The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1392 - Zach Bitter

00:00:03.000 What's up, Zach?

00:00:04.000 Hey, how's it going?

00:00:05.000 Good, man.

00:00:05.000 How are you?

00:00:06.000 Good, good.

00:00:07.000 Thanks for having me back on.

00:00:08.000 My pleasure.

00:00:08.000 Hey, thanks for turning me on to those shoes you wear, too.

00:00:10.000 Those Ultras.

00:00:11.000 Oh, nice.

00:00:12.000 I started running with those.

00:00:13.000 Yeah.

00:00:13.000 I like them.

00:00:14.000 I like them a lot.

00:00:14.000 They're great.

00:00:15.000 Uh-huh.

00:00:15.000 Which ones do you got?

00:00:16.000 The Lone Peak RSMs, I think?

00:00:17.000 I got whatever the trail ones are.

00:00:19.000 Okay.

00:00:19.000 You know?

00:00:20.000 I like the wide foot...

00:00:22.000 What's it called?

00:00:22.000 Footbox?

00:00:23.000 Is that what you're called?

00:00:23.000 Foot-shaped toe box?

00:00:24.000 Yeah.

00:00:24.000 Toe box.

00:00:25.000 Is that what it's called?

00:00:25.000 Toe box?

00:00:26.000 Yeah.

00:00:26.000 Those are great.

00:00:27.000 Cool, man.

00:00:28.000 No, I'm glad you like them.

00:00:29.000 And I feel like this is what you wear, so it gets me excited when I'm running.

00:00:33.000 It's really interesting when you dive into the world of footwear and stuff.

00:00:38.000 I learned this recently.

00:00:39.000 The number one indicator of low injury risk, which is what runners are always looking for.

00:00:45.000 They're going to minimize risk.

00:00:47.000 Comfort is the identifier for that.

00:00:50.000 If you find yourself going into a specialty running shop...

00:00:53.000 Ask them to try on a variety of different pairs, a variety of different models, and find the one that's most comfortable for you, and that's probably going to lower your risk to the lowest you can get from your footwear anyway.

00:01:01.000 What if you like really smushy ones?

00:01:03.000 Aren't those supposed to be not so good for you?

00:01:05.000 Yeah, no, that's a good question.

00:01:06.000 I think it's one of those things where it's kind of half true, half not, where you kind of have to look at what's the purpose of what you're doing.

00:01:15.000 So the way I kind of describe it is if I'm trying to strengthen my lower legs, you know, I want that low cushion, that firm platform because that's going to really activate the muscles in the lower part of the leg.

00:01:25.000 But if I'm dealing with some lower leg issues or a little sore, I did a workout and my calves are kind of sore or my ankles sore, then cushion can be great because it's going to relieve that kind of initial impact on the lower part of your legs.

00:01:37.000 And the caveat though is those impact forces have to go somewhere.

00:01:40.000 So they're kind of going to move further up the kinetic chain.

00:01:43.000 So what I usually tell people, if you're dealing with lower leg pain or injury, then you might want to consider something a little more cushioned.

00:01:51.000 And if you're dealing with something like in your knees or your hips, then getting rid of some of that cushion is going to just keep that kind of more precise foot plant and maybe alleviate some of those impact forces from ending up in those areas.

00:02:02.000 But at the end of the day, the mechanics of it all are going to be the real driver.

00:02:06.000 You want your foot to come underneath a bent knee.

00:02:08.000 Because you're using your legs as kind of like a three-foot spring, essentially.

00:02:11.000 So if you can get that foot plant under bent knee, it's going to absorb it in the way your body intends versus absorbing it in a way that could maybe send those impact forces into the wrong areas.

00:02:20.000 That's really interesting.

00:02:21.000 You know, I was watching a video with this guy who is in his 70s who runs an under-three-hour marathon.

00:02:27.000 Yeah.

00:02:27.000 And he said that five years ago he hired a coach, which is kind of crazy, like a 65-year-old dude hiring a coach but trimmed a bunch of time off of his marathon, I think more than five minutes off of his marathon.

00:02:39.000 I think it was quite a bit more than five minutes.

00:02:42.000 And he was running for a long time before that, but yet a coach sort of shortened his time in finishing a 26-mile race at 70 years old.

00:02:55.000 Yeah.

00:02:55.000 It's never too late.

00:02:56.000 Yeah.

00:02:57.000 The bent knee is really important because a lot of folks who don't pay attention to the history of footwear don't understand that this fat cushioned heel that everybody sort of thinks of when you think of a running shoe and when you watch a lot of people run that don't know any better,

00:03:13.000 they run and they land on their heel, which is sort of something that was created, was it by Nike?

00:03:19.000 Is that what it was that created that fat bottomed heel thing? 0.99

00:03:22.000 Yeah, I think they were the first one to do the offset, where it was traditionally, I think it was like 12 millimeters where your heel would be that much higher than your forefoot.

00:03:30.000 But I think even when we get into kind of like, say, heel striking versus forefoot or midfoot striking, heel striking is another thing where it's not inherently bad.

00:03:38.000 It all comes down to what I was saying before, where if you can heel strike, but your foot is still underneath that bent knee, you're probably not going to do anything too detrimental.

00:03:47.000 But it's not optimal, right?

00:03:49.000 Oh, really?

00:03:52.000 Yeah.

00:04:07.000 And just maybe some nuances with the way their body is kind of more or less designed.

00:04:12.000 But I mean, there's heel striking folks that are not injury prone or have never gotten injuries or hardly ever get injuries.

00:04:19.000 But usually, I think if you're doing that, that's probably because you're under that bent knee and you're not kind of having that point where your foot is out in front of your knee and then you kind of have that straight leg but at an angle where it's going to be, you know, not ideal for kind of absorbing those impacts.

00:04:34.000 Yeah, that's the real bad one, right, is when people are...

00:04:43.000 Yeah, I mean, I couldn't say for sure, but I think there's a lot of nuance and it ends up being kind of like an individual situation with a lot of these cases, so...

00:04:55.000 It's hard to know for sure.

00:04:57.000 There's probably people who can talk to mechanics better than me.

00:05:14.000 Yeah, so it was, yeah, let me, I'll explain a little bit.

00:05:18.000 So it was, the event itself was called Six Days in the Dome.

00:05:21.000 And really what it was, was you could do anything from a 24-hour event to a 48-hour event to a six-day event and just see how far you could run within that time frame.

00:05:29.000 Six days?

00:05:30.000 Yeah, I know there's some crazy people out there.

00:05:33.000 So just wait till David Goggins finds that event.

00:05:37.000 But yeah, so I've been, it's interesting because there's not a lot of timed events that are necessarily structured for 100 mile or for like 12 hours.

00:05:47.000 So a lot of times you find yourself jumping into some of these other events that are longer in duration and just kind of using them as a way to try to run a fast 100 miler or a fast 12 hour event.

00:05:56.000 So the race director for that particular event had reached out to me because he's known me for a while and knew that I was targeting fast 100 mile times and just said, hey, I've got this cool event set up at the Olympic training facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Pettit Center.

00:06:10.000 And I think it's going to be pretty conducive for fast times.

00:06:15.000 And asked if I wanted to do it.

00:06:17.000 So I actually didn't have an ideal timeline that I would have normally wanted to work with in terms of getting ready for it.

00:06:26.000 But training went really well.

00:06:27.000 And I went there targeting the 100-mile world record, which was 11 hours, 28 minutes, and 3 seconds prior to that.

00:06:34.000 And ended up running 11 hours, 19 minutes, and 13 seconds for 100 miles.

00:06:38.000 And then since we have like this 100 mile distance and also this 12 hour timed event kind of structure, you can find yourself if you're under 12 hours kind of double dipping and getting two events for the price of one, I guess you could say.

00:06:50.000 So I kept running after I hit 100 miles and ended up going 104.88 miles total in the 12 hour time frame.

00:06:56.000 So that was another record?

00:06:57.000 Yeah.

00:06:58.000 So it's two world records, 100 miles in 12 hours. 0.99

00:07:01.000 Dude, 6 minutes and 48 seconds for a pace for 100 miles is fucking bonkers. 0.98

00:07:09.000 That is so fast. 0.99

00:07:11.000 That's so crazy.

00:07:13.000 That's such a fast pace, man.

00:07:16.000 Yeah, you know, it's funny, like, when you look at it, because I think sometimes people look at, like, 100 miles in 11 hours and 19 minutes, and there's not a lot of context in their mind, unless they're kind of familiar with ultramarathon running.

00:07:27.000 But when you start to break it down into, like, the subcategories where it's like, well, that's like four...

00:07:33.000 Like sub three hour marathons in a row or I can't remember how many or what the 5k time is.

00:07:38.000 It's like 31 5ks at some time.

00:07:41.000 That's four sub three hour marathons in a row.

00:07:44.000 Yeah.

00:07:45.000 Wow.

00:07:45.000 That's so crazy.

00:07:47.000 That's so fast.

00:07:49.000 And are you still eating mostly meat?

00:07:52.000 So, you know, this gets brought up quite a bit, I think, because, I mean, I eat a ton of animal products, for sure.

00:07:57.000 But, you know, I wouldn't classify myself as a quote-unquote carnivore.

00:08:02.000 Well, this is because the carnivore diet people want to claim you.

00:08:05.000 And we discussed this kind of the last time you were here, where you take in a lot of glucose, and you ramp up your carbohydrates considerably before a race.

00:08:14.000 But, like, what is a daily diet, let's say, in training, like you're preparing for something like this, what's a daily diet for you like?

00:08:21.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:08:22.000 So, yeah, let's jump into that.

00:08:23.000 I think there is some nuance within that even because when you think of my lifestyle, the way I like describe it is if you took a calendar year and you grabbed a single day out of there and you grabbed a day where I was at like a peak training day versus a recovery day, those are like so drastically different in terms of my energy demands.

00:08:40.000 So, like things tend to fluctuate quite a bit and change quite a bit and I think that's oftentimes what confuses people because they want to...

00:08:47.000 We're good to go.

00:09:08.000 But if you pick a day out where I'm doing like a big training day, doing like a 30-mile run or something like that, that's where I'm going to kind of bring back some of the carbohydrates to try to supplement that activity.

00:09:18.000 And the best way to maybe describe it is, you know, there's like this kind of train low, race high, or this carb periodization concept that's getting more momentum behind it and more studies and science behind it too.

00:09:31.000 There's some...

00:09:35.000 I think?

00:09:50.000 One of the big things they're starting to recognize is that even with elite athletes, when you're periodizing your training like I do, your nutrition should be being periodized as well.

00:10:01.000 The science is pretty clear that if you're doing a workout and you take in glucose or fructose, I think most science says a two-to-one ratio is ideal for maximizing the amount you can take in.

00:10:13.000 And you're going to give yourself an advantage.

00:10:16.000 That's like rocket fuel.

00:10:17.000 So then it becomes a question of, do you need that 100% of the time?

00:10:21.000 Or do you even want to do it 100% of the time?

00:10:23.000 Can I pause you right here?

00:10:25.000 Yeah.

00:10:25.000 When you say glucose 2 to 1, what do you mean by that?

00:10:28.000 Glucose to fructose.

00:10:29.000 Okay.

00:10:30.000 Because what they found out is when they started doing a lot of the exercise science and nutrition was that the real limiter is your gut.

00:10:38.000 So on paper- So absorption- Yeah, there's a finite amount you can absorb and you increase the amount you can absorb on average if you have that two to one ratio versus all of one or the other.

00:10:51.000 So two glucose to one sucrose?

00:10:53.000 Yeah.

00:10:54.000 Interesting.

00:10:55.000 And what are the different sources for glucose versus sucrose?

00:10:59.000 Like sucrose is simple sugar.

00:11:00.000 Is that more like a refined sugar?

00:11:03.000 Yeah.

00:11:03.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:04.000 I think like the way – like most like sports supplements and things like that are going to be designed to kind of meet those specific – because they're looking at the literature and they're seeing like, okay, this is how you optimize it.

00:11:15.000 So like a Powerade or a Gatorade or something like that would be a two-to-one?

00:11:19.000 Yeah, I'd have to look to see exactly if they have that, but my guess would be they would be if they're looking at the research and where that's kind of at.

00:11:27.000 But yeah, so really the question that I think needs to be asked with a lot of this stuff is if I want to make a workout feel as easy as possible, if I can get in, say, 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour, it's probably going to do that.

00:11:42.000 My perceived effort at that pace is probably going to feel easier.

00:11:47.000 But then you have to ask the question, like, how often do you need it to feel that easy?

00:11:51.000 So for me, the answer to that is like, well, if I'm doing something really strenuous or something that's in a little bit of a gray area where it's just fast enough to dip into the glycogen stores, but just slow enough that I can do it for quite a while, like maybe even a couple hours, then you're kind of in this area where that could be an advantage for you from a performance standpoint.

00:12:11.000 But if I'm going out for an easy run of like 60 to 90 minutes and it's going to be like a 2 to 3 out of 10 perceived effort anyway, like there's no real need for me to be hitting glucose during that or, you know, sports drink during that to make that feel even easier yet because my goal isn't necessarily...

00:12:29.000 To, you know, make an easy run feel even easier, I guess is the way to make it.

00:12:33.000 You call a 90-minute run easy.

00:12:35.000 Nothing, just a stroll, just a few dozen miles.

00:12:38.000 Well, and I think that also brings up a really good point, too, where, like, a lot of this stuff, when we're looking at carbohydrate usage and performance, is we're looking at elite athletes.

00:12:46.000 We're looking at folks that are training for, like, you know, the Olympics.

00:12:50.000 You know, sometimes they're even Olympic medalists.

00:12:53.000 And that's just not a very good comparison, I think, to the average person who's out there running.

00:12:58.000 Because, you know, their purposes are different.

00:13:00.000 You know, their objectives are different.

00:13:01.000 Their lives are very different.

00:13:03.000 Like, one is doing basically everything around a specific date and distance and trying to run as fast as they can on that date.

00:13:10.000 And another person may be trying to run as fast as they can, but there's so many other factors in life, like their work, their relationships, their, you know, the level of training they're actually able to have with the time they have, and then also, like, You know, managing their own health and nutrition because like,

00:13:25.000 you know, elite athletes don't have a very rosy picture in terms of long-term health either.

00:13:30.000 So for someone who's like, you know, maybe 10, 20 pounds overweight and is trying to run to get into shape or trained to get into shape or something like that, they're probably thinking just as much about health as they are about performance.

00:13:41.000 So for them to be, you know, shuttling in 60 grams of carbohydrate every hour during training and racing is probably not the direction that they'd want to go.

00:13:48.000 Now when you get ready to do something like this 100 mile run, how many miles do you run on a typical day and do you ramp that up or do you just give yourself a base and know that you can push through?

00:14:01.000 How do you handle that?

00:14:02.000 Yeah, so I'll build up my training.

00:14:04.000 The way I kind of describe it is like I'm always focusing on specificity kind of being king.

00:14:09.000 So depending on the race, distance, and the intensity is kind of how I'm going to structure my workouts.

00:14:14.000 So the rule of thumb that I use is the closer I get to the workout, the more specific the workouts I do are going to be towards that race, distance, and intensity.

00:14:23.000 Uh, so for me, what that oftentimes means, since I'm training for like a hundred mile distance races is early in a training block, I might be doing some like shorter interval work, like VO two max, like an example that would maybe be like a three minute, uh, kind of almost all out effort followed by like a three minute recovery jog.

00:14:38.000 And then another three minute interval like that.

00:14:40.000 Some of those real short interval sessions.

00:14:41.000 And how many of those would you do in a row?

00:14:43.000 How many sprints versus recovery?

00:14:45.000 Yeah, it'll depend.

00:14:47.000 I'll start like pretty easy.

00:14:48.000 When I first started, I might just do three by three on that.

00:14:51.000 And my goal really is to every week is to kind of build volume within that.

00:14:55.000 So that first week, it might be just three of them.

00:14:58.000 But by like, say the eighth week, I might do a total of like 24 to 27 minutes worth of volume within that VO2 max context.

00:15:05.000 Yeah.

00:15:06.000 It's really interesting because like, you know, I could go out on any one day and do like maybe 10 of those.

00:15:11.000 But if I do that, and then it takes me like a week and a half to recover from that session, it's not nearly as probably effective as if I spread that out a little bit and said, did like five by three and then five by three.

00:15:21.000 Yeah.

00:15:42.000 I'm sure you are.

00:15:43.000 You know who Pavel Tatsulini is?

00:15:45.000 Yeah.

00:15:45.000 So he's got this sort of concept when it comes to weightlifting with kettlebells in particular called greasing the groove.

00:15:51.000 Whereas instead of doing all these sets to failure, you would just do like half of what you're capable of and then do it again in a more frequent manner.

00:16:03.000 Do it again on Wednesday.

00:16:06.000 Do it again on Friday.

00:16:07.000 And then give yourself a lot of time in between each individual activity, too, particularly in training for strength.

00:16:13.000 He actually recommends as much as 10 minutes of recovery in between sets, which is kind of crazy.

00:16:19.000 I mean, most people don't have the time for that.

00:16:21.000 Six sets is an hour in.

00:16:24.000 I mean, it seems like you're just laying around at the gym.

00:16:26.000 If you were at the gym, people would mock you.

00:16:28.000 But that's his protocol.

00:16:30.000 Yeah, and I think endurance is a patient-person's game, so I think if you can build that volume in a micro-stressing or in a sustainable way, that's what's going to get you strong, and it's also going to make it less likely to get injured.

00:16:45.000 How much time do you need?

00:16:48.000 If you got up to that insane pace that you did when you ran the 100 miles, if you took a week off or two weeks off, how much would you lose?

00:16:59.000 Not much in that amount of time, especially at that intensity.

00:17:03.000 So the thing is, the 648 mile pace, we need to be kind of relative about it.

00:17:08.000 So for me, when I'm out training, when I'm fully recovered, that's a pretty reasonable pace from an intensity standpoint.

00:17:18.000 So the interesting thing about ultramarathoning is race pace is sometimes faster than even some of your easiest runs in training.

00:17:25.000 So your training is kind of all what we'd call like overspeed training.

00:17:29.000 Whereas in most endurance events from like the 1500 up to like the marathon, the majority of your work is going to be sub race pace.

00:17:37.000 And then you're going to have like, depending on the program, you know, maybe 20, 30% of that be like overspeed training.

00:17:43.000 Why is that?

00:17:44.000 Well, just because the relative duration of the event is so long, like, you know, I can't run fast.

00:17:51.000 If I run too fast, then it's just going to end badly for me.

00:17:54.000 Right, but why is that with marathons?

00:17:55.000 Oh, well, because it's similar to strength training, where, like, if the limiter is, like, the amount of, like, stress you put on your body.

00:18:03.000 So if I was going to train to peak in, say, a marathon, my max potential pace for that wouldn't be sustainable to do every run.

00:18:12.000 So I'd be running too hard, too fast, too often.

00:18:15.000 And then we'd get into that kind of situation that we were talking about before where you're starting to macro stress versus micro stress.

00:18:21.000 So if you run a marathon, what is your standard marathon pace?

00:18:25.000 So I'm a little goofy where I competed in high school and college.

00:18:29.000 And then I did some marathons, but not really in a structured manner.

00:18:33.000 And then I got an ultra marathon running.

00:18:34.000 So I haven't really done what I would consider a real legitimate marathon training program. 0.99

00:18:38.000 So you're basically saying marathons are for pussies, right? 1.00

00:18:40.000 Is that what you're saying? 1.00

00:18:41.000 Just say it.

00:18:42.000 I actually think marathons are maybe the hardest event of them all.

00:18:49.000 Really?

00:18:49.000 And I'll explain why because- You're going fast.

00:18:51.000 Well, yeah.

00:18:52.000 It's just short enough where you have to be pushing like a fairly intense pace, but it's just long enough where if you make a mistake, you're going to pay for that for quite some time.

