The School of Greatness - 10 Rich Roll: From Fast Food King to the Vegan Ultra-Athlete

Episode Date: March 22, 2013

My guest this week is the amazing Rich Roll. His new book is called Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself. I had a chance to spend the afternoon with Rich and learn all about how he overcame working 80 hours a week eating fast food everyday, […]

Welcome to episode number 10 with Rich Roll on the School of Greatness. Hello everyone and welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes. I'm an author, lifestyle entrepreneur, former pro athlete, and world record holder in football. My goal with the School of Greatness is to share with you stories from the most inspiring business minds, world-class athletes, and influential celebrities on the planet to find out what makes great people great. So please leave us a review on iTunes and join us on the web at schoolofgreatness.com to be notified of each episode when it comes out. Now let's get after it. What is up greats? Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. I've got some exciting news. This guest that I've got on today, his name is Rich Roll. And I'm going to introduce him in just a second. But with that, our next guest is Rich Roll. His new book is called Finding Ultra,

Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself. It's kind of a memoir plus a lot of great nutritional and supplement things that he talks about on how he transformed his life. Just about when he turned 40, he was 50 pounds overweight and he had a moment where he was eating fast food every day, realized that he was extremely out of shape and needed to make a change. He talks about that in this interview. It's extremely inspiring what he's done. I urge you to check out the book. This guy is an ultra Ironman competitor, ultra athlete.

Basically, he does some of the craziest things in the world, running like 50 miles a day and biking 150 miles a day and swimming 10 plus miles a day and doing it every day of the year, right? He's insane. But it's an amazing inspiring story and i'm very excited to introduce you to the man rich roll i don't really know anything about endurance training at all and i'm built for speed that's really what i'm built for power power and strength. Power and strength. I have a mentor that I run with every now and then in Santa Barbara. And he is a marathoner, like a long

distance guy. And I can barely keep up after two miles. I'm like, I need a break. I need to stretch. So I'm excited to learn more about this topic. But thanks so much for coming on today. I appreciate it. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here we just had lunch at uh here in la near west hollywood at a little spot that has some vegan options because rich is vegan i've got a good friend of mine who's actually been vegan for 15 years and he looks like he's you know my age and he's probably about 15 years older than me it's amazing the power of vegansans. It's awesome what you guys can do. Yeah, but do you ask him where he gets his protein? There must be something wrong.

Yeah, I don't ask him. No, but there's a lot of vegan options here in L.A. It's super easy in L.A. I mean, you throw a rock and you hit a vegan restaurant or a juice bar or something like that. Exactly. Yeah, they make it easy here in town. I realize it's not so easy in other cities

the midwest is like impossible yeah i mean even if you go to a normal restaurant here there's plenty of there's usually a separate like gluten-free or vegan option menu right but you see it more and more i just got back from charleston south carolina and i thought there's not going to be any place where i'm going to be able to eat here and everywhere i went even like the pizza places had like cheeseless vegan pizzas with gluten-free crust and everything like that. So you're seeing it more and more. Exactly.

Now, Rich, we got introduced through a mutual friend recently. We both got podcasts that came out around the same time. And what's your podcast title? Is it just your name? The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. It's smart. Just like the Joe Rogan experience.

It's a way to brand yourself. I love it and uh rich has an interesting story i want to have him share his story here for us for a second before we get into some more awesome uh questions but you used to be an entertainment lawyer right for a number of years right that was kind of your main thing it's my main thing yeah recovering lawyer now recovering lawyer you remind. Recovering lawyer. You remind me of Jonathan Fields. I wonder if you've heard of Jonathan Fields. I do know him. I've had a couple emails with him over the last year. I'm going to New York in April.

I was hoping to connect with him. I'll introduce you guys. I'll connect that for sure. So you were, in 2006, you had an interesting moment, right? There was a moment in your life where you were an entertainment lawyer a little bit out of shape not really happy or satisfied with what was happening in your life your career you're kind of like a stale moment right is that yeah pretty much i mean in many ways you could look at my life at that time and say you know i was the very model

of the american dream my wife and i built a beautiful house in Malibu Canyon, happy marriage, having kids, successful entertainment law practice, and I'm also a recovering alcoholic and have been able to accumulate a number of years of sobriety and built my life back up from a pretty destitute state into something to be proud of. But at the same time, there was like this hole in my spirit, you know, like I felt like

my whole, my whole life I chased the kind of carrot, you know, like go to the best school. Like I got in all the Ivy League schools. I studied hard. Yeah. And I was a good athlete and I played, you know, I was a swimmer at Stanford on a one, two, two NCAA championships. Wow. I was a swimmer at Stanford on a one, two, two NCAA championships. Wow. I was a bench warmer on the team. I can't take responsibility for winning those rings, but, uh, but yeah. And, uh, and you know, took a, took a left turn and went down a

dark alley with alcoholism, but was able to kind of address that and get my life back on track. And I'd worked super hard to kind of climb the corporate ladder and was on the partnership track at a big law firm. And to the outside observer, like I said, it looked like I had everything going on. And I just was unhappy. I was like, is this it? Is this like everything that I worked for? Like, why am I not? I felt ripped off.

I felt like cheated, like I'd done everything right. And yet, and this was the point in life where I was supposed to be celebrating everything like I'd done everything right. And yet, you know, and this was the point in life where I was supposed to be celebrating, you know, everything that I that I built. And there was like a hole in my spirit. And that kind of was exacerbated by a health crisis. Because during that period of time where I was working so hard, I really had overlooked my health and my fitness, and I'd put on 50 pounds. And I'm a slim guy, so I weighed about – I was 39 years old at the time. I'm 46 now.

