driver. It was before we were being looked at for them. So, I mean, I raced with a concussion. But, I mean, there's I raced with a concussion and, um, but I mean, it's, there, there's a, there's a few stuff like that out there, but, um, but I mean, really it's, it's hot in those cars and you're, you're at kind of a marathoners heart rate for the duration of the time that you're at speed. Right. Wow. So that's interesting. So what is it like, what is your typical heart rate when you're racing? It's kind of in that like 120 to 140.

Wow, that's pretty elevated. Well, it'll spike, but I mean, it's just, it's just at that aerobic, you know, as a triathlete, you know, kind of anywhere from like a recovery to aerobic. But it's so hot. And I mean, you know, the cars are probably 120 degrees inside the car. And then the last thing that I always kind of put on top of it that puts it in perspective for people is like, we're not breathing clean air. Yeah. You know, it's not like. Hardly. You know, like, okay, marathon or heart rate, you know, like, yeah, that's one thing, but I run a lot, you know, it's like, okay, well, it's hot. Well, you yeah, that's one thing, but I run a lot. It's like, okay, well, it's hot.

Well, I run in the desert. It's pretty hot in the desert. It's like running a marathon in Mexico City on a super smoggy day breathing out of an exhaust pipe. Like you know when you're at the top of a climb on your bike and it's just brutal and you're full of lactic acid and you're just grasping on every breath and a dump truck drives by you. Like that's kind of, I mean, you know, obviously we're not complete heathens and have terrible, but like there's, you know, there's really no like formal filtration in these cars. You know, they're not clean.

These are race cars. Right. And I've got air that blows into my helmet, but our CO2 levels are high after races. You're not getting pure oxygen by any stretch. I've been tested before and after, and it's high. Right. And so throughout the race, you're hydrating. Are you eating?

How does that work, the nutrition throughout? I've dabbled. I go back and forth on eating during the race. Typically, I'll take either a gel or a banana. I haven't lately. I've just gotten, I don't know. I do so well on the hydration side of things that I haven't eaten a lot lately, but sometimes I'll throw a banana in there or a gel.

But I definitely, I I mean hydration is huge especially what I've learned with triathlon and just the importance of that it's like I found where in the past I've I've cut myself short right in a race car and I can think of instances where it's like man that's that's what I needed so um there's a lot of races where I'll take in uh anywhere from I, the majority of races I've taken anywhere from 75 to 150 ounces probably. Let's talk about, I want to talk about the triathlon stuff because that's super interesting. Yeah. But I, but before we do that, like I want to, I want to get into a little bit about the culture of NASCAR and kind of, you know, like the myths versus the realities of, you know, what it's like. And, you know, as somebody who, you know, I have a lay person's

understanding of what that world is all about, but I'd be lying if I didn't tell you it was half informed by Talladega Nights and whatever I see on television or whatever movie, you know, if you've seen Talladega Nights and don't even worry, you've seen it all. You got it. It's totally accurate, right? It's all about that. So, I mean, what is it like to be immersed in that culture, living in Charlotte, a race car? I mean, you're living in Charlotte, race car central, NASCAR central. You're a NASCAR driver. I mean, that's pretty sexy and cool.

Yeah. That's like being a rock star. I think it's pretty awesome. You know, but what is that culture all about? Like, and what is different in the reality of it versus what we might imagine? It's just a, it's a very blue collar, hardworking sport. You know, the people that put our cars together

and the guys that work on these teams, they were born and bred racers. I mean, a lot of them are just the mechanics of the world that love cars, and especially on some of the smaller teams like mine where we don't have – we're not engineering heavy. We're mechanic heavy. And so there are a lot of workers. I mean, my guys work seven days a week.

They travel four of those days. And they don't get to see a lot. Their family is a lot. The days that they do get off are like the day that they're going to travel. So if we're flying out on a Thursday afternoon, they'll get Thursday morning off type thing. But it's just – and it's kind of a big traveling circus, you know, a big traveling family. Um, you know, so 38, 40 weeks a year ish.

I always say 40 weeks a year because it's 38 races, but we get two off weekends and I'm always like traveling on those off weekends too. So we're traveling 40 weeks a year minimum. And, um, and it's the same people go to the same cities and and it's just that the the people like i said are very blue collar hard-working type people and the nascar corporate culture is um is still in a lot of ways very good old boy because it's a family-owned business and it's owned by the france family so NASCAR is a very sophisticated corporation, but it still answers to the boss. And so that's just a – and it's not – I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing,

but that's what NASCAR is, and there's a lot of businesses out there that are like that. And they just have a different culture than companies that are run by a board or run by whatever. Right, right, right. But you're not like, I mean, you're from Iowa, but you're not like, you don't strike me as like, I mean, your name's Landon. It's not Bobby or Dale. You don't strike me as being like a good old boy. Yeah, I know. You're not like Talladega, right? You don't strike me as being a good old boy and chewing tobacco and all that kind of stuff. I mean, is that – No, I'm not, and I never was.

I mean, it's – I don't know. I guess I could have been. I grew up in Iowa. I worked on race cars, and I'm an ass-kid driver. You can hang around for a few long, though. What's that? You get an accent. Yeah, if I hang around racers in the South, I start twanging it.

You get a little bit of a twang. Not too much. Gosh, please don't say that. I hate it when people say that. I have to check myself when people say that. You've been living in Charlotte for a while. I know. I definitely could have been a good old boy,

but I mean, I got a little bit of a creative mind sometimes and I always kind of venture out in things. And Katie and I, we don't live in a Charlotte area, like all the racing people live in Mooresville up by the lake and Lake Norman. And so we kind of keep to ourselves a little bit, which is funny. We live in the city. We keep to ourselves. But we have a lot of friends outside of the racing industry. You're not like jet skiing and doing like – No, no.

We live our little vegan life in Charlotte. But I get along with the industry, and I'm a part of that culture. But I was just, I never, I was never like into hunting and, you know, those things that racers, you know, and just that country boy type personas into. to. But growing up, I mean, I guess the reason I ended up being a racer, despite kind of being a part of that culture, I just cared about driving. Like I just wanted to race. I just wanted to drive. I built my race cars. I was in high school. There's oftentimes I got up before school to go work on my car. I went to school and then worked on it until 10 or 11 at night after school. And that's just all I wanted to do. I didn't create other hobbies or anything like that.

Your dad's got to be psyched. Yeah. Yeah. Did he come to all the races? He did at one point, but he hasn't. He'll go to like 5 to 10-ish. Maybe not 10, but he'll go to 5-ish. He's still in the car business in Iowa, so he's pretty deep in that.

My dad's a very highly motivated person. My family, we're a family of highly motivated people. Yeah, do you have brothers and sisters? My brother is a geologist. He lives in Boulder. I'm sorry, he lives downtown Denver. My sister lives. She goes to Denver University as well.

So my brother's a geologist, and he was a professional bass fisherman when he was in college, which is pretty interesting. And he was a vegetarian at the time, too. It was kind of weird. Really? Yeah. Which was, so, funny side note, talking about my brother, he was kind of like vegan vegetarian in college and or like towards the end of high school like

through college and he was your trademark like did it to piss off my parents right just like the perfect college kid vegan you know like it like like if somebody said like what do you stand for as a vegan i stand for pissing off my parents like that's what he wanted to do and um but he was he he was for a long time so i guess you can't just do it out of spite for two for that long he's not gonna be able to sustain right but uh but and he certainly wasn't a healthy you know vegan it was like potato chips and stuff. But it was always funny because obviously I wasn't a vegan back then, and I'd always be like, how could you go fishing and be a vegan?

How does that work? And he's like, I throw them back. And he's like, he always believed it was bad karma to eat the fish anyways. He's like, even if I wasn't a vegetarian, I wouldn't eat them. But it's just kind of funny. But again, I think it was just him justifying the rebellion. But my sister is a figure skater. Wow.

