The Peter Attia Drive - #17 - Mike Trevino： life-lessons from ultra-endurance, mindset, hard work, and removing limitations

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atiyah Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah.

00:00:10.140 The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking,

00:00:15.600 along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with

00:00:19.840 some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world. And this podcast

00:00:23.600 is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality,

00:00:28.360 more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode

00:00:33.020 and other topics at peteratiyahmd.com.

00:00:41.480 Welcome to this episode of the Peter Atiyah Drive. This was a really fun one for me to do,

00:00:46.760 and it was done relatively without much preparation or prompting. So in this episode, I interview one

00:00:52.260 of my really, really close friends, Mike Trevino. Mike and I have been friends from the moment we

00:00:57.360 met, which was about five years ago. And, you know, there are just a number of things about

00:01:00.940 Mike that are really interesting, and you'll learn a lot of them in this episode, starting with the

00:01:05.480 fact that Mike is arguably the most accomplished amateur endurance athlete, certainly that I've

00:01:11.020 ever known. But you'd have a hard time making a case for any other amateur endurance athlete,

00:01:16.140 period. His accomplishments are beyond legendary. And we go through many of them here, though not all

00:01:23.080 of them. And that's sort of why I wanted to have this discussion with him. It's like, Mike and I

00:01:26.800 see each other every week. We somehow figure out a way to time our travel such that there's one

00:01:31.700 day a week, at least three weeks out of the month when we're not traveling and we can go out and do a

00:01:38.080 ride. And it's a relatively short ride. We ride about 40 kilometers, but it's just kind of this amazing

00:01:43.060 time when we get to catch up on life and all of the things that, you know, we think about together.

00:01:47.740 And so Mike shares a lot of that stuff today. He gets into, again, I think you could listen to this

00:01:53.200 and easily come away overwhelmed and thinking, wow, there's nothing about that guy's experience

00:01:58.720 that I can relate to because he's basically setting world records in running, in cycling.

00:02:05.120 He's doing these things like the race across America that I think it's almost impossible for

00:02:10.020 a normal person to fathom what that means. It's impossible for me to fathom what that means. And I

00:02:15.000 have some experience in these sort of ultra distance world. But I think he also is able to

00:02:21.500 make the case that the lessons that he learns in doing these things are applicable to life and

00:02:26.640 they're applicable to specifically things that you might want to do for your own endurance.

00:02:30.900 You know, if you're currently able to run a 5k and wondering what does it take to get to the 10k

00:02:35.020 or the half marathon, or you're running the half marathon and you want to run the marathon,

00:02:38.380 what does it take? Well, in many ways, it's sort of taking a page out of Mike's playbook.

00:02:42.020 Mike's a really special guy to me. Mike and his wife, Nada, who are very close friends have been

00:02:46.960 there for me during arguably the, one of the most difficult periods of my life. And they were the

00:02:50.620 first people to basically show up when I needed to be picked up. And so I'm forever grateful to Mike

00:02:58.960 and his family. And I just find that our weekly bike rides on Sunday mornings, which are usually when

00:03:04.840 we do them are among kind of the most cherished things that I do outdoors anymore. So much of

00:03:11.460 what I do is now alone. I lift weights alone. I ride my Peloton or my Wahoo kicker alone. And this

00:03:17.920 is kind of the one time a week when I get to go and be with somebody else for, you know, or an hour or

00:03:23.200 75 minutes, half an hour and a half. And I value it greatly. One anecdote that I'll tell before we jump

00:03:28.080 into this episode, just to put in perspective for anybody who is themselves a cyclist or a

00:03:33.760 reasonably serious athlete, just to put in context, Mike's, you know, accomplishments and just his

00:03:38.620 ability. So about four years ago when I was, you know, training very hard as a time trialist. And at

00:03:44.900 this point, Mike was, you know, he was running, but he was kind of done with his ultra distance career

00:03:50.040 and had not been on a bike in probably a year. And he was like, you know, I'm going to come out and

00:03:55.280 join you one day for one of your workouts. I said, that'd be great. You know, and I couldn't

00:03:59.080 expect that he could even come close to keeping up with me because at the end of the day, just

00:04:03.920 conditioning seems to matter and how much preparedness you have matters. And so we went

00:04:08.900 out to Fiesta Island where we train and there's, you know, a loop that you do that's part of the

00:04:13.580 training. So we did this workout together and it was a very tough workout, lots of sort of three

00:04:17.940 minute, four minute, all out intervals. And at the end of the workout, we decided to do two hot

00:04:22.500 laps. So that's two laps of the big loop of Fiesta Island. That would be about almost 14 kilometers

00:04:29.520 for those two laps. And, you know, I was fit, like I was training for races. And I guess, as I said,

00:04:36.460 Mike hadn't been on a bike in about a year. And we went out and did these two hot laps and I couldn't

00:04:42.500 believe it when I crossed the line for the second lap. I mean, I expected Mike to be three or four

00:04:49.500 minutes behind and I look back and he's all of 15 seconds behind me. And I was like, wow,

00:04:56.720 I'm about as fit as I'm going to be at this stage of my life. There's not a lot I'm going to do to

00:05:01.260 take my game to the next level. And he's pretty much right where I am just out of the gate. And

00:05:08.260 that was kind of a, an interesting, you know, wake up of like, there are guys that are just at a

00:05:14.060 different level. And these guys train and they're forget about it. They're in another world. So

00:05:18.860 I hope you enjoy this episode. It's really geared towards people who have some sort of interest in

00:05:24.720 physical performance, but I really think there are enough sort of life lessons placed within here

00:05:29.940 that I think anybody, even someone who has no desire to run a marathon or do anything crazy like

00:05:35.360 that is still going to find something in it. And finally, at the very end, if you just don't want to

00:05:39.540 hear anything else and just want to skip to the very end, we do disclose what we consider the

00:05:44.040 second best beer of all time. Again, we do not disclose the best beer because you know, I've got my

00:05:49.580 reasons for that, but I'm at the very least, those of you that are interested in great beer, we'll get

00:05:53.260 a little tip at the end. So anyway, I hope you enjoy. Mike, I'm super excited to sit down and talk

00:06:00.340 about all this stuff with you. You know, we've known each other for such a long time now, but you're

00:06:03.900 such a sort of mild mannered understated guy that if someone Googled your name, they wouldn't realize

00:06:09.000 a fraction of what you've accomplished. And I think there are a lot of people who are going to

00:06:13.600 listen to this who are going to be, I think we'll learn a lot from this and be able to apply it to

00:06:17.240 what they're doing. I doubt many people who listen to this are ever going to want to go and do RAM

00:06:21.180 or try to set 24 hour world records in cycling and running. But I think the principles that you've

00:06:26.720 learned over the years are applicable to someone who's going on to try to run their first 10 K or

00:06:30.660 whatever. But let's start with a funny story, which is what'd you do for your birthday this year?

00:06:35.920 I ran. So how old did you turn? 43 in December. And what is your shtick on your birthday?

00:06:43.000 Starting at 40, the new goal became run my miles and years, years and miles. So this year it was 43

00:06:49.920 miles. So I remember when you called me later that day after you did your 43 mile run, which in and of

00:06:56.800 itself was crazy. But the part that I found most impressive was your nutritional strategy.

00:07:02.320 Yeah, this year was a new experiment. I thought I was in good shape and decided to try

00:07:07.640 the run no calories. So self-supported, but no calories just to see if I could pull it off. So I

00:07:14.340 left with a couple of crystal light packets for flavor on hydration and 20 bucks to buy, worst case

00:07:22.620 buy a banana at a 7-Eleven or something like that. And I pulled it off.

00:07:26.280 Yeah. So you had had dinner the night before.

00:07:28.980 Yeah. I started fasting at five the night before, had a beer.

00:07:34.440 By the way, I just want to state for the record, the beer that we drink, we never mentioned by name.

00:07:40.440 Never, ever.

00:07:41.600 Okay. Just, yeah. So don't let that ever slip out in case that was the beer you had.

00:07:44.600 So you had a beer at 5 p.m. the night before?

00:07:47.160 Had a beer at 5 and went to bed 9 or 10, up at 4, and out the door by 5.

00:07:54.960 No breakfast.

