The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1244 - Colin O'Brady

00:00:02.000 Four, three, two, one...

00:00:07.000 Alright, we're live.

00:00:08.000 What's up, man?

00:00:09.000 What's up, dude?

00:00:10.000 What's hilarious, folks?

00:00:11.000 I have to tell you this.

00:00:12.000 I did a podcast earlier today, and he said, wow, it's your second for the day.

00:00:16.000 He goes, impressive endurance. 0.99

00:00:18.000 Do you know how fucking ridiculous that is for you to say? 0.99

00:00:22.000 This is a guy who walked across Antarctica. 1.00

00:00:25.000 How many days did it take you?

00:00:26.000 54 days.

00:00:27.000 By yourself.

00:00:27.000 By myself.

00:00:28.000 Trekking across the fucking frozen tundra. 0.99

00:00:32.000 That was an endurance feat of its own. 0.99

00:00:34.000 Yeah, just back up.

00:00:34.000 No, that's a real endurance feat.

00:00:35.000 I'm just sitting down talking to people.

00:00:38.000 Oh my god, you talked already for two hours.

00:00:39.000 How do you do it?

00:00:41.000 Two more hours, here we go. 0.93

00:00:43.000 Crazy.

00:00:43.000 Yep, yep.

00:00:44.000 Dude, what the fuck were you doing? 0.99

00:00:46.000 Just getting back, actually. 1.00

00:00:48.000 Still practically have the snow on my shoes.

00:00:51.000 Yeah, I got back about a month ago.

00:00:52.000 54-day journey.

00:00:53.000 First person in history to cross the entire continent solo.

00:00:57.000 Unsupported, so no resupplies throughout the thing.

00:00:59.000 No aid, no wind, kites, nothing.

00:01:01.000 Just me dragging a 375-pound sled across Antarctica.

00:01:06.000 I can't believe it only took you 54 days.

00:01:08.000 Yeah.

00:01:10.000 It's so big.

00:01:11.000 Look at Antarctica on a map.

00:01:13.000 How long do you think it would take you to walk across America?

00:01:16.000 Well, so we usually look at Antarctica on a map.

00:01:19.000 This is hilarious.

00:01:19.000 I show people a picture of Antarctica.

00:01:21.000 You're a smart guy.

00:01:21.000 You probably know this.

00:01:22.000 But usually people see it on a map projection because then it gets flat, right?

00:01:25.000 It's actually circular.

00:01:27.000 So I went from the edge of the Ron Ice Shelf via the South Pole to the Ross Ice Shelf.

00:01:33.000 So basically, kind of a diagonal across through the center and then back to the other ice shelf.

00:01:37.000 What do the flat earthers think about your traversing this area?

00:01:42.000 This is what you did.

00:01:43.000 This is how you made it.

00:01:44.000 There it is, exactly. 1.00

00:01:45.000 So you went to the center of the fucking earth, basically. 0.99

00:01:48.000 There it is. 1.00

00:01:48.000 You went to the top of the pole. 1.00

00:01:49.000 Yep, bottom of the earth, you know, standing down there holding everyone up on my shoulders.

00:01:53.000 Wow.

00:01:53.000 Wow, so you were at the South Pole and then you trekked over to the ice shelf on the other side.

00:01:59.000 It's funny you say about the Flat Earthers though, because all jokes aside, I've been getting a lot of trolling on my Instagram page from the Flat Earthers. 0.77

00:02:05.000 I've got guys going like, oh, I was doing this speech the other day.

00:02:10.000 People are super nice, come up in the Q&A afterwards, want to shake my hand, take a picture or whatever.

00:02:14.000 And this guy walks up with this real earnest look on his face and he's like, so I really wanted to ask you, how was the hole?

00:02:20.000 And I was like, excuse me?

00:02:21.000 He was like, you know the hole at the center.

00:02:24.000 And I was like, give me a little more.

00:02:26.000 He was like, you know, like when you got to the edge.

00:02:31.000 And I was like, oh man, you're really asking me this question right now.

00:02:35.000 We were talking about this.

00:02:36.000 I didn't quite know where to go with it.

00:02:37.000 I was like, yeah, at least I didn't see the edge and the curvature kept going and I made it to the other side.

00:02:44.000 It is such a strange thing to believe, but people do.

00:02:48.000 People think people are trolling about that.

00:02:50.000 It actually started out.

00:02:52.000 It's another 4chan thing.

00:02:54.000 Did you know that?

00:02:55.000 Well, I'm sure there was probably somebody who believed it before that, but it started off, people were trolling on 4chan, and then eventually people just started actually going, hey, I bet it is flat, and then they started believing it, and videos, YouTube videos popped up.

00:03:08.000 There's another YouTube video someone linked to me the other day, and I thought it had a few hundred views, but it had 28,000 views, and it was all these guys debating, like, Colin proved that there's not a wall.

00:03:18.000 Like, the wall, there would be Game of Thrones at the edge of the world, there's this whole I bet there's another 28,000 people.

00:03:24.000 It's proved that Colin never actually went.

00:03:26.000 Of course.

00:03:27.000 He's a New World Order shill. 0.99

00:03:30.000 Well, the other funny one was that we got a bunch on the Instagram page.

00:03:34.000 I'm out there alone, completely by myself, but I wanted to share the whole story through my Instagram to share the journey with people, inspire others to do whatever they want to do.

00:03:41.000 And I kept being like, well, I mean, he's not out there alone.

00:03:44.000 He's taking pictures.

00:03:45.000 I was like...

00:03:47.000 The film crew.

00:03:48.000 I was like, guys, have you never heard of a tripod and a timer?

00:03:54.000 I've never watched Survivor Man.

00:03:57.000 Exactly.

00:03:58.000 So some funny comments along those lines.

00:04:00.000 So your sled was 300 and how many pounds?

00:04:03.000 375 pounds to start.

00:04:04.000 So basically, food and fuel was the main weight.

00:04:08.000 So people, I called my project The Impossible First.

00:04:10.000 That's sort of what I named the project because several people had tried it.

00:04:13.000 That's it right there?

00:04:14.000 Yeah, there it is.

00:04:15.000 Oh my god.

00:04:15.000 So not only are you walking, you're dragging this big ass Heavy sled.

00:04:19.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:04:20.000 Fuck, dude. 0.99

00:04:22.000 So people have tried this, you know, going back 100 years to Ernest Shackleton saying if it was possible, and then the last few years some really experienced polar explorers have given it a shot, and one guy actually died less than 100 miles from the finish line because of, you know, lack of nutrition and some challenges with the weather and things like that. 0.99

00:04:40.000 But people called it, you know, people after that were like, it's impossible.

00:04:43.000 And the reason people thought it was impossible was because, you know, You can't get resupplies, meaning if you fill your sled with food, at a certain amount, you actually can't drag the sled anymore.

00:04:51.000 So the whole math equation really was figuring out just how much food and fuel I could put in the sled.

00:04:55.000 The fuel melts the water, so it melts the ice into water, essentially.

00:04:59.000 And that equaled to 375 pounds.

00:05:01.000 And to be truth, I could barely pull it on the first day.

00:05:05.000 One hour into getting dropped off, I'm dropped off completely alone out there in Antarctica.

00:05:09.000 I planned this project for a year, you know.

00:05:12.000 And I get dropped off, and after about one hour pulling a 375-pound sled through the snow, it's minus 25 degrees out.

00:05:19.000 I'm crying.

00:05:20.000 I'm literally crying, and the tears in my goggles are starting to freeze.

00:05:23.000 And I'm like, oh my God.

00:05:24.000 So I pick up my satellite phone.

00:05:26.000 I call home to my wife, Jenna, who also creates and plans all these projects with me.

00:05:30.000 And I'm like, babe, I think we named the project the right thing, The Impossible Verse.

00:05:35.000 Yep, it looks like it might be impossible.

00:05:37.000 It's impossible to keep going.

00:05:38.000 So I'm one hour into a thousand mile journey pulling a sled, told everyone I'm going to do this and I'm already having those doubts pull up.

00:05:45.000 But fortunately I was able to get a little bit further that day and 54 days later made it to the end.

00:05:50.000 How far did you get in the first day?

00:05:52.000 Well, it's funny because we just showed the map.

00:05:54.000 It starts on an ice shelf, which is basically the frozen sea ice.

00:05:57.000 And there's an edge of that that's where the continent starts.

00:05:59.000 And so I have a waypoint on my GPS that marks that.

00:06:02.000 So the plane that drops me off actually dropped me off on the ice shelf before the continent starts.

00:06:06.000 And my first waypoint was kind of like the actual start.

00:06:09.000 And so one hour in, I haven't even hit the real start.

00:06:12.000 So when I call her on the phone, she's like, because she knows the route, and she's like, well, how far are you from the first waypoint?

00:06:17.000 Which is where the actual start is.

00:06:19.000 And I'm like, it's.63 more miles.

00:06:23.000 She's like, it's half a mile?

00:06:25.000 You have a thousand more to go.

00:06:26.000 Like, get to the first waypoint, you know?

00:06:28.000 And I was like, okay, okay.

00:06:30.000 So I, you know, rallied myself, got to the first waypoint, and then finally got in my tent that night and just kind of took a deep breath.

00:06:35.000 I think I was just overwhelmed by the magnitude of it.

00:06:37.000 I mean, imagine being a speck in the middle of Antarctica alone, these We're good to go.

00:06:48.000 We're good to go.

00:07:02.000 Yeah, so the training element of it was pretty cool.

00:07:06.000 I actually set a few other world records previous to this in the mountains and things.

00:07:10.000 We could talk about it if you want.

00:07:11.000 But the last years I really committed to this project, I decided to obviously start training specifically for this.

00:07:19.000 I needed to put on about 20 pounds of muscle.

00:07:21.000 I'm usually 6'165", pretty lean.

00:07:24.000 I had raced triathlon professionally for a number of years and realized I needed to be a bit bigger because I was going to lose so much weight.

00:07:30.000 And I found an amazing coach in Portland, Oregon, where I live, this guy named Mike McCastle.

00:07:35.000 I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but I know you've had David Goggins on your show, I take it.

00:07:39.000 So Mike actually surpassed David's pull-up record.

00:07:43.000 Mike did 5,804 pull-ups in 20 hours.

00:07:48.000 I think Goggins did about 4,000, which are both insane to me.

00:07:51.000 So he's in another 1,000?

00:07:54.000 Mike was wearing a 30-pound weight vest, too.

00:07:56.000 No!

00:07:57.000 Yes, just to add insult to injury.

00:08:00.000 Mike McCastle, absolute legend.

00:08:02.000 Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. 0.99

00:08:04.000 He did 5,000 fucking chin-ups with a weight vest on? 1.00

00:08:08.000 Dude, I barely can do 10. I'm right there with you, man. 1.00

00:08:12.000 I've got some other physical strengths, but the pull-up department is not my strong suit. 0.99

00:08:17.000 That is fucking insane! 0.83

00:08:19.000 Get this, too, just because I gotta big up my band for a second. 0.99

00:08:22.000 That's his fourth road ride.

00:08:23.000 He also pulled an F-250 truck 20 miles across Death Valley in a harness. 0.99

00:08:31.000 So I'm trying to look for the best guy to teach me how to pull heavy shit. 0.99

00:08:34.000 Oh my god, you got the guy. 0.99

00:08:35.000 I found the guy. 0.99

00:08:36.000 I was like, damn, this is the guy. 1.00

00:08:38.000 I just love that there's people like that out there that just make you feel like such a pussy. 1.00

00:08:44.000 Oh my god. 1.00

00:08:45.000 And the greatest thing about Mike, you know, big, strong, jacked dude, but like super soft-spoken.

00:08:50.000 He's like, yeah, I did those pull-ups.

00:08:52.000 It was cool. 0.98

00:08:54.000 He basically fucked with that record so hard. 0.99

00:08:58.000 He could die and like come back to life and live a whole nother life and no one's ever going to do it. 0.99

00:09:04.000 Yeah, so anyways, my training, he was the guy.

00:09:07.000 I went to him, trained out of this gym in Portland, where he trains out of, and he got me bigger, he got me stronger, but he also did all sorts of badass, crazy stuff.

00:09:16.000 I mean, this is a physical challenge, but it's more of a mental challenge than anything.

00:09:20.000 So he had me, you know, my hands in ice buckets, doing planks to get my heart rate jacked up, and then he'd be like, get out of the water!

00:09:26.000 Then I'd pull my hands out of the ice buckets, do, you know, a seated squat against the wall, but then he would hand me Legos, And so my hands are frozen.

00:09:34.000 My feet are in ice buckets now in a plank.

00:09:36.000 My heart rate's, you know, 190. And he's like, put this Lego set together.

00:09:39.000 So the dexterity of my fingers, the mental acuity to pull this all together.

00:09:43.000 There he is.

00:09:44.000 Look at this guy. 1.00

00:09:45.000 What a fucking savage this guy is. 1.00

00:09:47.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:09:48.000 And he did that for veteran suicides?

00:09:50.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:09:50.000 So he's got really, really important missions behind all of his projects.

00:09:54.000 He calls them 12 labors.

00:09:55.000 And over his life, he's trying to set 12 world records in various things.

00:09:59.000 Jesus Christ.

00:09:59.000 There's people that are just, they're just designed different.

00:10:03.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:04.000 So he's the man, but like this crazy training he came up with for me that was like the ice, the water, the mental acuity, all of this was like, he was like, yo, you're going to be in Antarctica.

00:10:14.000 If your tent blows away when you're pulling it up, you're dead.

00:10:17.000 Like the stakes are that high.

00:10:19.000 50, 60 mile per hour winds.

00:10:21.000 Right.

00:10:22.000 Absolutely crazy.

00:10:23.000 Did you ever have an issue like that?

00:10:25.000 Where you thought the tent could blow away?

00:10:27.000 I think, I don't know if you have it.

00:10:29.000 There's a clip on my Instagram I posted a few days ago of me setting up the tent in a minus 80 degrees out.

00:10:35.000 60 mile per hour winds.

00:10:37.000 It's pretty gnarly.

00:10:39.000 But yeah, I mean, there was one time when the tent almost did blow away from me.

00:10:42.000 There's this one, there's one other one.

00:10:44.000 This is me getting in the tent looking like an absolute disaster when I get help with audio.

00:10:49.000 But that's me.

00:10:50.000 That's me.

00:10:57.000 Whoa, you're pulling ice out of your eyelashes.

00:10:59.000 I got caught out in a massive storm.

00:11:03.000 And I just...

00:11:04.000 So hard to get the tent up.

00:11:06.000 I didn't know if I was gonna be able to get it up or I was gonna have to just keep walking.

00:11:10.000 Jesus!

00:11:11.000 I'm in the tent now.

00:11:14.000 Hoping these tent poles hold.

00:11:17.000 Man.

00:11:20.000 That was really intense.

00:11:22.000 How do you stay warm in that tent?

00:11:25.000 So, average temperature is about minus 25, minus 30 in Antarctica.

00:11:30.000 But like I said, when the wind jacks up, I don't know if there's that other clip of me setting up the tent, but if you get a chance to see that, it can be about minus 80 outside.

00:11:39.000 It's hard to wrap your mind around that, but I've tried to put it in perspective by saying I could take a cup of boiling water and throw it in the air and it immediately turns to ice.

00:11:46.000 That's the temperature we're dealing with.

00:11:49.000 Yeah, this is me trying to keep the tent poles together.

00:11:52.000 Usually you'd have someone else to hold on to it, but I'm alone.

00:11:54.000 I'm completely alone out there.

00:11:56.000 So this is me struggling.

00:11:58.000 With my tent, just trying to keep it up.

00:12:00.000 I've got it tied down to my sled there, just battling, battling the winds.

00:12:05.000 And like I said, the stakes are high.

00:12:06.000 If that blows away, I don't have a spare tent.

00:12:07.000 I've got no extra weight in my sled to hold spare stuff.

00:12:11.000 So it's do or die, quite literally, in a moment like that.

00:12:15.000 Did you have a patch kit?

00:12:16.000 I had a couple things repaired.

00:12:17.000 A sewing kit, a patch kit, stuff like that.

00:12:19.000 But if the tent itself or the tent poles ripped apart, pretty much done.

00:12:24.000 And also, you have to set up your tripod and film this.

00:12:28.000 Yeah.

00:12:28.000 And then press stop and go back inside.

00:12:30.000 And how are you keeping these batteries juiced up?

00:12:32.000 Are you using solar?

00:12:32.000 No, this is the film crew, man, that was following me around.

00:12:35.000 That right, the Flat Eye film crew.

00:12:37.000 Yeah, near the ice wall.

00:12:39.000 No, it was basically I had to keep the batteries warm by keeping them right against my skin.

00:12:44.000 So I'd keep the batteries right against my skin.

00:12:46.000 My body weight would keep it warm.

00:12:47.000 And the second I wanted to take it out, I'd pull it out real quick, hit play.

00:12:50.000 And then it would, you know, usually last a minute or enough to get a little clip or something like that.

00:12:55.000 You couldn't just let it run, but then it would, you know, completely freeze.

00:12:57.000 Even a full battery would be, you know, on zero battery by pretty quickly.

00:13:00.000 Were you using solar panels to charge it?

00:13:03.000 Yeah.

00:13:03.000 So one crazy cool thing about Antarctica at that time of year is it's 24 hours of daylight.

00:13:07.000 And so the sun never sets.

00:13:09.000 So even when I'm in my tent in the middle of the night, eye mask, earplugs to kind of pretend like it's nighttime, but 24 hours of daylight.

00:13:15.000 So solar panels, keeping everything charged, cameras, phone batteries, all that.

00:13:19.000 And are you traveling with...

00:13:21.000 Are you using GPS? Yeah, so I had some waypoints, the GPS waypoints that kind of led my path to the South Pole, etc., but mostly actually using a compass.

00:13:31.000 So I'd look at my GPS maybe once every week or something like that, just to get the bearing.

00:13:35.000 Because of the juice factor or...

00:13:37.000 It's actually just easier.

00:13:38.000 So I basically had like a harness in front of me that would have my GPS or my compass kind of off my chest, more or less, because some of the clips we saw, the sun's out, but actually more than half of the time, the clouds would come in.

00:13:49.000 So it'd be just complete and utter whiteout.

00:13:51.000 I couldn't even see one step in front of me.

00:13:54.000 And so I'd actually have to just stare down at my compass, keep it on this bearing.

00:13:58.000 And so imagine you can't see anything, can't see one step in front of you.

00:14:01.000 I'm pulling a 300-pound sled 12, 13 hours per day out.

00:14:05.000 Not listening to anything really can make dead silence and just staring at this compass bearing all day long. 1.00

00:14:12.000 Damn, dude. 1.00

00:14:14.000 Are you going crazy at all? 1.00

00:14:15.000 I mean, the mental side of it was by far the most interesting side of it for me.

00:14:20.000 You know, I have a lifelong endurance athlete, but really kind of an exploration into the mind is what it was for me and why I was curious about it.

00:14:27.000 So spending all this time in silence, I've done...

00:14:32.000 Yes.

00:14:33.000 So I've done a couple of these 10-day silent meditation retreats before this, which is 10 days, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, kind of dove into that piece of it, but 54 days alone in Antarctica in complete silence was next level of that,

00:14:48.000 for sure.

00:14:49.000 God. 1.00

00:14:50.000 Damn, dude, that is so fucking impressive. 1.00

00:14:54.000 I just can't believe that you did that. 1.00

00:14:56.000 Now, when you're looking down and it's an utter whiteout and you're looking at your compass and you're dragging this shit behind you, are you doing anything in your mind? 0.99

00:15:07.000 Are you singing songs? 0.99

00:15:09.000 What are you doing?