So I weighed about 210 pounds. Wow. Which I weigh like 165 now. Almost 6 feet. Okay, yeah. Almost 6 feet. You're slim. If you see – it wasn't like I was a candidate for the biggest loser, not like this huge obese guy. But we're so used to seeing incredibly fat people all the time i was

like a guy who you expect to see working 80 hour weeks in a law firm you know filled out a little gut you know the round head the whole thing chubby cheeks and uh i probably would have continued along that path but what happened was uh shortly before i turned 40 um i'd been working late i came home late and my eating habits were horrible uh my friend i have a friend named osher gunsberg and he calls it the the window diet if i can roll down my window and they hand it they hand it to me through a window and i eat it you know so i was all about you know domino's pizza jack-in-the-box mcdon, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, all the kind of fast, cheap food because I didn't want to be bothered with cooking. I worked late, so I wasn't home for dinner a lot.

And I just developed a habit for those foods. And I think those habits were formed when I was a swimmer because I was training four hours a day and calories are king. You can just eat what you want when you're young. You heard of the Michael Phelps diet. I was a swimmer because I was training four hours a day and calories are king. You can just eat what you want when you're young and I'm burning up. You know, you heard of the Michael Phelps diet. I was on that diet and I know what that's like, but when swimming's over, uh, you know, those habits stay with you and they're hard to break. So you continue to eat that way. And you know, I think denial is a very powerful thing too. So for years and years I would look in the mirror and I would still think that I was that fit collegiate swimmer. You know, I wasn't really seeing myself objectively or accurately. And so what happened was, yeah, I was up late eating fast food on the couch, watching late night TV.

My family was asleep. Went to go up the stairs to go to sleep one or two in the morning. And like halfway up a simple flight of stairs i like had to stop like i was out of breath i bent over sweat on my forehead tightness in my chest and i you know i thought like you know i didn't have a heart attack but it was scary enough to think you know i'm 39 like i had to like take a break walking up a simple flight of stairs like something is really not right. And, you know, I need to make some changes.

So that's kind of like where it all began for me. So what happened next? Were you just like, okay, I'm going to be drastic about the changes or I'm going to ease into training again or run marathons? Well, I'm a very extreme personality, and that's all good alcoholics are. And so for me, easing into something has never really worked. And I kind of tend to see things and perceive the world through this prism of recovery and addiction, and that's kind of my programming. And when it came time for me, I struggled with alcoholism for a long time. And when it came time for me to get sober and when that denial, you know, snapped and I was ready to do something, I had to act very decisively and very drastically.

Rip the band-aid. Immediately, yeah. Rip the band-aid, got on a plane, went to rehab and was in rehab for 100 days. Is that 39? No, that was several years prior to that, like 1997. But the point is that I understood how important those little

cracks in the door are. When you're able to kind of snap that denial and see yourself more clearly or recognize the need for a change, I understood the importance of acting decisively and immediately because I reflected back on that moment where I decided to get sober. Had I just not acted on that in that

moment, I might have stayed drunk for the next several years and maybe got into an accident and died or killed somebody. You know what I mean? So those moments I think in life are really, really powerful. And because I had had one prior, I was able to recognize how important it was and i knew that i needed to act quickly and decisively because i think and i think the other thing is is the thing to bear in mind is specificity because for me to say well you know what i really ought to eat better and i should probably go to the gym a little bit more like what does that mean that doesn't mean anything to me to me at least it doesn't that might work for other people but that's too vague you know so i needed to like do something that i could that was in accordance

with a program that i could hold myself accountable to that would start right away before that kind of motivation and and immediacy wanes and then you're just back to doing whatever it is you're doing i think this is something that a lot of elite athletes have in common is there. So you can get focused on like a plan and a goal and it's not just like, okay, I need to do this. I'm going to do a little bit of it and then just fades away. But we're like a different breed in the fact that we can just like take so much action on something and become so committed to the result and goal or

whatever it is. I think that gives us an advantage in just in life in general in business having that athletic background you competing at division one school you understand what it means to like reach a goal and train four hours a day and do whatever it takes to like you see the you see the the cause and effect yeah and i know and you're probably the same way when i have a schedule and i know what i'm doing and my time is regimented then i'm you know exponentially more productive. And my wife doesn't work that way.

She kind of likes to be all over the place and not be so planned ahead. And that works for her. And when I try to do it her way, my whole life just falls apart. I'm like, I need structure. I need structure. I operate well within the constraints of that. Right. I need structure. I need structure. I operate well within the constraints of that. So as it applies to diet, you know, so that's kind of what led me into this new phase.

And I started it off with a seven-day juice cleanse. And I know you had your guest the other week talking about the benefits of that. And I can speak to that because that changed everything for me and being a junk food junkie uh i was sort of the last guy in the world to like jump on the juice fast bandwagon like that was very out of character for me but what happened was my wife in like 2004 she had had she developed a cyst on her neck a thyroglossal cyst which was like she had like a tennis ball sized growth on her neck and all the doctors went to cedar sinai we went to ucla and they all said the same thing which was it's not malignant it's a benign growth but it's also never going to go away and it'll probably just continue to grow a little bit and you're going to have to have it surgically removed and she had had a botched tonsillectomy several years prior that she that had her in bed

like on bed rest for weeks and weeks so she was not in a hurry to have anyone cut her neck open and kill this and it because it was also sort of a um not not the most serious surgery but there was it's attached to the vertebrae and there's some nerves around there and she was like no way so she decided she was gonna heal this thing uh herself and she went to an ayurvedic doctor and he put her on this crazy regimen of plant-based foods and bizarre teas and the grossest smelly foulest smelling paste and weird stuff i'd ever seen in my life uh she would rub this stuff on her neck at night and put a bandage on it. And it was not a quick process. It took maybe nine months.

But she healed herself, and it went away, and it has never come back. So I knew that was powerful because it was the first time. So it went all the way down. It's gone. Yeah. It's amazing. It's never come back. And maybe there's a Western doctor out there who could come up with some explanation. But it's irrelevant to me because what I saw was somebody who was able to heal themselves with food.