But she's a college student now, so she goes to Denver University. Interesting. Is it Denver University or University of Denver? University of Denver. Those are two different schools. Yeah, I think so. University of Denver. UD, University of Denver. Okay. Yeah, right in schools yeah I think so UD University of Denver

okay right in downtown yeah that's cool everybody's doing different things follow our dreams family yeah that's cool um well I want to talk about like how you kind of you know this is sort of a segue into the triathlon stuff but like how you approach the training aspect of trying to be as physically and mentally fit as possible for your racing. And your sport is so unique in the sense that it's not like you can go to the track every day and do hot laps, you know, like the idea of getting the car out on the track is a hugely expensive endeavor. Um, and I've,

I have some friends that are motorcycle racers is a a hugely expensive endeavor. Um, and I've, I have some friends that are motorcycle racers, similar kind of thing. Um, so without being able to actually practice the thing that it is that you do, you know, on a regular basis, you know, what is it that you specifically, and maybe some of what the other racers do to try to, you know, be fit for that? Um, yeah, I mean, it's just like you said, it's triathlon is, is my choice. Um, I've, I've done CrossFit. I, I mean, I was never into it. Right. I say I've done CrossFit. I didn't do CrossFit because there's people that do CrossFit and my God, there's doing CrossFit and then there's doing, right. There's, there's, yeah. my god there's doing crossfit and then there's doing right there's there's yeah so um i i worked out and and um and you know lifted and crossfit and all those things and and first of all for me

like i didn't get hooked on those things like i did triathlon but also like i really found with triathlon just that endurance aspect was such a compliment to what I do in a race car. Because at the end of the day, I mean, we talked about the heart rate and the heat and everything. And our races being three and a half to four and a half hours. On a kind of a cardio aspect, I'm doing a marathon every Sunday. It's kind of a perfect triathlon training. It really is kind of a perfect compliment. And I actually race twice a week. I race on Saturdays as well in the Xfinity series.

Right, that was another thing. Like you race in two different cars. We didn't even talk about that. I was reading about this and I was like, how does that work? Like, wait, you have this car and you also race this other car? Yeah, so it's really, in NASCAR there's the Sprint Cup Series and there's the Xfinity Series. And the Xfinity Series is kind of like the feeder series.

But it's weird because the Sprint Cup drivers can race in the feeder series. And it's actually the Sprint Cup drivers racing in the feeder series is kind of a value proposition there because you get these big-name drivers to show up, and then the young guns can kind of challenge them. And it brings a lot of money to the sport. It brings a lot of money to the Xfinity series. So it has its pros and cons. For me, I run them both because it's more time in the race car.

Both the teams I drive for are small. We're not going to go out there and set the world on fire week in and week out. But for me, I can get more experience. I can prove myself more as a good driver. It's just another opportunity for me to race. So I race 300 miles on Saturday and 500 miles on Sunday. So I do a marathon on Sunday and a half marathon on Saturday. And I found that with triathlon and long course triathlon that just said endurance has helped me a ton inside the race car. And then anybody, there's a lot of triathletes listening, I'm sure,

know how addicting it is and that us triathletes have addictive personalities and and uh I've got addictive personality and I mean I just and I'm competitive and I and I push myself and and um and I definitely dive into things 100% and I've kind of gotten into a point where I treat my triathlon training and just my like my weekly schedules of my training and then into my races on the weekend it all just kind of works into one I mean I I uh you know I put on my recovery boots after a race whether it's a triathlon you got the normatec boots like you got all the stuff you know yeah I mean and I I've you you know, those were calculated purchases. But, I mean, it's just the recovery from getting out of a race car and then getting in the pool and running on Mondays,

which is what I do on Mondays. I swim and run. Monday is kind of a get back into the swing of things. You know, I typically, I'll try to uh my physical therapist on monday or tuesdays and get my body squared away again because we found that that my hips get cranked um over the course of the weekend just from the g-forces that i pull in the race car and being in the seated position buckled in tight you know your you know your your hip flexors yeah it's got to jack you up pretty good it's very jack you up pretty it's it's very

jacked up and so like the left side of my body is just like weak and and immobile and the right side is decent so you know actually i was going around the same way you know like yeah laughing it's real funny yeah i've never really thought about that but like over time yeah that would create like a huge imbalance so um so i i so I, I work with, you know, that, that stuff early in the week and, and, um, and then on Tuesdays, um, Tuesdays are usually big training days for me. I, um, I do a big swim in the morning and then, um, typically like a 25 mile or an hour trainer ride in a three to six mile brick, depending on where I'm at in my periodization. And then Wednesday's speed work and another swim and lift on Wednesdays. And

Thursdays would be like a long aerobic bike ride and a travel day. And then Fridays are a long run for me. And then that's when I'm in a race car so um fridays i have to start getting serious about like on a physical side of things getting a good solid run in but also recovering in time and staying hydrated throughout the day you can't overdo it because before you're racing right because i've because on fridays i'm in the car all day you know we talk about racing on sunday and how hard it is racing on saturday how hard it is but on friday i practice and i qualify both cars right so um like tomorrow is a friday and um i practice at noon um since we had a long week in palm springs like hiking and i did a lot of some some pretty tough runs while i was in Palm Springs. I'm just going to swim tomorrow morning. But I'm going to be nonstop at the racetrack in a car from noon to like 5.30 after we qualify.

So I kind of have to, like I try to get those long runs on Friday, but I have to really kind of stay hydrated, keep the nutrition in me throughout the day while I'm driving. Or you could do what you did, I think, was it in Phoenix, where the car broke down and then you ran back to the hotel? Yes, that was a good one. I saw it on your Twitter. There's a little story behind that too, so I have no idea when you'll air this or when this will apply,

but the story behind it is, uh, well, first of all, my, my Xfinity race in Phoenix, um, I blew a tire on lap 90. So we're a hundred miles into this race, 300 mile race and, or 200 mile race. I'm sorry. And, uh, blew a tire, hit the wall, car's junk. And, um, so I just put my running shoes on and I ran back to the hotel. I guess that's not much of a story. The story behind this is supposed to be a story. No, it's good. No, it's really simple. I just got out of my car, and so I put my running shoes on,

and I drank a bottle of water, and I didn't have my handheld with me, which would have really been nice, but it was 8 1⁄2 miles, and I thought, I can make it 8 1⁄2 miles. It would take about an hour. And I was thirsty by the end of the ride. And I drank two bottles in that 100 miles in the car and then drank one after. When you're in the car, do you have a water bottle with you? Or is it only when they squirt it in your mouth when you pull into the pit stop?

How does that work? What movies did you watch? I don't know. I'm telling you. I told you I don't know anything. So no, I keep a water bottle in the car. I keep it really simple. There's drivers that have drink systems and stuff.

Is there like an anchor for it? Yeah, there's just a water bottle holder. It kind of sits in there pretty deep, and it really only flies out if you crash or something. Extra weight, though. Yeah, I know. Well, yeah, I just try to suck it down and sweat it out. So yeah, I keep that in. and sweat it out.

So yeah, I keep that in. But I did that eight and a half mile run, but I'm sponsored by Snap Fitness, which is really cool because they just love the fitness and health side. I mean, they're just like, okay, Lena, whatever. I'm just like, hey, I'm going to do this half Ironman this year, and it's on an off weekend. And they're just like, oh, my God, dude, whatever you want to do man you just like just just tag snap fitness do you have a like a triathlon kit that has all your

sponsors i do yeah yeah i guess snap fitness on it and um i'm like that guy at the triathlon with my branding um so i'm the difference is that you actually are sponsored by all these people. Right, I actually am sponsored, yeah. Most people, they're wearing all these sponsored things, but they're not actually sponsored. Well, it's so funny. In the world of triathlon and cycling and all this stuff, it's like you buy Zip wheels.