00:07:55.780 No breakfast. And that was it. Started running.

00:07:59.880 And you ran about eight-minute miles for 43 miles.

00:08:03.940 Yeah, just over eight with some hills. Went south. I went left North County, San Diego,

00:08:09.500 went to the coast, ran up Torrey Pines. Gorgeous morning. And just kept going down the coast,

00:08:16.200 La Jolla and Pacific Beach and down Point Loma, then turned around and stopped in Pacific Beach

00:08:22.380 at the pier where I met my family at noon-ish. And we had brunch.

00:08:29.460 And you said you weren't even really hungry when you were done.

00:08:31.800 I wasn't. I wasn't. I expected to, you know, we were ready to have a big brunch and Bloody Marys

00:08:36.780 and celebrate. You know, my wife brought the kids and balloons and we ate at our favorite

00:08:42.920 restaurant. And no, it was great. It was a wonderful day.

00:08:47.280 Yeah. So in the parlance, that's what we call fat adaptation. Because, you know, if you do the math,

00:08:52.060 the extent to which you're expending energy, you're probably expending somewhere in the

00:08:56.160 neighborhood of 600 to 700 kilojoules per hour. And, you know, if you were trying to get access to

00:09:02.680 that just from glycogen, I mean, you'd be done in probably two, three hours at the most.

00:09:06.700 Two or three. Yeah. Two or three at most. And that was fairly aggressive pace, right? So,

00:09:12.980 you know, there's a series of energy stores that you tap into depending on your output and duration,

00:09:18.460 you know, that well. So now I try to keep an even pace and stay hydrated. I didn't really stop.

00:09:25.960 It was actually nice because in prior runs, I'd, you know, you have to stop at a 7-Eleven and you

00:09:29.700 wait in line or stop at a gas station and get something to drink and buy a banana or

00:09:34.720 granola bar or something. And then you get tight. So I was able to just keep moving.

00:09:39.460 How did you drink? How did you stop to get water?

00:09:41.000 I had handheld. So I had 20 ounce handhelds and fortunately I was able to refill. There's a

00:09:46.820 little drinking fountain at Torrey Pine State Beach and there's one in La Jolla Shores. And I didn't

00:09:52.120 kind of know where all the stops are. So I just planned it and a little 30 second diversions.

00:09:57.280 And by the end I was just doing, you know, straight water, which felt and tasted better.

00:10:02.920 I turned around Point Loma OB and then went back up North and to one last water stop in

00:10:09.480 South Mission Beach and ended in Pacific Beach.

00:10:14.340 So I remember one of the first times we hung out, we were introduced by a mutual friend. This is

00:10:19.860 probably in 2013. And this is back when I was cycling pretty seriously. You were running pretty

00:10:25.380 seriously, but you weren't cycling much at the time. But I was telling you about this shake that

00:10:30.140 I make this generation. You can, I call it the Peter Kaufman, where I take the generation you can

00:10:34.660 and I mix it with heavy cream and almond milk. And it's like, it's like the best meal you can have

00:10:39.120 in a shake. Right. And I was like, Hey, you know what? Why don't you come over after your workout on

00:10:43.180 Sunday and I'll, I'll fire this up for you. And you said, sure, I'll be there. And you came over,

00:10:48.000 but the part that blew my mind is you ran over and it was a 50 mile run. You know, even though we

00:10:52.900 only lived like you lived in La Jolla at the time, so we only lived maybe 12 miles away from each

00:10:57.400 other, but you had turned it into a 50 mile run to end at my place. I forgot about that.

00:11:04.100 Yeah, of course. Cause for you, that's nothing. Well, no, it was, it was actually one of my longer

00:11:08.100 runs training for, so that was, that was 13. And that Sunday, Saturday or Sunday was one of my long

00:11:15.560 runs training for what was supposed to be a 300 mile run down the coast. And so I think I peaked around

00:11:22.240 50 or 60 in terms of, you know, I was doing 130 mile weeks, getting ready for that.

00:11:27.520 170. You hit one week, didn't you?

00:11:29.720 No, I, the, the, the, the week of the run, I hit three 15, three 13, three 15. Ended up being about

00:11:35.660 275 miles, the run itself, which was Gaviota state beach to San Diego to raise money for the Navy

00:11:42.600 seal foundation. So that 50 miler was training for that, which was five, six weeks after your shake.

00:11:48.720 I remember your wife and daughter saw me standing in the driveway and she kind of looked at me out

00:11:54.760 of the corner of her eye and just ran in the house. The pool of sweat, incredible. Yeah. A lot

00:12:03.140 of sweat, but yeah, you came in and fired up the shake. So I'm really glad to have microscopically

00:12:07.380 contributed to that recovery that day. Yeah. It was all about that shake. So where'd you grow up?

00:12:12.880 Grew up in Iowa. And were you like a cross country star in high school or something? No, no. I was,

00:12:17.600 um, actually a football player, a wrestler in Iowa. I started riding my bike at four and was out the

00:12:26.740 door independently by six. And then, you know, doing 50 and a hundred mile rides by the time I was 10 or

00:12:33.160 12 did a red bright ride, which is a bike ride across Iowa. First one was an 87 when I was 12.

00:12:39.900 I was 400 miles across the state. So, I mean, I, I always liked the endurance stuff, but most of my time

00:12:44.800 was spent. My dream was to play Notre Dame football. Your dad went to Notre Dame, right?

00:12:49.360 My dad went to Notre Dame. My grandfather did. My mom went to St. Mary's, which is the sister college

00:12:54.020 there. So my dream was to, you know, Notre Dame football. So that was big too. You know,

00:12:59.140 weighed about 200 pounds in high school and, uh, wrestled heavyweight because I didn't want to lose

00:13:04.220 weight. You know, it's offensive lineman, offensive tackle in high school. And then went and played

00:13:09.820 football in college inside linebacker in college. And I remember the first time you told me that I

00:13:15.080 was like, how were you a football player? Like you just, you don't have an ounce of extra weight

00:13:19.740 on you at this point. And so what was that metamorphosis like to transition from being

00:13:24.740 kind of a, a power athlete to an ultra endurance athlete? It wasn't planned. You know, it was college

00:13:31.200 became about college and I played a year and a half of football and I wanted to finish college

00:13:35.960 early. I just didn't want to go the whole four years. So I just loaded up on classes and realized

00:13:41.000 I was there to study and work and not necessarily play football. So I quit football, played rugby,

00:13:46.720 and my first job out of college was actually a startup in Europe. And the interesting by-product

00:13:54.320 of that whole transition was, um, I was learning German. I was living in Heidelberg, Germany, and I was

00:14:00.020 running sales and marketing for this tiny little startup there. And the family teaching me German

00:14:05.560 one of the daughters was dating a rugby player that played for the local semi-pro rugby club.

00:14:11.820 And when he found out I had played rugby, he said, come practice with us. And their practices at the

00:14:18.120 time were runs in the mountains in Bavaria in Southern Germany. So I just fell in love with the

00:14:25.080 trail running. So it, you know, just, and I ended up playing rugby with that team, which was fantastic.

00:14:31.540 It was a blast, but I also ended up losing weight and that's just sort of fed on itself. So by the

00:14:37.220 time I got back to New York, you know, I'd lost 15 pounds and just kept training, kept running.

00:14:42.920 It didn't lift as much and it just fell off. I mean, I was at my peak 218. I'm 170 now when I was

00:14:50.640 racing, I was 155, 160. So I lost probably 60 ish pounds over the course of five, 10 years.

00:14:59.000 But the amazing thing, cause I've seen so many pictures of you back, like the picture,

00:15:02.400 there's a great picture of you that hopefully we'll figure out a way to sort of link to it in

00:15:06.020 the show notes. But at the beginning of the 2000, I think 2004 Ram maybe. And it's like,

00:15:11.400 I'm looking at you and I'm like, I know you're 155 pounds, but you don't look it. You look like a

00:15:15.560 beast. Yeah. It was never about looks. No, but it's just, you're, you know, you become purpose

00:15:21.480 built. We've talked about this, you know, being an engineer, I've always just looked at my body's

00:15:27.220 just a utility to achieve an outcome, right? So how do you engineer the outcome that you want?