00:15:12.000 There's a couple different things, but really what ended up happening is I started to be able to trigger these flow states.

00:15:16.000 So, you know, as a lifelong professional athlete through different capacities in my life, you know, I've tapped into that.

00:15:23.000 You know, I was a swimmer when I was a little kid, so swimming laps in a pool, sometimes I would, like, kind of just tap into this, like, timeless space where, you know, maybe 30 minutes would go by in two minutes or something like that.

00:15:33.000 But I never really knew how I got there.

00:15:35.000 I just would sometimes tap into it, sometimes not.

00:15:37.000 You know, the zone, flow state, whatever you want to call that.

00:15:39.000 But in Antarctica, I went in with this sort of intention of exploring that space in my mind.

00:15:45.000 And so as I got more and more into these whiteouts, into these compasses, staring at this compass, staring at this expansive landscape, I started to find ways to actually trigger that flow state in my mind.

00:15:55.000 And so it got to the point where I could, for several days at a time, be in this deep flow state.

00:16:01.000 You know, my day was about 17 hours every day between getting up, boiling my water, getting out of my tent in those crazy conditions, packing my sled, dragging it for 13 hours, setting my tent back up in these storms.

00:16:10.000 But I got into this sort of sequence of being so present with each step, each next sequence, that it ended up being in this really timeless, spaceless place in my mind of true high performance that was almost like the most deepest, peaceful, meditative state that I can possibly imagine.

00:16:26.000 It was very profound and beautiful to get there in my mind.

00:16:29.000 Wow.

00:16:30.000 Now, are you boiling this water in your tent?

00:16:33.000 Like, how are you doing?

00:16:34.000 Using a jet boil?

00:17:04.000 That must be a lot of snow.

00:17:07.000 It's just a lot of snow, and it takes a few hours to melt that.

00:17:09.000 But people don't realize this, Antarctica is actually the largest desert in the world.

00:17:13.000 So it's actually very dry.

00:17:15.000 It doesn't snow very often, but when it does, it of course never melts.

00:17:18.000 And the South Pole is at 9,300 feet.

00:17:20.000 So not only am I in this desert, but I'm at altitude doing this thing.

00:17:25.000 Oh my God.

00:17:27.000 Did you train at altitude?

00:17:30.000 Did you use one of those tents to sleep in?

00:17:33.000 No.

00:17:33.000 Yeah, so this gym that Mike and I train at is called Evolution Healthcare and Fitness in Portland.

00:17:39.000 They actually have an altitude room there.

00:17:41.000 So it's not even a tent, but they actually have a full room where you can, you know, it's got rolling machines, it's got treadmills, it's got all that simulated up to about 14,000 feet.

00:17:49.000 How big is the room?

00:17:50.000 It's about 400 square feet high still.

00:17:53.000 It's big.

00:17:53.000 I mean, it's not like huge, but it's big enough.

00:17:55.000 Yeah, it's like a proper room.

00:17:56.000 I've been in some of those tents before.

00:17:58.000 When I was racing triathlon many years ago, a lot of people were starting to sleep in those tents, but a lot of people have a hard time in them.

00:18:03.000 They get warm and stuff like that.

00:18:04.000 I know a lot of fighters use them as well.

00:18:07.000 But yeah, it was pretty cool to have a full room that you can actually be in and move in properly to simulate some of the high-intensity stuff.

00:18:14.000 Yeah.

00:18:14.000 And so it would take you hours every day to make your water?

00:18:18.000 Yeah, I would say I was boiling water for about three, four hours per day.

00:18:21.000 So about an hour or two in the morning, hour or two in the evening.

00:18:24.000 It takes a lot of energy to boil, you know, frozen snow when it's that cold out.

00:18:28.000 So I had to carry a lot of fuel.

00:18:30.000 That was the other really heavy component of my sled.

00:18:32.000 Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

00:18:32.000 That's like hundreds of hours of fuel, right?

00:18:35.000 Yeah, so I took about 17 liters of fuel.

00:18:39.000 So that's what I have, six gallons or something like that.

00:18:41.000 Wow, how'd you know that that was going to be enough?

00:18:44.000 I did some practicing beforehand.

00:18:48.000 In 2016, I did another world record project where I climbed the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents, the seven summits, as well as went to the North and South Pole, but much smaller polar expeditions, a week basically crossing the last degree of latitude.

00:19:01.000 And so in those expeditions, I was on Everest during that time, Denali, etc.

00:19:05.000 All of that in 139 days.

00:19:07.000 But I did that, and that kind of helped me get a sense of it.

00:19:11.000 But honestly, it was also best guess based on talking to people, different experts in the field, you know, diving into that.

00:19:17.000 But you never know.

00:19:17.000 Is it going to be enough or too little?

00:19:19.000 I don't know.

00:19:19.000 How much did you have when you finally got to the end?

00:19:23.000 How much did you have left?

00:19:24.000 So my final push, I actually, I woke up on the morning of Christmas Eve, 24th of December this past year, and it looked, I was 77 miles from the finish.

00:19:34.000 And I'd been going at that point, at the beginning of the trip, I was only going 9, 10 miles per day.

00:19:38.000 Towards the end, I started going about 20, 25 miles per day.

00:19:41.000 So I said, you know what?

00:19:42.000 Like, I'm about three days out.

00:19:44.000 And then I thought to myself, maybe if I could push really hard these next two days, I could do it in two days, like two 15 plus hour days, like really get into it.

00:19:52.000 And started looking at my fuel and food supplies and like they were pretty low.

00:19:56.000 I had enough fuel, a few liters of fuel, but I actually only had about a day or two of food, like real substantial food left.

00:20:03.000 And so I woke up, and I was like, alright, let's go for this.

00:20:06.000 And in the actually deepest, talk about flow states, that was the deepest flow state of my life.

00:20:11.000 I woke up, and one hour in that day, it's Christmas morning now, I wake up, and I'm just locked in.

00:20:16.000 And I just came, I didn't tell anyone back home, didn't tell my wife who was tracking me, they had this GPS tracker where they could follow me, but I was just, in my mind, I was like, you know what, not three days, not two days, I'm going straight for it.

00:20:27.000 And so I did a final 32-hour continuous push on day 54, and 77 miles straight, dragging my sled all the way to get to the finish line in one continuous push.

00:20:38.000 No music, no nothing, just like in my head in this crazy flow state of, I don't know, high performance.

00:20:45.000 And it was a crazy final push to get there, but made it right before the food and fuel ran out.

00:20:51.000 Oh my god.

00:20:53.000 And then there's no one there, of course.

00:20:55.000 You cross the finish line.

00:20:57.000 You're like, done this.

00:20:57.000 No one in the world's ever done this.

00:20:59.000 Applause.

00:20:59.000 Nope.

00:21:00.000 Audience of zero.

00:21:01.000 And so what do you do when you get to the end?

00:21:03.000 You said, hey, I'm done.

00:21:04.000 Come get me?

00:21:05.000 Yeah.

00:21:06.000 How long does it take for them to come get you?

00:21:07.000 It took me a week to get out of Antarctica totally.

00:21:10.000 It took actually me four days to get out of there.

00:21:13.000 But there's a crazy other component to this, which is no one in the world had ever done this before.

00:21:18.000 And like I said, a few really talented people, some of the best explorers in the world had tried recently.

00:21:23.000 One guy died.

00:21:25.000 And it just so happened there's a really specific season when you can attempt this, but another guy was attempting this at the exact same time as me.

00:21:32.000 A British guy who's equivalent of a Navy SEAL, you know, British Special Forces.

00:21:37.000 The living most experienced guy in Antarctica has actually pulled 3,000 plus miles in Antarctica now on various expeditions.

00:21:44.000 And so we got dropped off one mile away from each other to begin this thing.

00:21:48.000 And obviously, I was the first.

00:21:51.000 I did win this race head to head.

00:21:53.000 And at the finish line, I waited for him for a few days because I wanted to congratulate him because he did ultimately finish.

00:21:58.000 But you can only imagine...

00:21:59.000 I went back to that first hour where I was like, it's impossible.

00:22:02.000 It was also like, it's impossible.

00:22:03.000 And Bo, by the way, this Navy SEAL dude who knows more about Antarctica than me, he's off and going.

00:22:08.000 I can see him in the distance just like leaving me in the dust.

00:22:12.000 But fortunately, after day six, I caught up to him.

00:22:14.000 You know, I waved to him in this weird like passing of the torch moment like I was passing him and then I never saw him again until I finished and I finished about 70 miles ahead of him, about two and a half days ahead of him.

00:22:25.000 That's gotta suck for him. 1.00

00:22:28.000 Imagine, he's like, I got this motherfucker. 1.00

00:22:30.000 I brought it home for America, man, you know? 1.00

00:22:32.000 Thank you.

00:22:32.000 Appreciate that.

00:22:33.000 We all appreciate that. 0.98

00:22:35.000 But still, that's got to suck for him.

00:22:37.000 Yeah, so I actually, even though I finished and the first thing I could have kind of wanted to do, I haven't had a shower.

00:22:43.000 I haven't, I actually, to save weight so I could get as much food and fuel in my sled, I brought no extra clothes, no extra pair of underwear.

00:22:49.000 Like, literally, no extra pair of underwear, no extra pair of nothing. 0.97

00:22:53.000 Where are you shitting out there? 0.98

00:22:55.000 Everyone wants to know this, so let's just get it on the table. 0.99

00:22:57.000 Thank you for asking.

00:23:01.000 Basically, I describe that vestibule situation.

00:23:04.000 So one side I cook in. 0.99

00:23:05.000 If the wind is calm, I get out of my tent, dig a hole, and go shit in a hole, basically. 0.90

00:23:11.000 But when it's real windy, like those storms I just watched, you're going to get frostbite if you try to bend over and pull your pants down when it's minus 80 out. 0.90

00:23:17.000 So in the vestibule of my tent, not the side I'm cooking on, but the other side where I'm still inside covered, I dig a hole in there.

00:23:24.000 That was my morning routine.

00:23:25.000 Get up at 6am, start boiling my water on one side of my tent, and it's not glamorous.

00:23:29.000 It's not.

00:23:30.000 Not a pretty thing.

00:23:32.000 Actually, to me, this is very cool, but also not glamorous.

00:23:35.000 Within one degree of latitude of the South Pole, so the last degree of latitude, 89 degrees, the South Pole is at 90 degrees.

00:23:41.000 It's basically 69 miles or 60 nautical miles circumference around the South Pole.

00:23:46.000 Antarctica being as pristine as it is, they have all these laws about environmental conservation, which to me is amazing, being someone who just loves and is a great steward of the land.

00:23:53.000 They actually say you can't even leave your human waste in holes here.

00:23:57.000 Even though there's nobody out there, they're like, we want this to be a completely protected area.

00:24:01.000 And so, yes, usually my sled was getting lighter most of the time because I was eating food every day and burning fuel.

00:24:07.000 But in that last degree of latitude to the South Pole and crossing it, I was shitting in a bag.

00:24:12.000 Wrapping it up and putting it in my sled and having to carry it with me. 0.90

00:24:17.000 Wow.

00:24:18.000 That shows discipline.

00:24:21.000 It shows something.

00:24:22.000 A lot of people have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, put it in a bag. 1.00

00:24:25.000 Fuck you. 1.00

00:24:28.000 Crazy assholes. 1.00

00:24:29.000 No one's up there. 1.00

00:24:30.000 Who cares if I take a shit up there? 0.99

00:24:31.000 It was tempting, but I grew up going out in the outdoors. 0.99

00:24:35.000 It just says leave no trace principle that I really love, and particularly Antarctica.

00:24:39.000 One of the things about Antarctica, it's one of those places where, imagine you've traveled far and wide in your life, and there's a few places, at least in my mind, where you can't put it into words until you've stepped off of it.

00:24:48.000 And for me, this is my second time in Antarctica.

00:24:51.000 Both times, you know, this big cargo ship basically lands you on the continent and then you get in a smaller plane to get dropped off to where I needed to start on the edge of the continent.

00:24:58.000 But both times stepping off the plane, I'm just shit-eating grin ear-to-ear on my face because I just am like, whoa, what is this place?

00:25:06.000 Even the second time seeing it, I felt like my cheeks were sore because I was just smiling so big of just the pristine beauty, the blank canvas. 0.95

00:25:15.000 I mean, you look out on the land and you're like...

00:25:17.000 Human footprints haven't touched 98% of the continent, something like that.

00:25:20.000 I mean, it's untouched.

00:25:21.000 And so, shitting in a bag, if I had to do that to do my part to keep it that way, I did my part. 1.00

00:25:28.000 How many bags of shit did you drag? 1.00

00:25:30.000 At the end, it was about... 1.00

00:25:32.000 I reused the bag.

00:25:33.000 Oh! 0.60

00:25:35.000 One per day for that section is about 120 miles.

00:25:38.000 It took me, I don't know, a week or so to cover that distance.

00:25:40.000 So, yeah, added weight to my sled rather than subtracting.

00:25:44.000 That was the middle part of the journey, right around the 30th and 40th day.

00:25:47.000 Now, how did you calculate your nutrition?

00:25:50.000 So the nutrition journey was actually fascinating.

00:25:53.000 And to be honest, in my opinion, people said, well, how come other people died trying?

00:25:57.000 Or why did other people not be able to do it?

00:25:58.000 Because one other guy ran out of food.

00:26:00.000 And so when I was looking at this journey, you know, again, we were calling it the impossible first.

00:26:04.000 Like, how am I going to make the impossible possible?

00:26:06.000 And I thought that the nutrition piece of it was going to be huge.

00:26:09.000 I actually, my dad's an organic farmer in Hawaii, like whole food health and nutrition has been a big part of my personal journey.

00:26:16.000 And so I found a company that was really in it with me.

00:26:20.000 So it's a company called Standard Process.

00:26:22.000 They're a whole food supplement company really involved in chiropractic and acupuncture.

00:26:26.000 And I presented them with this and I said, hey, what do you guys think?

00:26:30.000 Is there a way to figure this out?

00:26:33.000 And they're like, well, we have 20 of the top doctors, nutritionists, food scientists on our staff in this innovation center around nutrition come in the lab with us.

00:26:41.000 And so...

00:26:42.000 They'd never done this with an athlete before, but they were intrigued, and so I actually went and did a years-long worth of, you know, 100-plus blood tests, VO2 max tests, all this fitness testing all around my physiology, and they created, ultimately, a custom food solution as a bar form, essentially, called the columbar that was all whole food ingredients.

00:26:59.000 It was no, you know, chemical derivatives or anything.

00:27:01.000 It was, you know, coconut oil, you know, seeds, nuts, you know, all these different pieces of macronutrients as well as micronutrient blends that I needed, but custom-tailored to my physiology.

00:27:11.000 And that was the bulk of what I ate.

00:27:14.000 I ate 7,000 calories per day.

00:27:16.000 I was burning 10,000.

00:27:17.000 So even at 7,000, I was losing about a pound of weight almost to my body.

00:27:23.000 So that's why I needed to get bigger.

00:27:24.000 But these column bars just burned super efficiently in my body.

00:27:27.000 It was the perfect blend of everything.

00:27:30.000 So eating the same thing every single day for 54 days may have gotten a little bit boring, but my body was actually pretty dialed in.

00:27:35.000 Wow.

00:27:36.000 Now, when they did this and they made these custom bars for you, how did you know how many calories you're going to be burning while you're pulling this 300-pound sled?

00:27:48.000 Was it dependent upon the conditions, like if the snow was more packed or icy?

00:27:54.000 Yeah.

00:27:54.000 It would be more difficult if it was soft, right?

00:27:58.000 100%.

00:27:58.000 So, I mean, we had to use our best guess, honestly.

00:28:01.000 We had to just say, let's use our best guess.

00:28:03.000 Like I said, a bunch of smart people, smarter than me, were in this room, all these doctors, these PhDs around this, and we had to make some assumptions.

00:28:09.000 And ultimately, they were like, okay, you're going to burn 10,000 calories.

00:28:12.000 Let's get you 10,000 calories in these bars. 1.00

00:28:14.000 And we started running the weight on the sled, and we're like, that'll be a 500-pound sled.

00:28:18.000 Like, we can't carry that.

00:28:19.000 So it's this equation of, like, can you make the sled light enough to pull?

00:28:23.000 Yeah.

00:28:24.000 If we can get the nutrition right, how efficiently does that burn in your body?

00:28:27.000 How much can your stomach absorb?

00:28:28.000 So you're hungry the whole time?

00:28:30.000 More or less, yeah. 1.00

00:28:31.000 Fuck! 1.00

00:28:32.000 I was ready for a big fucking meal. 1.00

00:28:34.000 I got done, that's for sure. 0.99

00:28:36.000 What's the first thing you ate?

00:28:38.000 The first thing I ate when I got back It was a big burger, but you might call me lame for saying this, but I'm just going to say it because it's the truth.

00:28:46.000 What I craved was salad, man.

00:28:47.000 What I craved was just something, because I'd eaten this, you know what I mean?

00:28:50.000 I've been eating this freeze-dried field, this chunk of columbar, which got me through, but it was something green and alive, and so I had this big salad with avocado and salad.

00:29:00.000 I had a big burger, too, but then, of course, I eat, my stomach is shrunk, right?

00:29:04.000 I eat this big meal, and I'm like, oh, my stomach kind of hurts.

00:29:07.000 But emotionally, I was like, I'm back in the real world, baby.

00:29:11.000 So it was like, I ate everything I could get in my hands.

00:29:13.000 I went to a buffet, it just was like, my stomach was hurting, but I was like, I'm not going to stop.

00:29:16.000 And I just started eating like, whatever, croissants and bread, just all the things.

00:29:22.000 Wow.

00:29:22.000 I would imagine your body would, like, you're probably craving all that life, like, live things, green, leafy vegetables, fruit.

00:29:32.000 It's weird to say, I mean, like, I'm from Portland, Oregon, you know, it's a pretty green part of the world up there in the Pacific Northwest, and not even just the food component, but...

00:29:41.000 There's nothing alive out there.

00:29:43.000 There's no animals.

00:29:44.000 On the coast there are, but in the interior, I didn't see any animals.

00:29:46.000 I didn't see a bird.

00:29:47.000 I didn't see nothing, right?

00:29:49.000 And so, not only...

00:29:51.000 I think as humans, we're kind of wired to see things living.

00:29:54.000 I mean, even here in LA, a bit of a concrete jungle.

00:29:56.000 But you see trees on the street.

00:29:58.000 You see the ocean.

00:29:58.000 Squirrels.

00:29:59.000 Yeah, whatever.

00:29:59.000 And so, to not see anything alive for 54 days, it was like, wow, I want to smell fresh air of the trees.

00:30:06.000 I want to eat a salad.

00:30:08.000 I don't know.

00:30:08.000 That's where my mind got to was...

00:30:10.000 Kind of coming back to reality in that way.

00:30:12.000 Man, so when they're constructing these bars for you, and this is all based on your body and what burns well with you, how do they, in terms of how many calories, what's the best food in terms of weight versus calories?

00:30:30.000 And is there some foods that are heavier but don't have as many calories?

00:30:34.000 Yeah.

00:30:34.000 Yeah, so I think, I'm going to get the numbers pretty close to right here, but I think fat, of course, of the macronutrients, we got protein, fat, and carbs, right?

00:30:44.000 Right.

00:30:45.000 Fat is the most calorie-dense of them all.

00:30:47.000 And you have to make sure these things don't freeze solid, right?

00:30:50.000 So that was one of the, it was minus 25 in my sled every single day, so it had to actually be edible while frozen, essentially, because it would be too hard to re-warm them, because this was the food I was eating outside of my sled.