It's got the Zip sticker on it. And Zip has great branding. They're laughing all the way to the bank. It's like you're paying $3,500 for a set of wheels to run their stickers on it. By the way, Zip is- In my world, you pay a lot of money to have those stickers on. I know. People are volunteering to do this.

Exactly. They're actually paying Zip thousands of dollars. To advertise for them. Yes. Right. So, so Snap and I, we were kind of chatting and they, they want to do something like we might do a 5k later in the year or something. We were kind of chatting, and they want to do something.

Like, we might do a 5K later in the year or something. And I was kind of thinking, and my dad and I were talking, and I was like, you know, the hardest race of the year is a 600-mile race we do in May on Memorial Day weekend. And it's like 13 to 14 miles from the racetrack in Charlotte to the Hall of Fame in downtown Charlotte. And I'm like, I wonder if I could do that 600-mile race in my car and then get out and jog it out. Right. 14 miles home or whatever it might be.

You should do that. You can do that. And so I'm thinking about it. Yeah, I know I'm fit enough to do it. But for me, the challenge would be like, well, first of all, finishing the race. I mean, blown engine, getting in a crash, finish the race. And then so Snap was kind of like, man, we'd get behind that. So we're kind of in the early stages of just figuring it out.

Because you've got to remember, that's a night race. It starts at 6 p.m it's a usually takes four and a half to five hours to do 600 mile race so you're done at 11 i mean by the time i get out of the car like and if i were doing it right it would do press and all that kind of stuff yeah after right yeah like i'd get out of the race car i would probably have at least like a masseuse there to just like strip me out or something, you know, get changed, get some fluids in me. Like it would probably be like a 15 to 30 minute brick, you know? Right. And, uh, and then you got traffic and it, so it's midnight, right? When we get started. So, um, you know, I told Snap, I'm like, well, I would consider looking into this,

but you've got to give me a plan. How are we going to execute this? So it'll be kind of interesting to see what they come up with. They've got some ideas, but I want to do it. But I kind of decided I'm going to start jogging home from some of these races and see how I feel. That could be your thing. Everybody needs their thing. You're, everybody needs like their spring.

You're the guy who runs home after every race. Dean Karnazes is the guy that eats a pizza while he's on there. Yeah. Probably not anymore, but. You know, like Jesse Thomas wears aviator shades. Exactly. This could be like your thing. Well, I think what would be cool would be just say it's a midnight half

and then also open it up to your fans so the people can hang out. Yeah. And those who want to run can do the run with you afterwards so it allows you to kind of connect with the people. If anybody wants to do this or is interested, or maybe if it's not Charlotte, just let us know. Let me know. Let Rich know.

I bet you you get a lot of people to do that. I think that would be really fun. That would be the driving force behind it is if I didn't have to do it alone. When is this? May? It's in May. I want to do it. Memorial Day weekend. That sounds really fun. Run from the racetrack and I'll you're going to look at me like,

man, Landon, are you okay? I just raced 600 miles in my race car. But yeah, I'm doing good. You're an endurance athlete. You can handle it. PR a half marathon after a – I think it would be cool. In Charlotte, do you ever go down and swim at Mecklenburg? Yeah, yeah.

So I actually – it's a name drop for a second. Do you know Coach Dave Marsh? I'm sure you've heard of him. Yeah, of course. I don't know him personally. I may have met him once, but I don't know him well. But, of course, I know who he is. He's a legend.

So his swim mac elite works out two days a week at the pool that I swim at in Mecklenburg Aquatic Center. The big outdoor 50-meter, right? It's indoors. That one? Oh, it is? Yeah. I used to go to a meet when I was in high school. It was a big meet.

It was like the Mecklenburg. It was like early summer.lenburg it was it was like early summer or maybe it was like july 4th weekend or something like that we would always go to charlotte and there was a big outdoor 50 meter pool but it was a mecklenburg like sponsored event that was to check it out it might i i'm i'll have to think of what pools are out there but the the kind of the the pool right now that i like the best one in town, 50 meters, the Aquatic Center in downtown. And Dave Marsh has a swim mag elite group that swims there twice a week. The rest of the time they swim at Queens University.

And he's got Ryan Lochte and Tyler Clary. Those are the ballers, yeah, Tyler and Cullen Jones. I've kind of gotten to know them a little bit just on the pool deck, like not outside. But other than Dave, I know them a little bit just on the pool deck, like not outside. But other than Dave, I know I'm a little closer, and he's kind of helped me with my stroke a little bit, which is nice sometimes. Oh, that's cool.

I usually go in because I know when they work out, and I'll see them. And Tyler is a big race fan, so he'll usually duck in and remind me that my head's lifting my head or something and you um and uh there's a guy on your team that swam for stanford right yes race team kevin radveny so yes and he he knew he knows who you are so i was like that's crazy um which i you know i think i mentioned something about you doing a while back because i was like gosh i read this guy's book it's so awesome he swam at Stanford. Do you know who Rich Roll is? And he's like, Rich Roll.

And the best part was, and you'll probably be able to at least chuckle, at the very least chuckle to yourself. I'm afraid of what you're going to say. You've got to understand, Kevin has no idea who Rich Roll, the super athlete, plant-based, he knows who Rich Roll, the college swimmer, is. Right. Right? So he didn't know you. He knows who Rich Roll, the college swimmer, is. Right. Right? So he was...

And he didn't know you. He didn't have anything to say. But he was like, oh, yeah, I know Rich Roll. He was some years ahead of me or something like that. And I'm like, you know who Rich Roll is? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. He swam with Stanford a couple years before me. What's the big deal?

He's a good swimmer. And I'm like, well well it's like he's like look at you know he does now like you know and and to me i'm like trying to convey this to kevin because i'm like he's a different person now that you know like he's he's he's like different than a swimmer that he was you know and and um and he's like wow that's that's incredible that's pretty cool you know so i think what he's doing is cool, like to make that transition from college swimming into racing. I remember reading about it. It's super impressive.

Yeah, he doesn't swim much anymore. And I like push him. I got him in the pool once. And it was tough because he's like, oh, man, I haven't swam in a couple years. And it just freaking smoked me. But he was an all-American swimmer. Yeah, it's like when you're at that level, there's sort of two camps. There's some people that are just like never again because you're just doing it so much.

You're just like, I don't need that in my life anymore. But guys like that, you'll see it. We'll do it. We have an alumni meet every year, and you'll see guys that are my age, and they jump in, and they'll just crank out some insane 50 freestyle. It's just in their blood. Once you know how to do that, you just hop back into it. Swimming, I've compared swimming and racing and golf sometimes,

which is really kind of weird. But the three of them are skill-based sports. Swimming more than the other two. Like swimming is a fitness. I mean, you've got to be fit to be a good swimmer. But there's so much technique. It really is like a stroke is really like a golf swing. It really is.

You can always be perfecting it. Exactly. And you can be a good swimmer but be out of shape. You can be a good golfer but be out of shape. You can be a good race car driver and be out of shape, but you can't be elite at any of those and be out of shape you can be a good golfer but be out of shape you can be a good race car driver and be out of shape but you can't be elite at any of those and be out of shape and and like and that's so like you can have the skill of being a race car driver but just never tap your potential um right if you don't uncover every rock and the same with the golf swing i mean tiger woods showed

up and was just like cranking his you know i mean he's paying for it now right with his back but like I mean just lifting and the flexibility and just show these these big guys that you know had the skill to hit a golf ball but he showed them that I can show up with that skill and and hit the ball 30 yards 50 yards farther than you because I'm fit. And swimming is the same way. I mean, you can have the skill of being a good swimmer and probably do as good as the guys around you who are working harder than you. Right, right, right. You know, so, and in racing, like I said, like, there's drivers.