00:18:59.000 So you're on such a razor's edge and you're also just one tiny mistake away from things going really badly.

00:19:05.000 And what you're saying about mistake, you're talking about pacing, like if you go out too hard.

00:19:08.000 Yeah.

00:19:09.000 I see your watch.

00:19:10.000 What kind of watch are you wearing?

00:19:11.000 It's a Coros Apex.

00:19:14.000 Well, I've never heard of that one before.

00:19:16.000 Is that a GPS watch, one of those?

00:19:18.000 Yeah, they're a relatively new brand.

00:19:21.000 In running, I guess, the two kind of big players historically have been Suunto and Garmin.

00:19:26.000 And Coros kind of came to the market a few years ago.

00:19:30.000 They wanted to try to take that high-end technology, but...

00:19:33.000 There it is.

00:19:56.000 Then you go dissect all the data like how much elevation gain and loss, your pace per mile.

00:20:02.000 Is this primarily a running watch?

00:20:05.000 I mean, you could use it for running or cycling or hiking or mountaineering or anything like that.

00:20:09.000 It's got all those kind of bells and whistles on it.

00:20:12.000 Okay.

00:20:13.000 So my question was, so if you're running, are you checking your watch if you're doing a marathon?

00:20:19.000 You're making sure that you're not going crazy?

00:20:21.000 Because is it otherwise you just have to kind of gauge it just based on the pack and based on how you feel?

00:20:27.000 Yeah, and I think that's actually a good – especially when you get into ultramarathoning, I think the metric that people should dial in the most is their rate of perceived exertion because that's something that's not going to necessarily lie to you.

00:20:39.000 Like if you base your thing – your stuff off heart rate exclusively or a pace exclusively, you can find yourself like justifying something that's not necessarily where you need to be.

00:20:47.000 And if something like that malfunctions and that was your only compass, then you're in trouble.

00:20:51.000 So when I'm doing my training and when I'm working with other folks, I like to use heart rate and I like to use pacing and stuff like that.

00:20:59.000 But ultimately, I'm trying to get the person to really understand how hard is this effort and then across the board.

00:21:05.000 Uh, from like very easy to very difficult.

00:21:07.000 And then when it comes time to race, we can kind of dial in like, this is the intensity you're trying to look for so that they can kind of feel that out.

00:21:14.000 Do you use a metric?

00:21:15.000 Like, do you, do you say like, how do you feel seven to 10?

00:21:18.000 Yeah, pretty much.

00:21:19.000 I have a scale of like one to 10 that I'll use a lot of times.

00:21:21.000 And there's like a whole variety.

00:21:23.000 Like most people are going to be using some sort of like, probably like zone system of training where there's like There's numbers that are associated with heart rate ranges or intensities, and there'll be descriptors.

00:21:33.000 And, you know, there's some that are like 1 through 20. There's some that are kind of 1 through 5 and then 1 through 10. Isn't that so weird too, right?

00:21:40.000 Because it's subjective.

00:21:42.000 I mean, the whoop strap is something I wear and it uses something like that.

00:21:46.000 Like, what's your perceived exertion?

00:21:48.000 I'm like, I just push it towards the far right.

00:21:51.000 I don't know.

00:21:52.000 Like, what does that mean?

00:21:54.000 Like, it's so hard to gauge your perceived exertion, especially when the workout's over.

00:21:59.000 Yeah, it was hard.

00:22:00.000 I went all out.

00:22:01.000 Like, what does that mean?

00:22:02.000 I don't know what that means, you know?

00:22:03.000 Yeah.

00:22:04.000 Yeah.

00:22:04.000 It can be tricky and it is very subjective, but I think it's one of those things where it falls into the same category that a lot of endurance events are where you just got to be patient and really work on kind of understanding that.

00:22:15.000 And you learn from experience too.

00:22:17.000 Like you find out like, oh, I went and did this workout and I thought that was the right pace and intensity, but it turned out to be a little too fast.

00:22:23.000 Do you keep a training log?

00:22:25.000 Yeah.

00:22:26.000 And do you like write it on Excel or something like that?

00:22:29.000 I basically just load all my stuff up to Strava.

00:22:32.000 Okay.

00:22:32.000 Yeah, so that's kind of like the go-to for most runners these days.

00:22:36.000 I'm sorry, but do you keep like a diary?

00:22:38.000 Like today felt like this and this was an issue and I felt like I didn't have enough fluids or do you do anything like that?

00:22:44.000 Not so much anymore.

00:22:46.000 I did it a lot when I was in college and I did it a lot when I first started when I was really trying to kind of learn my body and kind of learn what things mean and how I respond to them.

00:22:55.000 But now I've been kind of doing it long enough where I have enough of a...

00:22:59.000 Like an understanding of kind of how, like when things go wrong, like why they did, or if something went really well, like why it did, that I don't feel like I need to take as detailed notes.

00:23:10.000 But I think it's really valuable for someone who's, especially while they're trying to learn the rate of perceived exertion and kind of really dial those things in.

00:23:16.000 It's probably worth their time to write that stuff down so that they can look back at it and they have that resource available to them as they're kind of reflecting on things.

00:23:25.000 Now, say if you're getting ready to do something like this crazy 100-mile run, trying to break a world record, how much time are you giving yourself to really, truly prepare for that?

00:23:37.000 Is it based on how you're at right now, like what your baseline is, like what kind of preparation you've done before you knew that this race was available to you?

00:23:44.000 Like, how do you do that?

00:23:46.000 Yeah, no, and this is, we can kind of hop back to where we were talking about before, because when I was talking about the VO2 max workout stuff, that's kind of early in my training plan, because that intensity is very unspecific to a 100-mile pace.

00:23:58.000 You know, those VO2 max workouts are much closer to something shorter, like a 5K. So what are you trying to do with those VO2 max workouts?

00:24:06.000 You're just trying to elevate your base?

00:24:08.000 Yeah.

00:24:09.000 Yeah, there's the different systems of training, and that's kind of a higher intensity system.

00:24:15.000 So it's not very relevant to the race pace that I'm doing specifically, but it's not irrelevant to my overall aerobic efficiency.

00:24:24.000 So, like, by doing some of those faster stuff things, you can work on things like your form.

00:24:28.000 And just because when you're running that fast, like, things tend to be a little more dialed in.

00:24:33.000 And it just expands.

00:24:35.000 Basically, what you do is you give yourself kind of a bigger range of what your potential is going to be when you start focusing more in on, like, the aerobic side of things that we're going to see, like, as I would move further down in the training plan.

00:24:48.000 So once I kind of do that section of training, to answer your question though, like ideally I'll have maybe about, since I'm coming into most programs, not completely out of shape, like four months is kind of the sweet spot for me.

00:25:01.000 If I was coming like off the couch, so to speak, six months would be a little more appropriate.

00:25:05.000 Are you ever off the couch?

00:25:06.000 Only if I'm injured and I've only been injured in any significant way since they're ultra running once for about five weeks.

00:25:13.000 What happened?

00:25:13.000 Yeah.

00:25:13.000 I had a stress fracture on my right sacra alla.

00:25:16.000 What is that?

00:25:17.000 It's basically like on your tailbone.

00:25:19.000 Oh, ouch! 0.80

00:25:20.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:25:21.000 What the fuck happened? 0.98

00:25:22.000 So what I think, I don't know, it's hard to know for sure, but what was, the way it was described to me when I was going in and getting that stuff checked out was what likely happened was I had such a history in kind of flat running that I was actually preparing for a race that had a lot more climbing and descending, so I started changing my training to more climbing and descending. 0.99

00:25:38.000 And when I did that, like, uh, One thing that sometimes happens when you're running a lot of flat, hard surfaces is your ankles and your hips can get pretty tight from that real kind of uniform mechanic that you're doing.

00:25:51.000 So my range of motion was semi-limited.

00:25:54.000 So when I was doing some of that hard downhill and uphill running, I just probably wasn't very efficient with my form.

00:26:00.000 And it ended up, kind of what we were talking about before, those impact forces ended up in the wrong spot.

00:26:04.000 And then the stress fracture occurred.

00:26:05.000 That is crazy. 1.00

00:26:06.000 You broke your ass. 1.00

00:26:07.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:26:08.000 You literally broke your ass. 1.00

00:26:09.000 People always talk about, oh, he was busting his ass. 1.00

00:26:12.000 You actually did. 0.99

00:26:13.000 So where is it, Jamie?

00:26:14.000 Right there?

00:26:15.000 Oh, Jesus Christ. 1.00

00:26:17.000 It literally is your ass bone. 0.99

00:26:19.000 The really goofy thing about it, too, was when I first had the pain surface for that, it was kind of in the lower back glute area is where it surfaced. 0.98

00:26:29.000 So I thought I had a sciatic issue.

00:26:31.000 Oh, makes sense.

00:26:33.000 I went in to the doctor and they were like, okay, let's try some active release therapy and let's see if we can get this thing to loosen up.

00:26:39.000 And we just were working on it and it would clear up where I wouldn't notice it if I was walking around.

00:26:44.000 But then anytime I'd go for a run or try to go for a run, I'd get that sharp pain right away.

00:26:49.000 And so after about, I think it was maybe four weeks or so, we had been doing a ton of active release, a ton of mobility work.

00:26:55.000 And then it wasn't going away.

00:26:58.000 So he's like, well, let's just get an MRI and see what's going on in there.

00:27:00.000 And They did the MRI, got the results back, and he said, there's nothing there.

00:27:04.000 So you start running again.

00:27:05.000 So I started running again.

00:27:07.000 I ran like, I think it was two or three days maybe.

00:27:10.000 Very short, like two miles and then three miles and then maybe five or something like that.

00:27:14.000 And then I got a call back from the doctor and he's like...

00:27:16.000 Oh, it turns out we took a second look at the MRI. There is a stress fracture.

00:27:20.000 And I told him, like, well, I've just ran the first three pain-free days I have since this issue. 0.99

00:27:26.000 Oh, it's a mindfuck. 0.61

00:27:27.000 Yeah, well, and I think what he said maybe was going on there was, I mean, it was a very fine stress fracture. 0.99

00:27:33.000 I mean, sometimes when people have a fracture on their sacral alle, it's like a big enough fracture where it can be out for like a year.

00:27:41.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:27:41.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.71

00:27:42.000 So it can be a really bad injury.

00:27:44.000 But he said maybe the mobility and the strength work I was doing while I had that to try to rehab kind of strengthen the areas around it enough that when I just was running flat, really slow, really easy, that protected that area enough where I didn't feel the pain anymore.

00:27:57.000 Oh, okay.

00:27:58.000 So after that, I think I took another like two weeks off completely just to make sure before I started building back up and then I started kind of building back up again.

00:28:05.000 Do you ever run on one of those Air Runner things?

00:28:08.000 You know, those self-propelling treadmills?

00:28:10.000 I've been on one once before, but not in any significant way, but they look pretty sweet. 0.99

00:28:14.000 I love those damn things. 0.98

00:28:16.000 Which one do we have? 0.99

00:28:17.000 What is it?

00:28:19.000 Who makes it?

00:28:20.000 It's Airdyne, right? 0.89

00:28:21.000 Airdyne makes it?

00:28:22.000 The Air Runner?

00:28:23.000 Is that what it's called?

00:28:25.000 Jamie will find out.

00:28:26.000 But anyway, man, it's some percentage, 13, make up the number, 13% harder than actual...

00:28:32.000 Assault Air Runner, yeah.

00:28:33.000 Assault Air Runner, yeah.

00:28:35.000 It's amazing. 0.99

00:28:36.000 It's hard as fuck. 0.99

00:28:38.000 I gave one to Bert, Bert Kreischer. 1.00

00:28:39.000 He's like, this is too hard!

00:28:41.000 Yeah.

00:28:41.000 Because he likes using a treadmill and pretending he's really running when he's just picking his legs up and down.

00:28:46.000 But that makes you actually push.

00:28:48.000 And so your calves get blown the fuck up, man.

00:28:52.000 It's hard.

00:28:53.000 It's really good.

00:28:55.000 What does it say?

00:28:56.000 What percentage does it say it's harder than actual running?

00:29:01.000 Like if you were just running at the same pace.

00:29:03.000 Some people are like, running's hard enough.

00:29:05.000 Why are we making it harder?

00:29:06.000 Well, the idea is that you go and run and it makes running easier.

00:29:09.000 Uh-huh, yeah.

00:29:10.000 Sort of like running with weights on.

00:29:11.000 Uh-huh.

00:29:11.000 But it doesn't give you an additional stress.

00:29:14.000 Yeah, that's a good point.

00:29:15.000 It's not pounding on your body.

00:29:17.000 Mm-hmm.

00:29:17.000 It's not like you're doing anything that's going to injure you, but you have to propel that thing.

00:29:24.000 For folks who don't know what we're talking about, it's basically a very subtle you, right?

00:29:29.000 Like the way the thing is structured.

00:29:32.000 And it's got tread on it, and as you run, you are the thing that's making it move.

00:29:37.000 So there's no machinery.

00:29:39.000 It's not plugged in.

00:29:40.000 It's not like it's electronic, and you set the pace.

00:29:44.000 Woo! 0.99

00:29:44.000 And you just kind of keep up with it. 0.99

00:29:46.000 You're making it run.

00:29:48.000 So you're pushing it.

00:29:49.000 And as you push it, it requires extra energy and extra effort.

00:29:53.000 And that extra effort, when you actually go run on a regular road surface or a trail, it seems easier.

00:30:00.000 Yeah, no, that makes sense.

00:30:01.000 And I think it's pretty cool because with the weighted stuff, you run the risk of potentially hurting something by adding that additional weight.

00:30:07.000 They were doing these ruck challenges.

00:30:11.000 I think it was trained to hunt or one of these competitions.

00:30:17.000 They were making people wear heavy packs.

00:30:20.000 It might not have been trained to hunt.

00:30:22.000 I think it was another...

00:30:23.000 Anyway, they would make you wear a 100-pound pack. 0.98

00:30:26.000 And so the idea was they were doing these races with 100-pound packs on, which you can imagine is a fucking recipe for orthopedic surgeon visits.

00:30:36.000 And so these people were getting kind of jacked up, and I believe they stopped doing that. 0.92

00:30:41.000 As a running competition.

00:30:44.000 But there's a few of those similar kind of competitions where they force you to do a bunch of physical activities and then bring your heart rate down and execute shots on targets and then run to the next station and do a bunch of physical activities.

00:30:56.000 And they were doing that with heavy, heavy weights on.

00:30:59.000 It just really was a bad idea.

00:31:01.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:31:02.000 I think that would be maybe good for if you're going to do like a mountaineering experience and you're going to have to carry a bunch of little stuff like you're doing with hunting.

00:31:09.000 But even then, you really should just ruck.

00:31:12.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:31:12.000 Just put the heavy pack on.

00:31:13.000 There's a company called Outdoorsman's that makes a really good one.

00:31:17.000 It's called an Atlas Pack and it's essentially a pack frame, but the back of it is a universal post like what you would use for weights, you know, like a weightlifting post.

00:31:27.000 For, you know, Olympic weights, you know, so those big round steel plates slide right onto it so you can get a 45 pound plate on it and then clamp it down.

00:31:37.000 And so it's like really secure on you as opposed to like, sometimes if you put too much weight in a pack, like maybe it'll sit all at the bottom.

00:31:44.000 It's This is like, boom, right in the center of your back, and you cramp it down, and then you're really carrying all that weight on your hips, a little bit on your shoulders, and it's all really centered well. 0.96

00:31:55.000 That's a good one for really training, but you don't fucking run with it.

00:32:00.000 You just hike. 0.92

00:32:01.000 Hike, yeah.

00:32:01.000 Get that strength and power.

00:32:03.000 Yeah, hard enough just to walk with it.

00:32:05.000 Does it say what the extra percentage it is?

00:32:07.000 I couldn't find an official testing of whatever, but one person that did a big deep dive into it said its main thing was to fix his gait or it will improve running gait.

00:32:18.000 That 30% is a number that they read as a sales point.

00:32:23.000 30%?

00:32:23.000 I didn't hear that one.

00:32:24.000 I thought it was like 13. I'm trying to find testing or some sort of science on it.

00:32:29.000 It doesn't seem like it's 30%. 0.98

00:32:30.000 What the fuck do I know? 0.97

00:32:32.000 What am I, a mathematician? 0.97

00:32:34.000 But it's just excellent for training.

00:32:36.000 Do you do any training on machines or is all your training essentially done on the road?

00:32:41.000 The running is all pretty much done on the road and the trails.

00:32:44.000 I'll do some mobility work and some strength work in the gym, and that's where I'll kind of go inside, I guess, for it.

00:32:51.000 But yeah, I've used treadmills and stuff in the past, and I do use them from time to time, but usually if I have the option to go outside, I'll do that.

00:33:00.000 I mean, I live in Phoenix, so it's sunny most days.

00:33:04.000 Cold day is 70. I'm there this weekend, actually.

00:33:07.000 Oh yeah, that's right.

00:33:08.000 You're at the, is it Comerica?

00:33:10.000 Comerica Theater.

00:33:10.000 Nice.

00:33:11.000 Yeah, Friday and Saturday.

00:33:12.000 I'm psyched.

00:33:12.000 Yeah.

00:33:13.000 I love Phoenix.

00:33:14.000 Yeah, it's the time of year to be there for sure.

00:33:15.000 Yeah, man.

00:33:16.000 Right?

00:33:16.000 What's the temperature there right now?

00:33:18.000 Probably maybe 65 or so.

00:33:21.000 I've been there before in the summer. 0.96

00:33:23.000 In July when I used to do Tempe Improv and it was like fucking 120. Uh-huh. 0.96

00:33:27.000 Well, and that's the funny thing, too, because when I was training for that 100-mile, 12-hour world record, it was through the summer because the race was in August.

00:33:34.000 So my peak training was like 110 degrees some days.

00:33:37.000 And the funny thing, too, is the Pettit Center, where I did the race, it was actually built for speed skating and some hockey rinks.

00:33:43.000 So they keep it at like 60 degrees.

00:33:45.000 Ooh, that's nice.

00:33:46.000 I remember one day when I was running, it was like one of the hottest days of the summer.

00:33:49.000 I remember thinking like, I'm going to race literally at half this temperature.

00:33:53.000 Yeah.

00:33:54.000 So it's really funny when you see that.

00:33:57.000 And I think I'm no expert at it by any means, but I think there's some pretty cool studies and stuff of the effects that happen when you are training in some of those extreme heats, like what happens.

00:34:08.000 The way it was described to me is it kind of simulates training at altitude to a degree.

00:34:12.000 So who knows?

00:34:13.000 Maybe some of that helps.

00:34:14.000 That makes sense.

00:34:15.000 Well, it's similar to hot yoga, right?

00:34:16.000 Mm-hmm.

00:34:17.000 They're doing some studies at Harvard, I believe.

00:34:19.000 I think it's Harvard.

00:34:20.000 Someone was explaining the whole deal to me.

00:34:22.000 This is not something that I read, but essentially what they're doing is they're trying to find out whether or not hot yoga, these 90-minute hot yoga sessions, replicate some of the known benefits of sauna.

00:34:33.000 Uh-huh.

00:34:33.000 Because, you know, obviously the temperature is not as hot.

00:34:36.000 They keep it, the hot yoga place I go to, I think they keep it at 105 degrees.

00:34:41.000 Mm-hmm.

00:34:41.000 Yeah.

00:34:58.000 Basically to a similar level than if you were just sitting in a sauna.

00:35:02.000 So you get a very similar response.

00:35:04.000 Yeah, it's really interesting.

00:35:06.000 So I try to remember that when it's the summer in Phoenix so I don't get too miserable.

00:35:12.000 Yeah, you've got to be doing yourself good.

00:35:14.000 Kronk Gym, which is one of the most famous boxing gyms in history.

00:35:18.000 Emanuel Stewart, who was just a wizard of boxing, and he trained Tommy Hearns.

00:35:24.000 Some of the all-time greats of that era, he would crank the temperature, and this is in Detroit, they would crank the temperature up really hot.