And so then I was like, all right, I need to kind of get on this program. So that's, you know, for me to say I'm going to do a juice cleanse, when I said that to my wife, she was like. She was shocked. What she heard was, you know that dress and the high heels in the closet? Like, I think I'm going to wear that to my wife she was like she was shocked what she heard was you know that dress and and uh the high heels in the closet like i think i'm gonna wear that to the party that's how out of character it was for me wow um but this is back in 2006 this is 2006 so it wasn't really juice cleanse weren't really still like mainstream or more popular not as mainstream as they are now i mean in la you know everyone's doing it you know and it wasn't like the the cayenne pepper one it was a little there was more nutrients in it to that now have you seen the documentary food matters yes and i watched that probably about six months ago on netflix and i

remember seeing how they're healing themselves through supplements and for through juice things like that and so this reminds me a lot of chris carr's story right and uh food matters what your wife went through right so it's pretty interesting and i also watched i don't know if you watched this but fat sick and nearly dead of course juice i started watching i watched that and then i got into juice after that now it's like almost every day i juice and i see i have a very similar story with you where i was 35 pounds heavier than i am now and i remember feeling tired walking up hills and stairs. But I also felt like I looked okay. I had a gut.

I still feel like you're an athlete. But you've got to really pay attention to what you're eating, I think, at all times. All the time. And it's hard to convey that message to young people. I was the last person who wanted to hear that. You're more willing to pay attention when you're older and you experience what that kind of lethargy is like and the low-grade depression and the impact of a poor diet on you know every aspect of your life not just your waistline but literally your emotional state your mental state your spiritual state everything so you're 39 you go through the juice cleanse, then do you have a vision of being an ultra marathon Ironman machine?

Or is it just like, okay, I want to start swimming again and see how it feels? More the latter. You know, the juice cleanse was an interesting experience because the first couple of days I was buckled over, sweating, like I was in rehab. You know, I felt like detoxing off heroin or something. Wow. It was terrible.

But by the last couple of days of it, and I don't know if you've had this experience, I felt incredible, you know, like better than I'd felt in 20 years or maybe ever. You know? And so that told me just how resilient the human body is, that in a matter of a week after treating my body so horribly with terrible diet and drug and alcohol abuse for so long, that in a mere week of doing this, they could feel this good. Like, it's amazing, right? So then I thought, well, I've got to start eating food. I've wiped this slate clean. I've got to start on a new trajectory here.

And I made an ill-fated kind of attempt to eat a vegetarian diet. eating food you know i've wiped the slate clean i got to start on a new trajectory here and i made an ill-fated kind of attempt to eat a vegetarian diet and i didn't read the books i didn't see i didn't i didn't know what i was doing and you know it wasn't long before i'm eating domino's pizza with cheese you know like i'm looking for the loophole you know this is vegetarian and the reason i chose vegetarian diet is like like i said i i have this prism of recovery that i see the world and and in recovery it's it's like you're either drinking or you're not you're sober or you're using drugs or you're not and vegetarian diet was easy for my mind to approach because it's like you're eating meat or you're not and there's like that line in the sand but that didn't work

and i was ready to just bag it quite honestly and say well i tried and you know i'm And, you know, I'm going to go back and do what I was going to do. But I thought, well, I'm halfway there. I wonder what would happen if I got rid of the dairy and I got rid of the processed foods. And I did it as almost a way to prove that it wouldn't work to myself and to my wife. Just to make sure. Yeah, just, well, I'll explore this. But, you know, this isn't going to work either. And what happened was I ended up, again, a week later, I felt as good as I felt during that juice cleanse.

And that's when I thought, wow, something's really going on here. Were you gluten and dairy-free during that time as well? Yeah, I wouldn't say I was 100% gluten-free. I tried to eat gluten-free, and that's still a battle for me. Usually at home I do, but every once in a while some bread or wheat finds its way into my diet i know that i feel a lot better when i'm eating gluten especially if you're vegan it's hard to be gluten-free and vegan i think yeah you're you're cutting you're cutting the bone what can you get close to the bone yeah can you eat well there's a lot you can eat but but uh to get to sort of wrap up the long-winded answer to your

question um you know i started exercising again which is something i hadn't really done regularly in a very long time just to burn off all the extra energy i had like i was bouncing off the walls like i couldn't sit still like i needed to get out and and do something with my body so i didn't have the nutrients were giving you all yeah i was jacked like all the time which is not what I expected on a vegan diet. But I didn't have some big grand design to return to being a competitive athlete. I just wanted to lose my gut, and I wanted to be able to enjoy my children at their energy level. I mean, that was really my goal at the time. So tell me the difference between a triathlon, an Ironman, and an ultra Ironman, I guess.

An ultra distance Ironman. Is it called ultra Ironman? Well, Ultraman is one race, but I guess ultra distance triathlon. Well, a triathlon is any race that involves the disciplines of swimming, cycling, and running. And they come in all shapes and sizes. And there's like a sprinter's form, an Olympic. Right. Sometimes the course dictates the various distances and the disciplines.

But some of them, you know, can take, you know, half an hour to do or an hour. And they range in scope. An Ironman is sort of the crown jewel jewel of triathlon at least in america and that's a very long race in which in one day you do a 2.4 mile swim followed by 112 miles on the bike and then a marathon after that you do that all at once and then and then an ultra man which is what we're jumping ahead a little bit because this is the race that i've done a couple times um the ultra man is a race uh the ultra man world championships is a race that's held every year thanksgiving weekend on the big island of

hawaii and it's essentially double the distance of an iron man and it's held as a stage race during which the over the course of three days you circumnavigate the entire big island you do a loop around the entire island it's a big island it's like the size of connecticut it's big it's big and that entails uh well day one you do a 6.2 mile ocean swim followed by a 90 mile bike the last 20 miles of which are up this mountain to volcano national park the second day uh you do 170 miles on the bike and then the third day you do a 52.4 mile run it's a double marathon run that just sounds exhausting yeah it's long now what do you do to prepare both physically and mentally for probably one of the most challenging things that your body can go through?