I can think of drivers that I know that I look at them and I'm just like, I'm glad that guy is not focused because if he was focused, he would be taking my job. You know, he would be like, that guy is so good. You know, I guess that's a terrible thing to say, but it's like, he is so good, but he's just not in it. You know? And if he could just get in it, he could either, there's no telling what he could do. Right. The potential. potential i mean a couple observations on that i mean the first thing is i feel like um and this is just like a complete outsider's you know perspective looking in but i feel like there's a lot of guys in racing

that are like in a triathlon right now like you have guys like like Tony, you know, Tony Kinane and like, you know, some big time racers that are, that are doing triathlons. Yeah, Jensen Button's huge. Yeah, exactly. And one of our champion, Jimmy Johnson. And trying to do really well at it too, like treating it, you know, very competitively. And I feel like that's a quantum leap, you know,

in terms of approaching the sport of racing seriously as, yeah, I am an athlete. I can't just get fat and eat chicken wings and chew tobacco, you know, which I would imagine, you know, maybe 15, 20 years ago, most of the guys, you know, weren't into being fit. Well, because their skill carried them. Yeah, because they're highly, highly skilled at what they do, but that's not really approaching it like an athlete's perspective, you know, kind of from a mind, body, spirit approach of trying to be as fit as possible. So I would imagine that that's really, you know, translating into, um, you know, kind of quantum

leaps and performance gains and, and, and how well people are racing, you know, what you're seeing on the track. Um, but the question that I have for you is like, you're doing the triathlon training and that's making you endurance fit, you know, the cardio and all of that kind of aspect of it. But like is there anything that you do to work on like your reaction time? You know, like I feel like you're making all these micro decisions and you have to be able to, you know, like your nervous system has to be so finely tuned to be able to like, you know, make those snap judgments at the exact moment. And that's different from triathlon. You know, like in triathlon, you're not really doing that kind of thing. Um, so is there anything specific that you do to approach that? Um, I haven't, I, it's funny that you asked that question because I haven't like officially dove into that. Right. You know, I have like so

much of my time is consumed with triathlon training and just everything I do. And to add another reaction stuff is there is an avenue I can go down there. And I've seen drivers that are into training in the gym. There's a Jacob's Ladder type workout, things that you're picking the colors and you're jumping on things. that you're picking the colors and you're jumping on things. But one thing that I've kind of started to do is there's this app I play on my phone that's just a reaction game. And it's circles and these sticks that point out. I think the app is even called AA or something.

It doesn't even have a name. It's kind of weird. And the reason I say it's funny that you asked me that is, like, the answer is no. I don't really have anything that I've done. But I've started playing this app. And I've started noticing, like, kind of improvements and just at least short-term attentiveness and, like, quickness and things like that. Like, this is, like, the worst example. But I was playing through this game and kind of just getting into it and got through a bunch of levels.

And then I turned on Flappy Bird and it set a high score the first time I played it. Oh, wow. Like, you know, it was really weird that like I did that. And, and, and the reason I downloaded this game is for that reason that you were talking about is like, hey, is this something I can do on the plane headed to a race weekend, you know, just to kind of, even if I spend 15 minutes a day or, you know, or 15 minutes once a week, you know, just on my way to the track to just kind of sharpen my mind. I think, you know, it could be a help. Yeah, I think so.

So it's, I don't know, but sometimes, you know, the reaction stuff, I mean, it's, you know, it's definitely important, definitely something that can be honed and there's always ways I can get better. But, man, I feel like sometimes instinctually I just, those decisions get made. Right. Well, that's part of the 10,000 hours. Exactly. You know what I mean?

Like, it's just bred into you. But, you know, one of the things you said early on when I asked you, you know, what's the difference between, you know, a good driver and a great driver. And you were talking about, you know, being able to maintain your composure under high pressure situations and how you kind of, you know, the more graceful, you know, people are with respect to their teams and how you kind of navigate this world, the better off, you know, you see their careers going. And I'm wondering if you, to me, when I hear that, I'm like, well, meditation, Wondering if, to me, when I hear that, I'm like, well, meditation unlocks all of that stuff. Have you delved into that at all? So very lightly, and my wife is the inspiration behind. I know.

Katie, I want to put you on the mic here. I need to get her a mic. Yeah, I know. So she's really the inspiration behind a lot of my just my lifestyle and my nutrition and and um you know she comes from a um a counselor background and she's read a million yoga books and and like so sounds like somebody i know yeah well i i was telling her i was like man i feel like we have similar background even even kind of um yours and yours and my path to our nutrition is similar because it was like we were led by example.

I mean, your wife was there the whole time. It wouldn't have happened without her. She wasn't in your ear. Inhaling cheeseburgers right now. Right, right. But the whole time she was there doing it, but you were just kind of doing your thing, but you always had that tool ready to use it but you were just kind of you know doing your thing and but you

always had that tool ready to use it whenever you were ready right and so uh the meditation thing is something that that is is there for me that i've dabbled in but haven't dove into and um and it's so it could be it's something i'm looking forward to diving into because i know how and it's so it could be it's something i'm i'm looking forward to diving into because i know how valuable it's going to be you know i've i watch like the drivers that lose their cool in a car and things like that and and and sometimes it's so frustrating when people confuse passion with foolishness you know and there's a lot of drivers out there that man he's so passionate oh he's foolish you know he's he's acting like a lot of drivers out there that, man, he's so passionate. No, he's foolish. You know, he's, he's, he's acting like a fool. He's out of control. He's not in control of his. Exactly. And they, they confuse that. They call it passion or they call

that, you know, intensity. Um, so it's, it's definitely, it's definitely something that's, um, that's on the horizon. I'm challenging you now on record to get into it. Seriously, man, like, honestly, I think that starter kit, give me the starter kit. I'll give you, I'll give you a super, I'll give you a super easy way to get going. And that is this download the headspace app to your iPhone. They have 10, like 10, you know, 10 free guided meditations on there that are like 10 minutes each or something like that and if you're into it after that you can like upgrade and then um yeah it's cheap but and then you just get a whole world of all these different guided meditation programs and it's it's started

by this guy uh andy puttacombe i did a podcast with him i haven't i haven't aired it yet um he's an amazing guy it's like british guy and now he's sort of like the Jamie Oliver of meditation. Like he's sort of, you know, like, but he was a, he was literally a monk like living in India for 10 years. Like he, he talk about 10,000 hours. Like this guy's put in 50,000 hours of meditation, but he came back to the world and, you know, he would do like, you know, like 18 hours of meditation a day.

Like he was doing like he knows what he's talking about and now he's like this you would never know like he's super hip and cool and like he he but he's able to he's an amazing communicator so he's able to take these principles and kind of take all of the the sort of woo-woo vernacular out of it and and very and explain it in very elementary terms that make sense. And so the app has guided meditation programs on it, and you can just do it on your phone 20 minutes in the morning, and he just talks you through it. So you don't have to get into it like, well, I don't know how to do it.