00:15:32.540 I made a transition from running to cycling. In hindsight, it was a fairly short transition.

00:15:38.700 I was riding a lot cross training when I was competing in ultras running 2001, two, three,

00:15:44.600 but I knew I wanted to do race across America. And so I was always, I mean, I was still riding 150

00:15:50.740 miles a week when I was running a hundred miles a week. So I was still riding quite a bit. But then

00:15:55.500 as soon as I stopped running and started riding, my body just changed. My massage therapist,

00:16:01.180 who's still my massage therapist today, couldn't believe the transformation is your body just

00:16:05.520 changed overnight. But that's all I was doing. All I was doing was training.

00:16:10.100 You have that sort of unique ability where you can go out and run a sub three hour marathon,

00:16:14.220 which that's a very fast marathon. But at the same time, you're setting 24 hour world records on a

00:16:20.000 track and running. I mean, you, you ran almost 150 miles in 24 hours, right?

00:16:24.860 Yeah. Yeah. I didn't set any world records on the track running. I did set some course records

00:16:29.820 on a track 24 hour run and a one, which was the San Diego one day. And I swore I would never run on a

00:16:36.780 track again. It was the, probably the hardest ultra single day ultra I ever did. Cause it's just so

00:16:42.880 monotonous. You're on a quarter mile track, quarter mile track, clear market college. And

00:16:47.800 you know, South San Diego running 24 hours, just going, you know, you looked forward to every four

00:16:54.160 hours or every six hours, they'd change direction. They blow whistle and you'd cross the chip tracking

00:17:00.520 was, and then you'd change direction and you'd run the other direction for four hours. That's what

00:17:04.360 you look forward to. And at the time, this is a one. I mean, I was running with the handheld Sony

00:17:10.000 Walkman and I had tapes. Oh my God. Yeah. Cause back then the CDs were still skipping a little

00:17:17.200 too much. CDs didn't work. And shortly after that, you know, MP3s, he started playing with mini discs

00:17:22.660 and other things, but so that in hindsight, you know, I'm running with a water bottle on one hand

00:17:27.740 and a Sony Walkman in the other hand, carrying it for 24 hours. And did you have like a big support

00:17:36.320 staffed for something like that? I did not have anyone there at that event. In fact,

00:17:41.280 I had a cooler that I brought, you know, I backed my truck up to the, you know, back of the track

00:17:47.280 and threw a cooler in the back and left the hatch open. And I just crewed myself for that. I didn't

00:17:53.640 want to bother anyone. I mean, you couldn't ask anyone to stay out there. This was sort of your

00:17:57.380 opening, uh, like this, this was the event that kind of put you on the map of like, cause again,

00:18:03.000 you didn't, a lot of these ultra distance guys had been sort of doing that stuff for longer,

00:18:06.660 but you just sort of showed up and wasn't that like your first big win that run was actually at

00:18:11.460 the end of what had been my first sort of big year. So I, in 2000, I ran my first 50,

00:18:18.520 you know, Trent made the transition from marathons. And you know, the question was just,

00:18:22.500 can I do a 50? And I did the, it was, we call it PCT 50, the Pacific crest trail, 50 miler,

00:18:28.160 um, hot August. And I then did a hundred miler called the Angeles crest 100 starts in Wrightwood

00:18:36.300 ends at the Rose bowl in Pasadena about six weeks after that. And I was doing the hundred because my

00:18:42.180 goal was to qualify for what was, and still is the super bowl of ultras, the Western States 100.

00:18:48.800 I didn't get into the Western States. This was in 2000, but I submitted for the bad water. So that

00:18:54.880 was my goal. So in 2000 applied to get into bad water. I did for 2001, the July, 2001 running to

00:19:02.320 the bad water. And so 2001 was, I stacked a bunch of races. I did a bunch of 50 milers. I actually did

00:19:08.240 the Boston marathon, you know, in there between two fifties. And so the track run was actually at

00:19:14.040 the end of that season. So I did a few fifties, I did the bad water. And then I actually on September

00:19:19.980 11th of 2001, I was scheduled to fly to Colorado to try to beg a bunch of 14ers set a record of

00:19:27.520 14ers and had to postpone that a week and did it a week or two after that. And that was in September

00:19:34.680 of 01. And then I did the track run in November of 01. And that was the end of my year.

00:19:38.820 So tell people what bad water is because that out here means a lot because anyone in Southern

00:19:43.460 California knows what that is, but yeah. So bad water is a running race that is starts in Death

00:19:50.940 Valley, California. So it's nice and cool, nice and cool. So, you know, it's a cool one 25 at the

00:19:57.240 peak around four o'clock, you know, it's so hot. If you run the white line, it's, you know, 10 degrees

00:20:02.580 cooler. The surface gets really hot. So the air temperature is one 25, the surface to me, you can

00:20:07.480 fry an egg. People can fry an egg on a hood of a car. So I did the bad water. And how long is it?

00:20:14.480 It's 135 miles and you start in Death Valley at a hundred or so feet below sea level. I don't

00:20:20.980 remember exactly. And it now finishes in Whitney portals, which is 8,500 feet. So it's a beautiful

00:20:28.380 thing. You go through all these ecosystems, you start in a desert, you journey over to 395, you roll into

00:20:35.160 Lone Pine, which is sort of a cool little mountain town in California, the base of the Sierras. And

00:20:40.660 then you start get on this portals road, Whitney portals road, which is about a half marathon, pure,

00:20:46.420 you know, all climbing. So you have 13 or so miles of climbing up to the Whitney's portal. It used to

00:20:53.180 actually go all the way up to the top of Whitney for safety reasons. They stopped doing that. And

00:20:57.760 funny side note is I had, I was doing a lot of climbing, a lot of mountaineering stuff in 2001. So

00:21:04.340 my crew, I did have a crew for bad water. You have to have one. So I had two crews. I actually had a

00:21:10.360 running crew and a climbing crew. And my climbing partner was waiting for me at the portals. I don't

00:21:15.640 think I've ever talked about this with you. So I did the race, you know, 10 AM start. I finished,

00:21:22.020 I forget my time, but I finished the next day around noon or one. And my climbing partner was there,

00:21:28.540 we were going to go climb. So we're going to, you know, hike up to the base of Mount Whitney. And we

00:21:33.820 were going to climb, I think the East face of Mount Whitney. And he had all the climbing gear ready

00:21:39.180 to go. And I finished, you know, 135 miles. And I said, Hey buddy, you don't want me on the other

00:21:44.040 side of playing you. You don't want me on the other side of the road. And so we ended up going down to

00:21:49.280 Lone Pine and having pizza. Yeah. Bailed, bailed on the climb. I have a much smaller story than that,

00:21:56.400 meaning like it's a fraction of that. But, uh, in 2007, I was, I wanted to swim across Lake Tahoe

00:22:02.520 as a training swim for a longer swim. I was doing later that summer and trans Tahoe. I mean, you can

00:22:08.520 do it 10 different ways to Sunday, but I wanted to do the longest possible crossing, but I didn't do a

00:22:13.720 good job picking a boat captain. I left it till the last minute. I didn't know how to get someone

00:22:18.160 really good. So I just kind of went to, you know, some local and said, Hey man, can you pilot me across

00:22:22.440 this thing? And it turned out he was clearly drunk. And we only know this because I left

00:22:28.020 accidentally. I left my GPS device on in the boat the whole time we were on the boat, but he didn't

00:22:33.900 realize that the purpose of the guy in the boat is to set the direction. The swimmer sets the speed,

00:22:39.560 the boat sets the direction. He followed me. So we asked our way across Lake Tahoe. And I mean,

00:22:46.360 it was a total shit show. I ended up like running out of food. Cause of course I only budgeted this to be

00:22:51.120 so many hours and it ended up being like two and a half hours longer. It turned out to be probably

00:22:56.040 the hardest one of my life mentally. But I remember that day I was like, Oh, you know, we start at

00:23:01.900 night. So I'm like, I'll be done by 2 PM. I told my brother, I was like, dude, have the bikes down at

00:23:07.320 Lake Tahoe. As soon as I get off, we're going to ride around the lake, you know, which is like a

00:23:11.880 80 mile ride or something. And I swear when I finished that swim, I was, I could barely walk to the car,

00:23:20.040 just, you know, the sun beating down on you, like the mental fatigue. I was like, yeah,

00:23:24.740 I don't know how I thought that I was going to ride around this lake at this point.