00:31:00.000 Oh! 0.60

00:31:00.000 So it's frozen too? 0.60

00:31:18.000 Which ultimately, you know, if you see coconut oil on the shelf, it's not a liquid, it's actually a solid, but it doesn't freeze like rock solid.

00:31:25.000 So having that much coconut oil in it allowed it to, we actually had to get it shipped down frozen because if it didn't freeze, it actually kind of got like flat.

00:31:32.000 And so they put it in these freeze-dried packs, shipped it down to Chile, had to do this whole customs thing to import it.

00:31:37.000 It was like a whole like crazy logistical mess.

00:31:39.000 But got that done and it actually held up so that it was enough fat in there that I could actually bite off chunks of this rather than, you know, there's plenty of stories of guys in these cold places breaking teeth on cliff bars and things like that.

00:31:50.000 So the column bars were good while frozen.

00:31:56.000 I should have brought you one, Matty.

00:31:58.000 I should have brought you one to try.

00:32:00.000 So it's mostly like a lot of fats and seeds and nuts.

00:32:04.000 Seeds and nuts.

00:32:05.000 And then the other thing is that they, like I said, their bread and butter at this company, Standard Process, is they're a supplement company.

00:32:11.000 But it's all whole food derivatives.

00:32:12.000 So organic farm...

00:32:14.000 I think?

00:32:35.000 That was my other question.

00:32:36.000 What was the plan if you did get sick?

00:32:39.000 Was it just to wait it out in the tent?

00:32:40.000 Wait it out in the tent.

00:32:42.000 You're not in contact with anything though, right?

00:32:46.000 So I had a couple of things.

00:32:48.000 One is I had my GPS, which I was paying the satellite every 10 minutes.

00:32:52.000 What I mean is life forms.

00:32:53.000 Oh, no, no.

00:32:54.000 Bugs, flu.

00:32:55.000 No, no, no.

00:32:55.000 Yeah, so that part of it, there's nothing out there.

00:33:00.000 So basically, if you get a bacteria, you've brought it out there.

00:33:03.000 So the actual idea was more or less to get out there healthy rather than you can stay pretty healthy in terms of bacteria and stuff.

00:33:08.000 Of course, you can get pretty worn down and sick and the cold or flu-like symptoms or any of that.

00:33:14.000 But any virus you have is something you had when you landed.

00:33:16.000 Exactly.

00:33:17.000 Because, I mean, there's nothing out there.

00:33:18.000 And are you, were you concerned about that?

00:33:20.000 Because, like, I would imagine, like, the anticipation leading up to it is a little stressful, and sometimes your immune system can get run down.

00:33:27.000 Oh, 100%.

00:33:28.000 You know, of course, it's fun to recount the epic parts of these journeys, or my other, you know, world records, climbing Everest, or this summit day, or this push, or whatever.

00:33:38.000 But anything that's this long duration, this was 54 days, the world record I did in 2006 was 139 days.

00:33:44.000 Like, the boring answer is, like, how did you do it?

00:33:46.000 It's like, well, like, I washed my hands really good when I went to the airport and I didn't eat this food off the street.

00:33:51.000 Staying healthy, if you can't get that right, it doesn't matter.

00:33:56.000 Yeah, man.

00:33:56.000 Imagine you're on the flight, headed out there, and some dude next to you is sneezing.

00:34:01.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00

00:34:02.000 Motherfucker. 1.00

00:34:02.000 There was a couple of times. 1.00

00:34:04.000 When I raced triathlon many years ago, I raced in something like 25 countries all over the world, different places, and there were three or four times I can remember.

00:34:10.000 I remember one time I flew to the Philippines, this place called Subic Bay, gearing up for this big race, and sure enough, the night before the race, just like... 1.00

00:34:18.000 Diarrhea like crazy, puking my brains out.

00:34:21.000 So I jump into the swim, swim in the ocean.

00:34:24.000 It's a milestone. 0.99

00:34:25.000 I'm feeling like shit. 0.98

00:34:25.000 But I'm like, I'm going to try. 0.98

00:34:26.000 I flew all the way to the Philippines.

00:34:28.000 I got to do this race.

00:34:29.000 Sure enough, I get on my bike and the bike course went right next to my hotel.

00:34:33.000 And I just had no power.

00:34:35.000 And I was like, yep, I'm turning off.

00:34:36.000 And the Filipino guy's like, no, no, you're going the wrong way of the course. 0.99

00:34:38.000 And I was like, nope, I'm going to my hotel room to shit some more. 0.99

00:34:41.000 Basically. 0.99

00:34:42.000 So yeah, one bad burrito, one bad this can ruin any athletic performance.

00:34:47.000 If you have diarrhea while you're pulling a 375 pound sled in Antarctica.

00:34:51.000 Oh my god.

00:34:53.000 That's not a pretty moment.

00:34:53.000 That is not a pretty moment.

00:34:54.000 Plus with the one pair of underwear, that makes it even more.

00:34:59.000 So, yeah, staying healthy was super key to all of this.

00:35:03.000 But, you know, all things considered, I mean, my body, of course, got banged up some, but, like, I came back, you know, relatively healthy, and I think the food and nutrition was a key part of that.

00:35:10.000 Oh, it has to be, but it sounds like you really did it wisely.

00:35:13.000 Like, I mean, that's so cool that you had that company behind you that organized the food and nutrition.

00:35:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:35:20.000 Good Lord, man.

00:35:21.000 Yeah.

00:35:22.000 Now, were you trying to put fat on before you left, as well as muscle?

00:35:25.000 Yeah, so with Mike, you know, the goal was to put, you know, I put about 10 to 15 pounds of muscle on, and then another 5 pounds of fat on top of that, just knowing that I was...

00:35:34.000 Only 5?

00:35:35.000 Total was 20 pounds total, but, you know, between fat and...

00:35:39.000 The last few weeks, I was, you know, basically, I'd been lifted, you know, I'd gotten strong and all this, didn't want to wear myself out too much, you know, stressing my muscles, because I was about to undergo this.

00:35:48.000 And it was where I was just putting calories in.

00:35:50.000 So I'd, you know, eat dinner and then Jenna, my wife, would be like, what are you going to do now? 0.74

00:35:54.000 And I'd be like, should I be sitting there just eating like a pint of, you know, coconut bliss ice cream, whatever it was, you know, putting calories in just to put some fat on there because that just burned off me immediately.

00:36:02.000 I mean, it was gone, so.

00:36:03.000 Yeah, so you must have been shredded by the time it was over.

00:36:07.000 Yeah, I was pretty...

00:36:09.000 There's actually...

00:36:10.000 I don't know if I'll pull it up, but there's a photo on my Instagram that kind of shows a little bit of the before and the after body shot.

00:36:15.000 But I... Yeah, I was very lean.

00:36:18.000 But it was...

00:36:18.000 Honestly, it was also scary.

00:36:20.000 Like, in the end, I think I held up pretty well.

00:36:22.000 But you're out there by yourself.

00:36:23.000 You've got no context.

00:36:24.000 And so I started looking down at my legs halfway through this journey.

00:36:27.000 Yeah, there I am.

00:36:28.000 So before and after.

00:36:29.000 Not that much of a difference.

00:36:31.000 Yeah.

00:36:32.000 Yeah, the light's not great.

00:36:33.000 You definitely look a lot more lean.

00:36:37.000 I wouldn't even say a lot more lean.

00:36:39.000 Yeah, so it's about 20 pounds different, but my mind's played tricks on me more than anything. 0.94

00:36:44.000 I looked down at my waist about halfway through, and I was like, holy shit, I'm falling apart here.

00:36:49.000 And I actually started getting in my own head about, am I losing too much weight? 0.95

00:36:52.000 Am I not?

00:36:52.000 But when I actually weighed myself afterwards, like 20 pounds, we thought it could have been as much as 40 pounds.

00:36:57.000 So, you know, only losing 20 pounds, all things considered.

00:37:00.000 Like, yeah, like you said, I don't look that, other than that really cool beard that I grew.

00:37:05.000 So you were ready to get gaunt.

00:37:07.000 Yeah, I mean, we had planned for that.

00:37:09.000 We had planned for that.

00:37:10.000 And like I said, I started out, I started out about 165. I put myself up to 185 to leave, and I finished at 165. So I actually finished way more near my sort of natural, fairly lean weight for my height.

00:37:20.000 So, perfect plan.

00:37:22.000 Yeah.

00:37:23.000 There's plenty of things that went wrong, but that part of it, yeah.

00:37:25.000 It seems like you kind of planned out for things going wrong.

00:37:28.000 Yeah, I mean, this was in one way as a solo effort.

00:37:32.000 I mean, I was out there by myself walking across this, but this was a massive team effort from these guys getting behind me, all these doctors, you know, all the different people I have supporting me, you know, my wife and then what she does with all the media and our non-profit news of many things.

00:37:46.000 A lot of pieces go into making this thing happen, so it was a team effort for sure, big time.

00:37:50.000 That is so amazing.

00:37:52.000 Now, at the end, you get there, you're done, but there's no one there.

00:37:56.000 So what do you do?

00:37:57.000 You make a phone call?

00:37:58.000 Yeah.

00:37:59.000 Yo, I'm done, come get me.

00:38:00.000 Do they know where you are?

00:38:02.000 Because they're tracking you, right?

00:38:03.000 Yeah, so what was kind of crazy was that crazy last push, right?

00:38:07.000 It's this 32-hour, you know, non-stop push.

00:38:11.000 And so what happened is it's Christmas Day when I start this push.

00:38:15.000 And so my whole family, I'm actually, I have five older sisters, big family, you know, I'm the baby of the bunch and they're all together in Hood River, Oregon at my sister's house.

00:38:24.000 And they're thinking, cool, Colin's like getting close to any of his project.

00:38:27.000 We'll track him.

00:38:28.000 And every day they track me on my GPS. It pinged the satellites every 10 minutes.

00:38:31.000 So people, all my Instagram followers, anyone could actually follow the progress in real time.

00:38:35.000 And they were used to seeing me stop at about 12, 12 hours into the day.

00:38:38.000 So, 12 hours into the day happens and they're like, okay, maybe he's going another hour.

00:38:42.000 13 hours, 14 hours, 15 hours.

00:38:45.000 They're like, what's going on?

00:38:46.000 16 hours.

00:38:47.000 My whole family's not normally together, but they're all together because it's Christmas Day.

00:38:50.000 Finally, 18 hours into this push, I finally stop and put up a waypoint because what happened was I ran out of water.

00:38:56.000 Even though I said I'm not stopping, I was like, I only had three liters of water after 18 hours.

00:39:00.000 I need more water.

00:39:01.000 So, I at least have to put my tent up to boil water inside.

00:39:04.000 Yeah.

00:39:04.000 So what I do, it's now midnight.

00:39:06.000 I start at 6 a.m.

00:39:07.000 It's now midnight.

00:39:08.000 I've been going 18 hours.

00:39:09.000 Midnight in Antarctica is, with the time zone I was staying on, was 7 p.m.

00:39:13.000 on the West Coast.

00:39:14.000 So it's Christmas dinner.

00:39:15.000 I finally call in.

00:39:16.000 It's my mom, my sister, my wife.

00:39:18.000 Everyone's on the phone.

00:39:19.000 They're like...

00:39:20.000 Oh my god, you did 47 miles today.

00:39:22.000 That's your best by like 15 miles.

00:39:24.000 Incredible.

00:39:25.000 And I was like, no, no, no.

00:39:26.000 I'm not stopping.

00:39:27.000 I'm actually just boiling water for an hour to continue back out for another like 14 hours to finish this thing.

00:39:31.000 They're like, what?

00:39:32.000 The weather must be really good.

00:39:34.000 Wow, you're feeling so good.

00:39:35.000 And I was like, actually, it's the worst weather of the entire trip because this...

00:39:40.000 Massive ground blizzard blew.

00:39:41.000 Like, hour 16 of this push, it was nice.

00:39:43.000 Just this ground blizzard, which is it's not actually snowing, but it feels like it's snowing because it's so windy that the snow is blowing around everywhere.

00:39:50.000 But I was locked in such a deep flow state in my mind that even setting my tent up in this crazy storm, even getting inside, 18-hour push, I was just like...

00:39:58.000 Nope, I've got this.

00:39:59.000 And it felt like for me when I reflect on that moment, Jenna even says this, you know, she talked to me every night and there's clips of me crying, there's clips of me having doubts, you know, there was ups and downs to this whole thing, but she was like, you sounded the most lucid I've ever heard you.

00:40:13.000 And she's watched me high perform and other things.

00:40:15.000 She was like, you were locked in.

00:40:16.000 And so instead of her going like, Maybe you should sleep and get some rest.

00:40:19.000 She was like, I trust you.

00:40:20.000 I believe you.

00:40:21.000 Go for it.

00:40:22.000 She could just hear it in my voice.

00:40:24.000 It was a crazy thing.

00:40:26.000 For me, I'm 33 years old now, and it really felt like a culmination of my entire life in a lot of ways.

00:40:34.000 From the swim practices as a little kid to...

00:40:38.000 Burning this crazy fire that I overcame.

00:40:39.000 We can talk about that if you want.

00:40:40.000 I raced triathlon professionally.

00:40:43.000 All of these moments, the meditation practice, the family, the support.

00:40:47.000 All of these things were stacking on each other to kind of lead to this final culminating moment.

00:40:52.000 And I had to pull on lessons from each phase of my life to be that locked in.

00:40:55.000 But I found myself just kind of in that moment, in that flow state, being able to get up out of that Hour 18 and say to them, actually, I'm going back out in this crazy ground blizzard.

00:41:05.000 I got another 14 hours to go to finish this thing.

00:41:07.000 And so that was 32 hours and 77 miles later, the final push to the end.

00:41:13.000 Now, what did you wear in terms of like a base layer?

00:41:17.000 Was there a concern about you sweating while you were pulling all that weight, especially initially when it was 375 pounds?

00:41:23.000 Yeah.

00:41:24.000 So, you know, one of the famous lines that, you know, people who have been in the polar environments will say is, if you sweat, you die.

00:41:31.000 And, you know, it's maybe a little bit of hyperbole, but it's not far from the truth, which is you start sweating and you stop for even 30 seconds, your clothes are literally freezing to your body.

00:41:41.000 And so it was this crazy kind of balance of being able to pull the sled, get your heart rate elevated enough to keep your body warm.

00:41:48.000 But not too warm that you were sweating.

00:41:50.000 And so any second I would start sweating, I would strip layers off.

00:41:54.000 So there was times, especially when there was no wind, it'd still be ambient temperature, minus 20, minus 25, but I would just have like a thin Gore-Tex jacket on and one base layer.

00:42:02.000 That's it.

00:42:03.000 Were you wearing merino?

00:42:05.000 Merino actually itches my skin, although it's really good, but for me, I'm a little bit allergic to it.

00:42:09.000 So I wore synthetic fabric.

00:42:11.000 Do they have a synthetic that completely mimics Merino in terms of the way, when it's moist, you still stay warm?

00:42:17.000 Yeah, so Merino, honestly, Merino is amazing fabric for that reason.

00:42:21.000 Unfortunately for me, like I said, it just irritates my skin.

00:42:23.000 It is so funny that you could suffer through all that, but you can't have itchy clothes on.

00:42:27.000 Little Merino wool is going to make me feel that.

00:42:30.000 No, but, so I use a synthetic, but it's crazy.

00:42:33.000 What company are you using?

00:42:34.000 I was using Mountain Hardware Base Layers, and then actually my outer layers was this Norwegian company called Bergens of Norway.

00:42:41.000 They don't sponsor me, but they actually, believe it or not, the Norwegians know a thing or two about being in the polar environment, and so they've designed a really good jacket and pant that's actually really breathable and really good, and then I sewed a fur ruff onto the edge, so a wolf fur ruff on the outer side of the hood.

00:42:59.000 Wolf?

00:42:59.000 I think it's wolf, yeah.

00:43:00.000 Wolf fur.

00:43:01.000 Wolf fur.

00:43:02.000 I thought you were saying wool, but then I was like, it sounds like wolf.

00:43:05.000 You know more about this than me.

00:43:07.000 I hope I don't annoy your audience.

00:43:08.000 I am not a big hunter myself.

00:43:10.000 I've never done a lot of that, but yeah, it's a wolf fur.

00:43:14.000 Well, they know how to survive in the cold.

00:43:16.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:43:17.000 Now, the base layer is a synthetic.

00:43:18.000 What is the material that it's made out of?

00:43:21.000 The base layer is, yeah, it's a synthetic, like a polypropylene, something like that.

00:43:26.000 And so when it sweats, it dries quickly, is that the idea?

00:43:29.000 Yeah, so as it dries quickly, but the idea was just to not get it wet, so basically strip down as much as possible.

00:43:35.000 But literally, I'd go from that, and then of course I needed to eat and drink every, whatever, 30 minutes or whatever, actually more like every hour, so I'd stop.

00:43:43.000 So I'd stop, and the front of my sled I had a huge puffy down jacket, like a massive Michelin Man, huge puffy down jacket.

00:43:49.000 So even if you're stopping for a minute to drink water, before even trying to do that, boom, put the big jacket on, because that's how cold...

00:43:56.000 Or how cold you can get immediately from stopping.

00:43:59.000 I mean, it's just so much colder than when pulling the sled.

00:44:01.000 Your heart rate stays up and keeps you pretty warm.

00:44:03.000 I would imagine, like, your hands and your feet, too.

00:44:06.000 That would be a real issue, right?

00:44:07.000 The small digits?

00:44:08.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, frostbite's real, for sure.

00:44:11.000 Hands outside of gloves.

00:44:12.000 That's why some of the stuff I was doing in the training of getting my hands with the dexterity.

00:44:16.000 You know, you have to tie all these knots with big gloves, mittens on.

00:44:18.000 You can't take your gloves off for any sizable period of time.

00:44:21.000 If you look back on a lot of my photos, I've actually got tape on my face over across my nose and my cheeks.

00:44:26.000 Yeah, I saw that.

00:44:26.000 And that's because I started getting tiny little bits of frostbite on the bottoms of my nose and on my cheeks because I'd wear a full face mask, buff, everything, but even, you know, tiny little, you know, one, you know, needle prick of wind on your face throughout the day in that cold, it's going to turn into a cold injury.

00:44:43.000 And so I started getting a few cold injuries on my face, nothing, you know, too bad.

00:44:47.000 Do you grease your face up or anything?

00:44:49.000 Mostly the tape and then I had a little bit of like Vaseline or like chapstick type of stuff on some of the bad areas.

00:44:55.000 The one thing actually that I did that I'd never done before would actually worked well was a tip that I got which was my fingers started cracking really really bad from the cold and so they were like really painful and I actually was pouring putting super glue into all of those basically little micro cuts on my fingers which when someone told me that as a trick I was like really but It turns out it's actually a really good trick,

00:45:16.000 so it's kind of super gluing these cuts on my fingers back together, and that actually worked reasonably well, all things considered.

00:45:22.000 I mean, all things considered is the operative word, but it worked.

00:45:26.000 Yeah.

00:45:27.000 Wow.

00:45:27.000 So, you're wearing, what about your eyes?

00:45:31.000 So I'm wearing goggles, but funny enough, I had a couple of fancier, nicer ski goggles with me.

00:45:40.000 But yeah, there's the tape on my face right there.

00:45:43.000 But yeah, that's actually just like the normal K-team tape, like a physio tape that you'd see athletes wearing.

00:45:49.000 And I just had it in my repair kit.

00:45:51.000 It wasn't meant for this purpose, but I was like, what do I have that I could put on my face to block it a little bit better?

00:45:56.000 Hmm.

00:45:57.000 But I had those goggles on some of the time.

00:45:58.000 But actually, the goggle that I wore the most was one that you might use for motocross.