00:35:32.000 So you'd go into that gym and it would be that way, for that specific reason, because he believed that it increased endurance.

00:35:40.000 Yeah, it's interesting stuff, but I'll still take January and February.

00:35:45.000 For comfort.

00:35:46.000 Now, what do you do in terms of like, how do you hydrate yourself?

00:35:50.000 And like, what kind of durations are we talking about?

00:35:53.000 Like, say if it's 110 degrees outside, 120, what was the hottest you ran at?

00:35:58.000 I think 110 is what I got up to.

00:36:00.000 And I try to get out relatively early so that it's not like 110 from start to finish.

00:36:05.000 So like if I get out say at like 6 or 7 in the morning, you know, it might be in the 80s, high 80s and be working its way up so that like I'm...

00:36:13.000 Yeah.

00:36:37.000 So hydrating is interesting because, you know, I grew up in the Midwest, so I was very familiar with running in hot, humid stuff in the summer.

00:36:45.000 And, you know, the dry desert heat, though, it seems like you get thirsty a lot quicker and a lot more frequently.

00:36:51.000 So, you know, one of the things I learned the first summer I was in Phoenix was knowing where the water fountains are and kind of planning your routes around that.

00:36:59.000 Do you drink out of public water fountains?

00:37:00.000 When I have to.

00:37:01.000 Do you worry about cooties?

00:37:03.000 I haven't gotten anything too miserable yet.

00:37:05.000 In fact, I did a race earlier this year.

00:37:08.000 I think it was in early June called the San Diego 100. And it's got this spot in the middle of the course where the aid stations are a little further apart.

00:37:17.000 There's like a nine mile stretch and a seven mile stretch.

00:37:19.000 And I kind of mistimed how much water I did, so I filled up my water in a stream, and it was probably not an ideal spot.

00:37:26.000 Oh, dude.

00:37:27.000 But I rolled the dice, and I didn't get anything bad.

00:37:30.000 My thought during the race was, this is the mindset in the middle of one of these things, is like, well, if something really bad happens, it'll happen after the race.

00:37:36.000 Definitely would, but it's really bad.

00:37:39.000 Giardina is rough.

00:37:40.000 I've never had it, but the people that I know that have had it say it's really bad.

00:37:44.000 But, you know, you could just bring a SteriPen.

00:37:46.000 Yeah.

00:37:47.000 But you can't really stop, huh?

00:37:48.000 Yeah.

00:37:48.000 Yeah, I mean, in a race, I wouldn't want to.

00:37:51.000 And what really helped for me was the situation is since the race was on an indoor track, 442 and some odd meters, I was doing a lot of my big long runs on a 400-meter track.

00:38:06.000 So when I did that, I would just bring out a cooler and I'd have ice and water in there.

00:38:11.000 Just have it sit there waiting for you.

00:38:12.000 Oh, that's sweet.

00:38:13.000 Yeah, that makes sense.

00:38:15.000 But you do a lot of trail running though, right?

00:38:17.000 I do some of that too, yeah.

00:38:18.000 Historically, I've done a lot more flat, runnable stuff, but now that I'm out in Phoenix, I like to try to split the year into two halves and do some trail stuff in half the year and some flatter road or track or runnable stuff in the second half of the year.

00:38:30.000 Do you bring water when you run trails?

00:38:32.000 Do you bring a backpack or something like that?

00:38:34.000 Like one of those...

00:38:35.000 Like a pack.

00:38:37.000 Yeah, with the tubes. 1.00

00:38:39.000 What the fuck is that? 1.00

00:38:40.000 Camels. 1.00

00:38:40.000 Camel. 1.00

00:38:41.000 Camelbacks. 1.00

00:38:42.000 Yeah, I don't usually use what they call the bladder, which is the tube thing that you're talking about.

00:38:47.000 Those are nice, though.

00:38:47.000 They are, and you can pack a lot of water.

00:38:50.000 Usually, unless I'm going to be away from a potential stop long enough, usually what I'll do is I'll use the pack, but I'll have smaller little...

00:39:00.000 We're good to go. 0.89

00:39:14.000 Yeah, when I run with my dog in the summer, when it gets really hot, I bring a Hydro Flask in a backpack in one of those collapsible dog bowls, because, you know, I don't want him drinking out of puddles and shit.

00:39:26.000 But just having that extra couple pounds on your back, it makes a difference.

00:39:32.000 You feel it.

00:39:33.000 Yeah, and that's part of the reason why I try to go as minimal as I can with water if I can get away with it.

00:39:41.000 Obviously, if I go out and do a big loop where there's no potential stops, I'm going to have to carry it all from the beginning.

00:39:46.000 But if it's a spot where I know I can get to water every five, six, seven miles, then usually I'll pack a little lighter and not be carrying as much at any one given time.

00:39:56.000 Do you hydrate up before you go?

00:39:58.000 Yeah, I mean, I think one of the hardest things to really get right in Phoenix was just, like, kind of learning kind of how much you need to be hydrating, like, between sessions.

00:40:08.000 Because what I usually found out is I could go out and kind of neglect hydration for any one given, like, run or workout.

00:40:13.000 But if I did that, then the next one I'd probably pay for it.

00:40:16.000 So, for me, the big motivation to make sure I'm on top of hydration during any given run is because I know, like, if I don't, then the next one is going to potentially be miserable.

00:40:24.000 Suffer.

00:40:25.000 Yeah.

00:40:25.000 Yeah, man, I've done that before.

00:40:27.000 That's a weird feeling trying to do anything when you're dehydrated.

00:40:31.000 It's like you have a bad battery or something.

00:40:33.000 It's like everything's like, oh, come on!

00:40:36.000 It's amazing how just normal everyday life, like you could feel like a little run down and you barely notice it.

00:40:45.000 But once you start physically exerting, once you start training, once you start doing something hard, that's when you become, like, really in tune with how you're screwing your body up.

00:40:54.000 Like, drinking, for instance.

00:40:56.000 Like, have a couple of drinks and then run.

00:40:58.000 Like, oh, God.

00:41:00.000 You're like, well, this is what it's doing to my body? 0.98

00:41:02.000 I gotta fucking stop drinking, you know? 0.96

00:41:05.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:41:06.000 I like drinking to thirst.

00:41:08.000 That's usually what my gauge is.

00:41:09.000 And I haven't really had any issues with that.

00:41:13.000 So there's no strategy, like say, I'm going to run 25 miles today.

00:41:16.000 Let me drink X amount of liters of water before I go out?

00:41:20.000 No.

00:41:21.000 Before the run?

00:41:22.000 Yeah.

00:41:22.000 No, I try not to do too much preemptive hydrating.

00:41:28.000 Because I think what people oftentimes do then is they drink...

00:41:31.000 Too much and then that comes at the expense of your electrolytes too because your body is going to excrete those.

00:41:37.000 So if I find myself...

00:41:39.000 Couldn't you just supplement?

00:41:41.000 You can, yeah.

00:41:42.000 And I'll do a lot more of that especially in the heat too just in general is like having electrolyte supplementation and things like that.

00:41:49.000 What do you use for your electrolyte supplementation?

00:41:51.000 I use a product called Hydro-X mostly.

00:41:54.000 It's like a powder that you can kind of mix in with your water by a company named X Endurance.

00:41:59.000 They make these little tubes now too where like, so if I'm running and I have like one bottle with some in it already, I can have these little tubes that if I refill and want to put more and I can just kind of take them out, pop it off and pour that in.

00:42:14.000 A lot of other people will use, you can make like little caps that you just like swallow with your water and it's got like the formulation of the different electrolytes in there kind of dialed in and I think that's a little more hit or miss as to where people feel you need that.

00:42:32.000 Some people tell you you don't really need electrolytes at all.

00:42:34.000 You just need to salt your foods and things like that, all the way to you should be taking X number of these every hour.

00:42:39.000 There's got to be science behind it, right?

00:42:41.000 I mean, are you getting blood tests and finding out what your levels are pre- and post-workouts or anything along those lines?

00:42:47.000 Yeah, I haven't done any post-workout tests.

00:42:50.000 I was part of the FASTER study, which was a study that looked at high-carb and High-fat athletes, and I think they were looking at some of that stuff, too.

00:43:00.000 And, like, any time I've ever had a blood test done, though, by, like, my electrolytes, like my sodium-potassium levels have always been in range, so I haven't really tried to...

00:43:08.000 It's one of those things then where it's like, I'm probably not going to try to fix something that's not broken.

00:43:12.000 Right, and you're pretty diligent about your supplementation and things all those things.

00:43:15.000 Yeah, and I mean, I definitely am not afraid to salt my food.

00:43:18.000 You know, most of my food is conducive to putting salt on, so, you know, I'm probably getting quite a bit of that stuff just in my day-to-day nutrition, too.

00:43:25.000 Do you have a specific salt that you like?

00:43:27.000 Do you use Himalayan?

00:43:28.000 Do you use sea salt?

00:43:30.000 What do you like to use?

00:43:31.000 Yeah, I like to get sea salt.

00:43:33.000 Lately, I've been using this stuff called Redmond's Sea Salt.

00:43:37.000 They get their salt out of, I believe it's in Utah, in Salt Lake.

00:43:41.000 Oh, okay.

00:43:42.000 I don't know how accurate or whatever this is, but I heard that if you can get an inland sea salt, it's better because it's not like...

00:43:52.000 It doesn't have as many potential toxins that you're going to find in ocean sea salt.

00:43:56.000 Mercury, things along those lines.

00:43:57.000 Yeah, that's what the idea about Himalayan sea salt is, right? 0.98

00:44:01.000 Because there's no real fucking sea in the Himalayas. 0.96

00:44:06.000 Is it called Himalayan sea salt or am I just making that up? 0.99

00:44:09.000 Or is it Himalayan salt?

00:44:10.000 I think it's sea salt, right?

00:44:12.000 The pink Himalayan sea salt?

00:44:13.000 Right.

00:44:14.000 But how was it sea salt?

00:44:16.000 Explain that.

00:44:18.000 How does that work?

00:44:19.000 Was it an older sea?

00:44:21.000 I wonder if that's what it is, and it's just like these big salt...

00:44:24.000 Oh, it is just salt?

00:44:25.000 Okay.

00:44:25.000 Oh, it's just Himalayan salt?

00:44:26.000 No?

00:44:27.000 It both comes up.

00:44:28.000 Oh, yeah, I think I've heard it.

00:44:29.000 Like an old sea that's no longer there, and they just have the big salt deposits left over?

00:44:33.000 Right.

00:44:33.000 Like, that's what...

00:44:34.000 A lot of Montana is the great western inland sea, you know, like millions of years ago.

00:44:40.000 Like, they find seashells in Montana.

00:44:43.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:44:43.000 They're just fucking bonkers. 1.00

00:44:45.000 Yeah, it's crazy. 1.00

00:44:46.000 I was in Utah earlier in the year.

00:44:50.000 I can't remember where we were.

00:44:51.000 Just out of Salt Lake.

00:44:52.000 And apparently that used to be underwater too.

00:44:55.000 And they'll find shark teeth and stuff like that around there.

00:44:58.000 And you're up on this trail and there's no water in sight. 1.00

00:45:01.000 Think about that next time you see some asshole that would spend $10 million on a house on the beach. 1.00

00:45:05.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:45:06.000 What makes you think that's going to stay there, man?

00:45:08.000 He's going to pay for that eventually.

00:45:09.000 Yeah, that is not going to be here.

00:45:11.000 Something's going to be different in the future.

00:45:14.000 It's always been that way.

00:45:15.000 There's no permanent place where the water is or the water isn't.

00:45:19.000 Yeah, it is funny how we think of that, though, where it's like we see the map now and we're like, oh, okay, this is just how it is.

00:45:25.000 Maybe not.

00:45:26.000 Well, look at Pangea. 0.57

00:45:28.000 Things change pretty goddamn radically. 0.93

00:45:30.000 What's up, Jamie? 0.86

00:45:31.000 I don't know the accuracy of this, but I just found this.

00:45:33.000 Okay.

00:45:34.000 Himalayan sea salt is a gourmet salt with a slightly misleading name.

00:45:37.000 It doesn't come from the Himalayan mountains.

00:45:39.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:45:40.000 And it doesn't come from a sea. 1.00

00:45:42.000 These motherfuckers. 1.00

00:45:43.000 However, it's definitely a sea salt, so it's not a total misnomer. 1.00

00:45:47.000 Himalayan salt actually refers exclusively to Pakistani rock salt.

00:45:53.000 Hmm.

00:45:54.000 That used to be sea salt hundreds of millions of years ago.

00:45:58.000 So why don't we call it Pakistan? 0.96

00:46:00.000 If I was Pakistani, I'd be pissed.

00:46:01.000 I'd be masked, yeah. 1.00

00:46:02.000 Like, these motherfuckers are stealing our shine. 1.00

00:46:04.000 When a sea spreading over the region dried up, it was covered by geological shifts leading massive deposits of salt scattered throughout the hills. 1.00

00:46:14.000 Odd name aside, Himalayan salt has a lot going for it.

00:46:17.000 It's tasty, it's pink, and some even claim it has healing properties. 1.00

00:46:21.000 Well, those fucking healing properties, assholes. 1.00

00:46:23.000 Those are the people that like crystals. 1.00

00:46:25.000 Yeah, that's what that is.

00:46:26.000 We have a big Himalayan salt rock right there.

00:46:28.000 There you go.

00:46:29.000 Feeling low, I'll just go lick that. 1.00

00:46:30.000 Lick that sucker. 1.00

00:46:32.000 Has anybody licked that yet? 0.99

00:46:33.000 Someone must have licked it when we weren't looking.

00:46:35.000 Maybe.

00:46:36.000 Yeah, I like Himalayan salt, though.

00:46:38.000 It does.

00:46:39.000 It's nice.

00:46:40.000 But for cooking meat in particular, I like kosher salt because it's got the big flakes.

00:46:46.000 The flakes, yeah.

00:46:47.000 When you put the big flakes on there, does that help retain the moisture on it?

00:46:52.000 Allegedly.

00:46:52.000 I don't know.

00:46:54.000 You know, I cook in a Traeger, which I find that the low heat and the...

00:46:59.000 What I do is I cook at about 225 degrees and they have a setting called Super Smoke.

00:47:06.000 It sort of accentuates the smoke.

00:47:08.000 You know what a Traeger is, right?

00:47:09.000 For folks who don't know, it's a pellet grill.

00:47:12.000 What pellet grills are, they use something like this table.

00:47:15.000 Like when they make this table, this is hardwood, this is made out of oak.

00:47:18.000 They would saw the tree and the sawdust...

00:47:23.000 In the past, they would just sort of throw out.

00:47:25.000 Well, then they figured out where you can compress that sawdust and turn it into these pellets using the natural sugars from the wood.

00:47:31.000 So there's no chemicals at all.

00:47:33.000 And there's a lot of really good ones, but the one that I use is a Traeger.

00:47:36.000 And when they compress these pellets, there's a heating element that's electrically fired inside the grill.

00:47:44.000 That heating element turns into flame.

00:47:46.000 It cooks the pellets and turns it into fire.

00:47:50.000 So it's just fire and wood.

00:47:52.000 Mm-hmm.

00:48:08.000 So you really shouldn't cook at high heat or for any long period of time.

00:48:12.000 You've got to make sure you monitor the temperature of the actual food itself.

00:48:16.000 So I like to put it in there and I get it up to about 125, 130 degrees.

00:48:21.000 Then I sear it on a cast iron frying pan, usually in beef tallow.

00:48:25.000 Beef tallow is what I like the best for that.

00:48:28.000 So I get some more extra fats, healthy fats with that.

00:48:30.000 I've been doing a lot of slow cooking lately.

00:48:33.000 I'll go in phases where I'll be grilling.

00:48:34.000 I gotta get a pellet grill, though those things look pretty sweet.

00:48:37.000 I'll hook you up.

00:48:38.000 I'll have Traeger send you one.

00:48:39.000 Oh, awesome.

00:48:40.000 That'd be great.

00:48:41.000 Thanks in advance, Traeger.

00:48:42.000 Once you use one, it's like...

00:48:44.000 I have a regular grill. 0.99

00:48:46.000 It's just fucking gathering dust. 0.99

00:48:48.000 I don't even touch it anymore. 0.99

00:48:50.000 Because you could do everything on this thing.

00:48:51.000 And it's so easy to maintain the exact perfect temperature.

00:48:55.000 And again, for game, I'm not cooking at a high heat.

00:48:58.000 I'm not worried as much about losing moisture or stuff like that.

00:49:02.000 It's mostly a flavor thing.

00:49:03.000 I really just love the flavor of the salty on the outside, especially when it's seared.

00:49:09.000 It's just nice.

00:49:10.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:11.000 You know, I think like the low and slow is the way to go for a lot of that stuff.

00:49:16.000 And when I do a, when I roast a, I'll get like a roast and I'll put it in a slow cooker and ultimately some of the fat will separate and kind of form on the top and always take that off and use it, cook eggs and stuff later.

00:49:27.000 So it's Ooh, that's nice.

00:49:29.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:30.000 Well, a lot of people have their own idea about what to do and what not to do, but I learned this from a guy named Chad Ward, whose label on Instagram is Whiskey Bent Barbecue.

00:49:40.000 Oh, yeah.

00:49:41.000 And he's a world champion pit master.

00:49:43.000 Mm-hmm. 1.00

00:49:44.000 This fucking guy can cook his ass off. 1.00

00:49:46.000 Oh my god. 1.00

00:49:47.000 He's cooked for us a few times in hunting camps, and his food is insane.

00:49:51.000 He's so good.

00:49:53.000 And that's his philosophy, is the reverse sear method.

00:49:57.000 This is where I learned it from.

00:49:58.000 I learned it from him.

00:49:59.000 A lot of times people will cook it, they sear it on the outside, and then they try to finish it off.

00:50:03.000 And you can do that that way, but it's not as good.

00:50:06.000 It's better to bring it up to temperature slowly inside like a pellet grill.

00:50:12.000 Another good method is sous vide.

00:50:13.000 Do you ever sous vide Yeah.

00:50:20.000 Yeah.

00:50:33.000 But the sous vide method is fantastic too because say if you have a steak and you want that steak to be 135 degrees, you basically put the setting at 135 degrees and you can put it in there for four hours.

00:50:47.000 So when you get it, it's just all the tendons and ligaments and all that stuff is just broken down.

00:50:53.000 All the fascia is broken down and it's just so tender. 0.99

00:50:56.000 But it feels weird because you're boiling it in a fucking plastic bag. 0.99

00:51:00.000 It seems so wrong. 0.98

00:51:02.000 I know it's a different kind of plastic, but you're not even supposed to drink water if your plastic bottle has been sitting in a hot car.

00:51:10.000 Apparently you can.

00:51:13.000 It's not an issue at all to cook in it, but it makes me feel weird.

00:51:18.000 Eventually we'll hear in five years that that's going to give us cancer.

00:51:22.000 Ah!

00:51:23.000 I don't know, man.

00:51:24.000 I don't think so.

00:51:25.000 I mean, what is the reason why they can...

00:51:28.000 Okay, here, we're going down a rabbit hole.

00:51:30.000 Let's try it.

00:51:31.000 Let's go down the sous vide rabbit hole.

00:51:32.000 Why is it okay to sous vide your food, and why doesn't it leak...

00:51:37.000 What is it, BCPs?

00:51:39.000 Is that what they're worried about?

00:51:40.000 BPAs, BCAs.

00:51:42.000 BCAs?

00:51:43.000 BPAs, which is a bunch of...

00:51:44.000 B and a bunch of other letters, which is supposed to be what you get when you...

00:51:49.000 There's probably some NASA scientist who figured it out, though, right?

00:51:52.000 Yeah.

00:51:52.000 Maybe not, man.

00:51:53.000 Maybe the same guy who said smoking's fine.

00:51:55.000 You know?