00:23:28.400 That's a great, I mean, the, the training, the training for these things is what prepares you

00:23:34.180 and not just the miles, not just the time on your feet, but it's stuff like that, that mentally

00:23:39.140 is demoralizing, right? It completely humbles you. And I think if I look back on the stories,

00:23:44.960 you know, very few stories come from races. A lot of my stories come from the training and

00:23:50.740 we all have great story. I mean, I I've gotten stuck in the desert, sandstorms, learned to

00:23:55.800 bring goggles with me to ride my bike and goggles to deal with sandstorms. I had my beam. I used

00:24:01.960 to ride a soft ride and my beam delaminated. It was so hot in the desert. So the carbons sat

00:24:08.020 in this, this carbon beam sat in an aluminum sleeve and it was so hot, it delaminated. So essentially

00:24:14.060 what happened is, is the, my seat lowered about six inches. And so I was, you know, on my way

00:24:19.800 out east to the Salton Sea and I think somewhere around Westmoreland and Brawley, I found a machine

00:24:25.380 shop and I went to the guys and none of them spoke English. And I said, do you guys, do you

00:24:31.600 have any screws, some cheap metal screws? And so they had a bunch of power tools and they,

00:24:37.740 three of us, they pulled up on the seat, got it to a relatively close spot where I needed

00:24:43.180 to be. And we started drilling sheet metal screws through the aluminum and carbon. Cause

00:24:47.400 I was, you know, 200 miles from San Diego, 150 miles from San Diego. And it just wouldn't

00:24:51.900 occur to you to call a friend and come pick you up.

00:24:53.980 Well, no, I mean, yeah, you're, you're on your own. That's part of the journey. And this

00:24:58.820 is this, I had a flip phone that I turned off cause he had no reception out there. So

00:25:02.700 I don't think I probably even could have called a friend at the time. You know, the stories

00:25:07.200 are endless on, you know, stuff like that. Another, you know, Whitney story, we tried to rock

00:25:12.380 climb Whitney in May and it was still all snow and ice and what should have been a six or

00:25:16.740 eight hour climb turned into a 22 hour climb, no food, no water and brutal. Same deal. We

00:25:22.140 had planned to meet some people afterward. And, but those, you know, those are the most memorable

00:25:26.760 stories. It provided you get out alive. Provided you get out alive. Yeah. That's the caveat.

00:25:34.020 So you very, very briefly a moment ago alluded to Ram, which again, anybody in the cycling world,

00:25:39.960 especially in the ultra world will understand what Ram is. It would generally be regarded

00:25:44.140 as the single most challenging cycling event. Again, I don't even know how you compare it to

00:25:50.960 the tour de France, obviously the tour de France or one of the grand tours like the Giro or the

00:25:54.320 Vuelta. Those are remarkable feats that only the best professionals in the world are going to do.

00:25:59.120 Whereas Ram, you know, it's an amateur event, although some pros have done it, but I don't even

00:26:03.760 remember when I learned about Ram. Like it was always something I knew about and couldn't

00:26:07.860 fathom that people could do it. So you obviously decided to do it, but tell us what Ram actually

00:26:13.640 is. Ram is the race across America. It's a bike race across America. It started in the, I think

00:26:19.620 it's the early eighties. And my first exposure to Ram was actually when I was a kid, there was a guy

00:26:26.120 named Bob Breedlove who was a surgeon in Des Moines, Iowa, who was doing this crazy race across America.

00:26:33.560 So I learned about Ram and I was already riding my bike and it's just, holy cow, these guys can go

00:26:39.180 3000 miles across the country nonstop. You know, so it's the same length as the tour de France, but it's

00:26:45.380 not in stages unless you decide to make it in stages. You just go nonstop. So, you know, the whistle blows

00:26:51.500 and first person to the East coast wins.

00:26:54.840 And to put that in perspective, the tour de France, which is ridiculously grueling, is about 22 days.

00:27:01.280 It's about 22 days.

00:27:02.700 Yeah. And the winner is going to do Ram in how many days?

00:27:06.060 Eight. And, you know, depending on the route in the year, it's over a hundred thousand feet of

00:27:10.440 climbing and you're going through the desert of California and the hills of West Virginia, of

00:27:15.160 course, you're the Rockies and, you know, Kansas and, and the flats that are windy. And the year I

00:27:22.460 did it, we went, it was very windy, crazy rains. You see, you know, the thing about Ram is it's not

00:27:27.760 just the person riding the bike, it's the logistics, it's the crew, you're dealing with rules, crazy

00:27:33.920 race rules. And so it's a really multifaceted, I mean, you have to really engineer the race to do

00:27:40.740 well, right? So of course you have to prepare for it, but you know, your bike equipment and you have

00:27:45.420 the vehicle equipment, you have race food, racer food, you have crew food. And then you think about

00:27:50.820 everything from batteries to, we were rigging the car to get power, extra power. We had speakers on

00:27:56.360 the vans and I mean, it's just crazy logistics getting ready for something like that, which is

00:28:02.000 part of the fun. I mean, it's part of it's, you know, all the different variables you have to

00:28:05.240 control for. I've seen world-class racers bail before they even hit Arizona because they just,

00:28:10.180 their crew blows up. My crew in 2004, when I did it, only one was a cyclist. You know, it's kind of

00:28:16.560 like building a company, you know, problem solving comes best from people that represent different

00:28:22.260 functional areas, right? So I had massage therapists, I had a doc, I had one cyclist,

00:28:28.800 I had a software engineer, my sister, you know, I had a really mixed team. None of them, except for

00:28:34.260 one, knew how to change a tire on a bike. And I figured we could teach them that. And the crew

00:28:39.720 dynamics is the biggest part of pulling that thing off. It's all about the crew.

00:28:43.860 You know, when you're talking about eight, nine days, that's unbelievable. I always felt the

00:28:48.440 highest compliment that I ever felt or the greatest sense of pride I probably ever felt during my

00:28:53.120 marathon swimming days was when I got asked to crew chief for one of my fellow swimmers. So

00:28:57.160 when I was doing the swims, you'll have to have a crew chief. And that person basically is the one

00:29:02.260 that is designated in charge. There is one and only one boss on that ship and everybody does what

00:29:07.540 they say, no matter what the fuck is going on. That's right. So you have to trust that person with

00:29:11.160 your life. They're the ones that make the decision on when you have to change feeding.

00:29:14.760 If things are going wrong, they're the ones who pull you out of the water. If they think you're

00:29:18.860 failing, that's like the guy in the corner who can throw the white towel. And when you're getting

00:29:22.060 the crap beat out of you. So, cause you know, as athletes, when they're doing these ultra distance

00:29:25.900 things, like they can become delirious and then you have to think about their safety. So, you know,

00:29:31.100 a number of occasions I got to crew chief for friends of mine who were doing some of the most

00:29:35.380 ridiculous swims I've ever seen. Like Forrest Nelson is a friend of mine who, again, outside of the

00:29:40.960 swimming community, nobody would know him, but he's, the guy's ridiculous. I mean, he's soloed

00:29:45.360 around Catalina Island. That's a 50 mile swim. He's done a double crossing of Catalina in the winter,

00:29:51.440 which is, I mean, just from another planet. And yeah, you realize like, you know, the responsibility

00:29:57.640 that's on you when you are responsible for making sure the other 10 people on the boat aren't screwing

00:30:02.880 up their jobs and you are a hundred percent responsible for everything that swimmer is

00:30:07.340 doing, counting their stroke, right? All those things. And, and again, the longest I've ever

00:30:11.060 had to crew is, you know, be a chief is maybe 36 to 48 hours. I can't even imagine what a crew is

00:30:16.720 going through for nine days, eight days. It's nine days. It's nine days of the most intense. And,

00:30:22.700 you know, these are first world problems, right? This is an invented challenge that we should keep

00:30:28.600 that in perspective. So, but when you're in the moment, when you're in the race and there's other

00:30:33.920 crew out there and there's other racers out there, and especially as you get more and more sleep

00:30:38.240 deprived and vested in the outcome, it's as real as it gets. So that's exactly right. In fact, my crew

00:30:45.520 chief, the first year was the only cyclist he had brought his brother. I think his brother was a math

00:30:51.060 professor at MIT or Columbia. And they ended up getting into a fist fight in the parking lot of a

00:30:57.140 grocery store in the Midwest. And I heard screaming out, I was down for a sleep. I heard screaming

00:31:02.360 outside the RV, what's going on? Byron and Jerry are in a fight. What? And it's come to blows. And

00:31:10.600 they didn't speak for the rest of the, I mean, that was the, I mean, that, this is, these are brothers.