You quit your job and you say goodbye to all your friends. And no. Well, for me, I did this race for the first time in 2008. And when I got it into my insane brain that I wanted to try this, I only had about six months of real preparation time to do it. I hired a coach. So I know that's a big message in your podcast of surrounding yourself with experts and people that know more about things than you do. So that was the first thing I did. Do you think you could have done as well as you've done without a coach? No question. There's no way. I wouldn't have even finished it but there's no way no way i wouldn't have even finished it you know there's no there's no way you know there's no way um and i don't know whether he believed

that i was going to be able to do it but he led me to believe that he could take me across the finish line and and that was enough for me to believe in him and in the program that he constructed for me to which i adhered to to a, because I was terrified. Because I'm coming off the couch. And, you know, at this point, I started exercising. My wife bought me a bike for my 40th birthday. I'd never really ridden a bike. And I'd never met a runner. I'd been a swimmer in college.

But we're talking about a good 20 years of relative inactivity and trying to get ready for this race. Wow. In a pretty short period of time how many months do you have so well i'd been kind of biking and running and sort of getting fit like i you know like i said as a result of this added energy boost and that'd been going on for you know like a year but very unstructured and not like focused on it wasn't training it was sort of like enjoying being outdoors with friends and just getting a little bit more fit and having some of the weight come off but when i when it was time to serious, I had about six and a half months

to actually focus and get prepared. So it was imperative that I not miss any workouts and do as I was told and show up and suit up. And I did that. And you know, a lot of people get injured running. And a big reason, there's many reasons for that, but one of the biggest reasons is people ramp up their volume too quickly. They're like, oh, I'm up doing a marathon, so I'm going to start running 10 miles a day. Yeah, they run every day, and, you know, they go out and they run hard every time, and there's not enough. You know, every workout needs to have a purpose, and that purpose is different on different days. One of the big things that I learned in preparing for this, as a swimmer back in the late 1980s, we would just show up for a workout and go hard. I'd jump in the pool after a brief warm-up, then every set I just went as hard as I could, and that was it.

There were no recovery days. There were no rest weeks. We would just train like that for eight months and then do a two week taper and see how it would go. And I thought that that's how you would prepare for a race like this too. I want to hear more about my specific training philosophy because it's too long-winded to get into here. But it's about building your volume very gradually and very incrementally to not overstress your body too soon because you'll just overtrain or make yourself tired, and then you'll get sick, and then you'll get injured, and then you'll end up missing more training than you would otherwise. and then you'll get injured and then you'll end up missing more training than you would otherwise. So being very cautious and responsible about how you build that pyramid and creating a really strong, broad foundation and stepping up from there.

So it started off gradual, but at the end, I was putting in 25-hour training weeks. I mean, it became like a second job to me. 25 hours a week. How many a day? Most days, there'd be two training sessions in a day. I never ran two days in a row. But Tuesdays were double run days. Saturdays were really long bike rides that gradually ramped up from a couple hours up to eight or nine hours there at the end. And then Sundays were really long run days

and i did some simulation weekends in that kind of eight or ten weeks leading up to the race where i would approximate the ultraman distance over a friday saturday and sunday so in training before the race i actually did a 40 mile run and a 45 mile run wow so i knew i was going to be able to make it knew i was going to be able to finish it and just the fact that i was able to do those training runs was like at the time that i accomplished that i was like this is the greatest thing i've ever done as an athlete in my life i can't even believe i just ran this training and training yeah and at the end of a long week where i i kicked my butt all week and had ridden my bike like nine hours the day before. That's impressive. Yeah. But, I mean, again, it goes back to my coach and creating a program.

Now, did you know when you set out to wanting to achieve the Ultraman? Ultraman is what you call it? The Ultraman, yeah. Ultraman. Did you know when you said, okay, I'm going to go do this race that you could complete it? Did you think to yourself, I'm going to try this race, but I'm just going to do it and see how I do, or I am going to complete it. Did you like visualize that when you were like set out to do it where you're like, there's no matter what

I'm going to finish this race? Uh, well, first of all, visualization is very important. Um, and I do a lot of positive visualization and everything that I do and I find that critical so when I lined up to to uh tackle that race I knew that I was going to finish it there was no question in my mind that I was going to finish it and also that's a result of having done those simulation weekends where I done 90 of the race and training when I was tired so I knew that when I showed up to actually do it rested that I was going to be able to do it. That being said, in 2008, the first time I did it, I didn't, I wasn't there to race it. I was there to, my goal was don't die and finish. Don't get injured. And I was doing it to celebrate this life change that I made. I mean, two years prior, I couldn't make it up a staircase. And here I was, you know, I'd never

done an Ironman. I, it wasn't like I was a seasoned triathlete. Like I'm a complete newbie. Like I really didn't know what I was getting involved in. Well, I'd done, I did like the Malibu triathlon. Like I knew I could do short ones and stuff like that. But it wasn't like I was off, you know, I'd done 10 Ironmans and had a lot of experience. Like I was very inexperienced at this. And I had humility, you know.

Like I went into this race was i had a level of confidence that i could complete it but i also had a responsible level of humility about what i was about to do and i wasn't there to win or anything like that i was there to like celebrate right the fact that i was sober the fact that i had lost this weight and changed my life and and and that was really that was really it it wasn't to compete so compete. So you never did an Ironman. You went right to Ultra. Yeah. Which is two Ironmans, right? I told you I was sort of an obsessive, extreme personality.

I can't even see myself doing a marathon. It's like, it just seems like so far. I'll get you there. When you said you have trouble riding more than two miles, you don't spend enough time with me. Yeah. I feel like maybe in like 10 years when I'm like done being built for speed, then I'll just do the long distance thing. You'd be surprised. Really?

Yeah. I feel like I get slower though if I do like training long distance. No? No, I'll help you out. All right, cool. We'll do a run sometime. Maybe you can help me with my form. Maybe that's what it is.