00:51:58.000 Doctors prefer camel! 0.87

00:52:00.000 Remember those ads?

00:52:01.000 I don't think we're dealing with that, but it feels weird.

00:52:06.000 But as far as flavor, it's a phenomenal way to cook.

00:52:10.000 Particularly wild game, it's really good for because, again, you don't overcook it.

00:52:14.000 Like, if you want to cook an elk steak to 130 degrees and then blowtorch the outside, that's what a lot of people do.

00:52:21.000 You know, that's how you finish on a sous vide. 1.00

00:52:23.000 You basically use a fucking blowtorch. 0.99

00:52:26.000 You know, so I have this... 1.00

00:52:28.000 I guess it's like the Elon Musk flamethrower in the background.

00:52:32.000 I literally could use that.

00:52:33.000 Yeah.

00:52:33.000 Because it's basically the same thing.

00:52:35.000 It's just a fucking torch. 0.99

00:52:36.000 And you torch the outside of it to get a nice caramelized crust. 1.00

00:52:41.000 And then the inside you know is perfectly cooked.

00:52:43.000 Super tender.

00:52:44.000 Yeah.

00:52:44.000 What does it say, Jamie?

00:52:45.000 I don't like this one.

00:52:46.000 You don't like it? 0.95

00:52:48.000 Does it say it's going to kill you?

00:52:50.000 The first one just says like, after a considerable amount of research that's been done, we believe the answer is, it's safe.

00:52:55.000 And it's like they believe it is.

00:52:57.000 Oh, that doesn't mean anything.

00:52:58.000 Left a little window. 0.59

00:52:59.000 Well, I feel like if you don't cook in it every day, like when the director of The Cove was in here, I always fucking have a hard time saying his last... 0.72

00:53:10.000 Sohoyes. 0.74

00:53:10.000 Louis Sohoyes was in here. 0.74

00:53:12.000 He was explaining how he was eating a lot of fish before he became a vegan. 0.98

00:53:17.000 He was eating a ton of fish and his mercury levels really shot up because a lot of fish has like a lot of fucking mercury. 0.85

00:53:25.000 And if you eat fish for morning, noon, and night every day, day after day after day, you can develop high mercury levels. 0.94

00:53:32.000 Sure.

00:53:32.000 But then I talked to other scientists.

00:53:34.000 They said, yes, if you're eating it every day, all day.

00:53:37.000 But if you just eat fish like once a week, you're fine.

00:53:40.000 Like, don't worry about it.

00:53:41.000 Or even twice a week.

00:53:42.000 So I was like, oh.

00:53:43.000 Did they say anything?

00:53:44.000 Because I remember like when, I think it was probably when the Mediterranean diet got popular.

00:53:49.000 People were all in on salmon and stuff and seafood.

00:53:54.000 I think?

00:54:10.000 Oh, really?

00:54:11.000 Yeah, in terms of the heavy metals.

00:54:13.000 Because you've got to think they're just sitting there.

00:54:15.000 At least in the ocean, they're migrating, they're moving around, they're swimming in different places.

00:54:21.000 That podcast that I did with him was so disturbing.

00:54:24.000 Because I've always had this weird, not weird, just this sort of...

00:54:31.000 Peripheral fear of what we're doing to the ocean. 0.97

00:54:33.000 You know, this thing like, man, how many assholes are out there just giant nets just pulling fish out of the ocean right now as we speak? 0.97

00:54:41.000 And how much is that sustainable? 0.96

00:54:43.000 I mean, I think individual people fishing is sustainable.

00:54:46.000 But that's not what's going on.

00:54:48.000 It's just huge nets.

00:54:50.000 They're just scooping up everything.

00:54:52.000 And the conversation that I had with him scared the shit out of me for the future of the ocean.

00:54:57.000 Because what's been done...

00:54:59.000 The amount of damage that's been done over a hundred years, it's very similar to the amount of damage that was done sort of at the end of the 18th century, the beginning of the 19th century in the United States, where market hunters had basically wiped out almost every animal,

00:55:18.000 wiped out the buffalo.

00:55:20.000 Do you know when they were shooting the buffalo, they were basically shooting them for their hides and their tongues, and they would leave the carcasses to rot?

00:55:26.000 Yeah.

00:55:27.000 Which is just insane when you think about bison today as one of the most cherished meats.

00:55:31.000 Right.

00:55:31.000 Because it's so delicious and so good for you and high in protein and it tastes great.

00:55:36.000 Yeah.

00:55:37.000 But we basically almost wiped out every animal on this entire continent until they stepped in and decided to start regulating, hunting, and stopping it, and then sort of made concerted efforts to reintroduce animals.

00:55:51.000 And still, most of them are not at their historic range.

00:55:55.000 Yeah.

00:55:55.000 Yeah, no, it gets interesting when you start looking into some of that stuff.

00:55:59.000 But hopefully they get the bison herd back to where they need to...

00:56:03.000 Well, they kind of have that.

00:56:04.000 I mean, there's basically a healthy supply of bison, but not the ocean.

00:56:08.000 The thing is like the same thing that we did, not we, you and I weren't alive, but that human beings did in North America, they're doing right now, the world is doing to the ocean.

00:56:19.000 And there's no real concerted effort to reintroduce these animals or fish.

00:56:24.000 Sure.

00:56:24.000 I see what you're saying.

00:56:25.000 Yeah.

00:56:25.000 So we're essentially not learning from our past mistakes.

00:56:28.000 Well, yeah, and also there's too many people involved.

00:56:31.000 The thing about the ocean is it's kind of unregulated, right?

00:56:33.000 Yeah, because who is it?

00:56:34.000 It's the Wild West out there.

00:56:36.000 It's just this big gigantic swath of...

00:56:38.000 It's basically like another world that's connected to our world.

00:56:43.000 You know, it's a water world. 0.95

00:56:44.000 We have the land world and the land monsters go into the water world with these floating little fucking killing machines and suck all the living forces and living beings out of the water world and then serve it up on rice. 0.98

00:56:58.000 Sushi! 0.98

00:56:58.000 Ah, I'm eating healthy. 0.98

00:57:00.000 You know, but it's just, it's weird.

00:57:04.000 Are you still doing...

00:57:05.000 You were doing a podcast with Dr. Sean Baker, right?

00:57:09.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:10.000 It's Human Performance Outliers podcast.

00:57:12.000 We've been...

00:57:13.000 I think we've got maybe 175 episodes now, so we've been...

00:57:17.000 So you guys are still haul at it.

00:57:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:20.000 We're not...

00:57:21.000 We had a stretch where we're doing about three a week, but we've kind of backed off a little bit of that where...

00:57:25.000 Just scheduling and stuff.

00:57:26.000 How do you do it?

00:57:27.000 Do you do it over the phone?

00:57:28.000 Yeah.

00:57:28.000 That's always the hardest part.

00:57:30.000 Where's he?

00:57:31.000 He's down in Southern California.

00:57:33.000 Okay.

00:57:34.000 And then you're in Arizona.

00:57:36.000 And so do you have guests and do that over the phone?

00:57:38.000 Yeah.

00:57:38.000 We'll bring them in and we'll record with Zoom video recording and then bring it up.

00:57:42.000 But that's always the hardest part is getting...

00:57:45.000 The audio quality for that.

00:57:46.000 It's awkward, too, right?

00:57:49.000 I've only done, over the last few years, I did the Snowden interview, which I did remotely, and I did one with Dr. Anthony West, who's an Egyptologist, who did it with him.

00:58:00.000 But...

00:58:02.000 Most of the time when you do it with Skype or anything along those lines, it's like you're kind of talking over each other.

00:58:09.000 There's this weird delay.

00:58:10.000 It feels inorganic.

00:58:12.000 Yeah, in-person is the way to go if you can do it.

00:58:16.000 Props to you for getting it done.

00:58:18.000 I just don't...

00:58:19.000 I mean, I just don't like it.

00:58:23.000 I don't feel connected, right?

00:58:25.000 It feels awkward.

00:58:27.000 Yeah.

00:58:27.000 It doesn't make a good product, I don't think, as good a product for me.

00:58:30.000 No, for sure.

00:58:31.000 Yeah, you're taking a step back if you do remote, for sure.

00:58:34.000 Yeah.

00:58:35.000 Yeah, but it's been a cool experience just from a learning standpoint.

00:58:38.000 I mean, I don't think we really have a specific direction.

00:58:41.000 I mean, Sean's kind of the guy that everyone looks to from the carnivore thing, so I think sometimes we get identified as carnivore, but we...

00:58:51.000 Definitely go down a bunch of different rabbit holes.

00:58:53.000 We've had some of the protein researchers come on and talk about some of that stuff, like Professor Stu Phillips, Professor Don Lehman, Professor Jose Antonio.

00:59:05.000 What do you mean by protein stuff?

00:59:06.000 Like different qualities of protein?

00:59:07.000 Yeah, they're doing like the protein research.

00:59:09.000 They're kind of the guys who are doing some of the more recent research and looking at like, well, what are our protein needs across like a variety of ages as well as when you introduce athletics and then like what is the quality versus – or I guess maybe the best way to look at it is like the bioavailability of different protein sources and things like that.

00:59:28.000 It seems like something that we'd have figured out already, but there's, I guess, some nuance with that even.

00:59:34.000 And now they're saying that there's probably reason to believe that our recommendations should be higher than what they have been historically, especially for athletes and elderly folks.

00:59:44.000 You mean the RDA? Yeah.

00:59:46.000 The RDA as it currently stands is basically just to prevent disease, right?

00:59:50.000 Yeah, something like that.

00:59:52.000 And I think they maybe are learning more, too, about just kind of what role protein plays in bone health, too, as opposed to just because people think of protein as just this building block for muscle.

01:00:01.000 But there's a lot that goes into it with bone health as well.

01:00:05.000 So those guys were really interesting to hear about.

01:00:09.000 And, you know, we've done a lot of stuff with ranchers and some of the, like, The Savory Salatin folks come on the show and talk about kind of that practice versus kind of your standard agricultural production methods and things like that.

01:00:21.000 You mean Joel Salatin?

01:00:22.000 What is Savory?

01:00:23.000 What do you mean?

01:00:24.000 Oh, like Alan Savory?

01:00:25.000 So we've had Alan Savory, Joel Salatin, Will Harris from White Oak Pastures on, Bobby Gill, he's part of the Savory Institute.

01:00:32.000 Come on and just kind of share with us like kind of where that stuff is at because I think there's a lot of guesswork and unanswerable questions at this point with some of that stuff because we're projecting like Way down the road with some of this stuff.

01:01:06.000 Regenerative type practices into one bucket or one category when in reality there's a lot of different variants within them.

01:01:13.000 So someone can say like, oh, regenerative agriculture is going to save the planet and then someone will go dig up a bunch of studies that show like, well, no, it actually doesn't do anything.

01:01:20.000 Yeah, I'm confusing that because Chris Kresser is all in on this regenerative agricultural thing.

01:01:25.000 But is there real evidence that you can have a zero carbon gain?

01:01:32.000 Yeah.

01:01:33.000 Yeah, I mean, it's...

01:01:34.000 Because that's the net positive. 0.85

01:01:38.000 The idea is that if you use regenerative agriculture, meaning that animals graze, you're not talking monocrop environments, that these cows graze on open fields of grass, and then they shit all over the place, and then that shit becomes manure,

01:01:54.000 and that this actually helps the plant life grow, and all this stuff sort of...

01:02:01.000 Yeah.

01:02:04.000 Yeah.

01:02:06.000 Yeah.

01:02:28.000 And then look to the other side and see where the counters are to that and just kind of go back and forth until you hit a dead end.

01:02:33.000 And then, you know, if you hit a dead end, like that's where you're at for now until something else gets introduced.

01:02:37.000 And where I got to now is, I think it was maybe Will Harris told us this, that when you're looking for these studies on kind of what practice is going to be good in terms of like soil regeneration, you have to look up adaptive multi-paddock grazing.

01:02:54.000 Right?

01:02:55.000 Because if you look up like holistic or regenerative agriculture, you're just going to get a whole mess of like different ranges or different types of it.

01:03:02.000 And, you know, some are effective, some aren't.

01:03:03.000 So it's really hard to kind of piece out, you know, who's got the accurate stuff and not.

01:03:08.000 And I mean, I think ultimately some of this stuff is we just don't know yet.

01:03:12.000 What was the one that's most, what did you just say?

01:03:14.000 Adaptive multipodic grazing.

01:03:16.000 And what does that mean?

01:03:17.000 It just means like you're instead of kind of you're you're it's a rotational grazing from what I understand, but you're kind of moving the the herd along to these different products and then they're like, you know, they're doing their thing in a what would you consider like a natural way like it would have been before we came in and shot all the buffalo and all that stuff.

01:03:39.000 Right.

01:03:55.000 So you would need massive amounts of land and massive amounts of areas for them to graze?

01:04:00.000 I think, yeah, I mean, I think you would need, I think the more the better is probably the way to look at it, but hopefully the soil biologists aren't critical.

01:04:10.000 They must be cringing.

01:04:11.000 Yeah, I'm sure they are.

01:04:11.000 And we apologize in advance.

01:04:13.000 But the interesting thing, though, is like, I mean, I think there's a lot of work to be done in looking into this and finding out the best way to maybe utilize it.

01:04:20.000 But the thought, the part that I thought was really interesting is with the Will Harris white oak pastures thing, they just, I think this study is maybe overutilized by like the pro-regenerative or multipathetic group to a degree because it's like it's what they have.

01:04:36.000 And it's what they're looking for.

01:04:37.000 They're looking for a specific answer, meaning this is good.

01:04:40.000 This is the way.

01:04:42.000 We found a way where you can eat meat and not feel bad.

01:04:45.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:04:45.000 And the thing that's compelling about that study to me is the way it kind of happened was essentially what happened was Will Harris and White O'Patchers, they were raising animals for Epic Bar.

01:04:58.000 That was one of their buyers.

01:05:00.000 Oh, okay.

01:05:00.000 Epic Bar got acquired by General Mills.

01:05:06.000 General Mills looked at what Epic Bar was claiming when they were independent and they were saying, our stuff is regenerative.

01:05:14.000 You buy our product and you're giving back versus taking, kind of a mindset.

01:05:19.000 And I think General Mills was skeptical about that.

01:05:21.000 So they spent, I think it was like $80,000 to go in and have a study done on Will Harris' White Oaks pasture to really see if they could back that claim up.

01:05:31.000 And they went in and they did the study and it actually showed like a net...

01:05:35.000 Carbon sequestration versus, like, they weren't even neutral.

01:05:38.000 They actually pulled in more than they put out.

01:05:40.000 So this is from Epic's particular type of farming that they use?

01:05:45.000 At least at White Oaks Pasture.

01:05:46.000 So, I mean, again, that's one specific situation or one specific environment or area.

01:05:51.000 So I think where people run into maybe a potential problem is, can we extrapolate that forward to other areas?

01:05:57.000 Are we going to get that same result or is it going to be different?

01:06:00.000 Right.

01:06:00.000 That's what's important.

01:06:02.000 And it really is important to look at that honestly.

01:06:06.000 Because even though you do have this one area, is that because of the environment where this farm is taking place?

01:06:12.000 Is it because of the particular soil quality?

01:06:15.000 What are the factors that allow them to have...

01:06:18.000 So it actually takes carbon out of the atmosphere, like a certain percentage.

01:06:25.000 So instead of adding carbon, it actually removes some.

01:06:29.000 Yeah, because I guess the way it was described to me is that the inputs of that type of system are so low that, like, you're not – because if you look at just a normal, like, agricultural setup, you know, you have all these inputs of, like, manure and all these other things that are going to add to that,

01:06:45.000 that net effect or that – I think?

01:07:06.000 But, you know, I think we probably have a lot to learn and stuff with that stuff too.

01:07:10.000 But it's one of those things when I think about it, it's like, hopefully we're spending a lot of time looking at that stuff because if they're right about the number of harvests we have left, I think, what are the estimates?

01:07:21.000 We have like 60 harvests left.

01:07:22.000 I mean, clearly, regardless of whether you're vegan, carnivore, or somewhere in between, you know, we need quality soil, right?

01:07:31.000 What about hydroponic?

01:07:33.000 Because I know that there are some large-scale hydroponic operations that are growing vegetables and things along those lines.

01:07:40.000 And some people think that there's real promise in that because you're not using soil at all.

01:07:46.000 You're not using – you're not devastating the already depleted ground soil.

01:07:51.000 And you also don't need to do all the harmful things that are involved in monocrop agriculture, right?

01:07:57.000 Yeah.

01:07:58.000 Yeah.

01:08:13.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:08:14.000 You know, that'd be interesting.

01:08:15.000 I don't know a whole lot about it other than what it is.

01:08:17.000 So, I mean, I'm all for solutions.

01:08:20.000 Yeah, somebody sent me a link to something, some indication that there might be some promise in hydroponic agriculture.

01:08:27.000 But the thing about this whole idea, what was the name of the farm that this was done?

01:08:35.000 The white oak pastures.

01:08:36.000 White oak pastures.

01:08:36.000 Is that sustainable nationally?

01:08:39.000 Forget about globally, but even nationally in terms of the needs?

01:08:43.000 That people have for beef?

01:08:45.000 I mean, we use so much beef in this country.

01:08:47.000 Yeah, I don't know for sure what the scalability of that would be.

01:08:51.000 My guess is, at this point, it would be...

01:08:54.000 Because it's pretty small, even from a percentage standpoint of how much of that type of process is being used.

01:09:00.000 It's like a single percentage or something like that.

01:09:03.000 Well, you're all grass-fed meat, right?

01:09:05.000 All grass-fed meat is less than 3%.

01:09:07.000 Yeah, so it seems like we'd have a long ways to go.

01:09:10.000 But I mean, I guess the counter to that would also be we're essentially going back to what we would have been doing historically.

01:09:16.000 And so it's not necessarily like reinventing the wheel as much as it is just saying, okay, what we did here obviously is not sustainable or potentially not sustainable.

01:09:26.000 So let's look at, well, what did we do to get back to where we were before?

01:09:30.000 I guess maybe is the way to look at that.

01:09:32.000 Right.

01:09:32.000 How did you get linked up with Sean?

01:09:35.000 Because Sean is such a polarizing figure.

01:09:38.000 He's the carnivore go-to guy and he's like a full-on carnivore zealot, as it were.

01:09:44.000 He thinks vegetables are bad for him.

01:09:47.000 I think Sean sometimes gets misrepresented, and part of it is just the way he interacts on social media and stuff.

01:09:55.000 I met Sean before he, I think, went full carnivore, but on Twitter.

01:10:01.000 I thought he was an interesting person, not because of what he ate so much.

01:10:04.000 What was he doing back then?

01:10:05.000 What was he eating?

01:10:05.000 He was kind of more high-fat, low-carb, I think.

01:10:08.000 Something pretty similar to what I've been doing.

01:10:10.000 Maybe less carbohydrates, since his activity levels are really short and fast.

01:10:16.000 And, you know, I just thought he was an interesting person because of his background.

01:10:20.000 I mean, he's, you know, a Highlands game athlete, professional rugby player.

01:10:25.000 He's doing this high intensity.

01:10:27.000 He's a gigantic dude.

01:10:28.000 Yeah.

01:10:28.000 I mean, he's twice my size.

01:10:29.000 So it's like my thought is like, okay, here's a guy who has a similar nutrition plan that I do.

01:10:34.000 But he's doing the exact opposite athlete type stuff.

01:10:37.000 He's twice the size of me.

01:10:40.000 We're kind of two ends of the spectrum from an athletic standpoint.

01:10:45.000 So I was just interested in kind of what he was doing and what he was up to.

01:10:49.000 And that's kind of why we started the podcast together.

01:10:52.000 But yeah, I mean, one of the things that Sean always says on the podcast, I think, is kind of a better reflection.

01:10:58.000 I mean, he'll say, the only thing I know for certain is that I'm wrong about something.