I just put the earbuds in and do it. And I think it's a great way to get going. It takes the guesswork out of it. You don't have to go read some book. You don't have to do anything other than just kind of listen to him. And it's been revelatory for me. Like it's been, you know, I've been interested in meditation and flirting around with it for like forever, for like 16 years. And I've always had difficulty or challenges

trying to be consistent about it, but I've been really consistent over the last like five months or something like that. And I've noticed a huge change in everything, you know, like how I interact with people and just, you know, I got a lot of things coming at me right now. I'm juggling a lot of different things. I'm trying to be a dad and a husband and like, we got this book coming out, I'm doing podcasts, I'm traveling, I'm speaking and, and I'm getting, you know, way too many emails that I can't respond to. And on the anxiety level, like starts to go up, you know, like I want to be able to do all these things. And, and then I start, I get into like a panic mode and I freeze and then I'm not productive. Right. And my experience with the meditation is that now I'm

able to kind of navigate all these things and be more productive and, and delegate and communicate better and just be present in what I'm doing. And it's, it's been quite amazing. Yeah, it's quite amazing. And I think that in the context of like what you do, like that presence of mind, like that mindfulness that you could bring to your racing could really translate into something special in terms of your performance. That's definitely, I mean, that's the challenge I need because we've, I feel like the recurring theme in the past couple months, especially as my triathlon training has been more than ever, and my focus on, you know, being the best athlete I can be, and then getting the race season like this was a new race season for us like we're the team that I'm with is is like our we're a new team compared to what we were last year so there's a lot of things that just were ramped up going into this year and I felt

like the last eight to twelve weeks um I've told my wife multiple times, like, man, I just need to be more put together. Like, I found myself, I'm not a very good scheduler. So, like, I'll make a schedule and then I just, like, won't stick to it. Like, I'll, you know, I'll make a plan on what I'm going to do all day Monday and it's going to start at this time. But, like, if I wake up at that time and I don't decide I'm going to do that, I will convince myself, oh, I can do that later in the day, and I'll do this instead this morning, and then I won't, and then I just screw everything up.

And so I know we've had conversations where I've just been like, what do I need to do to get myself more put together to where I can execute? Because she is the most planned out, structured person. Look at her rolling her eyes. I feel bad I don't have a mic. I'm going to move. I'm going to have to hand this over. Slide it over to her.

Come on, I want to hear from her. Come on, Katie. Okay. What's the problem here? You know what's up. You know what's going on, right? You're trying to tell them what's what. I'm giving Landon the solution right now.

Of meditation. Yeah. What's that book? Is it Dan Harris, 10%? Oh, 10% Happier. Yeah. Yeah. I read that one.

That's a good book for him. Yeah. I tried to get him to read that. It's very accessible. Yep. That was a good book. 10% faster in the car. You're talking about like shaving you know

like that engineering team that's spending all that time on those tiny little carbon fiber you could just leapfrog right over that because 10 faster he was very vanilla to the whole meditation too wasn't he at the beginning of the book like he wasn't no i totally not into it did you listen to that podcast that i did with him no No, I would though. No, I did. I liked his book. Yeah, I did. No, I did a podcast with Dan and he walks through the whole process of, yeah. And why he's such a great kind of ambassador of it is because he was a skeptic and he's like a, you know, he's like a normal dude. He's a newscaster, like the guy's on Nightline and like, you know, he's like a, he's like a major newscaster. He didn't, you know, he didn't want know he didn't

want to be a meditator or anything like that and he had he was sort of kind of compelled into it by a personal crisis that kind of made him begin to explore it the news was so stressful too i mean yeah it was like very interesting it's a cool book right like when he talks about some of the stuff that he had to do um i got him on the green smoothies too. I don't have him vegan yet, but I've got him like every once in a while I email him and I'm like, how are the green smoothies going? But yeah, I would check out that book. That's what I think that would be helpful.

But yeah, I think you have like a little window of opportunity here to explore. Now it's just a matter of whether he's going to do it. He's laughing over there. He doesn't want to do it. I can tell you if he does it, he'll do it all the time. So whether he's going to do it he's laughing over there he doesn't want to do it i can tell you if he does it he'll do it all the time so we can get him to do it yeah it's like channeling that obsessive compulsive addictive personality into yeah well the great thing about the headspace app is that like it's right there like i moved it down into the dock

on my iphone so it's right there on the bottom like where normally the phone icon would be so i see it all the time and i'm like i ah, I'm going to do it. I should probably replace it with my messaging. Yeah, whatever you're using compulsively that's taking you out of the moment, put the thing there that's going to bring you back into the moment, right? That's good. Yeah. So cool. So you're the spine, you're the rock in this equation.

I'm a dabbler, so I think we're a good fit that way. Like I couldn't do triathlons because I can't do the same thing every day, so my personality is very dabbling. I'm interested in everything but not anything specifically enough. But you're the seeker. Yeah, I'm the seeker, and then he kind of will pick some things up and then just go all the way with it. So I think we're a good fit that way.

Yeah, I can relate to that a little bit, I think. Yeah, and I was a vegetarian forever, and he was always like, well, try to get me to not eat red meat. And I'm like, I don't care if you eat red meat. Do whatever you need to do. And then he read your book, and then it was really him who was like, no, we're just going to be vegan. But it kind of took him to be the person to say, like, we're not going to eat any of that stuff anymore. Cause I was so, I'm just dabbling and can try it for a little bit and whatever.

Yeah. That's similar to us too. Like Julie was the one who inspired me to make the change, but then I go all whole hog, you know, where she, and then she's like, okay, well, now I got to be in, you know, I'm going to be in too. So it was kind of like it looped around that way. Yep. And so what's it like to like, you know, be married to a race car driver and be traveling all the time? He asked me that today.

You have a baby on the way. How many months are you? I'll be eight soon. Oh, wow. He asked me that today. He's like, did you ever think you traveled this much? And I was like, my life has so not went as planned. In good ways, yeah.

What did you think you were going to be doing? Well, I was a school teacher, a school counselor before I met him. So I thought I'd marry a banker and we'd work nine to three and come home and go to church, go to church on Sunday and play on Saturdays, and that would be it. Yeah, but now you're living this adventure. Yeah, we're different. Like, his family was follow your dreams, you know, pick something you want to do, but you got to do it. My family was like, be safe, go to college, get a job that's going to be around for a long time.

Did you grow up in Charlotte? I grew up in Ohio, Midwest. But you got a twang in your voice. You must have been living in Charlotte for a while. He's been there longer than me, but I taught in some very country schools while I was there. So we don't have to get very far out of Charlotte to be very Southern. Have you guys hit some of the vegan restaurants around here? We ate at Sage Cafe in Pasadena. Lots of good places in Palm Springs. You guys have it easy out here.

Super easy, yeah. I can't imagine. I know. Slide the mic back. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's probably a little bit more difficult in Charlotte, right? Yeah. Rich, you're an inspiration. And man, you do an amazing job.

But there's a hundred restaurants for you to go to. I'm the first one to admit that. Trust me. There's two vegetarian... I know there's one to admit that, you know? Trust me. There's two vegetarian – well, there's two vegan – I know there's one place in Charlotte because I've got a buddy who lives there who's vegan, and he's taking pictures of – what is it called? Luna's Living Kitchen. Is that what it is?

It doesn't sound like the one he was talking about. Actually, when we started talking, I wanted to ask you if you've heard of Luna's Living Kitchen, which doesn't sound like you have. It's so funny that, okay, I'll tease about all the restaurants out here and now and maybe it's just a hometown thing but of like i travel the country right and seek vegan i've been to every you got the happy cow app yeah like i could probably name drop all the vegan restaurants everywhere because i've been to them all and luna's living kitchen in charlotte is like one of the best ones in the country like in terms of raw food and just like the healthy food and then there's one called Fern oh that's the one I think I've heard of yeah that is uh that is just absolutely delicious like it is a it is it's that kind of vegan restaurant that does a good job of replacing the non-vegan foods.

So you've got the meat replacement type stuff, but it's like executive chef run. So you actually have creative dishes rather than like, oh, barbecue this or that. It's actually creative, original dishes. So they're really good. Are you guys going to make it down to like Santa Monica or Venice or Hollywood or anything like that? We probably will probably try to like actually on our way over here. I said, you know, we need to find like a like a nice place to go to for dinner.