So what did you do then and now? What do you do like when you're training mentally? So you go out every day, I'm assuming for a couple hours every day or something for your training now. What do you do mentally during these long, painful workouts? Because it's a lot of one-on-one time with yourself. It's a lot of one-on-one time. Your own thoughts, your own doubts like, oh, I just want to go back and relax today or I've got other stuff to do. I want to hang out with my kids. I want to go in the pool. Right. How do you stay committed to being mentally

tough every day, every workout for years to compete at this level and stay fit and stay in shape? Yeah, it's a challenge. You know, I have four kids and I'm married and I have other things in my life. So it's, and my life is more complicated now than it was in 2008 and 2009 when I did these races that I talk about in the book. But I'm a better person when I'm taking care of myself in this way. And there's a certain part of me that feels like that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Like, I'm, you know, I'm wired for it. And I'm happier, I'm more productive, I'm a better husband, and I'm a better father, when I am when I am training and taking care of myself in that way. And that doesn't mean that when I'm out on a Saturday, and I have a really long ride to do

that I don't, I don't have certain thoughts of feeling guilty. Like I should be with my kids right now. And, you know, I work from home. I'm around my kids a lot. I'm there, I'm there all the time. So I'm not, by no means am I an absentee dad or anything like that. I'm not, you're not working 80 hours a week in an office and then coming home and training three hours a day and then spending, but I'm also human where I think, you know, is this, I question, I'm always, I think it's important to always be questioning what you're doing, you know, rather than just blindly saying this is what I'm supposed to be doing. But I approach the training, every training session as an act of meditation. be present in what you're doing and connect with a higher version of yourself, a more aspirational version of yourself, and to kind of the environment at large.

And I find that I learn a lot about myself, particularly in the last few hours of a long session or the last hour when it's starting to become very difficult and painful and you're overly fatigued and all of that. That's where the magic happens that that's where the magic happens and that's and that's where the beauty happens and it's like if you ever driven across country in a car like by yourself or anything like that i've driven from well high over the top of maine which is probably like a 14 15 hour trip so right By myself with no AC in the middle of the summer and no radio. Right, right, right. So that's similar. It's a similar thing because, and I've done that too. The first couple hours are the hardest hours because you're not used to sitting still. You're

not used to being alone. You're not used to all these things and you're antsy and you're like, I'm never going to make it. And then, you know, nine hours into the drive, you'll kind of come to and go, oh, what was I thinking about the last hour? And where have I been? You go into your zone, right? And that happens a lot, you know, and it's a similar kind of thing. Interesting.

So you look at it as active meditation. Do you actually do non-active meditation as well then, where you're just completely silent, no movement? You do a lot of that as well? Yeah, absolutely. I think that that is the final frontier for performance in life, whether you're a businessman or you're an athlete or whatever it is. I mean, athletes will train their bodies,

but I think that they undertrain their mind. And that's probably true in business as well. Interesting. And I've gone in and out of having a consistent meditation practice, so I'm not perfect at it by any means. But I know that when I am actively meditating on a consistent basis, that I'm definitely sharper and more focused. I'm a better athlete and I have better follow through and the things that I'm doing during the day. And it has this weird, there's this weird inverse relationship where you think,

well, I don't have time to do that because I got all these other things to do. I got to call that guy and I got to drive to this place and I got to do that thing. Right. Um, but when I take the time and I do it, then all that stuff gets done. Somehow it all gets done. And then some, you know, like I actually advance the ball more than seems logical yeah for some reason it's like every time i go on a flight i always remember to take care of myself because they say you know make sure to put your own mask on first before assisting others and i think uh you know i'm all about helping people and i'm a big giver and want to help the world and i'm sure you do as well with your message, but we all, in my opinion, need to be extremely selfish for at least a few hours

every day for ourselves and make sure we're getting all of our needs met, all of our wants, desires. We're like going after them so that we're not just like resenting ourselves for just giving all the time. Right. We're really taking care of our bodies physically, mentally, emotionally. we're just giving all the time, right? We're really taking care of our bodies physically, mentally, emotionally. Wouldn't you agree? Yeah. You, uh, you can't help someone else if you're not taking care of yourself and you can't give something away that you haven't got. So you cannot put a message out there about health, fitness, you know, spirituality, you know, business, whatever it is, if you're not practicing that, right, you can, but people are more perceptive than you think. And they will be able to tell

whether that's an authentic message or not. And if you're not doing what you're saying, people will know, right, you know, and then it will fall flat. Yeah. And water rises to its own level. You know what I i mean so you have to walk your walk and for the kind of message that you're putting out and the kind of message that i'm putting out like i have to do those things in order to be able to talk about them and you can look at it like selfishness but you know it's it's really it's really not because you're of maximum service to other people when you're as fit as you can be. That's true.

And by fit, I don't just mean physically. Emotionally, mentally. In a holistic wellness sense. So you should be selfish and becoming very healthy, in my opinion. And I'm becoming more and more selfish every day with my health. Trying to be, at least. You know, I'm not perfect. I still have, like, time. Nobody is.

And I think that's an important thing to talk about, though, because it is this notion of perfection or like holding on to this idea of perfection that I think prevents a lot of people from moving forward. And I come across this because I eat a plant-based diet. You know, people say, well, I can never do that. It's too hard, you know. And so they don't even try. And I'm like, you don't have to do it perfect. Just start. Like if all you did was have a green juice every day and that's all you did, that would change your life. Right. And so let go of being perfect. You

know, you're not going to be perfect in CrossFit. You know, you're not going to be perfect in whatever it is that you're trying, but you, if you can give yourself permission to fail or to be imperfect, that creates a safe place that allows people to move into a new direction and blossom in a way that maybe they didn't expect. I think when we beat ourselves up over the mistakes we think we're making, so it's like we're eating really healthy, but then we have a box of cookies or something. Right. And then we're like, oh, and then we beat ourselves up over it. That does more damage.

It takes you out of the game. Takes you out of the game. So not to beat ourselves up over it that does more damage it takes you out of the game takes you out of the game so not to beat ourselves up over it like i had a half a box of uh girl's house cookies last night i'm not gonna lie but i don't feel bad i don't feel bad i used to feel bad but now it's like you know what i've been eating clean all week i've been eating really well you know i have juice every day i have a smoothie every morning everything so what if i have a half a box of cookies once a week? Right. Well, you just go, well, that's interesting that I did that. I wonder why I behave that way. Like, am I depressed? Like, let me look at that. But in the meantime, I'm going to do the next right thing. Right. And I had a green juice today, a smoothie and healthy meal. You know, it's like,

yeah, we feel good. I feel good, man. This podcast coming for the next five hours. I feel good. I feel good, man. We're going to keep this podcast going for the next five hours. Ultra podcast. So what was the most difficult race you've had to date? What's been the most challenging for you? Well, after I did that, so I did that Ultraman in 2008.