01:11:04.000 So it's like, you know, it gets, I think it gets tough for someone like him who gets identified as the, like the face of the carnivore movement.

01:11:14.000 Because then like you get all the positive and the negative coming your way too.

01:11:17.000 And I mean, you can feed into that.

01:11:20.000 But I mean, when we record our podcasts and stuff, I mean, he's a very open-minded person.

01:11:25.000 We're looking for answers and we're asking questions and things like that.

01:11:28.000 And it's a learning experience, I think, for me anyway. 0.99

01:11:34.000 Well, he clearly enjoys fucking with vegans. 0.99

01:11:37.000 Well, yeah, and it's... 0.99

01:11:38.000 He's been on this fruitarian kick lately, which is kind of hilarious.

01:11:42.000 I didn't know there was that many of those people out there.

01:11:44.000 Yeah.

01:11:44.000 And one of them just died.

01:11:46.000 One fruitarian doctor died during a fast.

01:11:49.000 Oh, really?

01:11:49.000 Yeah, and Sean was talking about it on his YouTube channel.

01:11:52.000 There's people out there that think that you could just get by by only eating fruit.

01:11:56.000 Jesus Christ, folks.

01:11:57.000 You know, I've got a theory with social media and that stuff in general is that for a lot of the people who are most active on it, they either take it 100% serious or it's kind of a joke or a game.

01:12:10.000 And then when those two polar ends meet, that's where you get the big blow-up interactions.

01:12:17.000 And then it becomes kind of a game of, well, the vegan told me that I should die or something like that.

01:12:23.000 So then I'm going to go tell that vegan that this or that.

01:12:25.000 And it goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. 1.00

01:12:27.000 So stupid. 1.00

01:12:28.000 This is such a waste of time. 1.00

01:12:29.000 The one I always get a kick out of, though, along those lines is someone will come up with a picture of, like, here's the human's jaw system.

01:12:39.000 And this clearly means we're frugivores.

01:12:42.000 And then someone will say, well, look at the digestive tract of a human being.

01:12:46.000 It is clearly designed more to be eating meat or animal products than And, you know, they go back and forth with different, like, parts of the human anatomy to try to, like, prove that we're vegetarian or vegan, fruitarian. 1.00

01:12:59.000 The arguments are so stupid. 0.84

01:13:00.000 And then I'm thinking the whole time, I'm like, so what we have here is people who can have specific traits that are good for eating fruits and vegetables and some specific traits that are good for eating animal products. 1.00

01:13:14.000 So we're omnivores.

01:13:17.000 Yeah.

01:13:19.000 Biologically, it's been established.

01:13:21.000 There's no real controversy.

01:13:23.000 The controversy's fake. 1.00

01:13:25.000 Particularly from the vegans, where they say that we're herbivores and our jaws are designed to crush roots and shit. 1.00

01:13:32.000 No, we had tools and fire for fucking hundreds of thousands of years, you knuckleheads. 1.00

01:13:37.000 You know who... 0.99

01:13:38.000 One of my favorite podcasts we've done was with this guy, Dr. Bill Schindler.

01:13:43.000 He's an archaeologist out of, I think it was Washington University.

01:13:48.000 And he's such a cool dude.

01:13:51.000 He said something that was really resonated with me where he said, you know, humans, we're unique in that we've over time developed ways to use tools and things like that to liberate nutrients.

01:14:05.000 So to look at anything in its raw state is kind of missed the point of why humans are the way they are.

01:14:11.000 Sure.

01:14:12.000 Well, like lentils.

01:14:13.000 I've seen this argument that human beings aren't supposed to eat meat because if we were, we'd be able to just rip it apart and eat it with our own teeth and go eat a squirrel with your face.

01:14:22.000 Well, guess what?

01:14:23.000 You can eat a squirrel with your face if you're so inclined.

01:14:25.000 If you really wanted to do that, you could do it without tools.

01:14:27.000 You know what you can't do?

01:14:28.000 You can't eat a lot of beans without cooking them.

01:14:30.000 Like, we've figured things out, folks.

01:14:33.000 I mean, cassava, in the jungle, they figured out that you have to cook this stuff and strain it, and it's a primary staple of the diets of many people that live in the jungle. 0.99

01:14:42.000 And it's fucking toxic as shit if you don't do that. 0.99

01:14:45.000 I mean, it literally produces cyanide. 0.99

01:14:48.000 Cyanide is produced by cassava, which is like one of their primary foods.

01:14:51.000 They just figured it out.

01:14:53.000 Just like you figured out you have to boil lentils.

01:14:55.000 Just like you figured out you have to cook beans.

01:14:57.000 I mean, you can't eat most of these things that we eat are not...

01:15:02.000 Good to eat if you just eat them in their raw state.

01:15:04.000 Some things like fruits are.

01:15:06.000 Some vegetables are.

01:15:07.000 But some just are not.

01:15:08.000 And this is the same with meat.

01:15:10.000 And this idea that you're supposed to be, we're clearly an herbivore because of the fact that we're not supposed to be killing animals with our teeth. 1.00

01:15:19.000 That's so dumb. 0.98

01:15:20.000 Like, we kill animals with tools, and we've done it for so long that our bodies have adapted. 1.00

01:15:26.000 We've adapted to the fact that we have clothes. 1.00

01:15:28.000 That's why we're not covered in hair, you fucking idiots. 1.00

01:15:31.000 Like, this is like real, clear, obvious stuff. 1.00

01:15:34.000 People who live in the coldest climates of the world aren't covered in hair, you know?

01:15:40.000 Yeah, you know, and it was interesting because like what you're saying too, when we had Bill on the show, he's got this unique experience where he's actually gone in and visited these indigenous tribes that have been relatively untouched by modern society to basically with the one question of like, well,

01:15:55.000 how do you eat?

01:15:56.000 So he's been, he's seen like a variety of different stuff.

01:15:58.000 I think he even had a show on National Geographic for a while that looked into some of this, but he, like just to show you the polarization of what humans can kind of do, he went and he visited the Samburo, which is a branch of the Maasai over in Africa.

01:16:12.000 You know, they're basically drinking blood and milk for a huge portion of their nutrition.

01:16:19.000 So you have this tribe that's basically on a primarily animal-based nutrition plan, and they're super healthy.

01:16:26.000 He said that they were maybe one of the most healthy groups of people he's seen from just like a physical stature, like tooth health and that sort of thing.

01:16:32.000 But then he also went down to, I think it was in South America, I can't remember the name of the tribe, but they found a way to basically liberate nutrients from a poisonous potato.

01:16:42.000 Cassava.

01:16:43.000 Is that what it was?

01:16:43.000 Yeah, that's what we're talking about.

01:16:46.000 Maybe it was cassava.

01:16:49.000 Maybe there's other ones as well.

01:16:51.000 I think there is a purple, some weird purple potato that has a similar sort of a toxic profile.

01:16:57.000 Yeah.

01:16:58.000 And what he said was this tribe that ate basically mostly potatoes, what they would do is they'd literally dig a pit and put thousands of pounds of these potatoes in there and let them sit there and ferment, I guess, for up to six months.

01:17:11.000 Oh, God!

01:17:12.000 And then they would actually make this clay that they would use because there was still a toxin or something in there that they needed to kind of prevent from interacting with them.

01:17:21.000 This is something totally different.

01:17:22.000 Yeah, so there's this clay and there's this potato and when they dip the potato in this clay, it binds to that toxin so it doesn't become an issue when you eat it.

01:17:31.000 So by itself, that potato could potentially kill you, I guess, but with the clay, it doesn't. 0.97

01:17:37.000 How the fuck did they figure that out? 0.99

01:17:39.000 That's what I want to know. 0.99

01:17:40.000 I'm just thinking, how much trial and error goes into that?

01:17:42.000 It's like, oh, this guy dropped dead.

01:17:43.000 This guy dropped dead.

01:17:44.000 Oh, this guy lived.

01:17:45.000 There's so many things like that in the jungle.

01:17:47.000 You just have to really wonder, how do they develop all these different medicines and all these different ways of eating things?

01:17:53.000 It's just fascinating.

01:17:54.000 I guess when your only goal when you wake up in the morning is to find your next meal and kind of build enough around so that you can kind of survive.

01:18:03.000 You put a lot of time and energy into it.

01:18:05.000 But yeah, it is interesting to think how they all got passed along from generation to generation and how it got fine-tuned to where it is today.

01:18:12.000 But I think it's cool to look at that stuff when it just comes to your own nutrition too and kind of when you understand it's less about this food Is net bad for me or this, this food is this particular food item is bad for me across the board.

01:18:27.000 And this one is great for me across the board more so about, well, this is what this food does.

01:18:31.000 Well, this is what this one does.

01:18:32.000 Well, so let's find it.

01:18:33.000 Like you mentioned mix and match to where you get, get the profile that you're looking for.

01:18:37.000 Yeah, I think the problem is what we were saying before, is that people are entering into these conversations with this goal that they want to achieve, this goal being plants are bad for you, or meat is bad for you, or we're supposed to be only eating meat, or we're supposed to be only eating plants,

01:18:53.000 and here's why.

01:18:54.000 And, you know, you have this confirmation bias.

01:18:57.000 You're not looking at any other piece of evidence.

01:18:59.000 And particularly, the biological variability of human beings is pretty incredible.

01:19:04.000 Yeah.

01:19:04.000 I mean, I can eat peanuts all day long.

01:19:05.000 If you're allergic to peanuts, you're dead if you eat one.

01:19:08.000 I mean, we're strange creatures.

01:19:13.000 And what is this changing?

01:19:14.000 What do you got here, Jamie?

01:19:16.000 Oh, here it is.

01:19:17.000 The ancient Andean tradition of eating clay may have helped to protect health.

01:19:23.000 I think it goes back to ancient Egypt.

01:19:24.000 I was just trying to find out how far back this goes.

01:19:27.000 Powerful Egypt.

01:19:28.000 You can still buy clay dust right now.

01:19:31.000 I was just kind of looking that up, too.

01:19:33.000 So eating dirt's good for you.

01:19:34.000 Yeah.

01:19:35.000 Or this kind of dirt.

01:19:36.000 So they found a way to, like, package the dust and...

01:19:38.000 Right.

01:19:39.000 Huh.

01:19:39.000 Peruvian clay dust.

01:19:41.000 This is a whole history on potatoes and how it changed the world and, like...

01:19:44.000 Wild potatoes are laced with solanine and tomatine, toxic compounds believed to defend plants against attacks from dangerous organisms like fungi, bacteria, and human beings.

01:19:55.000 We are dangerous organisms.

01:20:11.000 It's like llamas.

01:20:13.000 Wild relatives of the llama lick clay before eating poisonous plants. 1.00

01:20:18.000 The fucking llamas figured it out! 1.00

01:20:20.000 The toxins stick more technically absorb to the fine clay particles in the animal's stomachs passing through the digestive system without affecting it. 1.00

01:20:29.000 Mimicking this process, mountain peoples apparently learned to dunk wild potatoes in a gravy made of clay and water.

01:20:36.000 Eventually, they bred less toxic potatoes, though some of the old poisonous varieties remain favored for their resistance to frost.

01:20:47.000 Clay dust is still sold in Peruvian and Bolivian markets to accompany them.

01:20:53.000 Wow.

01:20:54.000 That's interesting.

01:20:54.000 That's crazy.

01:20:56.000 I bet it tastes like shit, though. 1.00

01:20:58.000 Still eating dirt with potatoes. 1.00

01:21:01.000 But look, people do what they gotta do to stay alive.

01:21:04.000 We're just so fortunate we don't have to do that.

01:21:06.000 You can go to a crossroads and have a nice vegan meal if you want to.

01:21:10.000 You're not really worried about staying alive anymore.

01:21:12.000 We're worried primarily about...

01:21:14.000 Yeah, well, people are worried about the environment.

01:21:18.000 They're worried about the health consequences of certain diets and the environmental consequences of certain diets.

01:21:27.000 This is what I've really gotten into after Chris Kresser was on the podcast recently debunking the Game Changers when he was talking about the positive net benefits of regenerative farming.

01:21:38.000 I don't think that's clearly been established worldwide or in large scale.

01:21:45.000 Like in terms of, and maybe it can be.

01:21:47.000 Like can we do it and feed, yeah.

01:21:48.000 Yeah, can we feed the entire country on that?

01:21:50.000 I mean, I don't, I'm not.

01:21:52.000 Yeah, you know, I think that's, I mean, that's the million dollar question right now too, right?

01:21:55.000 Like, well, how are we going to feed however many they're predicting?

01:21:59.000 Like how are we going to feed the 10 billion people we're going to see in X number of years?

01:22:02.000 And I think it's interesting and it's certainly worth thinking about, but like, it's also like, well, how far do we keep kicking that ball down the road before we find ourselves in a situation where like, you know, then what's the next question?

01:22:14.000 15 billion, 20 billion and so on and so forth.

01:22:17.000 And eventually like, you know, we just overpopulate the world and it ends really badly for us.

01:22:22.000 Well, diseases usually follow overpopulation.

01:22:26.000 I think the real key for us, I think, is going to be, and I think this is within our lifetime, is going to be lab-created meat.

01:22:36.000 And I think they're really close to doing that.

01:22:38.000 And I think if you have some sort of ethical...

01:22:42.000 Lab-created, nutritious meat where you don't have to worry about suffering or death.

01:22:46.000 If this has been established, then we open up a whole new avenue of exploration because now you can say, okay, all these people that are vegan for this moral and ethical...

01:22:59.000 That sort of dilemma that they have with animal agriculture, killing animals, suffering.

01:23:05.000 Let's take all that out.

01:23:06.000 Now you can eat lab-created meat that has absolutely no suffering attached to it.

01:23:11.000 Let's find out how healthy things really are.

01:23:13.000 And let's find out how many people stay vegan and how many people revert to more omnivorous diet.

01:23:20.000 This is something that vegans hate to hear, but it is a fact.

01:23:23.000 Eighty-four percent of people who start a vegan diet quit.

01:23:26.000 Now, is that because of taste?

01:23:28.000 Is that because of...

01:23:29.000 And then there's the argument that, well, people that do it over a long period of time, you get a higher retention rate.

01:23:34.000 That's fine.

01:23:35.000 But 84% still is the number.

01:23:37.000 I mean, it doesn't matter if you get a high retention rate for people that are doing it more than two years or more than three years.

01:23:43.000 Like, if you stick with it, you can do it.

01:23:45.000 No, they're just more committed.

01:23:46.000 But the reality is 84% quit.

01:23:50.000 This is what's been firmly established.

01:23:52.000 What would the number be if there was ethical, humane, lab-created meat that had no suffering attached to it at all?

01:24:00.000 It's just science-based.

01:24:01.000 It's just made with compounds and whatever they use to create this stuff.

01:24:04.000 That would be interesting.

01:24:05.000 It would be interesting to find out.

01:24:06.000 Could we eliminate large-scale animal agriculture in favor of lab-created meat?

01:24:12.000 And what, if any, environmental factors would there be that would be negative that were attached to lab-created meat?

01:24:19.000 Because you've got to think...

01:24:19.000 Whenever you're making anything, right, industrial, large scale, you're going to have waste.

01:24:25.000 What is that waste?

01:24:26.000 Can that waste be mitigated?

01:24:28.000 Can they figure out some sort of a way to have some sort of net positive effect where that waste is utilized in some sort of a form where it actually can contribute to the natural processes of soil regeneration and manure and composting and things along those lines?

01:24:46.000 Yeah, no, I think it's interesting and we're in an interesting time for sure.

01:24:51.000 It'll be interesting to see where they get with that and everything else with that.

01:24:55.000 And, you know, you brought up an interesting point too, not to keep going down the rabbit hole, but the other thing that I thought really interesting was when you look at waste components.

01:25:05.000 I feel like we're not maybe looking at that as much as we should be when we're talking about trying to feed a bunch of people.

01:25:10.000 It's like, well, maybe we should start with what we're throwing away that we wouldn't have to.

01:25:13.000 Oh, yeah.

01:25:14.000 And I think, like, at first I just thought, like, well, you know, there's a lot of food thrown away at restaurants.

01:25:18.000 There's a lot of stuff that's thrown away just because it doesn't meet standards for, like, the grocery store.

01:25:23.000 It's like, let's start there.

01:25:24.000 And I actually had asked Dr. Schindler about that, and he actually did a study with some of his grad students where they looked at, I think they took 30 whitetail deer, and they processed it down to, like, the very last potential calorie to find out how much is wasted,

01:25:40.000 even in, like, you know, a A deer that say you go and you shoot a deer and then you take it to the process and get it all done.

01:25:46.000 He said it was between, I think it was between like 13 to 30 days worth of human nutrition that gets wasted in a single whitetail deer.

01:25:55.000 Well, here's the problem with that idea.

01:25:59.000 Waste is only if you do something with it.

01:26:02.000 If you leave it in the field, there's no waste.

01:26:04.000 Right.

01:26:04.000 Like if you just killed a deer, it's not, it just left it there.

01:26:08.000 There's no waste.

01:26:09.000 Right.

01:26:09.000 You're feeding animals.

01:26:11.000 Right, that's true.

01:26:11.000 I mean, they're going to absolutely destroy that thing.

01:26:14.000 It's going to be gone in a short period of time, including the bones.

01:26:17.000 They'll eat the bones.

01:26:18.000 And if they don't eat the bones, the bones will eventually deteriorate and become part of the soil.

01:26:22.000 This is what happens when animals die.

01:26:24.000 Sure.

01:26:25.000 So I guess maybe the way to look at it then is, like, what are we...

01:26:27.000 If we're looking to just...

01:26:28.000 If our objective is to feed as many people as possible and we're maximizing the amount of nutrients we can acquire from a specific thing, like...

01:26:35.000 We're leaving a lot on the table or we're giving a lot to different areas, like different animals and things that would be- Well, we're doing it wrong.

01:26:41.000 We're putting our waste in bags and we're throwing it into the landfills.

01:26:46.000 Have you seen they did this aerial study of Los Angeles?

01:26:50.000 They're trying to find out where most of the methane comes from. 1.00

01:26:53.000 It's fucking landfills, man. 1.00

01:26:55.000 Landfills are disgusting. 1.00

01:26:57.000 And this is not how it's supposed to be.

01:27:00.000 It's supposed to be animals are supposed to have access to what's left over.

01:27:05.000 I mean, this is what would happen if a bear killed a moose.

01:27:08.000 If a bear killed a moose, it's going to consume a big portion of the body, and then it's going to leave whatever's left, and then rodents and vultures and then eventually insects and bacteria are going to break it down.

01:27:20.000 And this is a natural cycle of life for animals.

01:27:24.000 We're good to go.

01:27:40.000 We know better.

01:27:42.000 We do know better.

01:27:43.000 We understand the whole process of these things breaking down in the wild and what happens to them.

01:27:50.000 We understand that there's animals that their entire diet consists of eating animals that other animals have killed and they leave some of it behind.

01:27:59.000 We're supposed to leave it behind.

01:28:01.000 It's supposed to be a part of the whole cycle of life.

01:28:03.000 We're supposed to compost.

01:28:05.000 All these things are supposed to be natural.

01:28:07.000 When I was a kid...

01:28:10.000 My mom and my stepdad were part of this cooperative farm thing.

01:28:15.000 And we started composting.

01:28:17.000 And we didn't do it for very long because we eventually wound up moving and we stopped being a part of this thing.

01:28:23.000 But I thought it was really interesting because I was a little kid.

01:28:26.000 Oh, I never thought of that before.

01:28:28.000 You take your food waste and you separate it from like paper.

01:28:32.000 Give your paper waste and then you have leftover tomatoes or something like that.

01:28:37.000 And all that would go into one specific bin and that bin would go into this big thing.

01:28:42.000 It was made with chicken wire and leaves and you had a lid over it and it was a wood box.

01:28:49.000 And you would throw everything in there and it would all sort of rot and compost.

01:28:53.000 And then you would take that stuff and you would use it in the garden.