00:46:02.000 Because it has like a plastic face mask over the front of it.

00:46:07.000 Because the wind, when it was blowing, it would just kind of blow around.

00:46:09.000 So sometimes I had this fleece stripped over my face, but it would blow too much.

00:46:13.000 And so I had this more plastic face mask.

00:46:15.000 So that's the one you can see.

00:46:17.000 Look how frozen it is on the inside.

00:46:20.000 That is so crazy!

00:46:22.000 Oh my god, man.

00:46:23.000 And then this neoprene mask underneath.

00:46:25.000 So I had double face mask, double tape, anything to just keep me warm.

00:46:32.000 I would never have suspected that it was so high above sea level there.

00:46:36.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:37.000 So you've got whatever it is, 9,300 feet at the South Pole.

00:46:40.000 So it's basically just like elevated ground, but it seems flat.

00:46:44.000 Right, but I started at sea level.

00:46:47.000 I'm actually going uphill all the way to the South Pole.

00:46:50.000 So for the first 40-some days, I pulled that sled uphill completely.

00:46:56.000 You're freaking me out.

00:46:59.000 That whole thing freaks me out.

00:47:01.000 When you were freaking out an hour in, and you hadn't even actually hit land yet, what thoughts were going through your head?

00:47:10.000 Were you thinking, man, I need to get someone to fucking rescue me? 0.86

00:47:13.000 I mean... 0.97

00:47:14.000 It definitely, you know, those moments of doubt, this is on Everest.

00:47:18.000 Oh, this is a different one.

00:47:19.000 We'll get to this.

00:47:20.000 We'll get to this.

00:47:20.000 Yeah.

00:47:22.000 You know, what's going through my head was these moments of doubt, for sure.

00:47:26.000 But one of the things for me, you know, to be honest with these projects that I've created...

00:47:31.000 I love pushing my own limits.

00:47:32.000 I love finding the edges of my own potential, all that kind of stuff.

00:47:35.000 But I also now really enjoy building these projects that I can share with other people.

00:47:39.000 I do this nonprofit work where there's 30,000 school kids tuning into this project and using this as curriculum in their classrooms to learn about climate change, to learn about weather, atmospheric pressure.

00:47:49.000 That's a really cool project like that.

00:47:50.000 And then just sharing it with the world at large.

00:47:52.000 People going like, this is impossible.

00:47:53.000 I mean, how many guys do you know that's like, one day I'm going to do this cool thing, but they like never do it, right?

00:47:57.000 Right.

00:47:58.000 Actually going after that and sharing it away was like, you might not want to walk across Antarctica, but you probably have some hope or some dream or some goal that you want to accomplish in your life. 0.96

00:48:06.000 Fucking go and do it. 0.95

00:48:07.000 Get after it. 0.99

00:48:08.000 And so, for me doing this, it's funny, I've started to think of myself less as an athlete and actually more of as an artist.

00:48:14.000 And my canvas really is just endurance sports, but creating these art projects in the world that I can create and share with people through storytelling to hopefully inspire them to do that.

00:48:22.000 So, what was I thinking in that first hour was, you know, I don't want my art project to blow up right in my face, but more so, this was bigger than myself.

00:48:32.000 And that's really what kept me going forward.

00:48:33.000 It's like, I can't let these kids in these public school classrooms think that I quit after the first hour.

00:48:38.000 These are other people that are driving inspiration from this, hopefully.

00:48:41.000 I want to do this for this larger purpose.

00:48:43.000 And honestly, that's what really kept me going forward through the really hard times, was that connection to a larger purpose of what I want to put out in the world and that ripple effect of positivity.

00:48:52.000 That's awesome.

00:48:53.000 And then, of course, you have a giant team that prepared and helped you.

00:48:56.000 You don't want to let them down as well.

00:48:58.000 Yeah, you know, it's a lot goes into it.

00:49:01.000 So get into that starting line and having that doubt.

00:49:04.000 But I think, I mean, on one level, it's also, it's a human element.

00:49:07.000 It'd be easy for me to come in here and tell this story like, you know what, Joe?

00:49:11.000 Like, I'm the biggest badass in the world.

00:49:13.000 No one's walked across Antarctica and like, I did it, even though these people died trying, whatever.

00:49:17.000 Like, those are the facts of the situation.

00:49:19.000 But like, the truth is, man, like, I'm human.

00:49:21.000 I have the wave of human emotions.

00:49:23.000 I've figured out how to tap into my mind in a way to do these things, but I still experience fear.

00:49:28.000 I still experience doubt.

00:49:30.000 I still experience the ups and downs, but I have a way of actually being able to repurpose or refocus that energy into positive forward momentum.

00:49:37.000 I think that's what the difference is.

00:49:39.000 But I believe...

00:49:40.000 All of us, all of us humans have the capacity to do this.

00:49:42.000 Like you're looking at me, I'm like a pretty like regular like size, regular looking guy.

00:49:47.000 But I think, you know, the muscle between my ears is what separates the difference and it allowed me to do this more than anything.

00:49:51.000 You don't seem to have the darkness that I usually see in people that do things like this.

00:49:56.000 Do you know what I'm saying? 0.52

00:49:58.000 I've met a bunch of people that have done some fucked up things and they all have some weird darkness. 0.85

00:50:04.000 Yeah, you know, I hear what you're saying. 0.72

00:50:07.000 I think for me, a lot of this strength comes from a dark moment in my life.

00:50:11.000 You know, right after college, I was traveling around the world.

00:50:14.000 I had no money as a kid growing up, you know, working class background, painted houses every summer, but always dreamed of traveling the world.

00:50:22.000 So I was like, one day I'm going to travel the world.

00:50:24.000 So I finished college, buddies of mine are getting like real jobs and Whatever, Wall Street and things like that.

00:50:29.000 And I was like, you know what?

00:50:30.000 I saved up $10,000 over the past six years.

00:50:33.000 I'm going to take a surfboard and a backpack and go see the world with my life savings.

00:50:36.000 And so I went and do that.

00:50:38.000 I'm 21 years old.

00:50:39.000 I go to Fiji.

00:50:40.000 I surf through Australia, hitchhike through New Zealand.

00:50:42.000 I end up in Thailand.

00:50:44.000 You ever been to Thailand?

00:50:46.000 Yeah.

00:50:46.000 Yeah, of course.

00:50:47.000 So you're familiar with how much fire and fire dancing and various crazy debaucherous things that happen over there.

00:50:53.000 So I'm on a beach in rural Thailand and I decide to jump this flaming jump rope.

00:50:57.000 And unfortunately it goes terribly wrong for me.

00:51:00.000 The rope wraps around my legs and ignites my entire body on fire to my neck.

00:51:06.000 And, you know, in an instant, my life changed.

00:51:08.000 You know, fortunately for me, the water's edge, the ocean, was 10 steps away, so kind of instinct takes over, and I dive into the ocean, which extinguished the flames.

00:51:17.000 My body's on fire to my neck, but not before.

00:51:19.000 About 25% of my body is severely, severely burned.

00:51:22.000 So my clothes were on fire.

00:51:24.000 But mostly we got severely burned was my legs and feet.

00:51:27.000 And so I'm in a place, I'm on a beach.

00:51:29.000 There's no hospital on this.

00:51:30.000 I'm on an island.

00:51:31.000 There's no hospital.

00:51:32.000 Instead of an ambulance ride, I'm on the back of a moped driving down a dirt path.

00:51:36.000 You know, I'm in a one-room nursing station, literally like the size of the room we're sitting in.

00:51:40.000 They're like, this is our sort of hospital.

00:51:42.000 It's like one bed.

00:51:44.000 And I'm just completely devastated.

00:51:46.000 And so they put me under eight surgeries over the next week in the middle of nowhere, rural Thailand.

00:51:50.000 Eight surgeries?

00:51:52.000 Yeah, and basically, there's a cat running around my bed every time I come out of their quote-unquote ICU. There's a cat running around my bed and across my chest, and the doctors are literally saying to me, in the broken English, they're saying, hey, you'll probably never walk again normally.

00:52:07.000 You're probably never going to walk again normally.

00:52:10.000 Yeah, there's a photo of that.

00:52:12.000 I think if you click over on that to the second one, it actually shows, you know, there's what the legs look like.

00:52:18.000 So, you know, I was, and that's that photo there with those legs, that's actually eight weeks after I was burned.

00:52:24.000 So that, believe it or not, that's like, it's starting to look a little bit better.

00:52:28.000 All things considered there.

00:52:30.000 So, as you can probably imagine, I mean, just the darkest time of my life.

00:52:34.000 I've been, you know, an athlete.

00:52:35.000 I swam through college.

00:52:36.000 I thought of myself as a physically active person.

00:52:39.000 And here I am, like doctor, saying, hey, you know, 22-year-old kid, like, you'll never walk again normally.

00:52:45.000 To me, the hero in this story, which is maybe why you don't see the darkness in my eyes and it's more the light, but my mother is really the heroine of this tale, which is she arrived to my bedside around day five, flies all the way over to Thailand, finds me.

00:52:58.000 Are you a parent?

00:53:00.000 I don't know.

00:53:00.000 Do you have Yeah, I don't have kids yet, but I can only imagine as a parent what it's like to walk into a hospital room and see your kid halfway around the world in this state, nothing you can do.

00:53:09.000 And she admits now that she was crying in the hallways, you know, pleading with the doctors for good news, like he's going to be alright, right?

00:53:16.000 He's going to walk.

00:53:17.000 She's crying.

00:53:18.000 Every time she walked into my hospital room, she walked in with a smile on her face. 0.99

00:53:22.000 And there's this air of positivity of being like, okay, Colin, this is bad.

00:53:25.000 What do you want to do when you get out of here?

00:53:27.000 Let's set a goal.

00:53:28.000 Let's get out of here and do something positive. 0.95

00:53:30.000 And I'm like, mom, are you crazy?

00:53:32.000 The doctors say I'm never going to walk again normally.

00:53:34.000 My life as I know it is over.

00:53:36.000 Just in this really dark place in my mind, but she just kept at me day after day with this positivity.

00:53:41.000 And I finally closed my eyes and I just pictured like, what am I going to be?

00:53:45.000 And I closed my eyes and I had this visualization of myself crossing a triathlon finish line, which is not something I'd ever done before.

00:53:51.000 I'd swam in college, but I'd never biked or run competitively, nothing.

00:53:54.000 But I was like, you know what?

00:53:55.000 The able-bodied me sometime in the future is going to be not only walking again, but doing a triathlon race.

00:54:02.000 And so I said it to her.

00:54:03.000 I said, my goal is to race a triathlon one day.

00:54:05.000 And instead of her looking at me going like, well, I said set a goal, but maybe something more realistic that doesn't require you to be running, she was like, great, let's learn about it.

00:54:13.000 Pulls out her computer and just literally starts reading me like, triathlon races are this.

00:54:17.000 They're this far.

00:54:18.000 They're this distances.

00:54:19.000 I knew nothing about the sport other than it just popped into my mind.

00:54:22.000 It's something I thought I maybe wanted to do.

00:54:25.000 And so, that's what I focus on.

00:54:27.000 I literally have this photo of me with a Thai doctor.

00:54:29.000 My legs are bandaged to my waist, and the Thai doctor is looking at me like crazy, but I'm lifting these 10-pound barbells in my hand going, I'm training for a triathlon now.

00:54:38.000 The guy's like, you're in Thailand in a hospital, and I'm telling you, you're never going to walk again normally.

00:54:43.000 And so, you know, flash forward, you know, two or three months, I finally get released from this Thai hospital.

00:54:48.000 You were there for three months?

00:54:49.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:50.000 Oh, my God.

00:54:50.000 And when I got released, I still hadn't walked.

00:54:53.000 You know, I'm in a wheelchair.

00:54:55.000 I got carried on and off the flight back to Portland, Oregon, land back home, and, you know, still bandaged up.

00:55:01.000 And my mom, you know, says to me, I wake up the first morning back in my parents' house, my mother's kitchen, the house I grew up in, and she looks at me and she goes, Alright, Colin, now I know you've got this big triathlon goal, but today your goal is to take your very first step.

00:55:13.000 And so she actually grabs a chair from our kitchen table and places it one step in front of my wheelchair, and she says, today you need to somehow figure out how to get out of that wheelchair, take one step, and step into the chair in front of you.

00:55:25.000 And I'm looking at it like, I don't know if this is possible.

00:55:28.000 But three hours later, four hours later, I'm still staring at this chair and I finally work up the courage and strength to get out of this wheelchair, take the one step, and get into that chair in front of me.

00:55:36.000 And is the problem that because of the burnt skin, it's not flexible?

00:55:40.000 You can't move it?

00:55:42.000 No, that's a good question.

00:56:03.000 They're not saying you'll never walk as in you won't be able to stand up at all, although that was like extremely painful, but they just didn't think, you know, be imagine walking around without being able to bend your knees or your ankles with like full mobility.

00:56:14.000 So it just was like, you're not going to be able to have that back, basically.

00:56:18.000 So sure enough, I take that first step, get in that chair.

00:56:20.000 The next day, my mom doesn't take it easy on me.

00:56:22.000 She just moved this chair five steps away. 1.00

00:56:24.000 The next day, ten steps away.

00:56:25.000 You know, every day, a few more steps.

00:56:28.000 Not to go on and on, but basically, 18 months after, you know, getting released from that hospital, I find myself in Chicago.

00:56:34.000 I finally, you know, took a job in finance, just trying to get out of my parents' basement, like, get on with my life.

00:56:38.000 I'm 23 years old.

00:56:39.000 Like, yeah, I got to get, like, a real job, get out of my parents' basement, you know, move to Chicago, take a job in finance, and, uh, Try to get my shit together, basically.

00:56:48.000 And I honored that goal.

00:56:49.000 I said, you know what?

00:56:50.000 I'm going to sign up for the Chicago Triathlon.

00:56:51.000 I live here now.

00:56:52.000 Joined a local gym.

00:56:53.000 Knew nothing about the sport still.

00:56:55.000 I'm asking random guys at the gym, like, anybody here race a triathlon?

00:56:58.000 I'm in a spin class.

00:57:00.000 How do you...

00:57:01.000 How do you take your shoes off and run afterwards?

00:57:06.000 How does it even work?

00:57:07.000 Ask these questions.

00:57:08.000 And sure enough, through that process, I trained at this gym, signed up for the Chicago Triathlon, ended up racing the race, crossed the finish line.

00:57:15.000 And to my complete and other surprise, I didn't just finish the race, but I actually won the entire Chicago Triathlon, beating 4,000 other people coming first place.

00:57:24.000 What?!

00:57:25.000 Your first triathlon?

00:57:27.000 You won?

00:57:28.000 Wow.

00:57:29.000 What kind of training did you do to prepare yourself for that?

00:57:32.000 I mean, like I said, I had been a collegiate swimmer, so I was a Division I swimmer.

00:57:36.000 Swam at Yale University, but then the biking and running was completely new to me.

00:57:43.000 Did you have anybody show you how to do it, or did you just start running and biking?

00:57:46.000 Yeah, I literally walked into this spin class.

00:57:49.000 So you didn't actually ride a bike, you spent?

00:57:51.000 So I went to the spin class and met a guy, and he was like, oh, I've done one triathlon before.

00:57:56.000 So he took me out on a couple rides with his buddies.

00:57:59.000 I had this steel frame bike.

00:58:01.000 I didn't know all these carbon wheels and aero helmet, all these fancy triathlon type of things.

00:58:06.000 I didn't know much about it.

00:58:08.000 And literally for a summer, I just kind of asked people some questions.

00:58:11.000 And what's funny about triathlon, I don't know how familiar you are with this sport, but In a race like the Chicago Triathlon, there's more than 4,000 participants.

00:58:20.000 And so, unlike a marathon where everyone just starts at the same time, you actually have to start in waves, like 100 people every five minutes.

00:58:27.000 And I was the 39th wave of 53. And so, I dive into Lake Michigan, and there's people that already started like two hours before me, and there's people starting two hours after me.

00:58:36.000 And so, when I finished the race, you know, I swim, I bike, I run.

00:58:39.000 It was Olympic distance triathlon, so it was a mile swim, 25 miles bike, 6.2 mile run.

00:58:44.000 I crossed the finish line.

00:58:46.000 I don't still know I won the race because, like, people started before me, people started after me, and they take the cumulative time at the end.

00:58:52.000 And so I, like, my grandma's there because she lives in Chicago, like, gives me a big hug.

00:58:56.000 Like, I'm so proud of you.

00:58:57.000 You weren't able to walk again, and here you are finishing triathlon.

00:59:00.000 Let's go get lunch.

00:59:01.000 And so I, you know, grab my wetsuit and my bike.

00:59:03.000 My grandma and I sit down to have lunch, and as we're walking back to the car, she's like...

00:59:07.000 Do you want to see, like, what place you came in your age group?

00:59:09.000 And I was like, sure, like, that would be cool.

00:59:11.000 Like, let's go see how I did.

00:59:12.000 And we wander over to, like, the scorer's table.

00:59:14.000 And the guy's like, I'm like, oh, you know, I'm trying to figure out a place.

00:59:17.000 What's your name?

00:59:17.000 I was like, oh, I'm calling a break.

00:59:18.000 They're like, we've been calling your name over the loudspeaker for the last 20 minutes.

00:59:22.000 I'm like, oh, why?

00:59:22.000 Did I, like, do something wrong?

00:59:23.000 And they're like, you won.

00:59:25.000 Like, my age group?

00:59:26.000 And they're like, no, you won.

00:59:27.000 Like, the whole race. 0.94

00:59:28.000 It was just this surreal, surreal moment in my life. 0.88

00:59:32.000 I mean, it was wild, but for me, in that moment, what I thought back, I was like, it was cool to pat myself on the back, like, holy shit, I just did this crazy thing.

00:59:42.000 But it was more so, going back to your initial question about the darkness versus the light, at least in my journey, was I was like, wow, this was a sliding doors moment.

00:59:50.000 What had happened had my mom not Come in with this air of positivity and force me to set this tangible goal.

00:59:56.000 Like, I'm certain my life would be nowhere where it was today.

00:59:59.000 But then it's not, I wasn't like, oh, wow, I'm some superhuman freak that can do these things.

01:00:03.000 I was like, wow, humans, all of us, we all have these reservoirs of untapped potential inside of us and can achieve extraordinary things when we set our minds to it.

01:00:11.000 And so what it did for me is just spark this curiosity, like, well, what else can I do if I set my mind to it?

01:00:16.000 So sure enough, it was a Sunday when I raced the Chicago Triathlon.

01:00:20.000 I coincidentally met, who became a huge mentor and influence in my life that afternoon, a guy named Brian Gelber, who ended up being my first sponsor.

01:00:28.000 And he said to me, you won the Chicago Triathlon today?

01:00:31.000 Do you think you should maybe do something about that?

01:00:33.000 And I was like, yeah, but I've got a job and I don't have any money.

01:00:35.000 I would need a sponsor.

01:00:36.000 He's like, I'll be your first sponsor if it's something you want to take seriously.

01:00:40.000 And so, literally, that was on a Sunday.

01:00:42.000 Monday morning, I walk in and quit my job.

01:00:46.000 Immediately.

01:00:47.000 Oh my god.

01:00:48.000 And two weeks later I'm living in Australia training triathlon full time and ended up racing triathlon professionally for the U.S. national team all over the world for the next six years.

01:00:56.000 Wow.

01:00:57.000 What a crazy story.

01:00:59.000 It was a crazy moment.

01:01:00.000 And what happened ultimately with the injuries that you sustained from the fire?

01:01:04.000 You know, all things considered, that was January 14, 2008. So it's just over 11 years ago now.

01:01:11.000 And I, you know, I ultimately have been pretty all right.