00:31:15.420 So that was one of many things that happened that year, but I broke my crew in the first 45 hours. I

00:31:23.440 didn't, I didn't get off the bike for 28 hours. I didn't sleep for 45 ish hours. And when I was

00:31:29.880 supposed to go down from my first plan sleep, the goal was to sleep two hours a day after the first

00:31:34.440 night. So I'd ride through the first night and then sleep into the second. But it's a funny story.

00:31:40.660 I came off the bike 44 hours, but just outside of Mexican hat, Utah in second place, tell folks where

00:31:48.020 the race starts. The race started in 04. The race started in downtown San Diego. So star of India

00:31:54.460 start in San Diego and you start heading East, you know, go through Arizona. It's not just that

00:31:58.820 you're crossing the country, you're diagonally crossing the country. You're going from the

00:32:02.460 bottom left corner of the United States to the top right corner, right? That's right.

00:32:06.780 It finished that year in Atlantic city. And so we, you know, I don't remember how many miles,

00:32:13.060 but you know, call it 800 miles into the event. I went down from my first sleep and I'm naked

00:32:20.040 getting massaged and my massage therapist is just trying to put me to sleep. And just as I'm falling

00:32:25.020 asleep, I feel this rocking and the whole RV is rocking. And I, for whatever reason, something

00:32:32.020 fires and like, wait, that's the wind. And so I jump up completely naked, run outside the RV and I'm

00:32:37.740 standing out on the highway. I'm like, which way is the wind blowing? Which way am I going? I didn't even

00:32:41.700 know which direction I was going. And the crew had just slept, you know, just everyone's asleep.

00:32:48.740 And I was probably a half hour after I had gone down. I hadn't slept yet. And they realized I

00:32:53.660 wanted, if that's a tailwind, put me back on the bike. And it was, and it was, and so they put me

00:32:58.760 back on the bike. So they got me all dressed and getting me dressed. You know, it was a process

00:33:02.780 because at that point I was sunburned and pretty beat and sore and shaved. They got me dressed,

00:33:07.660 got me back on the bike. And I started riding and I saw the guy in first place. I passed the guy in

00:33:12.480 first place who was just coming out of his first lead, slept for an hour. So it was about 45.

00:33:17.840 Robic, yeah. So Yuri Robic was, had just slept. I passed him and I was then in the lead,

00:33:24.800 wasn't by design. But then what happened is he and I then rode for four or five hours and pushed

00:33:31.060 into Utah. You guys gapped the field.

00:33:33.500 We gapped the field. And what happened is that wind was a storm. And so if I had stayed,

00:33:39.680 I would have gotten caught in the storm. And so what happened is we gapped the storm. There was one

00:33:43.340 guy behind me named Wolfgang Faschen. It was a world-class endurance athlete and, you know,

00:33:47.820 Seven Summits guy, Austrian guy, greatest guy. He was behind me, but a few hours behind me had blown up

00:33:54.360 in the desert. Just a lot of the European guys struggle with the heat because they just can't train in

00:33:57.820 the heat over there. So Yuri Robic and I ended up pushing 10, 12 hours ahead of everybody else and

00:34:05.140 everybody else got caught up in the storm. So it ended up being a really very good strategic move

00:34:09.200 to get back on the bike. I ended up sleeping around the 48, 50 hour mark. I did get my, you know,

00:34:15.040 hour and a half. And at that point we were ahead of everybody else and everybody else was just playing

00:34:19.940 catch up for the next six days.

00:34:21.760 It's unbelievable. I mean, we'll come back to talking about Robic, who would go on to become

00:34:25.680 probably the most storied rider in Ram history, correct?

00:34:28.640 Yeah, he is.

00:34:29.720 Five-time champion?

00:34:30.940 Yeah, I think four or five time.

00:34:32.640 Yeah. There's a book that talks about Ram and I've read it and I'm blanking on the title now.

00:34:36.900 We'll definitely link to it in the show notes. Do you remember the book I'm talking about?

00:34:39.540 I don't.

00:34:40.060 Well, you're in it, but barely because I remember talking about it with you a few years ago and I

00:34:44.000 was like, Mike, this is the year you were second in Ram. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I didn't want to

00:34:48.220 talk to the reporter. But anyway, we'll figure out what the name of the book. It's a great book

00:34:54.480 because if anybody's listening to this and thinks, what the hell? I want to understand a little bit

00:34:59.680 more about this. You go into it. And the book, because I mean, Robic must've been able to speak

00:35:03.820 with the author. You just get a great picture of this crazy dude. He's Serbian, right?

00:35:09.060 He's Slovenian.

00:35:10.040 Slovenian, okay.

00:35:10.580 Yeah. So he was riding for the Slovenian army. He was a soldier and his full-time job was to be an

00:35:16.500 endurance athlete. And he was just a beast. Strong, you know, just in his mental patience

00:35:23.740 was just phenomenal.

00:35:25.660 Although that year, if I recall, I mean, first of all, you're a rookie. So a rookie is not supposed

00:35:30.340 to be-

00:35:30.580 I was not supposed to be-

00:35:31.560 You were not supposed to be riding next to Robeck.

00:35:33.100 Challenging him.

00:35:33.940 Yeah.

00:35:34.260 In fact, that year was, the race directors couldn't figure me. I was a runner. Who is this

00:35:38.840 guy? And I just didn't know any, I was young. You know, I didn't know any better. I just

00:35:42.760 hammered. And just, I, all along, it was part of my plan. I was actually off my pace that

00:35:48.040 my, you know, I'm all about looking at my expected pace over 55 time stations and altitude

00:35:53.680 gain and loss and, you know, planning it all out. I was off my projected pace. So, you know,

00:35:59.720 I was a little bit disappointed with where I was, but that's eight days of 3,000 miles.

00:36:04.640 So, you know, things get out of whack pretty quickly. So, you know, it's all about just being

00:36:08.360 a, it's adaptation, right? In real time.

00:36:10.260 Now, was this the year or was it the following year when Robeck's team basically accused you

00:36:14.400 guys of cheating?

00:36:15.140 That was that year. So that year, Robeck thought he was going to win it. He had been preparing.

00:36:19.460 He should have won by a day.

00:36:21.500 Yeah. He expected to. And so his crew, all, you know, armed forces guys, about halfway through

00:36:27.140 the country when I was still in it and they, for whatever reason, they just, I just wasn't

00:36:31.180 sleeping. For that year, I just didn't, I could not sleep. I, you know, I, over the eight

00:36:36.980 and a half days slept 10 and a half hours.

00:36:39.940 Oh my God.

00:36:41.260 I just couldn't sleep. And, you know, we can talk later about the mental effects of not

00:36:47.020 sleep. I mean, sleep I've found is, is more important than food and hydration when it comes

00:36:52.000 to thermoregulation and muscle glycogen restoration and synapse repair and formation. I mean, literally

00:36:58.360 went, I was clinically insane by the end of that race, fully delusional by the end of that

00:37:03.380 race, but I just kept hammering. And so the Robeck team, what, who is this guy? What

00:37:09.060 is he doing? He has to be cheating and it's legal to spot people. So they sent a van back

00:37:14.020 and they just attached them to my team. And apparently this is sort of race tactics. The

00:37:18.680 Ram is famous for other racers playing mental games and the race directors kind of encouraged

00:37:25.120 it. And that was all new to me. I mean, I'm kind of a pure clean, just go and hammer and

00:37:30.860 let the best man win. And they love that those antics, right?

00:37:34.580 The mental games.