The nicest place is Crossroads. And where is that? It's right in Hollywood. Super fancy. It's like high end, but it's... We ate at Millennium in San Francisco. Right. Yeah, it's kind of on that vibe.

We love those types. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is very high end. Tal Ronan is the chef there, and he's amazing. It's considered like the best restaurant in LA. Not vegan restaurant, just restaurant. Really? Yeah.

And also if you want to see movie stars, that's the place to go. We'll have to look. I mean, it's probably hard to get into. We'll have to get a reservation or something. Yeah, just call and get a reservation. It shouldn't be that hard, but I would check that out. So Crossroads. Crossroads.

All right. That's where we'll be Saturday night. Cool. Gracias Madre is really good too. It's also kind of in West Hollywood. Okay. It's Mexican. It's delicious.

We were there last night for Tyler's birthday. When we were in San Francisco, there was a Mexican restaurant that was a vegan Mexican place. That's Gracias Madre. Is it the same thing? In the Mission? Yeah. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's owned by the same people.

This one has kind of a different ambiance to it. It's very kind of like cool. We're very like small town folk. Like especially it's so funny. Come on, Matt. Embrace your rock star racing identity. The funny thing is like we, you know, when we go to the West Coast and we go to San Francisco and L.A. and it's just like,

God, it's part of your lifestyle out here to be plant-based. Like people are just, you know, so much more open to it. Yeah. And so when we were... It's like AA. Like out here, everyone's like, yeah, I'm an AA. When we were in San Francisco and ate at Gracias Madre, we just couldn't help but to look at each other and be like,

I thought Mexican restaurants were already halfway to vegan anyways. Yeah, they are. You know, you take cheese and meat out and you get a vegan dish, right? And it was like, this place is awesome. It's a vegan Mexican restaurant. Who would have thought? You know, we're like, I mean, how would this ever be in Charlotte, North Carolina? Like, it never would.

But it was pretty cool. Like, we had some pretty neat experiences traveling. Have you been to True Food? It's not like a dead-on vegan place. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of a staple for us to go to, like in the Phoenix, Dallas area too. There's one in Dallas. Now I'm thinking of all the things we do when we travel and the restaurants that I've found. There's a Cafe Gratitude in Kansas City.

There is? Yes. The same people? I will eat there seven times in one weekend. Oh, it's so good. Because they have breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever. It's really good. And then I'll bring one of their superfood granola bars or chocolate bars with me to the racetrack. Yeah, that's good. So maybe as we're kind of starting to wind down here a little bit, there's a lot of people that are interested in kind of the plant-based

living and all that kind of stuff. And one of the things I always get is like, yeah, but I travel all the time, man. So there's just no way. It's too hard. And one of the things I always get is like, yeah, but I travel all the time, man. So there's just no way. It's too hard. And you travel. You travel as much as anybody, and you're finding a way to make it work.

So what are some of the tips and tools that you use that might be helpful to people? The first thing for me, especially if you're a traveler that's going to be there for a couple of days, if there isn't an obvious restaurant right off the bat, which actually restaurants, I mean, it's a lot of ways my second choice. I shoot for a great grocery store. And I mean, there's so many whole foods out there now. Like there's, they're all over the place. But there's also a lot more just natural food stores than you think. And believe it or not, like if you were to ask me, what is the best places that you found for eating clean?

And what are the worst places? One of the worst places, the least success I had was in Riverside, California, which is, you know, so crazy because it's like, we're so close, but in Riverside, California, which is so crazy because it's like we're so close, but yet Riverside is kind of a little bit of the armpit type area. And I just didn't have success there. But yet one of the best places I've been to was in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And there's no vegan restaurants in Scranton, Pennsylvania, but they have the greatest natural food store. and it just has everything you need in it and i can go there like i fly in to scranton wilkes-barre airport and we stay in the mountains in pocono when we race in pocono and um and i hit up this now i can't

remember that i wish i could give them the name and give them the credit we'll find it we'll put it in the show notes yes but it uh um but it just has everything I need for a weekend and for a traveler. And then the same other one that you would never think of is in Manchester, New Hampshire, when we race there up in Concord, New Hampshire, just outside of Boston. Again, I mean, up in the Northeast, there's no vegan restaurants or it's not in their culture at all. northeast there's no vegan restaurants or it's not in their culture at all and yet uh there's just these great natural food stores and i mean you get set up with organic fruits and vegetables and get some grains that you need and and you're set so for for this for the people that kind of struggle it's just like you know find a grocery find a grocery store, get the clean stuff. Stay away from chain restaurants. Yeah, stay away from chains.

Because, like, they'll make you, if it's not a chain restaurant, usually they'll make you use a staff or a vegetable. Right. Yeah, so that's one thing we've kind of, like, figured out with restaurants. Like, the ones that have, I mean, my turn, I'm sure there's a proper turn for it, but it's just like, I try to find places that have a chef, a chef you know and it's like will the chef make me a vegan dish you know and usually they usually kind of enjoy that like sometimes they get to do something different exactly sometimes we go to places and it's like yes all right we made the most beautiful right and they and they have a lot

some of the nice restaurants that you go to i mean they got stuff back there that they don't even serve on any of their plates. But for some reason, they've got it, like this great root vegetable or something. I mean, so we kind of will go into restaurants and pick at the chef a little bit sometimes. That's smart. I mean, I think what I always say is, like, if you're going to a new place, like you fly in, before you even go to your hotel or wherever you're going, like go to the market, you know, go to them and try to stay. Like if you're a business traveler, try to stay in like one of those hotels that has a little kitchen in it or something, kitchenette. And, you know, yeah, you have to plan ahead a little bit, but it's like with an iPhone, you know, you can sort all that stuff out pretty freaking easily. And for me, a big part of it, and to kind of encourage the people that

get discouraged, is like, you just, you kind of have to just go with the flow and try it, because I told you earlier, I'm not a planner, right? So, and you might be listening saying, well, I'm not a planner, you know, I can't show up at, my wife does all my cooking,, you know, I can't just show up at a grocery store and buy all I need for the weekend. You know, I don't have time to do that. But like, I don't either, like, I don't just go to these grocery stores and just, you know, buy everything. But I've figured out through experience what I need, what I need now or what I need in the morning to get me to the racetrack where I know Jackie will make me something or where I know there's going to be a restaurant that I can get dinner, but I just got to get through the day. So, like, I know that, I mean, my go-to snack that will just hold me over is an apple and some Justin's peanut butter, right?

You know, like those are, you know, just something that's pretty basic, something that's just basic but has those kind of essential nutrients that you need. And if you can kind of get in that rhythm of like, okay, yeah, I'm not a planner and I'm not going to go to the grocery store and have some elaborate groceries and I'm going to keep it the holiday in, I at least know what I need to get through the evening or to get me to the morning. Because sometimes, I mean, one of the biggest challenges as a vegan is breakfast, you know, kind of separating what we know as breakfast as eggs and bacon and like what you should be eating for breakfast. So it's kind of tough to

get started with breakfast. And sometimes you can only eat oatmeal so many times, you know? Right, right, right. And so, you know, sometimes it's just like, all I need is breakfast right now and I can figure out what I'm going to do the rest of the day. Yeah, that's good advice. So Fontana, what are you looking to accomplish this weekend? I really like Fontana, so I definitely want to have a good race. We had a really good weekend in Phoenix where we finished 22nd.