01:01:16.000 I mean, I've got some scars, but it's pretty faint.

01:01:18.000 I was able to gain back most of the full flexibility in my legs.

01:01:22.000 If you look at my left foot, it's where the worst, worst burns, but where the rope really just like sat on my foot for a long time must have.

01:01:29.000 That's still pretty thick with scar tissue.

01:01:31.000 When I'm in the mountains, when I'm in places like climbing Mount Everest like I did, pulling across Antarctica, all the things, I have to be really aware because my skin regulates heat not in the best way.

01:01:40.000 Heat and cold, it's still not like normal skin.

01:01:43.000 Because of the scar tissue?

01:01:44.000 The scar tissue just carries the heat a little bit different for some reason.

01:01:48.000 I guess I don't know exactly why.

01:01:50.000 Is it not as porous?

01:01:50.000 Yeah, it's not as porous.

01:01:54.000 We're good to go.

01:02:13.000 I would say it's pretty much 100%.

01:02:15.000 I mean, the things I've done with my legs and body in the last 10 years, I think, prove at least that my body's doing all right.

01:02:21.000 So I feel extremely, extremely fortunate to have recovered as well as I did.

01:02:25.000 And, you know, more than anything, I attest that to, of course, the physical ability for my body to recover in the way it did.

01:02:31.000 But I think that, at least for me, started with the mind, started with that positivity of my mother and the duration of the many different things I've done since then.

01:02:39.000 And you said you sustained ligament damage to your joints and your knees?

01:02:42.000 Yeah, so there's basically, again, I'm not, my anatomy, I have other skills, but my full anatomy is not, I'm not a doctor, let's put it that way.

01:02:52.000 But yeah, basically the ligaments, particularly on the backs of my knees, so I don't know exactly what that ligament is that goes through there.

01:02:59.000 That was really jammed up with the scar tissue.

01:03:01.000 So I wasn't able for a long time to fully bend my knees and flex them in the full way.

01:03:06.000 And the same thing in the ankles, whatever that ligament is that goes sort of basically, not your Achilles, but the other side of your foot, basically.

01:03:13.000 That part was just so much scar tissue had formed where the skin was healing around that.

01:03:18.000 And from the damage to the ligaments, it wasn't sort of being able to fluidly flex in the way that you normally would see a foot.

01:03:24.000 Imagine not being able to point your foot, basically, if you're putting your leg forward out, back like that.

01:03:29.000 Yeah.

01:03:29.000 For a long time.

01:03:32.000 So I was kind of dragging my feet around that first year.

01:03:35.000 Wow.

01:03:35.000 So did you have to just push through the scar tissue and break it up?

01:03:39.000 Yeah.

01:03:39.000 I mean, there was a lot of, obviously, PT. A lot of...

01:03:44.000 Massage?

01:03:45.000 Massage.

01:03:46.000 I'll tell you a funny story.

01:03:48.000 It's funny.

01:03:48.000 I haven't thought of this story in a long time.

01:03:51.000 I don't know if I've ever told this story, actually.

01:03:53.000 So when I got burned, I'd been traveling by myself in Thailand or around the world, but I actually met up With my childhood best friend, his name's David Boyer, who actually married my sister and they have two kids.

01:04:04.000 So my childhood best friend turned into my brother-in-law, which is pretty fun.

01:04:09.000 But anyways, he had actually been with me when I got burned.

01:04:13.000 So those first five days in the hospital before my mom got there, he was with me.

01:04:17.000 And was a saint.

01:04:18.000 You know, we're both these scared little 22-year-old kids, and he's, like, trying to do his best to, like, look after me, and he's freaked out.

01:04:23.000 But when I get back to Portland, his mother, who was kind of a second mother for me growing up, her name's Kate Boyer, she obviously was like, wow, this could have been my son, just as it had been, you know, her son, you know, it kind of felt, like, protective of me.

01:04:35.000 So, she comes over to my house one day and she goes, you know, I've been doing some untraditional healing work.

01:04:40.000 Would you be open to that?

01:04:41.000 And I, at this point, was like, I'll take anything.

01:04:43.000 What do you got in mind?

01:04:44.000 And she was like, well, I've been working with this pranic healing shaman.

01:04:49.000 Do you want to check that out?

01:04:50.000 And I literally was like, I was like saying yes to everything at this point.

01:04:53.000 Like, I'm looking for any way to recover.

01:04:55.000 And I was like, well, what is it?

01:04:55.000 And she was like, well, they don't even touch you.

01:04:57.000 It's just light healing.

01:04:58.000 And so, I go to this basement house.

01:05:01.000 I'm in Portland and I meet this guy and he's sitting there with a bucket of salt in front of him and he starts, he doesn't touch me at all.

01:05:09.000 He's just like waving his hands in front of like my body and my heart and he's like looking really intensely at my foot and I sit there for like an hour.

01:05:15.000 The guy never touches me, nothing.

01:05:17.000 He's just like looking at me, waving his hand in this and he's like, okay, I'm done now.

01:05:22.000 And I'm like, okay, what did you do?

01:05:24.000 And he was telling, I opened up this chakra, I opened up that, I did this, but what I mostly did was I put this force field of white light around your left foot.

01:05:32.000 And I'm like, I mean, I'm down with some untraditional stuff, but I was kind of like, uh-huh.

01:05:37.000 Cool.

01:05:38.000 Like, thanks.

01:05:39.000 I appreciate it.

01:05:40.000 And I was like, what's this bucket?

01:05:41.000 And he was like, this is the salt bucket that takes the negative energy away from your foot and your leg and puts the negative energy in there as I'm bringing in this light.

01:05:50.000 And there's this pranic healing.

01:05:51.000 And he's like, so you have this light blue force field over your left foot right now, which was the worst burned part of my body.

01:05:57.000 He goes, I would recommend not showering for the next couple of days as you might wash off the force field.

01:06:02.000 What jail is that going in now? 0.99

01:06:04.000 Yeah.

01:06:04.000 So I tell this story with a total smile, cheeky smile on my face, because that's funny, I haven't thought of this story in a long time.

01:06:10.000 But I will say this.

01:06:12.000 The next day, I walked further than I had the rest of the time.

01:06:16.000 So you want to call that placebo, you want to call it whatever.

01:06:18.000 I emotionally wasn't fully bought in on the pranic healing, although like I said, I am into a lot of alternative modalities.

01:06:24.000 God, I wish it was true.

01:06:25.000 Yeah.

01:06:27.000 I wish it was true.

01:06:28.000 I met a lady at the comedy store once told me she does Reiki healing. 0.68

01:06:31.000 She kind of rubbed her hands together and waved them in front of me.

01:06:34.000 I'm like, what are you doing?

01:06:36.000 She's like, do you feel that? 0.98

01:06:37.000 I'm like, I don't feel shit. 0.98

01:06:38.000 I don't know what you're talking about. 0.95

01:06:40.000 So that part, I don't know if it worked or it didn't work, but the combination of the amount of people in the hospital with the physical therapist, with my mother at home, with Kate Boyer taking me to the pranic healing, a culmination of all of those things somehow did work.

01:06:56.000 Unlock the scar tissue and allow me to make a full recovery.

01:06:59.000 I mean, it was a lot of hard work for, you know, a year plus to get back on my feet, but I got there.

01:07:04.000 Well, I'm sure there's something to be said for believing or at least having positive thoughts about your healing and making sure that you look at it in terms of like, this can be done, but...

01:07:17.000 I'm very skeptical of the salt man.

01:07:19.000 Like I said, the salt man, take it for what it is.

01:07:21.000 Like I said, I'm telling that story not as an advocate for pranic healing necessary.

01:07:25.000 But I will say, agreeing with what you just said, there is something about that.

01:07:28.000 There is something about being wrapped in the positivity that I was with my mother in that moment of just being like, hey.

01:07:34.000 Like, let's get through this.

01:07:35.000 Let's figure this out together.

01:07:35.000 Like, let's focus our mind on something.

01:07:38.000 And a lot of, you know, even as I go through Antarctica, you know, how did you do that?

01:07:41.000 Like, you know, people ask me this question, like, are you a superhuman?

01:07:44.000 And I'm like, yeah, I'm a superhuman.

01:07:45.000 And so are you.

01:07:46.000 Like, that's how I feel.

01:07:47.000 Like, we all have this capacity in our minds to unlock all sorts of things.

01:07:51.000 I mean, if you want to paint pictures, compose music, start a business, you know, sit in a warehouse and do a podcast, whatever it is you want to do.

01:07:59.000 You can fucking do amazing things.

01:08:01.000 And having that belief does add up to that. 0.98

01:08:05.000 I mean, that's step one, in my opinion, is visualizing that and believing it.

01:08:08.000 And on the flip side, having a negative self-worth or a negative opinion of what you're about to do or a negative thought about the future can also manifest all sorts of terrible results.

01:08:19.000 Absolutely.

01:08:20.000 Absolutely.

01:08:21.000 I mean, placebo effect is a real thing.

01:08:23.000 We know that, right?

01:08:24.000 We know that if you really do believe that you're going to get better because of some sugar pill they give you, there's a tangible result.

01:08:31.000 100%.

01:08:32.000 If you really believe.

01:08:33.000 Yeah.

01:08:33.000 So if that salt guy...

01:08:35.000 The thing about all that stupid shit is, if you believe it, it actually has an effect. 1.00

01:08:40.000 There's a lot of healers out there that... 1.00

01:08:44.000 At least on paper, are totally full of shit. 1.00

01:08:46.000 But if you believe in these assholes... 1.00

01:08:48.000 Yeah, that can make a big difference. 1.00

01:08:50.000 It's very slippery.

01:08:52.000 The human mind is such a slippery thing.

01:08:54.000 I mean, and I'll go back to my own experience, and again, I don't know how ephemeral or out there you want to get, but I'm out there in Antarctica, 54 days, alone.

01:09:03.000 Like, I'm telling you I'm doing this for this bigger purpose.

01:09:05.000 I feel like I'm tapped into that.

01:09:07.000 And like, legitimately, there were moments, at least for me, whether I'm manifesting that in my mind, whatever you want to call it, that I am actually feeling energetically uplifted by the people pushing me on.

01:09:17.000 Like, there were days that were incredibly hard where I would sit there and I'd be like, oh my god, I don't know if I can do this, and I'm done like, boom.

01:09:23.000 Like, I would get over, I would hit with this sort of larger purpose, this larger outcome, and Again, I'm not a super religious person.

01:09:30.000 I was actually raised on a hippie commune.

01:09:32.000 I come from a pretty untraditional background, but the energetic field, whatever you want to call that, or if that's just the belief in something, the power of that, I felt the strength from those moments.

01:09:42.000 There was moments when my body switched from kind of being negative, oh my God, another hard day out here, oh my God, it's minus 25, to tapping into those flow states.

01:09:50.000 Again, I don't have perfect words for that.

01:09:52.000 You know, I'm starting to try to build my vocabulary around that.

01:09:55.000 But that energy, I think it just derives from what you're saying.

01:09:58.000 If you start to believe it, if you can believe like, hey, there's a larger purpose in this, or hey, this blue force field's gonna heal my foot.

01:10:05.000 There is something that if you can originate that positivity in your mind that I think can give us incredible amounts of strength and then we can tap into something greater.

01:10:12.000 Well, I think there's definitely something to what you were saying about the untapped limits of the human potential and that there's most people barely scratch the surface of that and if you really firmly get into that zone and believe you can do things that people just...

01:10:28.000 They really don't have any idea what they can do if they have to, because people are rarely pushed to their actual limits.

01:10:36.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, it's been said many times before I say it, but that idea that growth happens outside the comfort zone.

01:10:41.000 And one of the things that I've personally thought about a lot in this space is, you know, I got severely burned in this fire.

01:10:48.000 Well, I chose to jump the rope, so I chose to be a knucklehead 22-year-old kid on a beach in Thailand, but I wasn't like, God, I want to get severely burned today.

01:10:55.000 Like, that happened to me.

01:10:57.000 Right?

01:10:57.000 Which forced me through this intense, tragic moment.

01:11:01.000 But from that, I was able to learn of this sort of untapped potential inside of me because of the outcome, because of winning this triathlon.

01:11:07.000 But what I realized is that it's hard to choose that path often.

01:11:11.000 It's hard to push yourself outside of those boundaries.

01:11:14.000 But things that are, you know, quote-unquote forced on you, I mean, let's look at something that half this population essentially does.

01:11:20.000 Give birth, like childbirth, natural childbirth. 0.99

01:11:22.000 It's been happening since the beginning of time, and that's an incredibly intense physical manifestation of the power of the human body.

01:11:29.000 I mean, I can't even imagine, obviously, what that would look like, nor will I ever be able to experience that, but that's incredibly powerful.

01:11:35.000 Or times when people, you know, are forced to go through a cancer diagnosis and have to go through radiation and chemo and, you know, facing the mortality and all this sort of stuff.

01:11:44.000 People get through those, but oftentimes these tragedies have to be forced upon us for us to do them.

01:11:50.000 And so my exploration now with my creative artwork, I call it, with these expeditions, these world record projects that push my body and mind, it's me choosing to step into those moments.

01:12:00.000 It's me choosing to put my body and mind in these intense moments because of a deep curiosity of like, what are the limits of human potential?

01:12:08.000 What are my limits?

01:12:09.000 What are our limits collectively?

01:12:11.000 And can my physical expression of this inspire other people to innovate, create, and do amazing things in the world and in other modalities and canvases?

01:12:18.000 Well, that's one of the weird things about people doing extraordinary things like what you did is that you absolutely will give other people fuel to accomplish things in their life.

01:12:27.000 Inspiration is so critical for human beings.

01:12:30.000 I mean, I draw upon it from so many different sources, from David Goggins and a bunch of my other friends, my friend Cameron Haynes and a lot of other people that are endurance athletes and different people that I've interviewed on this podcast.

01:12:44.000 But there's something that happens when you realize that people can do extraordinary things that makes you believe In the potential, not just in that person, but also in yourself.

01:12:55.000 Absolutely.

01:12:56.000 I mean, you know, Gog is a great example of that. 0.98

01:12:58.000 I've never met him, but, you know, I've personally derived inspiration from that guy.

01:13:01.000 I mean, he gets out there, you know, you can't run 100 miles.

01:13:03.000 Like, I'll show you I can run 100 miles, you know?

01:13:05.000 And he's pushing his body to extreme ways.

01:13:07.000 Or, you know, I love what he says about the 40%. 0.50

01:13:09.000 You know, I think about it a little bit different in my mind.

01:13:11.000 But, like, what are those limits?

01:13:12.000 I mean, I don't know if it's 40% or 50%.

01:13:14.000 People quit at 40%.

01:13:14.000 People quit.

01:13:15.000 People quit.

01:13:16.000 That I can't voice comes up, and he's proven it so as many other people of actually when you say I can, actually when you don't stop, you get stronger.

01:13:25.000 And for me, in my own story, in my own journey, I think that final day, that final 32-hour push proves it.

01:13:32.000 Three days before that, you know, I'm videotaping all this.

01:13:34.000 I'm trying to capture as much content to be able to share with people of this crazy, weird place that's in Antarctica by yourself.

01:13:39.000 And like, day 49, day 50, like, I'm literally crying into my GoPro being like, I'm running out of food.

01:13:45.000 I'm exhausted.

01:13:47.000 I don't know if I can keep doing this.

01:13:48.000 I'm just like, worked, right?

01:13:50.000 But sure enough...

01:13:52.000 I don't say I can't.

01:13:53.000 Was that 40%, was that 50%?

01:13:55.000 That's that moment when I wanted to quit or I should have quit.

01:13:58.000 But then the strongest, most amazing moment of my entire athletic career that spans decades happens three days later because I kept pushing.

01:14:05.000 It's not like I rested for three days and pulled that off.

01:14:08.000 I never took a rest day in 54 days.

01:14:10.000 I pulled my sled 12 to 13 hours every single day.

01:14:12.000 And on the last day, it was the strongest as possible.

01:14:14.000 So I think it proves if we can push through that I can't moment, no, it's not going to work, that you can get there.

01:14:20.000 And unfortunately, we talk about 40% with Goggins.

01:14:23.000 I actually think a lot of people quit at 1%.

01:14:25.000 They're sitting behind their office.

01:14:27.000 They're like, one day I want to travel overseas.

01:14:29.000 Or I hate this job.

01:14:31.000 I've got this great business idea.

01:14:33.000 But I'm Immediately, they're like, but I can't.

01:14:35.000 Like, I've got no money to start this business.

01:14:36.000 I've got no this.

01:14:37.000 Like, when I first set off my first world record in 2016, 2014, I sat with Jenna in my house, one-bedroom apartment with a whiteboard, and we're like, I'm going to see if I can set the world record for the Explorer's Grand Slam, something fewer than 50 people in the world have ever done, and I'm going to be the fastest.

01:14:51.000 Climb Everest, climb Denali, climb Kilimanjaro, North Pole, South Pole, back-to-back.

01:14:53.000 I hadn't climbed a bunch of mountains.

01:14:55.000 It'd be pretty easy to say I can't.

01:14:56.000 Oh, and by the way, we have no money to do this.

01:14:58.000 We have no platform.

01:14:59.000 I have, like, 200 Instagram followers.

01:15:01.000 Like, I mean, I've got...

01:15:02.000 Nothing.

01:15:03.000 But we just sat there and we're like, no, instead of saying I can't, let's say I can.

01:15:06.000 What's the first step to that?

01:15:08.000 We literally get out our laptops and we're like, we want to build this big media campaign where lots of people follow and get press.

01:15:14.000 We know nothing about it.

01:15:15.000 We have no background.

01:15:16.000 Google, what's the difference between marketing and PR? I mean, we are literally asking Google the most basic of all basic questions.

01:15:25.000 Wow.

01:15:26.000 But, you know, we continue to say, like, let's get coffee with our one friend who knows something about this.

01:15:32.000 We should probably get a website.

01:15:33.000 How does one build a website?

01:15:35.000 And it goes on and on like this.

01:15:37.000 How long ago did you start this journey?

01:15:38.000 So that was 2014 when we dreamed that up.

01:15:42.000 So the world record was- That was five years ago.

01:15:44.000 Yeah, so to see if I could set the world record for something called the Explorer's Grand Slam.

01:15:47.000 So it's climbing tallest mountain on each of the seven continents, seven summits.

01:15:50.000 And before that, had you done anything like that, or had it just been athletics?

01:15:55.000 So I grew up in Portland, so I grew up in the outdoors.

01:15:57.000 But I mean, to go climb Everest at Denali, sort of thing, no.

01:16:00.000 The short answer is, I mean, I climbed a few mountains.

01:16:02.000 It's not like I'd never been in the snow before.

01:16:04.000 I'd wear crampons.

01:16:05.000 I had zero experience, but not even close to the experience that you would think one would need to do that.

01:16:10.000 And to just break world records doing it.

01:16:12.000 Not just do it, but be the fastest person to ever complete it.

01:16:15.000 Like I said, it ended up being 139 days straight through to climb all those mountains.

01:16:19.000 Didn't...

01:16:20.000 I think we had to clip up a second ago of something on Everest.

01:16:23.000 But yeah, I mean, to do all of that, it started from this place of not, of believing I can.

01:16:31.000 And then, you know, again, it's fun to talk about the epic adventure, but for me, it's actually fun to talk about what happened behind the scenes of that.

01:16:38.000 Because what actually happened, like, people applaud our success now.

01:16:41.000 This is me.

01:16:42.000 This is you walking.

01:16:43.000 In Everest.

01:16:44.000 Walking across a ladder that's about a 300-foot hole of crevasse on the other side of it that you have to go through on your way up the Mount Everest climbing route.