01:28:57.000 And this is how composting is done.

01:29:00.000 This is how fertilizer is made, and this is what you're supposed to do.

01:29:03.000 This is like small-scale regenerative farming. 0.99

01:29:07.000 And what we're doing as assholes, we take our food, we put it in fucking bags, we zip-tie it shut, and we chuck it in the ground. 1.00

01:29:15.000 It's dumb. 1.00

01:29:15.000 It's a really dumb way of doing things. 1.00

01:29:17.000 I just feel like that is something that we could really leverage at the educational level. 0.98

01:29:23.000 We've got schools where we're housing these kids.

01:29:27.000 One of the biggest hurdles, I think, is we've got them indoors sitting in desks for seven, eight hours a day.

01:29:33.000 Why not get them out and learn that and do that?

01:29:36.000 We have these mini little regenerative areas.

01:29:39.000 Sure.

01:29:39.000 Then you learn it, and then it doesn't get forgotten when you're an adult as easily.

01:29:42.000 Wow, we're so enamored with this idea of working.

01:29:46.000 We're so enamored with this idea of getting a job.

01:29:48.000 We're so enamored with this idea of the structure of civilization as it stands in 2019 is the way to go.

01:29:54.000 So we're teaching kids how to complete this life that they're born into, the way it's established for their parents, the way it's established for their neighborhood.

01:30:03.000 Get in your car, drive to work, work all day, come home, eat what you can, throw the rest of the garbage, go back to work in the morning.

01:30:10.000 And this is nonsense.

01:30:11.000 This is not how you have to do it.

01:30:19.000 Sure.

01:30:37.000 Then you get lucky.

01:30:38.000 Like, oh my god, you know, Zach found a job that he really loves and he got really good at it.

01:30:42.000 And now he actually has joy in what he does.

01:30:45.000 But there's a lot of different places in this country alone where you can live and you can do things in a non-traditional manner and you can get by. 0.86

01:30:56.000 And you'll probably be healthier and happier than someone that gets stuck in the same goddamn civilization cycle, this industrialized cycle that we're all in.

01:31:07.000 And we don't teach kids that. 0.85

01:31:09.000 What we teach kids is, here's history, here's math, get your SATs in, get the score, go to the college that you want, get a job.

01:31:18.000 And this is the standard path that seems to be rewarded. 0.98

01:31:22.000 And if you say, well, I'm going to drop out and find myself, oh, good luck, loser. 1.00

01:31:26.000 You're going to fuck up your life. 1.00

01:31:28.000 What are you doing, man? 1.00

01:31:29.000 You're not even going to college?

01:31:30.000 Jesus Christ.

01:31:31.000 And it's very unfortunate that we have this incredibly rigid system.

01:31:36.000 And it really made me feel like a failure.

01:31:41.000 I didn't fit into the system.

01:31:43.000 Because I have ADD or whatever, emotional issues, whatever I had, I just could not sit still in class and concentrate. 0.99

01:31:50.000 I had way too much fucking energy. 0.96

01:31:52.000 This was just not for me. 0.99

01:31:54.000 I was twiddling my thumbs and tapping the floor and looking at the clock.

01:31:58.000 Is it 3 o'clock yet?

01:31:58.000 Is it 3 o'clock?

01:31:59.000 When that fucking thing hit, I was gone! 0.99

01:32:01.000 And I didn't want to do homework. 0.99

01:32:03.000 I literally didn't do any homework my entire high school career.

01:32:05.000 I didn't do any. 0.98

01:32:06.000 I just got by being smart enough to pass tests by learning what I learned in class and not putting in any fucking extra effort. 0.95

01:32:13.000 I just wanted to get out. 0.93

01:32:14.000 And I found something that I was good at.

01:32:17.000 I figured it out.

01:32:18.000 I got lucky that I did that.

01:32:20.000 But for a lot of people, they just live these lives of frustration.

01:32:24.000 You know, and they never do find, and they're not taught to find a thing.

01:32:29.000 And there's also, I think, there's great satisfaction to working on something that you enjoy, whether it's working with your hands or working on something that's creative.

01:32:41.000 And working with the land.

01:32:43.000 You know, you talk to people that run their own little organic farms.

01:32:48.000 Like, I know this couple that runs an organic farm.

01:32:50.000 And, man, when they talk about their food, they talk about the vegetables they grow and the stuff they grow, they, like, beam.

01:32:57.000 They're excited about it, yeah.

01:33:04.000 There's a gravity that we have towards that.

01:33:06.000 It's a natural human reward to be able to cultivate your own food.

01:33:10.000 If you can make a salad out of some stuff that you grew yourself, man, that feels amazing.

01:33:15.000 It really does.

01:33:16.000 And there's people that could be making a living doing that.

01:33:19.000 They're never encouraged to do so, and they might be way happier than selling insurance.

01:33:23.000 Yeah.

01:33:24.000 Yeah.

01:33:24.000 No, I agree.

01:33:25.000 And you can feed other people too, man.

01:33:27.000 That's the other thing.

01:33:27.000 If you could figure out a way to run an organic garden and you do compost, you don't use pesticides, you do everything organic and everything is regenerative and you actually can feed people, my God, how good would you feel?

01:33:38.000 Pretty satisfying.

01:33:39.000 Yes.

01:33:40.000 Yeah.

01:33:40.000 I would think really satisfying.

01:33:42.000 It's not for everybody, but it's got to be for somebody.

01:33:45.000 Yeah.

01:33:45.000 And no one's teaching you that in school.

01:33:48.000 Right.

01:33:48.000 Yeah.

01:33:48.000 You have to be one of those outside-the-box thinkers because school's essentially set up for scale, right?

01:33:54.000 It's set up for, you got 500 kids, you got to turn them into not losers.

01:33:57.000 How do I get 500 kids to not be a loser?

01:34:00.000 Well, just standard path, you know, like standard American diets, like standard American education, these like standard paths that will work for X amount of people. 1.00

01:34:10.000 You get 10 people, 7 of them won't be losers if you just shove them into this machine and pump them out in this fucking form. 0.99

01:34:16.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:34:17.000 It's a bummer.

01:34:18.000 Uh-huh.

01:34:19.000 Now here we're getting education advice from the ultra marathon runner.

01:34:22.000 Yeah, but you're a good guy to get education advice from.

01:34:25.000 Well, I was a teacher for five years, so.

01:34:26.000 But it's also, you're a successful guy at an unusual thing.

01:34:31.000 You know, you found a thing that you really excel at that you actually enjoy.

01:34:35.000 Yeah.

01:34:36.000 And that is, for so many people, the ultimate goal of life.

01:34:40.000 Like, you can make a lot of money in this life, but you will not be as happy It's really contrary to capitalist ideas.

01:34:50.000 We're taught to think that the more money you make, the happier you'll be.

01:34:54.000 That's definitely not true.

01:34:55.000 But you will make more money if you're happier.

01:34:59.000 With what you do, which sounds like a contradiction.

01:35:02.000 But it's not.

01:35:03.000 You'll excel.

01:35:04.000 And if you're excelling, whatever you're doing is profitable. 0.68

01:35:07.000 Obviously, there's some things that you can excel at that are just, there's no fucking way to make a lot of money as a bowler.

01:35:13.000 You know, if you're like, I'm really into bowling. 1.00

01:35:14.000 Well, you're kind of fucked. 1.00

01:35:16.000 Because it's just one of those things that nobody gives a shit about. 1.00

01:35:18.000 Better find something else you're interested in, too. 0.98

01:35:20.000 Yeah, it'd be nice if you found something that actually paid the bills.

01:35:22.000 But if you can find something that you enjoy, you'll have an infinitely happier life.

01:35:28.000 It's just, you can do that.

01:35:30.000 You just have to find those, you have to explore those things.

01:35:33.000 And I think that's where we fail kids.

01:35:35.000 We fail kids in giving them this landscape of possibilities that actually does exist.

01:35:41.000 I think there's a landscape of possibilities for what you can do, and everyone is different.

01:35:46.000 I don't want to be an ultramarathon runner, man.

01:35:48.000 Right. 1.00

01:35:48.000 If you and I are competing, I'm fucked, okay? 1.00

01:35:51.000 I'm not going to win. 1.00

01:35:52.000 I'm not going to excel. 0.98

01:35:53.000 I'm built like a chimp. 0.52

01:35:55.000 I'm not the guy that's supposed to be running 200 miles.

01:35:58.000 It's just your realm.

01:35:59.000 And it's also, I don't desire to do that. 1.00

01:36:02.000 Conversely, if you had to become a stand-up comedian, you'd probably be like, well, fuck this. 0.98

01:36:06.000 I don't want to be thinking about things that's funny. 0.99

01:36:09.000 And the first time you bomb, you'd be like, what am I doing with my life?

01:36:12.000 Everybody has a different personality and these different personalities and these different interests and desires, they take different paths.

01:36:19.000 And I think we need to open that up to people more and just sort of in some way encourage people to seek more, to genuinely try to find the things that interest you.

01:36:31.000 Maybe you should be a fly fishing guide.

01:36:34.000 Maybe you should be a guy who makes homemade mugs out of wood.

01:36:40.000 Exotic hardwood.

01:36:41.000 Maybe you're a knife maker. 1.00

01:36:44.000 Maybe you should make fucking dream catchers. 1.00

01:36:48.000 I don't know. 1.00

01:36:49.000 Don't make dream catchers.

01:36:50.000 Does anybody really like dream catchers? 0.95

01:36:52.000 There's something you buy and then you put it on the wall and you go, what the fuck am I doing? 0.90

01:36:56.000 Why did I do that? 0.98

01:36:57.000 I'm pretending I'm a Native American or something.

01:36:59.000 But there's things you can do, man.

01:37:01.000 You just have to find that thing.

01:37:02.000 And I think that's so hard for people.

01:37:04.000 And that's why people, when they find someone like yourself that's doing this unusual, unorthodox thing and you're extremely successful at it, it becomes so attractive to people to hear your story.

01:37:14.000 Yeah, and I think I would have never guessed I'd be doing what I'm doing now 10 years ago.

01:37:20.000 So it's equally surprising to me, I think, sometimes.

01:37:23.000 But, you know, it is interesting when you think about just...

01:37:30.000 Where you thought you would maybe be and then where you end up and all that stuff in between.

01:37:35.000 Ultimately, I think you want to be smart about stuff.

01:37:38.000 I didn't necessarily just quit my job and say I'm going to be an ultramarathon runner.

01:37:42.000 You kind of have a few different options available or you just keep options open to...

01:37:47.000 For me personally, I like to coach too.

01:37:49.000 So I'm going to do some of that and that helps supplement things.

01:37:52.000 And then, you know, podcasting has always been a fun thing to do.

01:37:55.000 So historically, I'd always go on podcasts.

01:37:57.000 And then a couple of years ago, it was like, well, if it's this much fun to go on them, it must be fun to do them too.

01:38:03.000 So, you know, starting these other, I think when people start kind of really exploring where their curiosities are, you find these different avenues too.

01:38:10.000 And it just kind of snowballs a little bit as opposed to being, you know, maybe you start out making the dream catcher and then you become something else or Right, right.

01:38:16.000 You just get really into feathers.

01:38:18.000 Did you ever think about doing something?

01:38:22.000 Do you get revelations post-training?

01:38:25.000 Because one of the things that I always have...

01:38:28.000 After really good, hard workouts, first of all, I'm always filled with gratitude.

01:38:34.000 I'm always really thankful after long, hard workouts.

01:38:37.000 And I've thought about doing this thing called the Gratitude Series, where I do a podcast immediately after really hard workouts.

01:38:46.000 And just talk about my feelings. 0.95

01:38:47.000 I mean, it sounds fucking corny and self-indulgent. 0.88

01:38:50.000 But realistically, I think there are some lessons that I learn off of really hard workouts. 0.95

01:38:56.000 You know, where it's like at the end of it, you know, when it's all done, first of all, there's always this feeling like eight out of ten times I don't want to work out.

01:39:06.000 Really?

01:39:06.000 8 out of 10. I work out 10 out of 10. But 8 out of 10, I'm like, fuck this.

01:39:11.000 You're always happy. 1.00

01:39:12.000 Always!

01:39:13.000 Always!

01:39:14.000 And that's the hump, man. 1.00

01:39:16.000 That fucking hump of just shut that part of your brain up and just start moving. 1.00

01:39:23.000 And then once you start moving, you start breaking a sweat. 1.00

01:39:25.000 Once you start breaking a sweat, it becomes easier.

01:39:27.000 It starts feeling good.

01:39:28.000 Then you start getting some satisfaction.

01:39:29.000 Like, ooh, I almost didn't do this today.

01:39:31.000 Here I am doing it.

01:39:33.000 And sometimes I'm looking at a three-mile run.

01:39:38.000 Which is nothing for you. 0.99

01:39:39.000 But a mile in, I'm like, fuck, two more to go. 0.99

01:39:43.000 Jesus Christ. 1.00

01:39:44.000 And I'm running hills and shit. 0.99

01:39:45.000 But when it's over, it's like, yes, I did it! 0.97

01:39:50.000 You know, and I get back to the car and I'm saying hi to people.

01:39:52.000 Hey, what's up?

01:39:53.000 How you doing?

01:39:53.000 What are you doing?

01:39:54.000 Waving to the neighbors.

01:39:55.000 Dog's exhausted.

01:39:56.000 I'm happy.

01:39:57.000 Everybody's pumped.

01:39:58.000 And I feel good.

01:40:00.000 I feel warm.

01:40:01.000 I feel friendly.

01:40:02.000 I feel loving.

01:40:04.000 I want to call people and tell them I care about them.

01:40:07.000 There's moments post-workout in particular where you just feel really good.

01:40:13.000 And I think life is sometimes about... 0.75

01:40:16.000 Getting over those periods of feeling kind of shitty or low energy or lethargic or unrested or what the fuck it is and just pushing through that because you know the territory. 0.51

01:40:28.000 You've been there before and then developing a habit of being able to do that and being able to know and have faith in the process and understand that this, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you don't want to do it. 1.00

01:40:40.000 Shut the fuck up and go! 1.00

01:40:41.000 Just go! 1.00

01:40:42.000 And then once you do go, you always feel better.

01:40:45.000 Yeah, no, I 100% agree.

01:40:46.000 And I think in my own training, I get that from a lot of different workouts.

01:40:51.000 But the one that I really love is when I get closer to a race, and like I was saying before, you start dialing things in to be more specific to the activity you're trying to prepare for.

01:41:00.000 I'll do a phase of training where I'm running kind of in an area of about 150 to 155 beats per minute.

01:41:08.000 It's just fast enough where I feel like I'm really kind of working, but it's also slow enough where I can go for quite a while so I can log a really big run.

01:41:17.000 When I was training for this last race at the Pettit Center, I had a training cycle where I hit a four-week block where...

01:41:27.000 I had one deload a week, which is basically a reduction of volume and intensity, and three build-ups.

01:41:30.000 Why is it called deload?

01:41:32.000 Because I'm reducing volume and intensity.

01:41:34.000 And the other three, though, were build-up ones.

01:41:36.000 So I had a 130-mile week, right around 130, and then 250-mile weeks.

01:41:40.000 And they were just basically loaded with...

01:41:44.000 Just faster than or right about kind of 100 mile intensity.

01:41:47.000 So, you know, I would do and you can maybe pull it up.

01:41:50.000 I think I have a picture on my Instagram page of the I did these key workouts where I'd go to a track and I would just do loops around the track.

01:41:56.000 And it'd be like anywhere between 27 to like 32 miles at that kind of intensity.

01:42:02.000 And you just get into a flow and a rhythm, and once you get moving, it feels great.

01:42:07.000 And afterwards, yeah, you feel great the whole rest of the day, and you just want to go out and do it again.

01:42:11.000 You almost have to be careful not to do too much at a certain point.

01:42:15.000 Who structures those?

01:42:16.000 Do you structure them yourself?

01:42:17.000 Yeah.

01:42:18.000 Yeah.

01:42:18.000 To kind of go back to what we were talking about in the beginning, like when I structure a plan, ideally I start out, I start out with a good base, a good aerobic base, which I typically kind of retain almost year round.

01:42:28.000 I'll take like off season, but I like to follow a principle where I'll let myself kind of lose some of that peak fitness just so it's sustainable because staying at your peak fitness level is not sustainable.

01:42:38.000 So I let myself get like just out of shape enough so that I'm not always at that level.

01:42:43.000 Uh, and then, uh, I, I start kind of building in the, the structure towards the race itself, which starts with those shorter, faster intervals since they're further away. 0.73

01:42:51.000 And then I get closer and closer to the race where I'm doing things that are more specific.

01:42:57.000 So like the next step would be, I'd be doing some longer intervals or kind of like what you consider like an anaerobic threshold type workout, which generally speaking is about like your max intensity.

01:43:06.000 If you did like a 60 minute all out time trial.

01:43:09.000 And then, you know, that's still not specific to 100 miles because I'm out there for 11 hours, so I'm kind of still moving closer to that slower race pace.

01:43:18.000 Yeah, and it just follows the principle of, you know, hitting all the systems of training like you would in any other periodized endurance plan, but always keeping that compass of the stuff you do or the intensity of the race itself is the type of work you should be doing closest to it.

01:43:34.000 So you're really just optimizing when you're closer to the race itself.

01:43:38.000 How do you know what your peak fitness is?

01:43:41.000 Like when you say that you want to, you can't really maintain the peak fitness, you want to back off a little bit so that you can just keep your training running.

01:43:49.000 How do you know where that is and how do you know that you cannot expand that and then...

01:43:54.000 Yeah, no, that's a great question.

01:43:55.000 That's somewhat subjective too.

01:43:57.000 I mean, you can analyze things if you want to go into like heart rate variability type things, but that's a little bit more on the micro level.

01:44:04.000 For me personally, like usually I'll get to a point where like I'll do a race and you can just kind of tell like I'm exhausted from that.

01:44:12.000 And I like to think of it kind of two-folded.

01:44:14.000 We're like physical recovery and mental recovery.

01:44:17.000 So if I do a big race and afterwards, like I can't even like bring myself to think of another big training block, I know I need to like let myself kind of get a little bit out of that fitness state, that peak fitness state and just kind of reset or hit the reset button.

01:44:33.000 So this is just from years and years of training?

01:44:35.000 Yeah, there's trial and error.

01:44:36.000 And you make mistakes.

01:44:37.000 I mean, in the past, you know, a lot of times I'll do one, I'll be like, I think I got one more race left for me and then it goes badly. 0.77

01:44:43.000 Oh, right, right.

01:44:44.000 Uh-huh.

01:44:45.000 Now, what is a long day?

01:44:47.000 Like, say if you're getting prepared for this 100-mile race and you know you're going to have to run for 11-plus hours, what's a long day for you?

01:44:54.000 Yeah, so the longest run I did for this particular one was three and a half hours.

01:44:58.000 It was, I think, 32 miles or somewhere in that neighborhood.

01:45:04.000 I usually don't push up much past five hours in my own training, but If I'm going to do much more than that, I'll just jump in a race.

01:45:11.000 The nice thing about Phoenix is there's a race company called Aravipa, and they put on like 30-some ultra events every year.

01:45:17.000 Oh, wow.

01:45:18.000 Almost every weekend?

01:45:20.000 Pretty much, yeah.

01:45:21.000 That's crazy.

01:45:22.000 So the guy who race directed at Jamil, he'll let me jump in events when I want to.

01:45:28.000 So sometimes if I'm going to do something, like say I'm preparing for 100 mile and I want to get a really long day, like a 7-8 hour session in, I'll just pick a 100k type event or a 50 miler type event and just do that.

01:45:42.000 I like to say, those are training tools, so I don't want to necessarily race it all out.

01:45:48.000 But if you can keep yourself at maybe 80% of what you're capable of, you can get that good long stimulus, but not necessarily beat yourself up so much that it takes away from the race you're preparing for.

01:45:56.000 And so 50 miles would take you, or how long would that take you?