And for our team, anywhere between 20th to 25th is like a good day. Like we're proud of that. 25th to 30th could be a good day, but it also could be disappointing. It depends on how the race played out. 30th or worse, we feel like in any circumstance we should run better than 30th. So we'll go to Fontana and have the expectation of 25th or better. And, um, our team has some new cars this year. We've got a new engine program that we've invested in that, that has just more power

and, or, uh, it's just much better than what we had last year. So, um, even though we kind of dug ourselves in a little bit of a hole, the first couple of weeks were just getting back into our rhythm. And Phoenix was really encouraging for us to run as well as we did there. So we just kind of want to follow it up in Fontana and just continue what we did there. And is that like a good track for you? Like what kind of track do you excel at?

And what is that all about like you know the differences in the tracks and how that favors you know some racers over others um I try to say I'm good at all of them I try to be good at all of them they they all kind of require a little bit of a different driving style and and Phoenix is a short track I mean you know heavy braking you slow down into the corners and then you got to accelerate out of the corners. And, and, uh, and I do run really well at those racetracks consistently. Like I just always seem to run well at short tracks or they, they require a lot of technique and, and, um, Fontana is a really big, wide racetrack. There's, we kind of talked about it earlier. There's like six lanes you can run high and low and, and low. And Fontana is tough because you're just constantly searching. Like your car will not handle the same two laps in a row running the same line two laps in a row.

Like it's just, you're just, you have to be ahead of it all the time. So, and it's also so big that the field always kind of stays on the same lap. They don't like, they don't get lapped and then the people behind you are a lap behind you. Like they're always kind of stays on the same lap. They don't get lapped, and then the people behind you are lapped behind you. They're always kind of on your lap. So you're constantly being challenged by the cars behind you. So you can have a really good day and run all the way up into 15th, 16th, 17th position, and at the end of the day, if there's a caution and there's a final restart and there's 35 cars on the lead lap it blows that you can still finish 35th right you

know there's no like there's no cushion where it's like okay we got 20 laps to go and the worst i'm gonna do is 20th like it's it's not like that so you really you have to race it's a sunday is a 400 mile race so uh you have to race all 400 miles of it because you can have a good day all the way up to mile 399 and then make a mistake on the last lap and get passed by 10 cars. Be on point the whole time. Yeah. So it's interesting. But Fontana is really cool because the track is getting some age, and racetracks get better with age.

The more the pavement gets worn out, the more the cars slide around, the more it becomes a handling race and a driver skill race. So it favors the driver that really knows how to drive. Yeah, and when the tracks are brand new and they have brand new smooth pavement, they're really fast and they're exciting, but they just have so much grip that the fastest car usually prevails or can prevail i mean um but i mean fontana if you turn on the tv i mean the cars are bouncing around they're bottoming out the drivers are getting jarred in their seats

you know our seats are fully contained and we have these headrests that contain our helmets and they're bouncing around in it. So it's just uncomfortable. And how much contact? Like are you banging into the other cars? Yeah. Is that like? Yeah, it is crazy, especially like Fontana because it's such a big track that like just on restarts, like the fuel just fans out and there's five wide

and you're just bouncing off other people's doors. You try not to. And then do you have to like replace panels on your car like all the time? Yeah, we do. So, I mean, if you bounce off of somebody's door and it dents it in, I mean, you got to replace it. It's really at the big fast tracks, you don't want to hit any other cars because it kills the aerodynamics

and you lose downforce and your car doesn't handle good. But in a couple of weeks, we'll go to Martinsville, where the track is a half a mile, and Fontana is a two-mile track. So you could fit four Martinsvilles inside of Fontana. And in Martinsville, pretty much the only way to pass another car is to nerf them out of the way. So we go from one extreme to the other. Right. And what's the A race? What's the biggest race of the year?

The Daytona 500. Daytona. Yeah. But then we come up on, we race in Daytona twice, which the 500 in February is the biggest one. And then in July we have the Firecracker 400, which is a big race, which is the classic name. I think it's called the Coke Zero 400 or something.

And then we do get to race at the Brickyard in Indianapolis, which is cool. So that's cool. And do you think like you're going to stay in NASCAR or would you ever make the leap to a different kind of, you know, car racing, like IndyCar? No, I don't, I don't know. I mean, how does that work? Do drivers move around in between or is it once you're in, you pick one and that's your thing? They do. Drivers have moved around, but kind of tooting our own horn a little bit, if they do move, they're usually trying to get to NASCAR. Moving towards you.

Drivers don't often go away from NASCAR. I mean, they kind of do. I mean, there's some drivers that have been in and out. Do they ever go to Formula One, though? That's a whole different world. See, drivers haven't gone from NASCAR to Formula One. They've gone from Formula One to NASCAR. And I think there's just so much money in NASCAR.

It's such a big sport. And the drivers make so much money at the top. And NASCAR just signed a billion dollar a year TV contract. It's just stupid money. It's hugely popular and people are definitely seeking our sport. Indy cars are really cool and I've thought about it. Have you ever driven any? Have you ever done laps in that?

Never driven an IndyCar, no. It would be an interesting. You gotta at least get behind the wheel, right? Yeah, if you try one. But I don't know. I think I'd like to be, like have my career wrapped up sometime after, shortly after 40. Yeah. I think I got another 20 years in me.

Yeah. So, I mean, that's a long career as an athlete. I mean, and NASCAR drivers have long careers, but just, you know, to travel that long and, you know, by that time my kids will be, you know, grown up. I know. So. Well, dude, you started when you were 16. You've been in NASCAR. I know.

This is my ninth. So, this is my ninth annual credential. We call it a hard card. It's my ninth hard card. I got one when I was 17. And 18, 19, 20, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's my ninth hard card. Yeah. What do you kick around town in?

Do you have a fancy – what is it like when you're – this is a question for Katie, actually. Slide the mic over to her. What's it like to be in a passenger seat when he's driving just around the streets of Charlotte? That's funny that you ask because he got a lot of speeding tickets when we first started dating and we were first married because he was driving. He was being all cold trickle. He was driving BMWs and fast cars, and then he switched over to a family vehicle. It's been a lot better. Right, like around the time you got pregnant maybe? Yeah.

My wife drives a nice car in the family. Yeah. And I drive a Honda Civic actually. Do you? Yeah. That's hilarious. You know, I grew up in the car business. You must be the only guy in NASCAR

who drives a Honda Civic maybe I don't know I don't like fall in love with cars I just don't I don't know are you like rebuilding an old GTO in your garage or anything like that don't even have a garage

we have a house and no garage in Charlotte I drive a Hondaonda civic she she drives a nice car though and you know i don't know i i like cool cars but i just don't fall growing up in the car business and stuff and you know seeing the values dropping i don't fall in love with things so but i've had do you have like toys like motorcycles and boats and stuff like that got an expensive bicycle that's about it yeah your tri-bike yeah yeah what kind of what kind of tri-bike you ride i've got a p5 yeah nice it's really nice yeah so i'm not like on any

sponsored bike deal or anything i haven't like seeked one out or anything like that i didn't really you know i i kind of i wanted a nice bike so i um i had a friend that uh that's a dealer that kind of hooked me up with a discount on the Cervelo because it's a really nice high-end bike. But I didn't really want to call around and swing it. At the time when I started, I didn't even know if I was a triathlete yet. So I'm trying to get some free stuff. Do you know it's like so i'm like trying to get some free stuff do you know uh do you know dave mira um i don't but i think he like tweeted at me or instagrammed at me when uh

jimmy johnson and i and joshua is another nascar driver we did a half iron man together in january but he's from north carolina he lives in north carolina i follow him on instagram he's super yeah he's super into it yeah he's super mean, he's treating it like he's a professional triathlete. Yeah. And he's an amazing brand ambassador for Cervelo. I think he did the same like you. He went and bought it and fell in love with it. But he was sharing it so much on his Instagram and everything like that.