01:16:53.000 And so your crampons are clicking and you're hooking them on the ladder as you walk across, and if you fall, you die?

01:16:59.000 Yes.

01:17:00.000 Okay, great. 1.00

01:17:03.000 Fuck, man. 1.00

01:17:04.000 Watch this again. 1.00

01:17:05.000 This is so awful.

01:17:08.000 It's so awful to look at.

01:17:09.000 Because you're basically just walking this tightrope on...

01:17:13.000 Let me hear it.

01:17:15.000 Listen to that click.

01:17:16.000 Folks, I implore you to go to the Instagram page so you get the full freak out.

01:17:21.000 Look how those...

01:17:22.000 They're tied together too, those ladders.

01:17:24.000 Yeah.

01:17:25.000 Tied together.

01:17:25.000 It's rickety as could be.

01:17:26.000 It's a 300 foot cavern over there. 1.00

01:17:28.000 Oh, fuck all of this. 1.00

01:17:30.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:17:31.000 Jesus.

01:17:34.000 And you're looking down because you have a GoPro on.

01:17:36.000 And we cut the sound off at the end there, but at the very end I go, whoo! 0.98

01:17:40.000 Because there was 50 of those ladders, but I was cheering every fucking time I got across. 0.98

01:17:44.000 I was like, yep, one more down, whoo! 0.99

01:17:46.000 You did that 50 times?

01:17:48.000 In the Kumbu, I actually go through that section a couple of times.

01:17:50.000 It's a very dangerous section of the mountain.

01:17:52.000 But yeah, I went about 50 of those ladders, so...

01:17:54.000 When you went through Everest, did you see the bodies?

01:17:58.000 So, I fortunately didn't see any bodies up there.

01:18:01.000 Fortunately or unfortunately?

01:18:02.000 Fortunately.

01:18:03.000 I mean, I'm not like trying to see dead bodies, you know, but they're more prevalent on the climbing route on the north side.

01:18:08.000 The day that I did summit, three people died on the day that I summited. 1.00

01:18:13.000 Fuck! 0.99

01:18:13.000 When I, yeah, when I, so, to set the, I mean, to talk about Everest, I mean, for me, it was major setbacks. 0.99

01:18:19.000 It was the eighth of nine expeditions in this sequence, so I'd done a hundred days of other expeditions leading up to Everest to do this Explorers Grand Slam world record.

01:18:26.000 I'm trying to climb Everest.

01:18:28.000 I'm exhausted from a hundred days.

01:18:29.000 I just come from the North Pole before that Kilimanjaro, before that, you know, Elbris, all these other mountains.

01:18:33.000 And then I make my summit push on Everest.

01:18:36.000 I'm not climbing with a guide or anything.

01:18:37.000 It's just myself and one Sherpa who I met climbing in Nepal the year previous when I was training for this.

01:18:42.000 And so it's just the two of us.

01:18:43.000 And we climb up into Camp 4. So Everest has, you know, four camps.

01:18:46.000 There's base camp and then there's camps progressively higher on the mountain so you can get your body acclimatized.

01:18:50.000 And we get up into Camp 4. Have you read the book Into Thin Air by John Krakauer or anything about No.

01:18:55.000 There's a famous book that's written about it where 11 people die and right in this moment it's called the death zone where you enter above 26,000 feet the human body basically can't survive for long even with supplemental oxygen and this massive snowstorm and windstorm blows in like kind of out of nowhere and we're trying to push for the summit it takes us two and a half hours just to set up our tent and get inside and we know like it's over like we're not we're not going to summit Everest like in this storm there's no way so we just survive the night and Wake up the next morning,

01:19:21.000 still getting pounded by this weather and actually have to climb back down the mountain.

01:19:24.000 So climb back down the mountain all the way to camp too.

01:19:27.000 And they're like, well, that's probably it.

01:19:28.000 You don't usually spend a night out in the death zone and make a second attempt.

01:19:32.000 And you've already tried all these other mountains.

01:19:33.000 You're 100 plus days in this journey.

01:19:35.000 And I was like, man, I want to see if I can get back up there.

01:19:38.000 And this other guy who I met on another team had some supplemental auctions.

01:19:42.000 So I had to use some of my supplemental auctions.

01:19:43.000 So my supply stores are limited now as well.

01:19:46.000 And so, he says to me, And we decide we're going to go for the summit.

01:20:06.000 We call back down to base camp.

01:20:08.000 What's the weather forecast?

01:20:09.000 And they're like, well, it's the exact same forecast we told you before.

01:20:12.000 It might hold, in which case you'll be fine, or it might turn into what you guys just survived.

01:20:16.000 And if you're not near your tent and you're up on the summit ridge of Everest, it's going to get pretty bad.

01:20:22.000 And so we kind of go back and forth.

01:20:23.000 Should we go for it?

01:20:24.000 Shouldn't we go for it?

01:20:25.000 We just decide to go for it.

01:20:26.000 But this crazy thing happens, which is, you may have read about this or heard of this if you know much about Everest, but basically, no one climbed Everest in 2014 or 15 because a huge avalanche killed 16 shorepers in 2014. The mountain was closed.

01:20:38.000 And in 2015, there was a huge earthquake in Nepal that shut the climbing season down.

01:20:41.000 So no one's even climbed the mountain in two years.

01:20:43.000 But all of a sudden, because of these weather delays, I end up there and there's 100 people going for the summit on the exact same day. 0.94

01:20:50.000 So basically, traffic jam on the worst fucking place to be in a traffic jam possible.

01:20:56.000 So Pasang Bodhi and I, we go, okay, let's figure out how to climb this thing. 0.95

01:20:59.000 And we leave camp.

01:21:00.000 You know, there's a photo that I took for leaving camp.

01:21:02.000 There's all these lights going up the side of the mountain.

01:21:04.000 And it's because there's one rope that everyone works to put in.

01:21:07.000 So everyone's using the same rope.

01:21:08.000 And all of a sudden, we're behind 100 people.

01:21:11.000 And if you stand there, wind chill minus 40 degrees, we're going to get frostbite.

01:21:15.000 We're going to not be able to make it.

01:21:16.000 And so Pasang Bodhi and I look at each other and we go, let's unclip from the rope.

01:21:20.000 And so we actually decide to unclip from the rope.

01:21:25.000 We're good to go.

01:21:43.000 And people are, I mean, you're on Everest at 28,000 feet, and people are walking, I mean, one step per minute sometimes.

01:21:48.000 I mean, it is brutal.

01:21:50.000 And so, I mean, I'm walking maybe two steps every 30 seconds, but I'm like Usain Bolt, like, flying past these people.

01:21:57.000 Yeah, this gives an example of like, so you're in it, like the world, the worst place in the world to be, you know, in a traffic jam, as you can see here from this photo I posted that day, but But anyways, I get up to this edge and finally it's too steep.

01:22:11.000 It's too dangerous for us to be unclipped from the rope any longer.

01:22:14.000 We're like, we're just going to have to clip in and settle in behind.

01:22:16.000 You know, we'd pass like 50 or 60 people, so we're in a much better place than ever.

01:22:19.000 I still have this one big puffy coat.

01:22:21.000 It's actually the same puffy coat I used in Antarctica, the big like Michelin man coat.

01:22:24.000 And I'm like, we're going to slow down.

01:22:26.000 I better put this big jacket on.

01:22:28.000 And so, I take my jacket off, I undo my gloves real quick to put this big jacket on over me to warm myself up, and I look down, and my right hand is black.

01:22:36.000 Like, just black as black can be. 1.00

01:22:39.000 And I'm like, holy shit, like, telltale sign of frostbite. 1.00

01:22:42.000 Like, oh my god. 0.93

01:22:44.000 Same thing, we've got school kids following along, we've got family fun, the whole thing, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm going to lose my right hand.

01:22:51.000 Is Jenna still going to love me?

01:22:53.000 What's my family going to think?

01:22:54.000 And then, I don't say anything to Pasang Bodhi, I jam my hand back in these big gloves, and I go, okay. 0.97

01:23:00.000 And I don't recommend this thought process, but I go, well, if I'm going to lose my hand anyways, wouldn't it be cooler to lose my hand but also have summited Everest?

01:23:11.000 How black was it? 0.78

01:23:12.000 I mean, it was black.

01:23:13.000 Like this can of coffee?

01:23:16.000 Yes.

01:23:16.000 Really?

01:23:17.000 I mean, it was black.

01:23:18.000 Did you take a picture of it?

01:23:19.000 So the sun was just below the horizon, so it was like dusk.

01:23:23.000 And I look down at this point, and then the sun comes up.

01:23:25.000 So I jam my hand back in this glove.

01:23:26.000 And I don't say anything to Pasang Boat. 0.99

01:23:28.000 I'm like, let's keep pushing for the summit.

01:23:29.000 So we go for the next three hours. 1.00

01:23:31.000 And the whole time I'm like, oh my God, I'm such an idiot. 0.99

01:23:33.000 Like, I'm going to lose my hand. 0.99

01:23:35.000 My hand's frostbitten, this and that.

01:23:36.000 And so we get up and we're about 30 minutes below Mount Everest Summit.

01:23:39.000 And it should be a beautiful moment for me.

01:23:40.000 Like, since a little kid, I dreamed like, summiting Everest would be like the greatest accomplishment of my life.

01:23:45.000 Oh my God.

01:23:45.000 And I'm thinking like, just in this dark place.

01:23:47.000 But I also haven't taken a single photo, basically.

01:23:49.000 And I'm like, well, I got to get like a photo or a video of, you know, the famous Mount Everest Summit.

01:23:54.000 So I pull up my GoPro to shoot a video.

01:23:57.000 I shoot this short little video which kind of shows this crazy exposure that I'm on, like one side 5,000 feet down into China, on one side 5,000 feet into Palm, this tiny little knife-edge ridge.

01:24:07.000 And of course, I have to adjust my gloves again.

01:24:09.000 This is from The Summit.

01:24:11.000 And I pull my GoPro out, have to mess with my gloves, put it back in, and I look at my hand and I start going, waving my arms in the air and go, Pasang Bodhi, my hand's back!

01:24:23.000 My hand's back!

01:24:24.000 And he's like, what are you doing?

01:24:26.000 It just so happened that the glove warmers in my gloves, the chemical hand warmers, had broken open and the charcoal and the copper filings of the chemical hand warmers had dyed my hand black.

01:24:39.000 Oh, jeez.

01:24:40.000 And my hand was completely fine.

01:24:43.000 Oh, God.

01:24:43.000 And so, yeah, this clip here, if you play it from the top, it's me reaching the summit.

01:24:47.000 That's Pasang Bodhi right there.

01:24:49.000 So when...

01:24:53.000 On the summit of Mount Everest.

01:24:56.000 Top of the world.

01:24:58.000 No words can describe.

01:25:02.000 Wow.

01:25:03.000 Did you experience any discomfort in your hands before?

01:25:07.000 So, again, we're talking about a lot of this podcast has been about mindset, which is one of my favorite topics.

01:25:13.000 And just like we said, you can convince yourself that the salt man is fixing your foot.

01:25:17.000 Yeah.

01:25:18.000 I'm on Everest.

01:25:19.000 I'm at 28,000 feet.

01:25:21.000 My brain's not working very well.

01:25:23.000 I know that the weather's coming in bad, that people are going to get maybe frostbite based on the forecast.

01:25:28.000 And I look down and I see my hands black.

01:25:30.000 Where does my mind go?

01:25:31.000 It's not like, oh, let me think about this.

01:25:33.000 My hand warmer must have broken open to this.

01:25:35.000 It was weird because I didn't feel my hand getting cold.

01:25:39.000 My hand feels fine.

01:25:42.000 But I'm on Everest, my hand's black.

01:25:43.000 That means, you know, in my brain, I'm like, I have frostbite.

01:25:46.000 So it's just like, it's a weird thing where you can take your mind, like, a lot of this, the positivity of this.

01:25:50.000 My mom went to the negative immediately, like, your hand's gone, it's frozen off, like, the end.

01:25:55.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:25:56.000 What happened to the people that died?

01:25:58.000 Were they on the rope?

01:25:59.000 Yeah, so unfortunately that day, the weather actually did get pretty bad later in the day.

01:26:03.000 So fortunately, I was able to get down before the weather got too bad.

01:26:06.000 But the people that died that day, one slipped and fell down these ropes over on Lhotse, which is the adjacent mountain, but sharing some of the same ropes on the same route.

01:26:16.000 And then two people died from altitude sickness.

01:26:18.000 So basically, either running out of oxygen up there and not being able to get back down to their tents.

01:26:22.000 I think those people actually did get carried back down to their tents that night and then died in the tents that night.

01:26:26.000 So...

01:26:27.000 It's called cerebral edema, which is basically your brain fills with fluid from being at the high altitude and not getting enough oxygen.

01:26:33.000 And it's a killer up there.

01:26:35.000 And one of the crazy things about being up there is you read about it, but you really can't rescue somebody very easily up there.

01:26:41.000 I mean, to carry a human body down to rescue them is nearly impossible.

01:26:46.000 And I kind of always thought in my mind, if I saw somebody lying on the ground, I would summon the energy to pick them up.

01:26:53.000 And I was actually coming back from the summit And I was on the South Summit, so just below the Everest Summit, you know, at 28,800 feet or something like that.

01:27:01.000 And this Brazilian woman who I'd met in base camp named Tice, who I've, you know, become friends with here in Nepal for a couple months.

01:27:08.000 You start talking to people, getting friends with other climbers, whatever.

01:27:10.000 And I see her lying on the ground with her head, like, leaned back and her oxygen mask off to the side. 0.98

01:27:15.000 And I'm like, oh, my God, like, this is the moment that I most feared.

01:27:18.000 Like, somebody who I know is lying here on the side of the mountain.

01:27:21.000 And I think to myself, I've got to pick her up.

01:27:23.000 I've got to pick her up and somehow, like, carry her down this mountain.

01:27:26.000 And I lean over to grab her and I try with all my might to do anything and I realize I can't move her six inches.

01:27:33.000 Like, I'm completely exhausted.

01:27:35.000 Muscles aren't working.

01:27:36.000 Brain's not working.

01:27:37.000 So, I do the only thing I can think to do is I just wrap her in my arms and I say, Tyce, like, if you can hear me, it's Colin.

01:27:43.000 You need to get up.

01:27:44.000 You need to get your oxygen mask on.

01:27:46.000 You need to start moving.

01:27:47.000 Like, please get up.

01:27:48.000 Please get up.

01:27:48.000 No response.

01:27:51.000 I think?

01:28:10.000 I mean, this person might be a friend, but if any human being is lying on the ground in the snow, you're like, I want to help this person get down this mountain.

01:28:17.000 And I was just so close to on my limit up there in the summit, there was nothing I could do.

01:28:21.000 Fortunately, she was not one of the people that passed away that day.

01:28:24.000 Her team did get her oxygen mask on her, and she actually made it to the summit and back down safely.

01:28:29.000 Wow, so she went up?

01:28:30.000 She ended up going up from there, which to me is like another whole crazy part of that story.

01:28:34.000 But it was an interesting lesson for me in like, you know, you hear these stories, you can't move bodies up there, there's nothing you can do to rescue.

01:28:41.000 And people have been criticized for not, you know, doing these crazy rescues when things have gone wrong up there.

01:28:47.000 But it really hit home for me how hard it would be to move somebody down that mountain from that altitude.

01:28:52.000 And so when you're up there, unlike Antarctica, I was actually alone, and Everest, like I said, was a pretty crowded day.

01:28:58.000 You're essentially alone up there.

01:29:00.000 If you can't keep putting one foot in front of the other up in the death zone, there's not a whole lot that you can do.

01:29:06.000 So the three people that died up there, did they leave them there?

01:29:10.000 I'm not sure with those specific people, because sometimes you can get a large team of people to slowly lower people down.

01:29:17.000 In a weird way, it's actually easier to lower a dead body than it is to lower a live person, because a dead body, you don't have to worry about breaking bones and things like that if you're lowering someone over rocks and things like that.

01:29:27.000 So I actually believe those bodies are no longer there.

01:29:30.000 But there are quite a few bodies still on the mountain, and particularly the north side, the Chinese, so you can climb it from two sides, the Nepal side...

01:29:37.000 We're good to go.

01:29:52.000 And I'm thinking I'm going to sleep for the night rest and come back down the mountain.

01:29:55.000 It usually takes a few days to get back down the mountain.

01:29:57.000 At this point, you know, I've only got one more mountain to climb to finish my world record, the Explorer's Grand Slam.

01:30:03.000 And I was about two months ahead of schedule.

01:30:05.000 So if I had climbed Denali in the next two months, North America's tallest mountain up in Alaska, I was going to set this world record that I was.

01:30:11.000 And so I called back home to Jenna and I was like, I made it.

01:30:14.000 Like, I made it.

01:30:16.000 And, uh, earlier in the day when my hands had gotten frozen, I had actually had, uh, uh, heated boot warmers.

01:30:21.000 And so I had turned the heat in my boot warmers up as hot as possible.

01:30:24.000 So I'm like, if my hand is frostbite and what would my feet look like?

01:30:26.000 So I cranked those up as hot as possible.

01:30:28.000 And so Jenna's like, Hey, like, how are you doing?

01:30:31.000 Like, you all right?

01:30:31.000 We've heard some reports over social media.

01:30:33.000 That's been a really hard day up there.

01:30:35.000 Like, I'm like, yeah, I'm all right.

01:30:36.000 Like no frostbite, no injuries.

01:30:38.000 Like I'm good.

01:30:39.000 And I was like, well, actually, um, I, uh, I burned my feet.

01:30:43.000 And she's like, oh, frostbite? 0.92

01:30:44.000 Like, how bad is it?

01:30:45.000 And I was like, no, not frostbite.

01:30:47.000 I actually burned two, like, silver dollar circles in the bottoms of both of my feet from turning my boot warmers up too much.

01:30:54.000 And she's like, wait, let me get this straight.

01:30:56.000 Like, you climb Everest, you don't get frostbite, but you burn yourself?

01:30:59.000 She was like, you, your feet, fire, like, just like, this is a bad situation.

01:31:04.000 But then she goes on and she was like...

01:31:07.000 She literally said, the next thing she said to me, I will literally never forget in my life.

01:31:10.000 But she goes, so you're in your tent, right?

01:31:13.000 You took your boots off and everything.

01:31:14.000 You're curled up in there.

01:31:15.000 I'm like, yeah.

01:31:15.000 And she's like, well, I actually need you to put your boots back on.

01:31:19.000 And I'm like, excuse me?

01:31:21.000 Like, I just, what?

01:31:22.000 Like, she was like, yeah, so we've been doing some calculating back home.

01:31:26.000 And it just so happens that if you can get to the summit of Denali in the next week, you can set not one, but two world records.

01:31:33.000 And I was like, well, that sounds nice, but I'm below the summit of Everest.

01:31:38.000 How the hell is that going to work?

01:31:39.000 She's like, okay, put your boots back on down now.

01:31:42.000 Climb all the way back to base camp.

01:31:43.000 There's no time for you to sleep, but a helicopter is going to take you to Kathmandu.

01:31:47.000 No time for a hotel, no time for a shower, but an evening flight is going to take you to Dubai, to Seattle, to Anchorage.

01:31:51.000 And instead of having three weeks to climb Denali, you'll have three days.

01:31:54.000 But if you can do all of that, you'll set another world record.

01:31:57.000 Like, ready?

01:31:58.000 Go! 0.95

01:32:01.000 Jesus.

01:32:02.000 So I was in disbelief, but knowing better than to disobey not only my amazing wife, but the planner and logistics expert in running the background of all this, I sure enough put my boots back on, wiped the slate clean, and found myself, you know, just 100 hours after standing on the summit of Everest,

01:32:18.000 I found myself over in Alaska trying to push up to the summit to try to set the two world records and not just the one.