01:46:01.000 It depends on the course.

01:46:02.000 Like I just did a 50 miler actually about a week and a half ago called the JFK 50 mile and that took me five hours and 42 minutes.

01:46:09.000 And that course is kind of, it's got, you go over the Appalachian mountains for about 60 miles and you get on a really flat towpath for about a marathon.

01:46:17.000 That's a lot.

01:46:38.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:46:39.000 That's hilarious.

01:46:40.000 It's really interesting too because like some of the – I live just about two hours south of Flagstaff and there's a group of ultramarathon guys who train up there and they – I got a lot of inspiration from two of them specifically for this last race, the race I did at the Pettit Center.

01:46:56.000 One guy's name is Jim Walmsley, and he's, for my money, probably the best ultramarathoner we have, certainly in North America, if not the world.

01:47:06.000 I mean, he's got the course record at the Western States 100, which is the most tested 100-miler in North America.

01:47:13.000 He's got the course record at the Lake Sonoma 50-mile by a pretty big margin.

01:47:18.000 He's actually got the two fastest times, but the next closest person to him is like...

01:47:22.000 18 minutes behind or something like that.

01:47:24.000 And then he's also got the course record at the JFK 50 mile, the one I just was mentioning before.

01:47:28.000 And these three events are three of the most tested courses that we've had.

01:47:33.000 And he's got the course records at all of them, and he can probably go faster on all three.

01:47:37.000 Jesus Christ.

01:47:38.000 So, I mean, some of his training is like, he'll do like 150 mile a week sometimes with like 30,000 feet of climbing and descending.

01:47:45.000 Oh! 0.60

01:47:45.000 And the kicker is one of his training partners, Jared Hazen. 0.60

01:47:49.000 So if Jim is the best ultra runner North America has from the male side, Jared Hazen is by far the most underrated.

01:47:56.000 So this guy, he ran the Western States 100 this year.

01:48:01.000 Jim finished first.

01:48:02.000 Jared finished second.

01:48:03.000 Jim broke his course record by running 14 hours and 9 minutes on a course that has 17,000 feet of climbing and 23,000 feet of descent.

01:48:12.000 You ran 100 miles with that much in 14 hours?

01:48:16.000 In Western states, it's considered a running course for the most part, too.

01:48:20.000 There's crazier ones that get way worse from a climbing and descending standpoint.

01:48:23.000 Like Moab.

01:48:24.000 Yeah.

01:48:24.000 We have to use trekking sticks.

01:48:26.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:48:27.000 So, Jared, though.

01:48:29.000 Jim, he had actually broken the course record the year before.

01:48:32.000 And he took, I think it was like 16 or 17 minutes off the old course record.

01:48:37.000 Ran 14 and a half hours.

01:48:39.000 This next year, he broke his course record with the 1409. Jared came in second in, I think it was 1423 or 26, just behind Jim, basically pushing him all day.

01:48:50.000 So any other time Jared would have won that race, except for that year, and it would have been a huge story for him.

01:48:59.000 And, you know, it just, I mean, it was an amazing performance from those two guys, and just watching kind of their training, and then their performances, because I was out there crewing and pacing my wife, was, like, a huge motivator for me when I kind of got into the training buildup for that race at the Pennant Center,

01:49:15.000 so...

01:49:15.000 Wow.

01:49:16.000 It's just funny with ultramarathoning because you have such a variety.

01:49:20.000 I think we talked about this a bit the last time.

01:49:22.000 You can have these 50k races that are like...

01:49:25.000 I mean, there's 50k races that have 10,000 feet of climbing and descending.

01:49:28.000 And then you can have these six-day events that are on a 400-meter track.

01:49:31.000 Right.

01:49:32.000 Which is much different.

01:49:34.000 You are doing something really bonkers right now, right?

01:49:37.000 You're attempting to run across the entire country and to break the record.

01:49:42.000 Yeah, so this is kind of in its infancy a bit from the planning stages, so it probably won't happen in the immediate future, but...

01:49:51.000 Someone you're very familiar with, actually, Justin Wren.

01:49:53.000 Yeah.

01:49:53.000 He's got the fight for their guy, and I was actually on the phone with him last night.

01:49:56.000 And one thing I've kind of been interested in since I started ultra running is this route.

01:50:01.000 It's a 3,100-mile route, basically, that goes from San Francisco to New York.

01:50:04.000 And it's been done by quite a few people, both walking, running.

01:50:09.000 Pete Koselnik, he's got the course record.

01:50:10.000 I know he averaged like 70 miles a day.

01:50:13.000 Yeah, so it's a pretty insane route.

01:50:18.000 And I've always been interested in doing it.

01:50:20.000 And I just haven't really been motivated, I guess, to really attempt it.

01:50:26.000 I guess I just really didn't know when I would do it.

01:50:28.000 I just kind of had an idea I would.

01:50:29.000 And then last year, one of my sponsors, the F-bomb, those nut butter sachets.

01:50:36.000 I love those.

01:50:37.000 But my friend RZA and John L. Rollins, they believe that the name should be changed. 1.00

01:50:43.000 They believe nut butter has a negative connotation to heterosexual males who think that it sounds like something comes out of your dick. 1.00

01:50:55.000 Any thoughts? 1.00

01:50:57.000 A name change would maybe be good.

01:50:59.000 Well, I guess in their defense, theirs is called F-Bomb, not Not Better, right?

01:51:02.000 Right, right.

01:51:03.000 F-Bomb.

01:51:04.000 F-Bomb's better, right?

01:51:05.000 It's a better name.

01:51:06.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:06.000 Good stuff.

01:51:07.000 I love their stuff.

01:51:07.000 Yeah, no, they make a great product.

01:51:09.000 And they had actually proposed last year, I think they just were maybe spitballing a little bit, but they were like, hey, would you be ever interested in doing that?

01:51:15.000 Like, go running, you know, doing that cross-country route.

01:51:18.000 And I was like, yeah, I've been actually wanting to do that at some point.

01:51:21.000 I just haven't gotten around to actually planning it out.

01:51:23.000 How funny is that as a statement?

01:51:24.000 Yeah. 0.95

01:51:24.000 Yeah, I've been wanting to run 3,100 miles across the fucking continent and try to beat the record, which averaged 60 to 70 miles a day. 0.95

01:51:35.000 Goddamn, dude. 0.99

01:51:36.000 How would you prepare for that? 0.99

01:51:38.000 Yeah, you know, I mean, I'd be in super uncharted territory because I've just haven't done anything like that before.

01:51:44.000 So it would be difficult.

01:51:46.000 You'd be a lot of learning on the fly.

01:51:48.000 I think really the big key thing there is you're managing a lot of stuff with that.

01:51:52.000 Like you want to make sure you're sleeping well throughout that because obviously if you're not sleeping well, it could end badly for you pretty soon.

01:51:58.000 So then I think you just end up trying to do as much specific things as you can to prepare without going overboard.

01:52:05.000 So just a lot of time on feet.

01:52:06.000 I mean, you can imagine the pace is going to be incredibly slow.

01:52:09.000 There's probably going to be like walking breaks.

01:52:10.000 I'm not going to be like, you know, certainly not going to be running 648 per mile pace.

01:52:14.000 But my first thought is like, I'll probably target like a 12 to 14 hour range per day.

01:52:20.000 And whatever I get out of that 12 to 14 hours is what I get.

01:52:24.000 And then that gives me kind of the flexibility to have at least 10 hours of buffer to kind of prep and sleep and get ready for the next day.

01:52:32.000 Do you know who Eddie Izzard is?

01:52:34.000 Yeah.

01:52:34.000 Are you aware of what he did?

01:52:36.000 He ran the entire length of the UK on the outside of it?

01:52:40.000 With no training, right? 0.95

01:52:41.000 He's an animal, man.

01:52:43.000 He really is a special person.

01:52:45.000 Really is a special person.

01:52:46.000 I remember only knowing of him as a comedian and, you know, had seen him do a lot of stand-up before.

01:52:54.000 And then I watched this documentary where he's running...

01:52:57.000 I mean, how many different marathons was it?

01:53:00.000 It was like 26?

01:53:01.000 27 in 27 days.

01:53:04.000 27 marathons in 27 days.

01:53:06.000 He did wind up taking one day off or his feet were literally mangled from blisters.

01:53:11.000 I can only imagine. 0.98

01:53:12.000 He wasn't in shape, which is just fucking crazy. 0.94

01:53:15.000 Just sheer willpower. 0.98

01:53:16.000 I mean, just to do one marathon when you're not in shape... 0.98

01:53:20.000 I just can't imagine the just a fucking sheer amount of just will just pure will that it takes to do something like that and to just keep pushing left right left right left right left right even though everything your head your brain your feet everything stop stop stop fuck you left right left right left right i mean he ran how many thousand miles was it The entire length of 0.98

01:53:50.000 the UK, all over the outside edge? 0.99

01:53:51.000 He did another one, too, though.

01:53:52.000 He did 43 marathons.

01:53:54.000 Oh, Christ.

01:53:55.000 He did one in South Africa, right?

01:53:57.000 43 in 51 days was his first one, and then 27 in 27 days was his second one.

01:54:03.000 43? 0.99

01:54:04.000 43 fucking marathons? 1.00

01:54:06.000 The article in 2009, a comedian in LA was celebrating after finishing his 43rd marathon in 51 days. 0.99

01:54:12.000 He's a really, really interesting guy.

01:54:17.000 He's Eddie Izzard, but he's a cross-dresser. 0.96

01:54:20.000 He comes out as transgender, I think, but not really, because he likes women.

01:54:27.000 And he likes women as a man.

01:54:28.000 He just likes dressing as a woman. 1.00

01:54:32.000 He's just a really unique guy.

01:54:33.000 But he owns it.

01:54:34.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:54:35.000 He is who he is.

01:54:37.000 Sub-five-hour marathon.

01:54:39.000 The connection was aimed at finishing on a sub-five-hour marathon.

01:54:41.000 It missed his target by 30 seconds.

01:54:43.000 Give it to him.

01:54:44.000 Yeah.

01:54:45.000 Let's round down in that case.

01:54:47.000 Jesus Christ.

01:54:48.000 Give him an honorary 459. Such a fucking interesting, interesting, thoughtful... 0.99

01:54:54.000 Intelligent person. 0.99

01:54:55.000 Really enjoyed talking to him.

01:54:57.000 But when he's talking about these marathons, you're like, good lord, man.

01:55:01.000 Like, it's hard enough for someone to do who's like you.

01:55:03.000 Like, for a guy like you to run 40 what?

01:55:06.000 How many marathons?

01:55:07.000 40 what?

01:55:08.000 What do you say?

01:55:08.000 A lot.

01:55:09.000 A lot.

01:55:10.000 Let's say 40. Fuck it. 1.00

01:55:11.000 For you to run 40 marathons in 40 days is fucking bonkers, right? 1.00

01:55:15.000 Yeah, that'd be a bigger training block than I've ever done, for sure. 0.99

01:55:18.000 That's crazy. 1.00

01:55:19.000 And you're a fucking world record holder. 1.00

01:55:21.000 You got a goddamn stand-up comedian out there running. 1.00

01:55:24.000 It's amazing what people can do when they decide they're going to do it. 0.99

01:55:27.000 Yes.

01:55:28.000 But yeah, I mean, I think for this particular run, I probably would have kept punting it down the road had I not talked to Justin Wren, to be honest with you.

01:55:40.000 When you do something like that, part of the reason I think you do that is, for me anyway, is when I see...

01:55:47.000 Endurance, ultra-endurance sport too, it can be a very selfish sport because you're putting in tons of training.

01:55:53.000 Race day is like an all-day effort with tons of people helping you out.

01:55:56.000 They're taking time out of their schedule, their day, to come out there, crew, pace, essentially be your...

01:56:02.000 Your support system while you're out there trying to do all these things.

01:56:07.000 Part of it is I want to try to give back in a way as well, as opposed to just always going out and racing for my own sake.

01:56:16.000 What will be done?

01:56:19.000 Will you have sponsors?

01:56:21.000 Yeah, I mean, hopefully what we'll do is I was talking to Justin.

01:56:24.000 Can we sponsor you?

01:56:25.000 Absolutely.

01:56:25.000 Really?

01:56:26.000 Beautiful.

01:56:27.000 Will you wear like a JRE logo on one of your shirts or something?

01:56:30.000 No doubt about it. 1.00

01:56:30.000 Fuck yeah! 1.00

01:56:31.000 All right, we're in. 1.00

01:56:32.000 Let's do it.

01:56:33.000 Awesome.

01:56:33.000 We got one sponsor on board.

01:56:35.000 Here we go.

01:56:36.000 Yeah, hell yeah.

01:56:37.000 But yeah, so like when I talked to Justin, I mean Justin is, I mean you know Justin while he's been on the show.

01:56:41.000 I love that guy.

01:56:42.000 And I think it was on here that I heard his podcast for the first time.

01:56:45.000 I know I heard him tell I guess what you would call his origin story here and I think I heard it again on like the Mind Pump Media Guys podcast and it's, when I describe just listening to Justin Wren's podcast or his interviews to people, I try to say like well it kind of comes in these stages where he tells his background story of like his experience with bullying and And at first,

01:57:07.000 your heart just sinks for the guy.

01:57:08.000 You're thinking like, well, how could anyone have to go through that?

01:57:11.000 I would never want anyone to go through that.

01:57:13.000 And you kind of transition into this phase of like, you kind of get nervous and anxious because you're thinking like, well, who did I say something mean to when I was younger?

01:57:20.000 Or who did I potentially affect in a negative way?

01:57:24.000 And then it's like, then you just want to try to do something to support.

01:57:27.000 And You know, it's really, when you look at someone like Justin Wren, it's mind-boggling to me that this guy isn't like an internationally known hero or leader, yet anyway.

01:57:41.000 Well, he's becoming that.

01:57:42.000 He's getting big.

01:57:42.000 He really is.

01:57:43.000 He's getting big.

01:57:43.000 The only thing that's holding him back is he keeps getting sick.

01:57:46.000 Yeah.

01:57:46.000 Well, and that's just it.

01:57:48.000 He's got a fucking crazy, you know, his parasites he's got now. 1.00

01:57:50.000 They don't even know what they are. 1.00

01:57:51.000 He picked up some parasites in the Congo.

01:57:53.000 They can't even identify them specifically.

01:57:56.000 And he's really suffering health-wise.

01:57:59.000 And you would never know talking to him.

01:58:01.000 Like, he just goes about it.

01:58:02.000 Like, the guy's gotten malaria.

01:58:03.000 Like, most people would probably say, okay, I went over to Africa.

01:58:07.000 I got malaria.

01:58:08.000 I helped some people out.

01:58:09.000 I'm good.

01:58:10.000 I'm good.

01:58:11.000 We'll raise some money for this charity and we'll send it over to him or something like that.

01:58:14.000 No, he keeps going back and keeps getting it.

01:58:16.000 He's got malaria three times.

01:58:18.000 Yeah, three times.

01:58:19.000 And now he's got the unknown parasite.

01:58:21.000 So when I think of what we...

01:58:24.000 I think maybe...

01:58:25.000 I mean, Justin Renn is next level when it comes to a leader, I think.

01:58:29.000 And I think in the current...

01:58:30.000 Especially in the current climate, our leaders today tend to be people like celebrities, athletes, and then politicians and things like that.

01:58:38.000 And it's like...

01:58:40.000 You look around and it can be very underwhelming about just how badly are people actually trying to help people and how many of these politicians actually care about poor people.

01:58:55.000 How many of them actually care about someone who's disenfranchised?

01:58:58.000 Why are they doing it?

01:59:01.000 Are they doing it to just get elected or do they actually care?

01:59:03.000 Well, Justin, it's just care.

01:59:05.000 It's all care.

01:59:06.000 There's no worry at all about ulterior motives.

01:59:09.000 They don't exist.

01:59:10.000 There's no ulterior motive to sleep on a dirt floor in a grass shack with the pygmies like he's done for months at a time. 1.00

01:59:17.000 He's just doing it for love.

01:59:19.000 Yeah, so I think when I look at, I think people want to help, and I think people want to do things that are good for humanity, but oftentimes they don't necessarily have that example to lead the way.

01:59:33.000 And they look into a void in some cases.

01:59:35.000 And I think Justin is the type of person who, you know, if the more people we can get to know about him, his story, and what he's trying to do on the wells and the farms with the pygmy, as well as his new branch on anti-bullying, the better.

01:59:49.000 So when I reached out to him, I was actually kind of surprised.

01:59:54.000 I shot him a note on, I think, Instagram and Twitter.

01:59:57.000 And I thought, he's probably not even going to see it because he's not following me.

02:00:00.000 And he responded in like...

02:00:01.000 Less than a couple hours.

02:00:03.000 He followed me, responded back, and he's just like, this is so awesome.

02:00:06.000 I feel super honored that you'd want to help out in some way.

02:00:09.000 He's just always looking for opportunities to help promote this great cause.

02:00:12.000 So then when I got that response from him, it was like clarification of what I think some I already knew about the guy just from listening to him on your show and others.

02:00:21.000 He's really in this for a big reason.

02:00:23.000 And if we need to fast track this cross-country event to bring him some awareness, we'll see what we can do.

02:00:30.000 But He's in everything he does, he does to help and promote other people.

02:00:34.000 Even when I was trying to talk to him about his parasite, I had to keep getting him on track.

02:00:39.000 He's like, you gotta interview my doctor. 1.00

02:00:41.000 No, no, no, fuck your doctor. 1.00

02:00:42.000 What's going on, man? 1.00

02:00:43.000 What's happening with you?

02:00:45.000 Because I worry about the guy because he's so selfless.

02:00:48.000 When he's talking about blacking out and all this after training, they gotta get him in the shower because he's shivering and he's pale white.

02:00:56.000 I'm like, bro, what is going on with you?

02:00:59.000 What is this?

02:01:00.000 And he's like, oh, you gotta meet my doctor.

02:01:01.000 He's amazing.

02:01:02.000 Like, stop! 1.00

02:01:02.000 Stop with the fucking doctor. 1.00

02:01:04.000 What is happening? 1.00

02:01:06.000 He doesn't want to talk about himself.

02:01:08.000 It's amazing.

02:01:09.000 He's the most selfless person I've ever talked to.

02:01:11.000 He's talking about fighting again, right?

02:01:12.000 He's getting over these incredible bouts of...

02:01:18.000 Antibiotics that you know weaken your ligaments, right?

02:01:21.000 Like when you take Cipro or any of these like super intense antibiotics, one of the side effects is a lot of times people get injured, like your ligaments get injured, because apparently there's a weakening effect, which is really kind of...

02:01:37.000 It's really fascinating when you think about the human body as an overall organism and that it's really an ecosystem and that when you flood antibiotics into that ecosystem to try to prevent disease from destroying it, you also have these unintended side effects and one of them is weakened ligaments.

02:01:56.000 There's a lot of correlation between people getting staph infection and then blowing out knees, ACLs, you know, tendons and things along those lines afterwards. 0.98

02:02:06.000 Both of his shoulders are fucked. 0.96

02:02:08.000 This is post-antibiotics, and yet he's still talking about fighting so he can bring more awareness to the pygmies. 1.00

02:02:15.000 I'm like, bro, please, stop!

02:02:18.000 Just get your shoulders fixed.

02:02:20.000 Whatever you got going on, let's heal that up first. 1.00

02:02:23.000 And then also, find out what the fuck this parasite is. 1.00

02:02:26.000 You don't even know what this is. 1.00

02:02:28.000 He's not even thinking about himself.

02:02:29.000 He's like, if I can get in and get a fight in by the end of the year. 0.99

02:02:32.000 I'm like, the end of the year, man, it's fucking December. 0.99

02:02:34.000 Stop it! 0.99

02:02:35.000 You're not getting in by the end of the year.

02:02:37.000 You're not getting in the beginning of 2020. Let's heal up.

02:02:40.000 Heal up.

02:02:40.000 We want you healthy.