I did finish. And, again, my goal wasn't a race, but I ended up 11th in that race. Out of how many? 12? There were only 35 actually it's a small race but it's invitation only from athletes all over the world so it was a triumph just to be your first one that was my first one 2008 2008 so then i thought well i wonder what would happen if i actually trained for a whole year and took it seriously and went back not just to complete it but to actually race it and see what I could do. So that's what I did. So I went back in 2009.

After the 6.2-mile swim, I got out of the water 10 minutes ahead of the next guy. And I held that lead that whole day one through that 90 miles on the bike and finished that day with it. I held that 10-minute lead the whole day. So I finished day one with a 10-minute lead on everybody. That's amazing. And I'm like, this is awesome. Eating a vegan diet is working you know uh but uh what happened was 35 miles into the next day's ride the 171 mile ride i crashed my bike uh bike slipped out from underneath me on wet

pavement um i went down hard my knee was bleeding my left shoulder all the skin was sheared off it and i broke a pedal oh and it was on one section of the road where they don't allow any crew support um so i had to pet because every athlete has to bring their own crew so you have this van with your crew support that's right every yeah exactly all your equipment all your food because you stay in a different place every night and they go around with you. No crew van, so I had to pedal my bike with one foot for a full mile to get to the end of this segment and meet up with my crew. And, you know, without a pedal, like, it's done, right? You know, like, I don't care, you know, like, I don't care who you are.

You're not going to finish the race. So during that one mile, I had an opportunity. You know when you've probably experienced this in football where you take your mind out of it. You're totally engaged in what you're doing, and then something happens that throws you off, and then you just check out. You're out. You're out. It's done, right? So I start to think, this is awesome. I don't have to finish this race.

I just got an exit pass out of all this pain. No's gonna say anything because obviously i have a broken pedal i crash like it's over with and i start thinking about i'm gonna sleep in a nice bed tonight and i'm gonna take my kids to the beach the next day and what happened was i get to the end of the road i hugged my wife she's there and i got blood all over me my knees all swollen and a guy who was crewing for another athlete comes up to me and he's like what kind of pedal do you need i showed him the make and model of the fractured broken pedal he disappears he comes back with a brand new pedal the exact model of the one that i had on my bike that was still in the box it was brand new and he's like give me your bike he took my bike he he like put

got the new pedal on it and he's like you're getting back on your bike and i was like were you thinking to him like uh don't worry about it i was like you don't understand you know i'm done you know like i'm not doing this race anymore because and he's like no you're getting on your bike wow and so i think the hardest thing that i've ever experienced was was getting back on that bike and then with blood all over my knee and my shoulder and riding the rest of those 150 miles injured. But it wasn't the injuries as much as it was trying to mentally get back into it after you've checked out. I can only imagine.

And I suffered through that day, and it was miserable. And I lost the whole lead that I had and the whole thing. Because you you're just thinking i don't want to be doing this for another hundred miles every pedal stroke was miserable no focus no like desire it's just absolutely not and then even after finishing that being in so much pain thinking well i'm not gonna run tomorrow you know like i got through that um you know my knee I had all this ice on my knee. It was all swollen. I was like, there's no way I'm running tomorrow. But I thought, well, I'll just show up and I'll just, I'll run a half mile, see how it feels. You know, I'll just gauge it. If it, if it really isn't, if I really don't think it's going to hold up, I'll just, I'll run until I think it's going to give out on me and then I'll pull out.

And so I showed up to run and I just, you know, with every half mile, it started to loosen up a little bit better. 50 miles? 52 miles. So I ended up running that whole thing on a wounded knee and kind of worked my way back up the field a little bit and ended up sixth overall in that race. Did you see yourself getting like a second win where you're like, okay, it's feeling okay. I'm going to like kick it in like the eye of the tiger. Yeah, yeah a little bit i definitely got back in the game a little bit on it um and so people say to me well aren't you bummed that you crashed and do you think you could have won the race or do you think you could have been on the podium and my answer is always the same which is no like it was

the perfect race because i didn't my attraction to even doing this race in the beginning in 2008 was never to like see how many people i could beat or how fast i could go it was i wanted to have a spiritual experience i wanted to have a growth experience i wanted to learn more about who i was and i wanted to see how hard i could push this body that i had abused for so long and what i got was exactly what I asked for. And when everything goes right, it's like this in football, right? You have a perfect game. What did you learn about yourself?

It's like you learn the most when the chips are down and they're stacked against you and what are you going to do in that moment? And I learned something about myself. So that was the hardest thing that I've ever endured endured athletically but also the greatest and most valuable now did you ever go back and win that race i didn't i went back in 2011 um ready to give it a go again and i and on day two i started spitting blood on day two and i made it i made a decision to pull out. Wow. So I still have unfinished business. There you go. I'm going to race.

2014, here we come. I know. I'll be 50. Now, so you used to eat a lot of meat, right? Mm-hmm. You used to eat pretty much anything you wanted. Fast food, window diet. Garbage, the garbage disposal.

Everything. Window diet. Now, you changed to vegan at what age? When I was 40. Yeah, 40. You fully changed. You haven't had meat since then. So I'm 46 now.

Yeah, I've been on a plant-based diet for almost six years. Now, what's the main difference and what's the main benefit to being on a plant-based diet at 40 to 46 from eating meat and junk from zero to 40 well the biggest difference is is my energy levels i have really good high energy throughout the day and i don't have the peaks and valleys i don't get the food coma after lunch um i don't get the you know i don't get the sugar highs but i don't get the food coma after lunch. I don't get the sugar highs, but I don't get the sugar crashes either. I don't worry about my ratio of carbs to fat to protein so much. So I'm not like – my kitchen is not like a lab where I'm measuring everything. I don't worry about that.