01:32:25.000 Whoa.

01:32:26.000 Now, what kind of recovery does your body need when you exert yourself like that?

01:32:32.000 Yeah.

01:32:32.000 Climbing Everest, I would think that your body must...

01:32:36.000 You had to be in some kind of state of shock or...

01:32:38.000 I mean, completely.

01:32:39.000 There's some clips of me on Denali in those next few days where I'm just absolutely trashed.

01:32:44.000 Like, I'm like, barely eyes open.

01:32:46.000 I'm going to try to push for the summit.

01:32:48.000 I'm going to do this.

01:32:49.000 The one benefit, I would say there is one...

01:32:50.000 Most of it's not a benefit, but I'll keep it in the positive.

01:32:53.000 The one benefit is usually in the high-altitude mountaineering, you need to acclimatize.

01:32:57.000 So your body creates more red blood cells when you go up into the thinner air to allow you to breathe oxygen better at the higher altitudes.

01:33:03.000 A mountain like Denali normally takes three weeks to climb because you're coming from sea level and to get up to 20,000 feet, you can't just get dropped off there.

01:33:09.000 If you or I right now got dropped off on the summit of Denali, we would pass out in a matter of minutes, right?

01:33:14.000 But because I'm coming from Everest at 29,000 feet...

01:33:18.000 I think?

01:33:37.000 No, it does make sense, but man.

01:33:40.000 So when you're done with this, how long did it take you to just feel like a normal person again?

01:33:46.000 Yeah, so I was on Denali.

01:33:47.000 I ended up summiting in three days and setting, so the Explorers Grand Slam was the seven summits plus a North and South Pole, but the second world record was just the seven summits by themselves.

01:33:56.000 So even though I went to the poles, I still set the speed record for the seven summits as well.

01:34:00.000 So seven summits, 131 days.

01:34:02.000 And the Explorers Grand Slam 139. And then I returned to Alaska and then home to Portland.

01:34:07.000 And honestly, it was a good six months until I felt normal again, at least.

01:34:12.000 And I'm definitely, like I said, I'm only about five weeks out from Antarctica right now.

01:34:18.000 I haven't really taken a lot of rest of recovery.

01:34:20.000 I've been on the road still doing various things and I'm nowhere near recovered.

01:34:24.000 It's going to take a long time to get back.

01:34:26.000 So these exertions, I love them.

01:34:27.000 I love pushing my body but the cycle of high performance is also knowing how to recover, recover well, good nutrition, all that and it takes a long time.

01:34:35.000 That one took six months and I would imagine this Antarctica recovery is going to take a long time as well.

01:34:39.000 Now when you say it took six months, are you monitoring your physiological levels?

01:34:45.000 What are you monitoring and how do you find out where you're at?

01:34:48.000 Yeah, so I started to do a lot of blood work actually early on in my triathlon career.

01:34:54.000 Actually early on in my professional triathlon career, I mentioned I moved to Australia not long after turning pro and coming out of the gate with this win.

01:35:01.000 And I had the opportunity to go train with some of the best triathletes in the world.

01:35:05.000 There's actually, you know, a couple of world champions, a group of 15 of us, a couple of world champions, a female Ironman world champion, a couple of Olympic medalists, I mean, some of the top people in the world, and I'm this, like, up-and-coming professional triathlete.

01:35:17.000 I think it's so cool that I'm training with the best guys.

01:35:20.000 It would be like a guy that just gets into the UFC and all of a sudden he's training with the top contenders, the title guys.

01:35:26.000 I wanted to really roll hard with them.

01:35:27.000 So I was training super hard to try to keep up with the best guys.

01:35:36.000 Yeah.

01:35:55.000 Learned that lesson the hard way, and that was one of the darkest moments of my athletic career, but it's also been a net benefit for me as I've gone, that was back in 2011 or whatever, and these world record projects have been in the last couple of years.

01:36:08.000 And so I learned from that, taking it way too much and not learning how to recover.

01:36:13.000 To implementing things.

01:36:14.000 So your question about what did I monitor?

01:36:16.000 You know, resting heart rate is one that I monitored a lot.

01:36:18.000 Heart rate variability as well.

01:36:20.000 As well as certain blood levels, of course, around the whole endocrine system, the testosterone levels, the, you know, different hormone levels and things like that.

01:36:28.000 So coming back.

01:36:29.000 I do blood work ahead of time, then come back, just with standard process with the nutrition company, they did all this blood work on me.

01:36:35.000 So, when I left Antarctica, before flying home, you know, the next place I had to go actually was to New York to do the Today Show, which was a whole weird thing after being alone in Antarctica to have those type of TV cameras in your face.

01:36:45.000 That's a whole other, like, weird Twilight Zone moment.

01:36:47.000 But before I even did that, I flew to Charlotte where their Nutrition Innovation Center is and did all my blood work.

01:36:53.000 And so we can have basically this longitudinal study of my blood work to understand it.

01:36:56.000 And so I monitor all that and figure out what I'm deficient in, what I need, where my heart rate's at, and basically a lot of inflammation in my body and needing to kind of rid my body of that and fully recover.

01:37:07.000 So when you're coming back from all these summits and all this time at altitude, what has actually happened to your body that causes you to be really depleted for six months?

01:37:19.000 What's happening other than the fact that you were at high altitude, low oxygen?

01:37:23.000 What's taking place?

01:37:25.000 So one of the things that happens at high altitude that you don't really think about too much, which is your body's not getting...

01:37:30.000 So the air actually has just as much oxygen in it as it does at sea level, but the air is less dense.

01:37:36.000 So that means as you breathe in the air, you're literally getting less oxygen into your blood.

01:37:40.000 It's less dense.

01:37:41.000 It's less dense.

01:37:41.000 So there's less nitrogen in it?

01:37:43.000 The pressure changes.

01:37:44.000 Oh.

01:37:44.000 Right.

01:37:44.000 So at the high altitude, it's actually the pressure that's changing.

01:37:46.000 So it's not less oxygen.

01:37:48.000 There's just as much oxygen, but in a less dense form.

01:37:50.000 So in the same volume of breath, you're getting less actual O2 into your blood.

01:37:54.000 And what are you getting?

01:37:55.000 At the higher altitude.

01:37:56.000 I guess it's carbon dioxide.

01:37:58.000 Is that right?

01:37:59.000 I'm not a doctor, like I said.

01:38:01.000 All I know is you're getting less oxygen.

01:38:04.000 You're getting less oxygen in your body.

01:38:05.000 So what ends up happening is your muscles, of course, need oxygen to perform.

01:38:09.000 So normally, when I'm in my most elite physical shape, I have a resting heart rate during a professional triathlon career of like 35, getting out of bed, 38. Low enough that if you weren't a professional athlete and you went to a doctor with a heart rate of 35, they'd be like, oh my God, you're going to die.

01:38:22.000 There's something wrong with you.

01:38:23.000 But that's also a key marker of elite health performance.

01:38:26.000 You know that, of course.

01:38:28.000 But...

01:38:30.000 What happens is your body's getting so little oxygen, even as your blood is acclimatizing, you're sleeping with a resting heart rate at altitude on Everest at like 90, 100 beats per minute.

01:38:39.000 So, you know, that's pretty elevated heart rate 24 hours a day, and in my case, for 139 days straight.

01:38:46.000 So essentially, your heart is just like, even at rest.

01:38:51.000 And so, what that does to your body in terms of, you know, it throws your hormones around.

01:38:56.000 Obviously, you lose body weight, body fat, body composition changes.

01:38:59.000 All of those things really shift and happen in a pretty intense way.

01:39:03.000 So, coming back, like actually just getting your heart rate back down, getting your, you know, parasympic nervous system to just relax and stress-free and all that kind of stuff, it takes a while for sure.

01:39:13.000 So what do you do to help yourself recover when you come back?

01:39:16.000 Is there specific kinds of food that you eat or supplements that you take?

01:39:20.000 You know, I'll start...

01:39:22.000 There's a few different things that I find to work well.

01:39:24.000 One, sleep.

01:39:25.000 I mean, I think that sleep in our culture in general is really underrated.

01:39:29.000 I think, you know, if you...

01:39:30.000 Go in the corporate world and everyone's like, I pulled this all night or I work 120 hours a week, I this, I that, or whatever.

01:39:37.000 I'm telling you a story about pushing through the night and going 32 hours straight.

01:39:40.000 There's a time and a place for big pushes without sleep, but we are not built to do that sustainably in any way, shape, or form.

01:39:47.000 So in my training, when I'm training for these things, I prioritize sleep.

01:39:49.000 I prioritize taking a nap, the same thing when I'm recovering.

01:39:52.000 So really making sure I get that sleep is, for me, the most natural way to recover.

01:39:56.000 On top of that, Soft tissue work.

01:39:58.000 I'm a huge believer in massage as well as chiropractor.

01:40:01.000 I've been going to a chiropractor since I was a little kid.

01:40:04.000 And to me, that makes a big difference just to have everything in alignment, everything kind of, you know, working well, efficiently in my body.

01:40:10.000 And then, yeah, supplements, you know, definitely reducing inflammation.

01:40:13.000 So, for me, gut health is huge.

01:40:15.000 So, getting those probiotics, getting the right stuff in, you know, it's easy to have, you know, that leaky gut or things where you're not getting your nutrition absorbed properly.

01:40:24.000 And I think we all in various states, you know, deal with that.

01:40:26.000 You know, the standard American diet for sure leads to that for a lot of people.

01:40:30.000 So getting that nutrition clean and right.

01:40:32.000 So yeah, sleep, rest, recovery, nutrition.

01:40:35.000 And then, you know, I've definitely been taking a lot of supplements through my life.

01:40:38.000 I err more towards the whole food supplements these days, but I find...

01:40:42.000 Things like turmeric that really reduce inflammation.

01:40:46.000 And magnesium definitely helps a lot.

01:40:48.000 So there's a few things that I take daily.

01:40:51.000 But really, I think sleep and a clean diet goes a long way.

01:40:55.000 I've messed with some cryo before.

01:40:57.000 I find that to be pretty good.

01:40:59.000 I didn't do that a lot, but I've done that in the last couple years a bit.

01:41:02.000 So various things.

01:41:03.000 But yeah, for me, sleep, diet, nutrition is the key to recovery.

01:41:07.000 And what kind of foods do you eat?

01:41:08.000 When you say eating clean, do you have a particular way of eating?

01:41:13.000 I'm recently doing more of a pescatarian diet, so I've mostly cut out meat, although I was raised that way.

01:41:21.000 My parents have been vegetarians forever.

01:41:24.000 Well, I should say pescatarian, so they eat some fish, but no chicken, no beef, none of that.

01:41:30.000 For me, I've actually, even in Antarctica, there was some, in my freeze-dried meals, there was beef and chicken and stuff like that, so it's not something I've cut out of my diet.

01:41:38.000 Oh, so you brought freeze-dried meals as well as bringing those The Columbars was the main thing, but at every dinner I had one freeze-dried meal at the end of the day that was an extra thousand calories.

01:41:46.000 So you poured boiling water in a mountain house?

01:41:47.000 Exactly.

01:41:47.000 Yeah, it was a company.

01:41:48.000 It was Alpine Air, but same thing as a mountain house, basically.

01:41:51.000 So it was rice, noodles mixed with chicken or beef.

01:41:54.000 But when I say eating clean, I mostly mean just eating whole food stuff.

01:41:58.000 Not eating processed crap, refined sugars, that kind of stuff.

01:42:03.000 I mean, I'm a normal human being, so I'm guilty of that as anyone from time to time. 0.90

01:42:07.000 I'm just grabbing the easiest, closest thing.

01:42:09.000 But, like I said, my dad's an organic farmer.

01:42:12.000 My mom and my stepdad started a chain of natural foods grocery stores when I was a kid.

01:42:15.000 So I was really raised around, you know, in the sort of hippie co-op days of the natural foods movement, which of course now with, you know, Amazon owning Whole Foods has tipped a lot more to the mainstream.

01:42:25.000 But, you know, that was what I was raised around.

01:42:28.000 And, you know, eating, you know, quinoa, rice, kale, you know, those kinds of things.

01:42:33.000 Healthy things.

01:42:34.000 You know, whole food nutrition has gone a long way for me, particularly when I need to recover.

01:42:38.000 Now, do you mess with CBD at all?

01:42:40.000 It's not something I've done a lot of.

01:42:43.000 I hear amazing things.

01:42:44.000 I'm definitely not opposed to it at all, but I haven't tried it.

01:42:49.000 What's your experience been with that?

01:42:50.000 I've been experimenting with it for the last couple years.

01:42:53.000 It has a pretty profound effect on alleviating soreness, especially joint soreness, and it also makes you feel good.

01:43:01.000 The word is that it alleviates anxiety, which I don't suffer a lot of, but it just makes me feel relaxed.

01:43:08.000 Do you take it orally or do you use it topically?

01:43:11.000 I take a dropper.

01:43:13.000 It's like a dropper.

01:43:14.000 I take whatever they say to take, I take five times more than that.

01:43:17.000 Yeah.

01:43:19.000 Do you take it at night?

01:43:20.000 I take it during the morning and I take it at night as well.

01:43:23.000 I just always feel like I'm running my body at redline and running my brain at redline so much.

01:43:29.000 So whatever they say you need, I just double it for almost everything.

01:43:33.000 And do you feel like, obviously it doesn't have the THC effects of it, but do you feel like in a...

01:43:37.000 No.

01:43:37.000 No, nothing.

01:43:38.000 Clear-headed, clear-minded.

01:43:39.000 Yeah, and my THC tolerance is so high.

01:43:42.000 It doesn't really...

01:43:43.000 But some forms of it have a small amount of THC, and I think there may be some sort of synergistic effect that happens with the THC combined with the CBD that helps people even more, because a lot of people that have pain...

01:44:00.000 Particularly chronic pain, they experience a lot of relief from THC, from just smoking it or vaporizing it or using edibles.

01:44:08.000 So I think that the CBD with a little bit of THC might have a better effect.

01:44:13.000 A lot of fighters say that.

01:44:14.000 Sure.

01:44:14.000 No, I'm interested in trying the CBD for sure.

01:44:17.000 Something I should definitely try.

01:44:18.000 Do you find that it gives you like a sustained, like is it relief when it's in your body, like a masking relief?

01:44:23.000 Or do you feel like it actually is like curing the root cause of that inflammation or anxiety?

01:44:27.000 I don't think it's masking at all.

01:44:28.000 I think it's alleviating the inflammation.

01:44:31.000 It's a very healthy thing for your body to eat.

01:44:35.000 Obviously, there's a bunch of different oils that will alleviate inflammation.

01:44:39.000 Different essential fatty acids and fish oils are very good for inflammation.

01:44:43.000 I think anything that you can take that helps your body mitigate inflammation.

01:44:47.000 Inflammation seems to be a gigantic problem with just...

01:44:50.000 Not with pain, just with pain, but I think also with anxiety.

01:44:53.000 I think it's entirely possible that feelings of discomfort, you know, like when you see people that are anxious, they often look bloated to me.

01:45:02.000 They often look like, ugh.

01:45:03.000 I think it's just an overall sense of unwellness, you know, and I think that a poor diet exacerbates that and a good diet can alleviate some of those symptoms and I think that CBD is a big part of that.

01:45:17.000 A hundred percent.

01:45:18.000 I mean, yeah, I'm interested to try that for sure.

01:45:21.000 I've definitely, that inflammation, even for me coming back from Antarctica in this quarter of recovery phase, what's weird is like you saw how lean I got then, but my body, I think, because it was so depleted of food source, is now actually almost trying to put fat back on my body of kind of storing that.

01:45:36.000 So actually, my body composition feels weird to me right now because my body's just trying to figure out where the hell I'm at, and I think a lot of that comes from Yeah,

01:45:55.000 I like it because there's...

01:46:00.000 Gel tabs are fine, but I think it's unnecessary.

01:46:03.000 Your body's absorbing the cover.

01:46:06.000 Just go right to the oil.

01:46:08.000 I just think it's the best way to do it.

01:46:10.000 But I'm a big fan of curcumin and turmeric as well.

01:46:13.000 I think those are really good.

01:46:14.000 Have you tried ashwagandha or any of the mushroom teas and stuff like that?

01:46:19.000 I do take this stuff actually that I have right here.

01:46:21.000 This wasn't a plant.

01:46:22.000 Lion's mane mushroom elixir.

01:46:24.000 I love this stuff.

01:46:25.000 Yeah.

01:46:25.000 I take this all the time.

01:46:28.000 I make a tea out of this.

01:46:29.000 It's really nice.

01:46:30.000 I've messed with like the cordyceps and the ashwagandha as well to kind of reduce some of the cortisol like emotional or hormonal balances type of stuff.

01:46:38.000 Cordyceps is fantastic too for endurance.

01:46:41.000 Yes, 100%.

01:46:42.000 Yeah.

01:46:42.000 We have an Onnit product called Shroom Tech Sport that has cordyceps, B vitamins, and a bunch of adaptogens.

01:46:49.000 It really has a big impact on me in terms of how hard I can push in the gym.

01:46:56.000 I take it about an hour or so before I work out.

01:46:59.000 Let your body absorb it.

01:47:00.000 It just really has a real effect.

01:47:02.000 It doesn't give me a jittery thing either.

01:47:04.000 Yeah.

01:47:05.000 It just gives me more energy.

01:47:06.000 Just kind of take it an hour before it kind of primes your body for that.

01:47:09.000 More oxygen uptake.

01:47:10.000 Is that kind of the idea behind cordyceps?

01:47:12.000 That's what I've been told.

01:47:13.000 Yeah, it came out of high-altitude herders.

01:47:16.000 They noticed that when the cattle were eating certain mushrooms, they had more energy.

01:47:22.000 And so that's how they started experimenting with this stuff.

01:47:25.000 They actually grow it on caterpillars.

01:47:27.000 What?

01:47:28.000 Yeah.

01:47:28.000 How does that work?

01:47:29.000 So strange, man.

01:47:30.000 See if you can find it.

01:47:32.000 Cordyceps mushrooms grown on caterpillars.

01:47:34.000 I'm picturing like this room of caterpillars with like carrying around mushrooms on their back or something.

01:47:39.000 It's real freaky.

01:47:40.000 It's real freaky.

01:47:42.000 But apparently the way they farm it, that's the way they farm it.

01:47:44.000 They actually grow it on caterpillars.

01:47:46.000 Huh.

01:47:47.000 That's fascinating.

01:47:48.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:47:48.000 Fucking weird. 0.99

01:47:49.000 It's expensive shit. 1.00

01:47:50.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:47:50.000 But like there it is. 1.00

01:47:52.000 Oh, wow. 0.98

01:47:52.000 Like how fucking strange. 0.98

01:47:54.000 So those... 0.98

01:47:55.000 At the bottom there, that's the caterpillars and that's the mushroom growing out of their heads or something like that.

01:47:59.000 I'm like, thank you, I'll take that. 0.99

01:48:00.000 And they snip that shit off the caterpillars. 1.00

01:48:02.000 Holy shit, that's crazy. 1.00

01:48:04.000 Fucking weird, man. 1.00

01:48:05.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:48:06.000 Well, apparently it works.

01:48:08.000 Well, it does.

01:48:09.000 Yeah, it's, you know, there's so many benefits.

01:48:10.000 I mean, Paul Stamets, who's been on the podcast before and I can't wait to get him back on again, but he's a mycologist and it was one of the best podcasts that I've ever done in terms of like really explaining the benefits of different fungi.

01:48:23.000 Hmm.

01:48:29.000 I mean, I can't agree more.