00:37:35.440 The mental games. And so the accusations of cheating were chalked up as all, they're just

00:37:40.300 mental games, but it did become more than that for me because the race director, you

00:37:44.340 know, first of all, I had the press, which is why I wouldn't talk to the press after that.

00:37:47.680 I had the press asking me, what do you think about the accusations? My team hadn't told me

00:37:51.680 yet. And Robeck's crew just accused me of cheating. So the officials would scrutinize

00:37:56.580 me and their intent was eventually they withdrew their accusations and, you know, it was all

00:38:02.080 fine. The damage had been done. I had one really, really bad night. I think it was in

00:38:05.800 Kansas or a little bit past that. And it came after I, Robeck told me flat out, you're going

00:38:11.360 to win. And he said, you just don't need to sleep. You're going to win. And I said, we've

00:38:16.060 got a thousand miles to go.

00:38:18.200 Wait, so you and Robeck would actually be riding together at some point? Is that even

00:38:21.720 legal? You're allowed to ride together for 20 minutes every 24 hour period. And so we

00:38:28.680 rode together. I mean, we taught, his wife was pregnant at the time and in 04 when we

00:38:33.040 were riding, you know, he's, we were talking about his, I think he knew it was going to

00:38:36.080 be a boy. So, you know, he's talking about his, his soon to be born kid. And, you know,

00:38:40.900 he asked me where I was from. And, and so we talked a little bit, you know, his English

00:38:45.220 was okay and actually had a great time. And then I told him to go ahead and he said, no,

00:38:49.720 you go ahead. And so I ended up riding ahead and got ahead of him a bit. And he was hurting

00:38:55.140 at that point. Cause I think he was just like, what? And I was, I did my best to look fresh

00:38:59.680 and was smiling and joking and, you know, acting like, ah, this is just a little stroll, you

00:39:04.200 know, in the park. So mental games. But shortly after that, his team accused me of cheating

00:39:10.120 and, you know, it all played out over a day or so. What's interesting is one of the race

00:39:14.940 officials. I almost, I don't think we've ever talked about this, but I quit, I quit

00:39:20.320 the Ram. I think we were in Indiana. We were outside of Indianapolis and it all came to a

00:39:24.900 head and the race official, uh, his name is Johnny Boswell. And Johnny came up to me and

00:39:30.540 he said, we're so sorry about everything that's happened. I heard you, you're withdrawn from

00:39:35.760 the race. Is there anything we can do to keep you in the race? And I said, this isn't why

00:39:40.620 I came out here. I, you know, this is crazy. And, and mind you, I've, you know, 2000 miles

00:39:45.540 into it. Yeah. With no sleep, you're not even able to think. I just got off the bike.

00:39:49.680 Robic at that point was four or five hours ahead of me. It was completely demoralized,

00:39:53.740 right? And my team's having to answer questions about why they pulled me off the road to sleep

00:39:57.580 in the RV, just crazy stuff, right? All within race rules. And so I told Johnny, I said, the only

00:40:04.060 way I'm going to stay in this is if no one speaks to me for the rest of the event. I don't want,

00:40:11.000 cause there were crew or press vans cruising up alongside me, trying to take pictures, trying

00:40:15.560 to interview me. And I said, I want everyone to leave me alone. The only way I stay in this.

00:40:20.900 And at that point I'd felt like, you know, the race is lost. I'm not going to win this race.

00:40:25.580 Robic's too far ahead.

00:40:27.180 So four or five hours with how many miles to go is insurmountable?

00:40:30.500 Eight, around 800. I think it was around 800 miles.

00:40:33.360 I'd have to go back and look and believe it or not, I went for a run. I went, I...

00:40:40.000 I would say I don't believe it, but I, you went for a run before we rode our bikes today.

00:40:44.320 I did.

00:40:45.120 You just decided at five 30 in the morning, you needed to go for a run just to, you know,

00:40:48.620 get a little workout in before we got on our bikes.

00:40:51.180 So I asked myself, what's the one thing that'll center me? And for me, running has always been my,

00:40:57.600 call it meditation, but it's just, I get centered, right? So I asked my crew,

00:41:03.240 I said, find my running shoes. And I, you know, what? And I went for a run and I found a park

00:41:07.980 bench and a little town in the Midwest. And I ran, I mean, a mile or two and I just sat under a park

00:41:14.540 bench and I checked myself and it was, you know, you could say I was sleepy, but I was of probably

00:41:20.960 the clearest mental. I knew exactly why I was there and what I was doing. And I asked myself,

00:41:26.820 do I, do I want to do this to my crew? They were demoralized. I was hurting and I ran back and I

00:41:32.560 said, all right, I will do it under these conditions. I will get back in the race and

00:41:35.640 do it under these conditions. And I did. And the official stayed with me and kind of protected us

00:41:40.220 the rest of the race. And it was fantastic. They gave us space, but they just kept an eye on us,

00:41:44.980 the rest of the race. And I've, you know, since we, I still exchanged Christmas cards with Johnny

00:41:49.880 Boswell and we'll always think of him as a friend. Cause he, he saw what we were trying to do.

00:41:55.120 And I think a lot of people like, what's this guy doing? And what's, what's his angle?

00:41:58.580 So what was the strategy that normally people took to Ram as far as how much time on the bike

00:42:04.240 versus how much sleep time? What would, what would be considered the sort of best practice?

00:42:07.860 20 to 22 hours on the bike, two to four hours of sleep. You know, so you want to sleep if you're,

00:42:14.080 you know, at a minimum 18 to 20 hours over the course of a week.

00:42:18.380 So did anybody ever experiment with, I'm going to ride 18 hours and sleep a full six?

00:42:23.260 A lot of guys have talked about time trial on it, right? So you, yeah, you ride 300,

00:42:27.320 you hammer and you go off, you know, so you ride for call it 18 hours and then you get off the bike

00:42:31.860 and you sleep six. And I think there's something to be said for that. I mean, that's the ultimate,

00:42:37.780 you know, if you can do that and sustain it and still put the same performance in on your six or

00:42:43.200 seventh 300 miler, then that may be there, you know, it's just math. If, you know, cumulative time

00:42:49.860 elapsed is less than just hammering the whole time. It's tough though. I'll tell you, it's tough

00:42:55.100 to get off the bike. It takes a lot of patience, especially early in the race when the other guys

00:43:00.060 are, you're going to see like, Jesus, I'm going to sleep for six hours when some dude's sleeping

00:43:03.760 for two, like I'm going to wake up, you know, given the difference in speed, three hours behind

00:43:08.460 a guy. That's right. And there's a guy here in San Diego that his name is P Penn Sears and he held

00:43:14.200 the transcontinental speed record for a long time. You know, it's 15.4 miles an hour for eight and a

00:43:19.680 half days. That includes off the time off. Yeah. Yeah. That's ridiculous. So his on bike speed is

00:43:24.680 20 miles an hour. He's flying and he didn't stop much, but he said there's really two and I,

00:43:30.400 and eventually experienced this. There's two things that will determine whether or not you can win

00:43:34.980 Ram. One is what is your Ram speed and really what is your speed? What speed can you maintain on the

00:43:41.300 bike after you've depleted your muscle glycogen and you're just cruising? Cause it's, that's your,

00:43:47.000 that's ultimately going to determine how fast you can really go. We used to call that your all day

00:43:51.860 speed in the water. This is, we're well beyond thresholds. We're, we're just talking about

00:43:56.780 something totally different. That's right. That's right. You're no longer trying to stay 5% of

00:44:01.840 thresholds. You're, you're just, you're done, right? That's, that's one. And the other is what's your

00:44:07.580 Ram cycle. And he taught me this and his wife used to do it for him is she would watch him sleep

00:44:13.680 and then watch when he would come out of Ram and she would chart it. And they would do this before

00:44:18.140 the Ram cause obviously it changes over time. And so right up before the Ram, his wife would watch

00:44:23.560 him sleep, time it, and then she would wake him up. And the whole point being, don't wake yourself up

00:44:29.980 in the middle of Ram cause you're going to be sleepy and not be able to perform.

00:44:33.320 So she'd look at his eyes until, cause theoretically you go from Ram, you, you, if it's late enough,

00:44:39.080 you might go out to stage one, two, which is a perfect time to wake somebody up.

00:44:42.240 That's right.