I just eat really clean foods close to their natural state. And, uh, and you know, I've been able to, I dropped those 50 pounds and they've never come back. So I'm not on any kind of yo-yo program. It's very sustainable and doable. And, um, you know, people say to me, well, you've, you did all these athletic things despite being on a vegan diet. Like what if you were on a paleo diet or what if you were on this diet? And I can only speak to the diet that I'm on, but I actually, I believe that, that, uh, that it is responsible for everything that I have achieved as an athlete. I think it's a huge contributor to it.

I think there's a lot of misinformation, uh, and misguided direction about protein particularly and what our protein needs are. And when you go into the grocery store and every packaged food tells you how much protein it is and you're kind of bombarded with this message of protein and how much protein you need, you have to ask yourself, well, who is pushing this message on you and why? And I did a lot of research on it, and I realized that most people eat upwards of twice the amount of protein that they actually should. There haven't been any studies to establish that additional protein beyond what your body actually needs, which is less than most people believe, expedites muscle recovery or makes you stronger or a better athlete. And I can personally say that in the six years of doing this, I continue to get leaner, faster, stronger, and I've never had a problem with this. But I think above and beyond

that, well, two points I want to make. But the first is above and beyond that, eating a plant based diet is very alkaline forming. And most people are eating a much more acid-forming diet and leading sort of lives that contribute to a state of metabolic acidosis. Stress, the toxins we breathe, the meat and dairy products all contribute to this. And that's sort of, when you're in this, when you're eating acid-forming foods and breathing these toxins and and stress and the like um this is pushing your your ph toward a more acidic state which makes your body have to ramp up into overtime to neutralize that piece that ph and that causes inflammation it leaches minerals from your bones and contributes to things like osteoporosis

and inflammation is really a huge contributor to a lot of the western diseases that we suffer from and it's a it is like a huge impediment to uh recovering in between workouts so if you have all this inflammation after a workout you're not going to recover very quickly so when you're eating when you're eating a more alkaline forming diet you are going to expedite your recovery you're less likely to get sick you're eating a more alkaline-forming diet, you are going to expedite your recovery. You're less likely to get sick. You're less likely to get run down and overtrained. And all of these things, one and of themselves, day to day, don't necessarily make you a better athlete.

But if you protract that out over a course of a season or a number of years, you're going to realize performance gains as a result of that. The consistency of it. Exactly. Yeah. And then the second point, real quickly, is just, you know, I adopted a plant-based diet not for performance reasons, but for health reasons. I didn't want to suffer a heart attack. I didn't want to get diabetes. You know, I don't want to have cancer.

I don't want to have any of these Western diseases that are huge epidemics in our country. And when 935,000 Americans suffer a heart attack every year and 385,000 of them are fatal, it's insane. And 42% of Americans are obese, and that obesity is leading us to die prematurely and have strokes. And with the rates of diabetes going through the roof and we have a huge problem here so uh in all the studies that i've done and i could you know name a million books um i've become very very convinced that the best way to make yourself bulletproof to western disease and feel great and maintain your weight is to eat a plant-based diet. Interesting. Again, my buddy swears by it. I'm seeing more and more athletes coming out talking about how having a vegan diet is helping them perform longer, faster, stronger, feel better, recover faster, all these different things.

You're seeing athletes talk about it now. Yeah, they are. And it's an amazing time. Five years ago, nobody was talking about it, particularly athletes. Now, particularly in the MMA, a lot of MMA fighters are doing it and kicking ass. It's one thing for a crazy ultra runner like myself, or there's other people out there, Scott Jurek, who's a legend, ultra marathoner, or triathletes. They're kind of very unthreatening athletes.

But the MMA guys are doing it, and they're talking about how good they feel. And Timothy Bradley, who beats Manny Pacquiao, arguably. I don't know that he really won that fight. But for him to even be in the ring with Pacquiao on a plant-based diet. The guy's on a plant-based diet. He's a boxer. So regardless of where you are, and I'm certainly not here to tell anybody how they should live their life or eat or anything like that. I'm just sharing my experience.

But when all these athletes are talking about it, maybe check it out or look into it and do your own research. It's interesting. Wasn't Carl Lewis a vegan yeah yeah back in the day in olympics when he got like five gold medals no one was talking about that no one i know but he was like above and beyond everyone right it's pretty interesting and i think the more that i'm learning and educating myself about foods and nutrition i'm still a long way away from it but but the last two years, I've kind of come to the middle. I'm thinking from vegan to just like the window diet.

And for me, that's a big improvement. I'm seeing that in my daily activity, in my mental performance and everything that I do. So I think it's interesting to definitely take a look at and experiment with different things for what works for your body.

Do your own research. I didn't adopt it because I read a bunch of books. Watched Forks Over Knives. Have you seen that documentary? I haven't seen it yet. That should be next in your Netflix queue. It happened to me accidentally. I was just paying attention to how I felt.

I realized that when I started doing this, I felt really good. It's personal experience and learning to be in tune with your body, I think, which most of us aren't. Right. You know, and when you're eating crappy foods, you can't be. It's tough. You get disconnected from who you are. It's tough. So what are people going to learn in Finding Ultra? What are they not going to learn so Finding Ultra it's primarily memoir it's my personal story about all the kind of things that we've been talking about today

my history with addiction and kind of recovery and then what was going on with me health wise when I turned 40 and how I made this switch and where it led me throughout all the races that I've 40 and how I made this switch and where it led me and throughout all the races that I've done and the kind of performance and endurance performance endeavors. And then there's

about 60 pages in the appendices with resources on the real specifics of how I eat and why and a day in the life of how I eat and resources to other books and websites where you can learn more about it. Very cool. It's a page-turner memoir. It's pretty quick. I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited to check this out. I rarely read books, but I'm actually excited to read this one. No pressure, man. You're a busy guy.