01:48:31.000 Just the whole food nutrition from many different levels, whether it's mushrooms, turmeric, these full plant derivatives, I mean, to me, they go a long way in their pure form, for sure.

01:48:41.000 Yeah.

01:48:42.000 What do you drink?

01:48:43.000 Do you drink a lot of water?

01:48:44.000 Do you drink fruit juices?

01:48:46.000 Vegetable juices?

01:48:47.000 Mostly water, to be perfectly honest.

01:48:50.000 I do usually start the day with a smoothie of some kind, so usually it's got fruit in it.

01:48:58.000 Obviously fruit.

01:48:59.000 Another thing I put in there is I've been using this stuff that...

01:49:03.000 Actually, the company's standard process is just coming out with it, but they let me try it ahead of time.

01:49:07.000 It's going to make this slow-release glucose, so it's a protein powder, but instead of giving it that glucose spike like you would from a refined sugar or something like that, it's kind of a long-burn, long-chain glucose.

01:49:17.000 I don't know the full chemistry of that, but I find it makes a big difference.

01:49:21.000 Rather than kind of just getting that sugar spike early in the day, it actually kind of gives the slow release of energy, and that was actually in the column bars as well, and I really like that, particularly for endurance, because If you start taking the goo packets or something like that, you get that spike of 100 calories.

01:49:35.000 You get that quick, boom, burst of energy replenishes your glucose source.

01:49:39.000 But this, I feel like, just is a much slower, cleaner burn and it lasts longer.

01:49:44.000 For anaerobic stuff, maybe you need that more explosive power or whatever, different things for that.

01:49:49.000 But for some of the low heart rate, zone 1, zone 2, long grinding type of stuff that I do in the mountains or pulling this sled or whatever, I find it's really good for stuff like that.

01:49:58.000 Now, what scares me about people like you is, how old are you now?

01:50:02.000 33. Okay, you're very young.

01:50:05.000 I'll take that.

01:50:06.000 This is what I'm worried. 1.00

01:50:08.000 I'm worried that you've already done so much crazy shit that you have to push past the crazy shit you've already done. 0.99

01:50:18.000 And you've already been on Everest. 0.99

01:50:20.000 It sounds like you were kind of like...

01:50:22.000 You weren't on death's door, but you opened the front gate.

01:50:25.000 Yeah.

01:50:25.000 You opened the front gate.

01:50:26.000 You were on the lawn.

01:50:27.000 Yeah.

01:50:27.000 You were on death's lawn.

01:50:29.000 Sure.

01:50:29.000 You know?

01:50:30.000 Right?

01:50:30.000 No, absolutely.

01:50:31.000 I mean, like I said, the people literally died that day.

01:50:33.000 Yeah.

01:50:35.000 What are you going to try to do next?

01:50:37.000 This is the question. 1.00

01:50:38.000 Do you have some crazy shit in your head right now? 1.00

01:50:40.000 You're like, okay, now I'm going to the moon with a fucking balloon. 1.00

01:50:43.000 You know, it's funny. 0.99

01:50:44.000 It's twofold.

01:50:45.000 It's an interesting intersection.

01:50:46.000 I appreciate that you call me young.

01:50:49.000 I'll take that all day long.

01:50:50.000 Well, I'm 51, so you are young to me.

01:50:52.000 Well, I guess in athlete terms, right?

01:50:55.000 You're in the peak.

01:50:58.000 Yeah, the peak for endurance athletes, and it's fun to be here.

01:51:00.000 But I also think it's a moment in time where a little bit of wisdom meets also athletic performance. 0.99

01:51:28.000 Get the fuck out of here! 1.00

01:51:31.000 I'm not just bullshitting. 1.00

01:51:32.000 When I think about it, these things are really methodical.

01:51:36.000 Yes, I understand.

01:51:38.000 They're practiced.

01:51:39.000 Not to say there's not risk.

01:51:40.000 You saw me trying to set up my tent.

01:51:41.000 That tent flies away. 0.99

01:51:42.000 I'm screwed. 0.99

01:51:43.000 I'm in a bad way. 0.97

01:51:44.000 What would you do?

01:51:45.000 Would you run after it?

01:51:46.000 I mean, no chance. 1.00

01:51:49.000 Fuck. 1.00

01:51:49.000 Yeah, you know, you hit the ejector button on the call the plane and hope they can find you type of thing. 1.00

01:51:55.000 And even that's like, in a storm like that, unlikely they're going to get there.

01:51:58.000 But for me, what I'm honestly most excited about next, yes, I have some other projects that I'm marinating in my mind.

01:52:04.000 Do I have other expeditions?

01:52:05.000 Sure, I haven't.

01:52:06.000 They're not fully crystallized enough to announce right here, unfortunately.

01:52:10.000 But, you know, I've got some ideas.

01:52:12.000 But more so, like, I'm excited about...

01:52:14.000 I think?

01:52:30.000 Having an ability to pass this on, because for me, as fun as it is for me to push my own limits, what really inspires me, what really fires me up is when I get emails or notes from people like, hey man, I watched you cross Antarctica, I haven't been to the gym in five years, and I've gone every single day since then,

01:52:45.000 or I'm trail running now.

01:52:47.000 I started that business.

01:52:48.000 I never said I was going to star or whatever.

01:52:50.000 And so having an ability to have a moment in time when I can share some of my learnings with the world and meaningful different contents, that really excites me.

01:52:58.000 I love the opportunity to do that.

01:52:59.000 But man, for sure, there's some other events on the horizon as well.

01:53:04.000 But yeah, it's not just about one-upping the next thing.

01:53:07.000 I think that that's a losing proposition in the long run of always trying to do the bigger, badder, craziest thing because When the stakes are, like you said, the razor's line between life and death, you keep one-upping yourself enough, you don't make it to the end of a long life, unfortunately, and I'm not trying to have that be the end.

01:53:22.000 Well, it sounds like you've already broken world records.

01:53:26.000 You're in this weird place where you've accomplished so much that in order to accomplish other things, if you're going to take it to the next level, it really has to be truly life-threatening.

01:53:38.000 Do you have any recommendations?

01:53:39.000 Do you want to come on the next one with me?

01:53:41.000 Quick! 1.00

01:53:41.000 Quick now! 1.00

01:53:43.000 Move into the next stage of life that doesn't involve risking your life.

01:53:47.000 I don't know.

01:53:47.000 You seem like a nice guy.

01:53:48.000 I don't want anything to happen to you.

01:53:49.000 Give me some wisdom.

01:53:51.000 You've got almost a couple decades on me.

01:53:53.000 If you were whispering in the ear of your 33-year-old self, how about this?

01:53:57.000 You've had an interesting path.

01:53:58.000 If you were whispering in the ear of your 33 self, what would be some advice that you would give yourself that you'd be happy that you lived out over the next 20 years?

01:54:05.000 Well, I mean, obviously life experience, when you have life experience, learn those lessons, become a better person, be better at communicating, be better at everything you do.

01:54:15.000 But the problem with what you're doing, and it's not a problem, but in this context, is that you're pushing these incredible endurance records in nature, and particularly in cold weather.

01:54:29.000 And this is, what's stunning about these things is that you're risking your life.

01:54:34.000 It's not that it's just difficult.

01:54:36.000 Like, running in ultra-marathon is incredibly difficult, right?

01:54:40.000 For sure.

01:54:41.000 But what you're doing is not just incredibly difficult.

01:54:43.000 You're doing it in these incredibly harsh environments, and particularly in Antarctica, you don't have any relief, right?

01:54:50.000 No one's going to help you.

01:54:52.000 Like you said, your tent blows away. 1.00

01:54:53.000 You might very well be fucked. 1.00

01:54:56.000 Yes. 1.00

01:54:56.000 Very much. 1.00

01:54:57.000 You are.

01:54:58.000 I don't know what you could do that would one-up that.

01:55:04.000 The problem is you're one-up...

01:55:08.000 Margin of error.

01:55:10.000 You're in this very strange sort of stratosphere of one-upitude.

01:55:15.000 Maybe it's, you know, we take a page out of the Bruce Springsteen Glory Days song and just, you know, kick my feet up and talk about the glory days for the rest of the time.

01:55:24.000 Well, you don't have to do that.

01:55:25.000 But the thing is, I mean, don't listen to me, man.

01:55:29.000 Do whatever you want to do.

01:55:30.000 Obviously, you're going to.

01:55:31.000 You're not going to listen to me.

01:55:32.000 But...

01:55:33.000 You could apply this sort of mental fortitude that you've demonstrated and this ability to push through things, you could apply it to anything.

01:55:41.000 It doesn't have to be these physical feats of risking death in frigid cold temperatures in the middle of the fucking nowhere, or literally at the bottom of the planet Earth.

01:55:51.000 Yeah, I know.

01:55:52.000 And to me, that's actually, that's why it's exciting.

01:55:55.000 Because for me, yes, are there some other physical expressions that I want to have in the world?

01:56:00.000 For sure.

01:56:00.000 And I have some ideas, like I said.

01:56:02.000 And it's not necessarily trying to one-up the next thing.

01:56:04.000 But it's also why it's exciting to me.

01:56:07.000 The lessons that I try to learn, that I try to share with other people, like you said, are universal lessons.

01:56:11.000 But they also, if I revert them back to my own self, are also universal lessons in my own life.

01:56:16.000 So like you said, it's like, hey, what's the next thing I'm super passionate about?

01:56:19.000 If you I have the confidence to sit with a whiteboard with no money, no resources, no background, an incredibly supportive fiancé at the time, now wife, who's down to ride or die with me and go into this with me.

01:56:31.000 And we created what we did.

01:56:32.000 We did something that people literally wrote about and said, this is impossible.

01:56:35.000 People have died trying this.

01:56:36.000 You can't do this.

01:56:37.000 And we've achieved it.

01:56:37.000 It gives me confidence.

01:56:38.000 Not that I can do some other crazy physical thing, but it gives me confidence like, cool.

01:56:42.000 I want to start a business that makes millions of dollars.

01:56:45.000 Cool.

01:56:45.000 Let's figure out how to do that.

01:56:46.000 Let's do the equivalent of writing into Google.

01:56:48.000 What's the difference between PR and marketing?

01:56:51.000 Let's do that.

01:56:52.000 As I do a ton of public speaking now, write this book, the things that I'm doing, that's super fun to share those with the world.

01:56:59.000 I'm having a lot of fun doing that and actually sharing the universal truths and the wisdom that I've learned that I think can be applied different ways.

01:57:05.000 It also goes to, now I get to have the fun of applying those in all of those other different ways of my life.

01:57:12.000 You know, for me, I think that the future is bright, particularly if I don't, I don't really think of myself as this endemic core outdoor athlete.

01:57:20.000 It's very easy to put me in that box.

01:57:22.000 It's very easy to say, like, cool, so you climb mountains.

01:57:24.000 You're a mountain climber.

01:57:25.000 I'm just like, but four years ago, I'd never really climbed mountains, but I happened to do something in mountains.

01:57:28.000 Well, I've never been in the polar region.

01:57:30.000 That's why this British guy was looking at me like, oh, ha, ha, ha, young boy. 0.59

01:57:33.000 I've spent all this time in Antarctica.

01:57:35.000 You'll never survive this.

01:57:36.000 And, like, not only did I survive it, but, like, I finished first.

01:57:38.000 Like, I beat him.

01:57:39.000 How many days did you beat him by?

01:57:41.000 Two and a half days.

01:57:41.000 Ha!

01:57:44.000 But like, I'm not sitting here going like, you know, I'm fascinated by Antarctica.

01:57:47.000 Would I like to go back someday?

01:57:48.000 Absolutely.

01:57:48.000 But I'm not like, Colin O'Brady, the polar explorer only.

01:57:52.000 You know, it's like, what else can I explore that actually presses me?

01:57:55.000 I mean, I love to learn.

01:57:56.000 I love to learn about the mind, explore that.

01:57:59.000 There's so many different ways to express that, that I'm just excited about the future and holds in lots of different verticals. 0.98

01:58:04.000 Well, listen, I think you could fucking do anything. 0.80

01:58:07.000 I think it's very clear what you've already accomplished. 0.98

01:58:10.000 You could literally do anything you want.

01:58:13.000 But I want to see you live.

01:58:15.000 Yeah, me too.

01:58:16.000 How about this?

01:58:17.000 How about you break some crazy endurance running feats?

01:58:21.000 How about that?

01:58:21.000 Break some ultramarathon feats.

01:58:23.000 Because it feels a little bit safer.

01:58:24.000 Yes!

01:58:25.000 Yes! 0.98

01:58:26.000 The worst thing that's going to happen is you're going to get really fucking tired. 0.96

01:58:28.000 But you can live.

01:58:30.000 Maybe the next thing is, I mean, maybe I'm not the funniest guy in the world, but what do you think about comedy?

01:58:34.000 Why not?

01:58:35.000 Should I get back out there on the stage?

01:58:37.000 Listen, if you can communicate and you can make people laugh, you can make a group of people laugh, you can do stand-up comedy.

01:58:42.000 It's just a matter of taking steps and figuring it out and writing stuff out. 0.98

01:58:46.000 I mean, you've got a lot of fucking stories. 0.99

01:58:49.000 For sure. 0.98

01:58:50.000 I mean, just how about getting on stage in front of people and telling people that you're the first person to cross Antarctica on foot?

01:58:56.000 52 days. 0.99

01:58:57.000 Like, what in the fuck? 0.99

01:58:58.000 I do a lot of that. 1.00

01:58:59.000 I enjoy that.

01:59:00.000 I love public speaking.

01:59:01.000 I do a lot of that.

01:59:02.000 Corporations, kids, everything.

01:59:03.000 But that's too easy.

01:59:04.000 Well, trust me, I do it.

01:59:05.000 You could do that.

01:59:06.000 It's fun.

01:59:07.000 No, I have to say, I gotta give a shout out.

01:59:09.000 You definitely don't remember this, but I actually have met you once before about seven years ago in a tiny little comedy club.

01:59:15.000 You did a bit out in Portland, a small little venue.

01:59:18.000 I'm sure you do way bigger venues now.

01:59:19.000 Is that, um...

01:59:20.000 It's called like Helium?

01:59:20.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:59:21.000 Yeah, that place is great.

01:59:22.000 And at the time, it was funny.

01:59:23.000 I was thinking about it when I was driving over.

01:59:25.000 I was like, what was this bit?

01:59:26.000 And you were doing this bit about, hey there, Delilah. 0.97

01:59:30.000 Oh, damn, that's a long time ago. 0.98

01:59:32.000 Wow! 0.99

01:59:33.000 That's what I most remember.

01:59:34.000 But the reason I was there actually was when I first started training for triathlon professionally, I started training with this guy named Phil Claude who was training a couple of UFC fighters at the time.

01:59:45.000 You remember this guy named Mike Pierce who fought in this?

01:59:47.000 Yeah, sure, yeah.

01:59:48.000 He's a Portland guy too, right?

01:59:49.000 Yeah, Portland guy as well.

01:59:50.000 And so, I didn't know a lot about MMA. I still certainly am not as well-versed as you are, but I got in this gym.

01:59:54.000 My coach was like, hey, you're going to start training with these MMA guys.

01:59:57.000 And I was like, you know, what?

01:59:58.000 Like, I'm a skinny little triathlete.

02:00:00.000 These guys are like, you know, brawlers. 0.99

02:00:02.000 But I was, man, what was I impressed?

02:00:03.000 Like, talk about a multi-sport, true multi-sport, right?

02:00:06.000 Yeah.

02:00:06.000 All the different disciplines.

02:00:07.000 I don't have to tell you this, obviously, but I was blown away by how strong they were and became good buddies.

02:00:11.000 And Mike said to me, he was like, hey, man, I'm going to this comedy show.

02:00:14.000 This guy named Joe Rogan's going to be doing his comedy.

02:00:16.000 Come listen to him.

02:00:18.000 So, you know, you made me laugh back then.

02:00:20.000 So, mad respect.

02:00:22.000 And, yeah, it was fun to see into that world a little bit.

02:00:24.000 Well, thanks, man.

02:00:25.000 I guarantee you could do that.

02:00:26.000 But if you still want to do endurance things...

02:00:29.000 Like, please do something where you're not going to die.

02:00:31.000 That's just my request.

02:00:33.000 You know, I made it back here safe and sound.

02:00:35.000 So yeah, the goal, I mean, like I said, the goal is not to keep one-upping myself.

02:00:38.000 I mean, I think that's...

02:00:40.000 But is that part of the danger of this kind of endeavor?

02:00:43.000 Because you really have one-upped I mean, you've done some crazy one-upping, man.

02:00:48.000 For sure.

02:00:49.000 Like I said, I think that if I only thought of myself as a professional athlete, and that was my identity was tied up in that, I think we see that across the spectrum of professional athletes in general, of people just going, hey, I'm a pro athlete, and the second I'm not, even if they banked millions of dollars as an NBA player or something like that,

02:01:05.000 their whole identity disappears with the feet of athleticism.

02:01:09.000 I read a really interesting article today that I was really compelled by, actually, which was a story about Kevin Durant that was on ESPN.com this morning, and it's about him and his business manager and a couple other guys that have kind of gotten around him and like, dude, you're like one of the best, you know, basketball players in the world, MVP, but he's already thinking about all the various things that he's doing,

02:01:27.000 you know, in his life.

02:01:28.000 And what I loved about that article is they were like, you know, SportsCenter back in the day used to be guys, you know, hitting home runs, dunking basketballs, which of course it still is that, but they'll intersperse that with like, Kevin Durant just made a venture investment in this company, or they're growing this watermelon water brand,

02:01:43.000 or they're this or that.

02:01:44.000 And so, I think sports, particularly with the growth of social media, with story time, with media, with content, with all the other ways we can share the insights, which isn't just the game, which isn't just me in the arena pulling the sled, But it's actually a way to connect with people, whether that's in the sense of Kevin Durant making incredible venture investments in companies,

02:02:00.000 or that's with storytelling that actually reaches universal truths with people.

02:02:05.000 I've got a single mother from Nebraska reaching out to me and saying, hey, I don't care about mountains or the outdoors, but I'm going through some hard stuff in the middle of the country being a single mother, and your story connects with me.

02:02:16.000 Thank you for giving me the inspiration to keep pushing forward.

02:02:19.000 So for me...

02:02:19.000 It extends beyond just this athlete in this arena because we have all these other ways to storytell, to create content, to be involved in businesses and things like that.

02:02:29.000 So that's where my mind's at next.

02:02:30.000 It hasn't fully crystallized into the most concrete of plans, but the ability to explore all these different mediums and just having sort of the sports be the catalyst for growth in that way is what I'm really passionate about.

02:02:40.000 That's awesome, man.

02:02:41.000 And whatever your plans are, I have 100% confidence in you.

02:02:45.000 You're an inspiration, man.

02:02:46.000 Thank you very much.

02:02:47.000 I appreciate it.

02:02:47.000 Thanks, brother.

02:02:48.000 Really appreciate it, man.

02:02:49.000 And tell everybody your Instagram, how to get a hold of you on social media.

02:02:53.000 Yeah, follow along.

02:02:54.000 It's just my name, at Colin O'Brady.

02:02:56.000 Also, my website is just my name, colinobrady.com.

02:02:59.000 Got a list on there.

02:03:00.000 Like I said, I'm working on a book.

02:03:02.000 There's lots of juicy details that I haven't shared yet.

02:03:04.000 So if you're interested in that, pop your email address in there.

02:03:06.000 We'll keep you posted when that comes out next year.

02:03:08.000 But at Colin O'Brady or ColinOBrady.com.

02:03:11.000 Come say hi.

02:03:12.000 Beautiful.

02:03:12.000 Thank you.

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 11, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1244 - Colin O'Brady

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