00:44:42.600 So she would wait till his eyes stopped moving.

00:44:44.440 She would wait till his eyes stopped moving, bring him out. He would feel rested even though

00:44:48.260 it was two hours. And he said, look, if your Ram is 90 minutes instead of two 20, you know,

00:44:53.240 two and a half hours, you're going to win.

00:44:55.260 Yeah.

00:44:56.000 Wow. That is freaking incredible.

00:44:58.200 Yeah.

00:44:58.500 Sleep engineering.

00:44:59.560 Engineering the sleep. And then he, you know, we've talked a lot about, you know,

00:45:03.180 staying liquid cause it's, you know, you don't want to move blood to your gut while you're

00:45:07.100 riding. Cause then obviously you're taking blood away from your legs. So stay liquid,

00:45:12.260 try to let your body do as little work digesting, but you want nutrient dense calories, right?

00:45:17.820 And nutrition, nutrition and hydration should be one of the same to the extent that you can

00:45:22.080 tolerate that. So yeah, you, you're engineering your sleep. You're engineering your, your intake.

00:45:27.700 Of course you're engineering your training and race strategy. And then people engineer the

00:45:32.080 shit out of their bikes too. I mean, people are doing all kinds of crazy things to get

00:45:35.480 their bikes dialed.

00:45:36.500 Now you got to know Panceras pretty well and you got to ride with him. You told me a story

00:45:40.440 about him once and I couldn't believe it. Like how old was he and how fit he still was?

00:45:45.120 Yeah. In 04, I was introduced to him in 04 and went out and rode with a group of guys that

00:45:51.620 still ride. And he invited me to ride with them. So I rode up there in North County, San Diego,

00:45:58.020 and I rode up, did 60 or 70 miles to meet them. And we rode and we were, rode up a hill that was a

00:46:06.560 26% grade, probably a hundred or so miles into our ride. I was about 140 or so for me. And we rode

00:46:15.140 up the hill. We were leading this crew and I looked over to him at the end of the hill, 26% grade in

00:46:22.700 North County. I think it was up near Fallbrook or Vista, where he was former nuclear engineer at

00:46:28.420 San Onofre. And he said, what's your heart rate right now? And I said, I think it's like 188.

00:46:36.060 And I said, well, what's yours? And he said, it's 181. So he's 60. I don't know how old he was. He was

00:46:42.940 mid sixties then. And his heart rate was like 180. And I said, what's the highest your heart rate has

00:46:49.240 ever gotten? And he said, I just hit the highest heart rate I've ever seen. So here he is in his

00:46:54.360 mid sixties. And I, and I asked him, I said, well, he said, I've never gone up this hill this fast.

00:46:59.900 And I've never seen that heart rate. So here's someone in their mid sixties. And if you do the

00:47:03.880 math, right, 220 less your age, and that's your max heart rate. That's, that's, so, you know,

00:47:09.400 he should have been around, let's call it 160, maybe max heart rate for highly trained, adapted,

00:47:16.520 did some of my professional athlete, world-class athlete, transcontinental speed record holder at

00:47:21.600 the time. And here he is hitting one 80 and he just did. I'm still reeling in the 26%. I mean,

00:47:28.800 admittedly, I've never been able to climb particularly well on a bike, but I don't

00:47:32.580 actually think I could pedal a bike up 26% grade unless I had like a mountain bike or something.

00:47:38.160 Like if I took my road bike now, which probably, I can't even remember if I have a compact crank,

00:47:43.240 I probably do. So I'm riding like a 34, 23. I don't think I could get up 26. Like that hill,

00:47:48.820 when we're coming around like Hodges as we're, you know, when you come to the light before you get

00:47:52.180 to Del Dios, that's maybe 18%. Maybe. And it's a, and it's only like a couple hundred of a mile.

00:47:59.760 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's nothing. It's nothing. Yeah. In fact, he told me most guys will,

00:48:05.960 what they call paper boy. So they weave back and forth to get up that. So they'll paper boy. And then

00:48:11.580 the rule used to be, they would go, there's an avocado grove, it gets to the top of the hill.

00:48:16.180 And when they were kids or younger, they would go grab avocados and they would start just,

00:48:20.100 it's all you have to do is lay it on the road and the avocados would roll down and start,

00:48:24.000 start bouncing down the hill. And they'd try to nail guys on their bikes.

00:48:29.400 So if you're slow, you're going to get beamed by avocados. So Pete came up to me before right

00:48:35.980 before the race and said, good luck. You know, that record needs to go. And, you know,

00:48:39.920 I wish you the best. And he, he taught me so much. I mean, very early on, I haven't talked to him in a

00:48:44.040 few years, but he taught me a lot. And just this whole notion of engineering, the sleep, the nutrition,

00:48:49.620 the training plan, the race strategy, of course, all the crew stuff. And that's a lot has to come

00:48:54.880 together. And there's so much more I want to talk about on that front. And I want to come back to

00:48:58.320 aerobic because I don't want to forget this. There are a lot of people listening to this who just,

00:49:02.120 they just can't relate to what you're talking about. Let's call a spade a spade. I doubt there's

00:49:05.400 anybody listening to this. Who's ever going to go out and ride Ram, let alone, you know,

00:49:08.900 do any of the other crazy ultra endurance stuff. But I get, I am sure there are a lot of people here

00:49:12.700 who are thinking, I really want to run a marathon one day, or I really want to do an Ironman. You

00:49:17.800 know, I want to take that leap from Olympic distance to Ironman. What can they learn from you

00:49:23.360 to make that transition, which, you know, for many people running a marathon is as crazy as doing a

00:49:27.660 24 hour run. And for many people doing an Ironman for them is as big a stretch as it was for you to do

00:49:32.900 Ram. I think we all have the physical ability. We all natural born athletes, right? Everyone,

00:49:40.540 some people may have, I believe that I firmly believe that now some people may have better

00:49:45.320 genetics or better biomechanics, but look, I was heavy and a jock football player, and I'm not the

00:49:53.540 best endurance athlete in the world. I mean, I was able to engineer myself, kind of hack my way to

00:49:58.700 positive outcomes. And if I can do it, I think anybody can. Now people may have different goals.

00:50:04.540 So I think the biggest thing is just assume that you have in you somewhere the ability to do

00:50:09.420 great things. The other piece of it is change your mindset, right? Whatever your goal might be,

00:50:14.780 whether it's run a half marathon instead of a 5k, if that's what you want to push yourself,

00:50:20.100 is there should be no sacred cows, right? We have these constructs in our mind about limits.

00:50:25.360 And I'd say that's the biggest thing. I've talked to people about this before is just change your

00:50:29.760 perspective on what you think you can do. Just throw it out the window, right? It's the classic,

00:50:35.320 you know, if someone gets electrocuted and they get thrown across the room, it's not the electricity

00:50:39.940 throwing them across the room. It's their body. They have the innate ability to do amazing things.

00:50:44.960 Most people haven't figured out how to tap into that. So that's my only piece of advice is just check

00:50:51.800 your assumptions at the door, right? And just open your mind up a little bit.

00:50:56.180 We talked about all these things you've done and what's missing from the story is you were working

00:51:00.100 60 hours a week as an engineer at Qualcomm during this period of time.

00:51:03.680 Yeah. In the early 2000s, I was running a software company and, you know, we had test engineers and

00:51:10.660 programmers, et cetera, working at Qualcomm and lots of other places. That's right. So I actually,

00:51:16.360 but it fit very nicely with my routine. So I would get up at three-ish, run, ride into work.

00:51:22.720 Just to be clear, that's 3 a.m.

00:51:24.620 3 a.m. Run.