No, I'm excited. When I get it signed, autographed. You can get it in an audio book. You can hear me drone on. Really? Yeah. Do you have this at Barnes and Noble right now also or Barnes and Noble Amazon barnesandnoble.com you can get it on Kindle you can get it on iTunes you can get the audio book on Audible or iTunes or Amazon very cool all over the place now you have your own supplement

company as well right with plant-based proteins and things like that yeah i do i have a company called jai lifestyle and and i know on it is uh your sponsor so i don't want to step on that's all right with some of the stuff that i make is similar to what they make right um but yeah i have a uh athletic recovery supplement called jai repair which uh you know i talked earlier about how i think there's too much emphasis on protein. And a lot of people are scared of a plant-based diet because they're worried about not getting enough protein. But you can get a lot of protein. You can. Plants have a lot of protein.

I talk about that in the book, and I list all the plants that are high in protein and the kind of things that I eat. And I'm not a guy who is putting protein powders in my Vitamix blends on a daily basis. I've found that I don't need it. But when I'm training really hard, like when I'm doing those 25-hour weeks that I was telling you about earlier, I'm hitting it really hard, or I feel like I haven't eaten the right foods that day, I will definitely, I believe in supplements, and I will use a plant-based protein supplement. And I started experimenting when I was training with what worked for me and I was making all these crazy, I was getting, I was buying all sorts of different stuff and playing around with it. And when I decided I wanted to launch my own formula,

I sort of took the best of what worked for me and combined it into one. So it's a combination of three plant-based proteins, hemp sprouted brown rice and pea which i which i've always worked the best for me are very bioavailable it's a complete amino acid profile i've got l-glutamine i've got vitamin b12 and it has uh cordyceps mushroom extracts in it which is the same as uh the shrimp tech product yeah that stuff's amazing you know and i i know you know joe and those guys talk about how great it is and you've experienced what it's like to be eating cordyceps. And I started using cordyceps in 2008 and noticed a very dramatic change in how I felt. You talked about it the other day on your podcast, like not feeling winded, feeling like you have an extra gear, like you can keep going.

And so that's why I included it in this product as well. And I've got a vitamin B12 supplement. I've got a cookbook, a jelly lifestyle. I've got a bunch of meditation program, all sorts of stuff. Mel Stewart's a friend of mine too. No way. Down in Austin. Is he down in Texas? You know Mel? Yeah. I've known him for a few years. He's my boy. I just saw this on the back of your book. Dude, Mel, I've known Mel forever. Swimmer, the two time, or you want two goals, right? Backstroke? Uh-huh. No, in Butterfly. Butterfly. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. He does a lot of videos online and stuff, right? He does. Well, we'll talk after the show. Yeah, Mel, I love Mel. That's cool. Yeah.

So what's the best place for people to find you online? So my website is richroll.com, R-I-C-H-R-O-L-L. It's like rock and roll. I've got a blog there, and I host my podcast there too the Rich Roll Podcast which you can find on iTunes probably right next to Lewis's we've been up in the top ten

and you've got to come on my show dude I'm going to make you commit right now I'm in I'm active on Twitter at Rich Roll you've got a great audience there as well and Facebook and all the normal stuff. But my website, richroll.com, and Twitter and the podcast are the best ways to find me.

Okay, cool. And the last question is, what's your definition of greatness? That's a great question. Yeah? It's an interesting question. I think it begs the question of what is greatness and what does greatness mean to me and to you? I mean, I think it means different things to different people. For me personally, I think being great means being the most actualized

version of yourself, the best version of yourself. And that's what my book is about. Like, it's about me going on these crazy endurance adventures, but really the subtext is unlocking a more authentic, better version of myself and providing a roadmap for other people to do the same. And for me, it's endurance sports. For you, it might be playing the banjo or becoming a stand-up comic. It doesn't matter. is having the balls and the courage to look inside yourself and do the work to figure out what gives you a heartbeat and what gives you purpose to find that passion inside of you and then set in motion a series of actions that lead to a plan to help you more fully actualize that and live that because that is what being great is and that is what's going

to make you happy and that's what the world needs more of people that are doing that and again it doesn't matter what that is it's different and individualized for every single person but the more people that can tap into that and unlock it and make it happen we're a better place and that doesn't mean that it's easy. It is a warrior's path, man. Right. And it is fraught with landmines and it will be hard and you will question yourself

and it will take you to the mat. But if you can do it, if you can take that on and make that your mantra, then you will be a happy person and the world will be a better place. There you go. Make sure to check out richroll.com.

Thanks, brother. All right better place. There you go. Make sure to check out richroll.com. Thanks, brother. All right, man. Thank you. And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed this episode number 10 with Rich Roll. Super inspiring guy. Make sure to go check him out at richroll.com. He is doing some cool things over there.

Subscribe to his podcast. He's just an awesome dude. I'm glad I got to spend half the day with him today in Los Angeles and have lunch with him and just learn more about his story, his theories on fitness and life. Very cool, inspiring guy. And make sure to check out the book, Finding Ultra. You can check it out on Amazon or in Barnes & Noble and all that good stuff. So before I let you guys go today, I would love it. I'm getting all these great reviews

and ratings from you guys over on iTunes. I'm currently, the show School of Greatness is currently on the homepage of iTunes, the podcast section, and it was on the homepage of stitcher.com. So a big shout out to the crew over at Stitcher for posting this up there. And with your help, we can keep getting more people and build this audience and share this message with more people. So I'd love it if you guys would leave me a five-star rating over at iTunes and then leave a review. Let the other people who are coming to learn more about this podcast, let them know what you like about it. If you don't like stuff about it, you can write that as well.

I mean, I'm not being too picky here, but I would just love for you to mention something. Leave a review. Leave a five-star rating. I just got a cool one in today from David Birch Designs. And the headline says, Teaching in every episode and he gave it five stars and said finally a show that shares the wisdom of successful businessmen and athletes how they made it and what obstacles they faced along the way amazing stories from some killer guests about how to overcome limiting beliefs and truly succeed in life, you have inspired me to be great. Keep them coming. So thanks David for that. And there's a ton of other great reviews on there. I would love it

for you guys to check it out. Also go to schoolofgreatness.com. Leave us a comment over on the blog, share these podcasts, these episodes with your friends, get the word out there. It'll make me love you even more. Just kidding, but not really. Anyways, guys, thanks so much. Hope you have an amazing day and make it great. Outro Music