They were like, we've got to pay you for this. We've got to rope this guy in. But they should because he's an amazing guy. He is a great ambassador. Do you see him on the rollers and stuff, what he's an amazing guy. He is a great ambassador. Do you see him on the rollers and stuff, what he's doing? Yeah, he pops up on the rollers. I mean, I guess he ought to. He's a pro BMX rider.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. You've got to get out and do some training with him. How far away? Where in North Carolina is he? So he's in, I can't remember if he's in Greenville or Greensboro, but I think he's as close as an hour and a half and probably tops two, two and a half hours away. Oh, you should go.

Definitely hook up with him. You should hook it up. So get a couple of training sessions in. We train, so like my closest friend in kind of our circle is Josh Wise. He's a driver, and he's a triathlete and he's been a triathlete longer than i have so so we kind of um i've caught up to him a little bit though to the point that we can kind of like compete with each other a little and and uh and we're always one up in each other and it's funny you talk about like all the toys and stuff like i bought norma tech

boots before he did and so like as soon as i bought him and then like he used it once oh he went and got him and then like he shows up with like some new like you know beat recovery drink and he's like you know just check this out and i'm like oh my gosh where'd you get that yeah we're in different well the best part is we're different age groups so we train together and we race together but but not really against each other. We do, but we don't. Gotcha. So what are you training for?

What triathlon race? So I'm doing Mont-Tremblant half in June. Cool. And the goal is to qualify for the half Worlds, which is in Austria. So I would probably, I mean, I guess it rolls off the tongue so easy to say that I'm going to Mont-Treblanc and I'm going to try to qualify for Worlds. But, I mean, I've got to get fitter than I was in January to do it.

So it's a tall order. I've probably got a 5% chance of making it. Well, I mean, you're juggling so many different things. Plus, you're about to be a dad. Yeah, yeah. Pretty soon here. I'm pretty psyched about that. Yeah, it's. Plus, you're about to be a dad. Yeah, yeah. Pretty soon here. I'm pretty psyched about that. Yeah, it's exciting.

Do you know if it's a boy or a girl? We don't. You don't? Old school. Old school, yeah. Your wife said she does, but she's not going to tell me. Yeah, your wife Julie said she knows. Yeah, yeah.

Julie's very intuitive that way. I told her she needs to write it down and mail it to us or something and we'll she'll do that too and and we'll open it like the day of and see if see if she's right or something cool that would actually be fun cool so well thank you so much all right man well that was uh that was cool man i think we did it yeah this was wonderful what a day yeah so awesome of you guys to come over here i really really appreciate it. You guys are delightful. Absolutely delightful. Yeah, I'm so excited for your new addition to your family.

And have a great race this weekend, man. I wish I could go and, like, thank you so much for inviting me to come down. I have a wedding this weekend. So I've got to go up to Santa Barbara. I'm going to ride my bike to Santa Barbara tomorrow. Are you really? How far? It's like 70, 80 miles or something like that from here.

That would be nice. Yeah, doing it with a group of friends. That would be cool. That should be cool. So you travel a lot though, right? Yeah, I've been traveling quite a bit. Okay. I might see – I'm going to speak at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in like two weeks

to the USA Swimming National Junior Team. Oh, wow. I think Dave Marsh might be there. I'm not sure. Oh, that would be great. I know there's going to be some of the elite coaches are going to be there. I'll have to check and see if he is. But if he's there, I'm going to say hey to him and tell him that we hooked up.

Definitely. He'll tell you about my stroke or something. Yeah, you got to get Ron Lochte down in your car, you know what I mean? Yeah, it would probably be easier to get Tyler Clary in when he's more interested in the racing. Is he? Yeah, interesting. But those guys are really – that group is really nice.

They're all – every time I swim they're always like kind of like i'll finish the set and they'll be like you need to you know this that oh they're helping you out they're always great yeah that's cool he's he's uh dave dave works on pretty hard though it's pretty it's just amazing to watch those guys swim like just the elite swimmers i mean you can you can go you can go to a golf event and watch Tiger Woods hit a ball. You can watch LeBron James play basketball up close, but you can't actually do it with them. But in Charlotte, and I'm sure there's other swim clubs around the country

where if you knew when those guys practiced, you could. I don't know if they would get mad at me. They practice at Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 a.m. Now everyone's going to go to Charlotte. But really, and everybody knows. They've got their own lanes, and thens at 8 a.m. Now everyone's going to go to Charlotte. I mean, but really, and everybody knows that. They've got their own lanes, and then the rest of it is public. And you can swim in the lane next to those guys and compare yourself. And it's like, I can't even sprint as fast as their aerobic speed.

It's amazing. And I just, you know, I swam at a pretty high level, but now when I see what those guys are doing, I can't even fathom the times that they're going like it's a completely different sport it it reaches a point like watching them isn't about strength and speed it's just about efficiency like just it's just the amount of strokes that they take right or just just watch ryan lochte you know dolphin kick underwater on his back oh it's crazy the economy of motion like it's his body's barely moving and he's going faster than he can swim on the surface yeah you

know that's crazy it's an extraordinary thing so you're in good hands we can talk forever I know cool well uh best of luck in the race thank you very much this weekend that's exciting I'll be cheering from afar and uh enjoy the rest of your time in Southern California. We will. If you guys want to hook up with Landon, they can go to your website. Is it Casiel? How do you say your last name? Castle.

Landon Castle. Two S's, two and then I-L-L. Yeah. And then you're just Landon Castle on Instagram and Twitter and all those kind of places. So give them a shout. Yeah. It's pretty cool. And I've been pretty into Instagram lately. Benning Castle on Instagram and Twitter and all those kind of places. So give them a shout. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

And I've been pretty into Instagram lately. I kind of missed the Instagram boom. But I was in Instagram early, and then I missed the boom. Like, I just wasn't active in it. And I've liked Instagram because I really connect with people in it because, you know, people post their own photos. So typically when people like my photos, I'll, like, look at your profile. Because I really connect with people in it because people post their own photos. So typically when people like my photos, I'll look at your profile. And if you post some cool photos, I'll like one.

So I do that. And then Twitter is the same. And it's just my name. It's a hashtag. I like your Instagram because it's this juxtaposition of super intense race car racing and then you training. You're transparent with you're at the pool, you're running. it's like an active lifestyle yeah it's pretty fun i've kind of created this habit of just like carrying my little lens that i put on my iphone with me a little tripod and i try to take a picture and just get good content and some people seem to enjoy it it's good stuff man yeah all right dude thank you very much thank you all right thanks for the

smoothie too. Peace. Plants. Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. I love NASCAR. Nice guy, right? Oh my God. Such a nice guy and so inspiring. So I really enjoyed that and I hope you guys did too. So give me a solid, let's give Landon a shout out on Twitter or Facebook to put a little

wind in his sails for his post Coca-Cola 614 mile run. That would be really cool. And let me know what you thought of this episode in the comments section on the episode page at richroll.com. Hey, listen, our new cookbook and lifestyle guide, The Plant Power Way, it's out. People are loving it. We've got 130 reviews on Amazon at the moment that I'm recording this, 124 of which are five-star, overwhelming support. I'm so grateful for all the incredible feedback and for everybody who's been sharing the enjoyment of the recipes.

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If you dig online courses, I've got two of those at mindbodygreen.com. The Art of Living with Purpose, which is all about goal setting, unlocking that authentic, best version of yourself. And also the ultimate guide to plant-based nutrition, which is about three and a half hours of, you know, how we do what we do with respect to food, diet, nutrition, and athletic performance. It's kind of takes a tip from our book, the plant power way,

but kind of shows you tools and, and ways of really implementing that to make that lifestyle shift. So you can go there. Again, it's at mindbodygreen.com. Thanks for supporting the show. Thanks for telling a friend. Thank you for sharing it on social media, spreading the word. That's how we grow this pirate ship. So I appreciate that. And I will see you guys in a few. So make it a great week everybody peace plants