02:02:42.000 He's such a rare, totally selfless person, and he's such a powerful force for good for the people that live in the Congo.

02:02:51.000 And what he's done for them I mean, I don't know how many wells they've built so far, but they've made an alliance with the Cash App, which is one of my sponsors.

02:03:00.000 So every time someone downloads the Cash App, when they use the code JoeRogan, whether it's for Google, for Android, or for an iPhone, for Apple, you get $10 goes to this cause.

02:03:12.000 So they've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're building wells right now.

02:03:16.000 It's just this amazing thing that he's done.

02:03:19.000 And he's just... 1.00

02:03:21.000 Like, you feel like a piece of shit. 1.00

02:03:22.000 Like, when you're around him, you're like, why am I not this nice? 1.00

02:03:25.000 He's so nice!

02:03:27.000 It's like, it wasn't enough for him to find people who were hard-off.

02:03:30.000 He had to go and find the most forgotten, most hard-off people on the planet.

02:03:33.000 Yes!

02:03:34.000 Right.

02:03:34.000 It's like, so many people in Africa have it rough.

02:03:36.000 You're like, no, no, no.

02:03:37.000 Who's got the roughest?

02:03:38.000 Yeah.

02:03:38.000 Where's the worst spot?

02:03:40.000 And on top of that, the guy's a world-class mixed martial artist.

02:03:44.000 I mean, he really is.

02:03:45.000 He's one of the best heavyweights in the world. 0.99

02:03:47.000 And how much better would he be if he was selfish and spent all of his time training and not getting malaria three times, not having this unknown parasite that they think might be in his fucking brain? 0.99

02:03:59.000 I mean, they don't even know what... 0.99

02:04:00.000 I was just reading this story about some guy who was having seizures, and it turns out he had all these worms in his brain.

02:04:08.000 And I'm like...

02:04:09.000 And I was thinking about Justin.

02:04:10.000 It was from uncooked pork from this guy.

02:04:13.000 And Justin...

02:04:13.000 They think...

02:04:15.000 The problem with the Congo is it's so remote, and you don't get a lot of people that go there and get diseases and then come back.

02:04:23.000 So they don't even know what this is.

02:04:27.000 It might be something that no one's ever got before and then made it back to Western civilization to be examined.

02:04:33.000 Yeah, wow.

02:04:34.000 Yeah, wow. 0.97

02:04:35.000 What the hell, man? 0.91

02:04:37.000 Yeah, and you would never know talking to him. 0.87

02:04:39.000 No, he just doesn't want to talk about it.

02:04:40.000 Yeah.

02:04:41.000 He wants to talk about his friend.

02:04:42.000 Hey, you got to get my friend on the podcast.

02:04:43.000 He's really sweet.

02:04:44.000 He's a great guy.

02:04:45.000 He makes kites.

02:04:47.000 Like, what? 1.00

02:04:47.000 What the fuck are you talking about? 1.00

02:04:49.000 Each kite is going to generate X amount of dollars. 1.00

02:04:52.000 Just need to bottle up Justin Wren and feed it to everyone, I guess.

02:04:55.000 Well, you know, it's an interesting—not just an interesting—it's a beautiful sort of expression of what can happen to a person when they experience deep pain and sadness, and then they find a way out, and then they find a way to help other people.

02:05:11.000 And that's sort of what he's done.

02:05:13.000 You know, his childhood was really rough.

02:05:16.000 And he came out of that a super kind person, as opposed to being angry and mean.

02:05:23.000 I mean, this is what we need more in the world, right?

02:05:25.000 We need more people building people up and helping, and less people tearing people down and hating.

02:05:32.000 So much of what social media is used for and so much of what the internet is used for is hate.

02:05:38.000 It's anger.

02:05:39.000 There's so much anger.

02:05:40.000 And to see someone like Justin, this rare soul that has found a way to almost universe...

02:05:46.000 I mean, everything he does is channeled towards good.

02:05:50.000 All of it. 0.99

02:05:51.000 Including kicking people's asses. 0.99

02:05:52.000 How do you make that good? 1.00

02:05:54.000 He found it. 0.99

02:05:55.000 He found a way to make kicking people's asses a good thing. 0.99

02:05:58.000 It's beautiful. 0.99

02:06:00.000 I'm really honored to be his friend.

02:06:01.000 He's one of my, you know, the rarest people that I know.

02:06:05.000 Yeah, no doubt.

02:06:06.000 No, it's been cool to hear his story.

02:06:08.000 And, you know, I think, thanks to you, he's probably got a much bigger audience, too.

02:06:14.000 So what are you thinking about in terms of the timeline?

02:06:18.000 Yeah.

02:06:18.000 Well, so if I go and try to get close to or right around the record for that, it's about a 40-day-ish timeframe, give or take.

02:06:30.000 So you're really, I think the biggest hurdle or planning thing is to find the timeline where you're going to run into the least amount of weather issues.

02:06:38.000 Because you're going across the country, so you're going over the Sierras and you're going through the...

02:06:42.000 You know, the middle of the country and then all that stuff.

02:06:44.000 So obviously you don't want to be going over mountain passes in the middle of winter, but you probably don't also want to be going through the Midwest in the middle of the summer.

02:06:53.000 So some of it's going to be kind of planning around that.

02:06:55.000 There's probably some good opportunities in the spring and the fall that kind of catch that window of moderate temps versus extremes.

02:07:01.000 What's the gentleman that did it before?

02:07:03.000 Pete Koselik.

02:07:04.000 Do you know Pete?

02:07:05.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:07:06.000 There he is.

02:07:06.000 Man runs from San Francisco to New York in record time.

02:07:09.000 Look at that guy.

02:07:09.000 He's still dazed.

02:07:11.000 Pete's also like... 0.99

02:07:12.000 He's like, what the fuck did I do? 0.98

02:07:14.000 You want to hear something crazy about Pete, though? 0.98

02:07:16.000 So he did that, and then that wasn't enough because he...

02:07:20.000 I think this was...

02:07:21.000 A year ago or two years ago, he went up in Alaska and went from Alaska down to the southern tip of Florida all by himself with just one of those push strollers.

02:07:30.000 And he averaged, I think it was like 50 miles a day or something like that.

02:07:34.000 What?

02:07:35.000 He went from Alaska to Florida?

02:07:37.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:07:38.000 He did a, I forget what they called it.

02:07:39.000 Well, a stroller.

02:07:40.000 So that's his food?

02:07:40.000 His food's in the stroller?

02:07:42.000 Yeah.

02:07:43.000 What the fuck, bro? 1.00

02:07:44.000 You know, it was funny. 1.00

02:07:45.000 I was kind of following him while he did it.

02:07:48.000 That's so crazy.

02:07:49.000 He's got a baby stroller with food in it.

02:07:51.000 What a crazy idea.

02:07:53.000 When I was following him, he was logging all his runs on Strava.

02:07:58.000 So it was hilarious to see these...

02:07:59.000 These weeks after weeks where it's like 50 mile day, 50 mile day, like, you know, like 350, 400 mile weeks and stuff like that.

02:08:06.000 And then if you like zoomed in on his routes, you could see like he'd be on this route and all of a sudden you see him deviate a little bit and you'd zoom in and be like, oh, there's a grocery store there.

02:08:12.000 That's why he turned right there.

02:08:15.000 To fill up his baby cart with food.

02:08:18.000 Where'd he keep his money?

02:08:20.000 I don't know.

02:08:21.000 The baby cart?

02:08:22.000 Probably, yeah.

02:08:22.000 Someone tried to steal that baby cart.

02:08:24.000 Where'd he sleep?

02:08:25.000 I think he stayed at hotels, if I'm not mistaken.

02:08:28.000 I'd have to look back in the story.

02:08:31.000 So he has to bring the baby card up the stairs?

02:08:32.000 Yeah.

02:08:33.000 Jesus Christ. 0.70

02:08:36.000 There's crazy people out there, man. 0.83

02:08:38.000 There's different kind of humans, right?

02:08:40.000 You have this idea of what a person's capable of, and you see someone like that, and you go, okay.

02:08:46.000 I gotta rethink this.

02:08:47.000 People are capable of way more.

02:08:49.000 Yeah, it's nuts when you think about it.

02:08:51.000 As soon as you think you find limitations, then all of a sudden someone goes out and does something crazier or bigger or better.

02:08:57.000 Guy took a baby stroller from Alaska to Florida! 1.00

02:09:01.000 What the fuck, man? 1.00

02:09:03.000 Did you talk to him at all about this idea? 1.00

02:09:06.000 I haven't yet, no.

02:09:07.000 Are you going to?

02:09:08.000 Yeah, I'll definitely reach out to him.

02:09:10.000 He'll be good about it, I think.

02:09:12.000 He's a nice guy.

02:09:12.000 I know Pete.

02:09:13.000 How many people have done this run?

02:09:15.000 I don't even know.

02:09:16.000 It's a documented route, so it's been done.

02:09:20.000 You could probably Google it and find out.

02:09:23.000 But yeah, it's more than you'd think.

02:09:25.000 It just really usually comes down.

02:09:27.000 And actually, Justin worked with someone earlier who did it walking.

02:09:30.000 I think it maybe was a slightly different route, but it was basically the same premise.

02:09:35.000 And he walked like 20-some miles a day or something like that and was raising funds and awareness for Fight for the Forgotten, too.

02:09:43.000 Yeah.

02:09:44.000 We'll maybe talk to him a bit too.

02:09:47.000 So the idea is late summer, early fall, something like that?

02:09:52.000 Yeah, that's probably ideal.

02:09:53.000 I think you want to try to catch, you want to get away from winter, but you also want to be done before the worst part of summer.

02:10:00.000 Right.

02:10:01.000 With the global warming, do you factor that in?

02:10:05.000 Depends how fast it ends up coming.

02:10:07.000 The route might be shorter by the time I get around to doing it, if the coasts come in though.

02:10:12.000 So sometime around this time next year, it should be completed.

02:10:16.000 Is that the idea?

02:10:18.000 Maybe?

02:10:19.000 My thought is it's probably got to either be about a 10-month start point or 18. So I could either do it now, or I guess it'd be a little less than 18, but by finishing.

02:10:31.000 So I would either maybe try to do it this fall, or if I don't have enough in place by then, target kind of the end of winter for 2021. And what would change?

02:10:41.000 What would make you decide to do it 2021 versus 2020?

02:10:45.000 Just, I mean, I'm trying to respect how much, like, planning it's going to take, and I haven't really started that yet, so I don't want to, like, necessarily get, find out, like, okay, let's say I just put a date on the calendar right away, and then find out, oh, I need to,

02:11:00.000 like...

02:11:01.000 There's a lot more resources I have to try to acquire to make this happen.

02:11:18.000 Um, obviously this will probably, this will take the place of an entire, the way I look at, uh, like seasons of racing is just kind of two key ones.

02:11:27.000 You have like your spring, early summer, and your kind of late summer, fall slash winter season.

02:11:32.000 So there's kind of two.

02:11:33.000 Uh, so I'll basically just sacrifice one of those seasons for this.

02:11:37.000 And I probably won't, I mean, I don't really know what to expect cause I've never done anything quite like this before, but I'm planning on dedicating one of those seasons towards that exclusively.

02:11:48.000 Jamie's nodding over here.

02:11:49.000 I was digging through this article.

02:11:50.000 It's pretty interesting.

02:11:51.000 It started here.

02:11:53.000 Distance walking was a huge spectator sport.

02:11:55.000 In the late 19th century?

02:11:57.000 They would bet money that you couldn't do it.

02:12:01.000 Look at this quote.

02:12:04.000 People followed it like it was the World Series?

02:12:06.000 So it continued on until the Great Depression and World War II, probably because people didn't have enough time to waste their time doing this.

02:12:12.000 And then it picked back up in the late 20th century, and that's when you had to prove what you were doing.

02:12:17.000 Look at this!

02:12:18.000 The first known transcontinental journey took place in 1896 by a mother-daughter duo who, needing to raise money to save their farm in Spokane County, Washington, responded to a $10,000 public wager that no one could make it by foot across the country.

02:12:35.000 Helga and Clara Espy left home with $10 between them, as well as a compass, a knife, a curling iron, and a Smith& Wesson revolver. 0.99

02:12:44.000 Don't fuck with those ladies. 1.00

02:12:46.000 They'll curl your hair and shoot you in the dick. 1.00

02:13:00.000 Someone fucked them out of their money, probably. 1.00

02:13:02.000 Someone fucked them out of their money. 1.00

02:13:03.000 Some jackass. 0.99

02:13:04.000 Yeah, so it started again, picked that back up again in like the 60s, and in 1980, somebody that was doing it had his team scramble to get witness signatures the whole way across so he could prove that he did it when he did it and the amount of time that he did it. 0.96

02:13:17.000 I mean, people cheat on marathons, right?

02:13:20.000 They jump in cars on marathons and make it on the train.

02:13:23.000 There was a guy, I think, before Pete broke the record that I think got caught cheating trying to do it.

02:13:28.000 Because, I mean, you've got to document stuff pretty detailed.

02:13:31.000 And it's crazy.

02:13:32.000 Like, I mean, you'd think it would be enough just to track it on your watch and upload it.

02:13:35.000 Right.

02:13:36.000 But, like, you know, people do goofy things.

02:13:38.000 Like, they get in the back of the RV, I guess, and drive really slow.

02:13:41.000 But people who are really good at, like, looking at those GPX files can look and see, like, oh, that's not a run.

02:13:46.000 That's, you know, they can see these variances and paces or consistencies that wouldn't be uniform with running or something like that.

02:13:53.000 Oh, interesting.

02:13:54.000 Well, maybe this should be some sort of a video recording of it, like if you have a GoPro in your head.

02:13:58.000 I want to do a live feed and just have it on.

02:14:01.000 Is that possible?

02:14:02.000 Satellite streaming?

02:14:02.000 Yeah, there's probably a way to do it.

02:14:04.000 Yeah, that would be dope.

02:14:06.000 Listen, man, we're in.

02:14:07.000 We'll help you.

02:14:07.000 Whatever we can do.

02:14:09.000 Sounds like a very worthy cause, and it's a crazy undertaking. 0.96

02:14:13.000 And we'd be happy to promote it, too, and let everybody know and have people fucking honk their horn and drive by you. 0.89

02:14:19.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:14:19.000 We're going to Dairy Queen! 0.98

02:14:21.000 See you later, Zach!

02:14:22.000 As long as they want to hand off a nice ribeye or something.

02:14:26.000 What are you going to eat along the way?

02:14:28.000 What kind of food would you consume?

02:14:32.000 Kind of to maybe go full circle with what we started before where we kind of talk about kind of what I periodize with carbohydrates and stuff like that where I think there is a point where the distance is long enough where like a strict ketogenic diet is maybe more applicable.

02:14:46.000 I think it's pretty well established.

02:14:50.000 If you follow a strict ketogenic diet or a zero-carb diet and try to perform in some of these typical endurance events, it's going to come at a performance cost unless you have some weird outlying type situation.

02:15:02.000 Trent Stellingworth looked at, he's a guy up in Canada who works with a lot of the sports performance stuff, and He did some studies that actually looks at if you go super strict keto or zero carb, you get really fat-adapted.

02:15:16.000 You get really good at burning fat.

02:15:17.000 But it comes at a cost of your ability to burn exogenous glucose.

02:15:22.000 So if I went zero carb for a year and then I tried to take in my fueling strategy that I do now, my body would probably reject it or at least I would have to be really, really conservative with how much I used.

02:15:35.000 Have you talked to Dom D'Agostino about this stuff?

02:15:37.000 Not personally, though.

02:15:38.000 Do you know him?

02:15:39.000 Yeah, I know, I know, I follow him and stuff.

02:15:41.000 I'm actually going to be presenting at his Metabolic Health Summit in, I believe it's in end of January, early February.

02:15:47.000 He's a very, very interesting guy because he's a super legit fact-based scientist who's also a power athlete, you know, and ketogenic, like for a long, long time now.

02:15:57.000 Try to get him on board for this attempt.

02:15:59.000 But like what I'm trying to say with that is like- He'd probably help you.

02:16:03.000 Yeah.

02:16:03.000 I mean, he'd be a great resource for sure.

02:16:06.000 But like for something like this, like my intensity is going to be so low that like I don't technically need to be taking in exogenous glucose for something like that.

02:16:15.000 So it might actually behoove me to be as fat adapted as I can get versus what I'm normally doing is I'm trying to get as fat adapted as I need to be, but not necessarily so far that it comes at the compromise of being able to do my in-race nutrition fueling plan.

02:16:27.000 I was always under the impression that your body always knows what to do with glucose, but that it has to be fat adapted.

02:16:33.000 Does that sound the case necessarily?

02:16:34.000 I think you probably can to a degree, but what happens is you downregulate...

02:16:40.000 I can't speak to the science perfectly, but Trent Stallingworth did a bunch of research where basically it downregulates the mechanism that allows you to take in glucose and utilize it in a meaningful way.

02:16:52.000 So most people can tolerate probably somewhere between maybe...

02:16:57.000 60 to 90 grams of glucose per hour during some of these events.

02:17:03.000 Whereas if you went on a strict zero carb diet and tried to do 60 to 90 grams of sports drink or fuel or something like that, I don't think your body could clear it because it would have down-regulated your body's capability to do that.

02:17:16.000 So, I mean, folks who are interested should look at Trent Stallingworth's work.

02:17:20.000 He would be able to describe it in much better detail than I can.

02:17:24.000 So you would just go on a real super heavy fat diet?

02:17:27.000 I think so.

02:17:27.000 That's what I'm thinking about.

02:17:29.000 I wouldn't necessarily...

02:17:30.000 Just avocados, coconut oil, meat.

02:17:32.000 Yeah.

02:17:33.000 Just mainline those F-bombs. 1.00

02:17:34.000 Yeah.

02:17:35.000 Just get as much fat as your body can do.

02:17:37.000 I think a lot of fat and a lot of protein would be the name of the game for something that's that low and that slow intensity.

02:17:44.000 And you would try for how many miles a day?

02:17:46.000 Well, Pete did it in 70, so I feel like it would be cool to try to challenge his attempt, but who knows?

02:17:53.000 How many hours was he doing a day?

02:17:55.000 I don't know.

02:17:56.000 That's a good question.

02:17:56.000 I'd have to look back and see what he was doing.

02:17:58.000 I don't know if it was consistently the same every day, so maybe that's where my plan would deviate, and I probably am going to learn along the way and maybe change things, but I do kind of like, at least on paper, that idea of targeting a 12 to 14 hour window so that I have at least 10 hours to kind of refuel and sleep We're good to go.

02:18:39.000 Beautiful.

02:18:40.000 Well, listen, we're in.

02:18:41.000 You let us know.

02:18:42.000 We'll help you.

02:18:43.000 We'll pump it up.

02:18:44.000 We'll sponsor you.

02:18:44.000 Whatever we need to do, let's make it happen.

02:18:47.000 Awesome, man.

02:18:47.000 Thank you.

02:18:48.000 Thanks, Zach.

02:18:48.000 Thanks for being here.

02:18:49.000 Yeah.

02:18:50.000 Hey, do you mind if I share my social media real quick?

02:18:51.000 Please.

02:18:52.000 I was just going to ask you that.

02:18:53.000 Oh, cool.

02:18:53.000 Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

02:18:54.000 No, please.

02:18:55.000 Yeah, I mean, you can find me on my website at ZachBitter, Z-A-C-H-B-I-T-T-E-R.com.

02:19:00.000 Social media is Instagram, at ZachBitter, and Twitter, at ZBitter.

02:19:04.000 All that stuff can be found on my website, though.

02:19:06.000 Zach Bitter, ladies and gentlemen.

02:19:08.000 Thanks, brother.

02:19:08.000 Appreciate it, man.

02:19:09.000 Awesome.

02:19:09.000 Thanks for having me on the show.

02:19:10.000 See you soon.

02:19:10.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 03, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1392 - Zach Bitter

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