00:51:26.560 And run how far? What would be, give me a day in the life of training for-

00:51:29.320 12. 12 was sort of my staple. Run 12, jump on the, you know, no shower, jump on the bike,

00:51:35.220 ride in to work, shower, ask in the seat by 6.30. And I was a programmer at the time. I mean,

00:51:41.040 even though I had people, I loved to architect and build stuff, right? So somewhere in there and

00:51:45.620 prepping for my run, I would make a smoothie with whey protein isolate and L-glutamine and

00:51:50.480 glucosamine and flaxseed oil and all the stuff I needed to recover. So I'd have that in the freezer,

00:51:56.380 come back from my run, grab that, throw it in my pack, throw my computer in my pack,

00:52:00.780 jump on the bike, and then I'll put my feet up. And so from 6.30 to noon, I would sip on a smoothie

00:52:06.920 that was super cold and eat over time. You know, that, that, those would be my,

00:52:11.160 that was 2000 calorie shake essentially. Right. And so that was my routine, but it worked because

00:52:17.460 that was my recovery time. And occasionally I would go out and run, or when I was training for

00:52:21.280 bad water, I learned that, you know, bad water was all about just becoming like a human water filter

00:52:26.260 because you have to push so much fluid in bad water just because you sweat so much that I would

00:52:32.920 go and do sauna time. So I would run over to a fitness facility that had a nice sauna and a jacuzzi.

00:52:38.660 And I would just focus on raising my, my body temp. So I'd sit in a sauna and then I would go sit in

00:52:43.320 the jacuzzi and I'd just pound waters and I would go back and work for a few hours and jump on my

00:52:47.560 bike. So you trained yourself to be hot and to basically process as much water as possible.

00:52:53.000 Did you have to pay attention to your minerals and electrolytes? Because, you know, at that level,

00:52:57.040 you can start getting into concern around hyponatremia and things like that.

00:53:01.200 Exactly. Yeah. In fact, I learned to love salt. So I would actually find,

00:53:06.180 it kind of became a salt geek. So I would find different salts with trace minerals and elements.

00:53:12.520 I fell in love with this Celtic sea salt that I found and it just, it felt like electricity. You

00:53:18.760 put it in your mouth and I would actually just do, you know, teaspoons of that. So I would do grams of

00:53:23.660 salt. I mean, of course, other things, magnesium and potassium, et cetera. So without a doubt,

00:53:28.800 salt was a big part of it. And then of course, fat in, you know, whether it be a tablespoon of

00:53:34.720 coconut oil or something else, I would do that throughout.

00:53:37.180 Yeah. You were kind of far ahead. I mean, I think today, most people, if they're going to be

00:53:42.280 objective, so let's dismiss all the sort of zealots on all sides of the equation. But if you're going

00:53:46.820 to be objective, there's no doubt that if you want to be an ultra distance athlete, you have to be fat

00:53:51.220 adapted. Now that doesn't mean you have to be in nutritional ketosis, but you must be fat adapted.

00:53:55.560 You do not want to do these things with an RQ above about 0.75 to 0.8. But I feel like you sort of

00:54:02.080 backed into that because there wasn't anyone to look to 15 years ago. There weren't people

00:54:06.880 doing this stuff or talking about it the way there are today. When did you figure that out? And what

00:54:11.700 made that so clear to you? There were a couple of things and you're right. It was, it was accidental.

00:54:16.280 I backed into it and it was through experimentation. Again, just checking all your assumptions at the

00:54:20.980 door. There was this, first of all, back then there was this idea you shouldn't run more than a

00:54:24.940 marathon or two a year, which at one point I was doing one a day and just as part of my training

00:54:30.600 regime. So what about this whole idea of car bloating? Really? Cause I always felt bloated

00:54:36.000 and it didn't, you know, my performance the next day, my heart rate and, you know, blood was still

00:54:40.300 in my gut. And so a metric for me often when I woke up the next day about whether or not I was going to

00:54:45.460 run or train was my heart rate. And my resting heart rate used to be 37, 38. And if it was ever above

00:54:51.980 40, I would just stay in bed. I wasn't adapted and there was no point in stressing myself further

00:54:56.580 because I would break into overtraining. Well, that in and of itself is pretty impressive

00:55:01.060 because I'm guessing many people listening to this are thinking this guy's just a hammerhead.

00:55:05.360 He's just a robot. But that takes, I remember from my days, the hardest decisions were the days when I

00:55:11.980 pulled back on training. That's right. Cause that was like, you're struggling with your own demons.

00:55:16.520 Am I good enough? Am I, I'm going to stay in and not train today, but my opponents out there

00:55:20.760 training, Oh my God, what am I doing? But you, this is almost where it helps to have a trainer.

00:55:25.100 That's right. Who you can outsource that decision to, but you have the discipline to do that.

00:55:29.180 But after a lot of research, so, you know, a couple of things, you know, I want to come back

00:55:33.220 to fat adaptation and, you know, carb loading. I learned, so I had some fairly objective indicators

00:55:40.240 that I would use to make decisions. Cause I mean, a big part of doing this consistently over time is

00:55:46.340 just to be objective with yourself. Am I really in course record shape or am I just fooling myself?

00:55:52.020 And so what are the metrics? What are your times? Time doesn't lie, right? Time is objective.

00:55:57.440 Your heart rate, it's objective. It's a great metric to use. Of course, power, if you're on the bike is

00:56:01.600 the absolute. And if you know, you're at altitude, there's some other things you can do in mountaineering

00:56:06.220 to keep yourself in check. And mountaineers are the same way. They're very disciplined. If I'm not

00:56:10.960 where I need to be by 2 PM, I turn around. It's not summit day. It's just not going to work.

00:56:15.420 That is impressive. When I talk to those guys that have summited Everest, especially those,

00:56:20.540 I've talked to a few guys that have done it repeatedly, that actually impresses the hell

00:56:24.300 out of me. Live to climb another day. It's that simple. So I borrowed from mountaineering. I'll get

00:56:29.180 back to the fat thing in a second because there were indicators, early indicators in terms of just

00:56:35.000 being in ketosis and what your body does over time to optimize endurance. So mountaineering is actually

00:56:40.920 where I learned about fat and I'll get back to that in a second. So the carb thing didn't work

00:56:46.160 for me. Right. And I learned accidentally that you can actually fast and do better and feel better

00:56:52.760 and feel cleaner. And so I just started phasing things out. Right. So I started phasing carbs out,

00:56:58.820 drank very little alcohol and very monastic lifestyle for a long time there. I had no girlfriend,

00:57:04.700 lived in a little condo by the beach and just worked my tail off and trained and

00:57:10.780 loved it. It was a very simple life. No drama outside of just not, maybe not feeling good about

00:57:15.900 my run that day. It's a very simple life engineered intentionally to be that way.

00:57:20.820 So I did learn that the traditional thinking was wrong. And I also learned that the assumptions

00:57:29.160 around what a human body could do were wrong. And I learned that through experimentation. So back to

00:57:34.680 the mountaineering thing. So there's a great book called, I think it's called Fast and Lighter,

00:57:39.280 Moving Fast and Light. There's a mountaineer named Mark Twight, who's a batshit crazy mountaineer who's

00:57:46.000 doing all kinds of stuff in the nineties. And I've always been intrigued by doing endurance stuff and

00:57:52.680 in the mountains. And there's guys now doing what I knew would eventually happen. I came to it late and

00:57:58.180 of course had a family decided risking my life wasn't worth it anymore. But we knew that metabolizing

00:58:04.420 your body is very different at altitude and actually taking a shot of oil at altitude was

00:58:12.380 better than eating a bowl of spaghetti. And it's written about, and that's where I learned sometimes

00:58:18.120 it's better just to take a shot of olive oil and never forget reading about this. And I'm like,

00:58:23.980 I'm going to experiment with that. If they're doing this at altitude and it's working and it's actually

00:58:28.520 helping them, right? First of all, a little Nalgene vial of olive oil or flaxseed oil to take in your

00:58:34.600 pack. If you're doing it on summit day to not have to carry a bunch of food. Yeah. From an energy

00:58:39.080 density standpoint, it's the most energy dense way. And you're fat adapted and your body has a hard

00:58:44.700 time metabolizing the fat and anything else at altitude. And it's hard to cook stuff at altitude,

00:58:50.480 which is another story. So I learned that fat, fat's actually not bad. And also learned,

00:58:56.080 sugar is not good when you're doing long events because insulin response and you bonk. And so

00:59:03.280 sugar is great. It's like a drug though, right? I mean, it's chasing the drag. And once you have

00:59:07.560 your Twix at mile 20, you're going to want another one at mile 25. Yeah, you're hosed. You have now

00:59:12.880 committed to a pure glycolytic strategy and you better have it timed perfectly to the finish line.

00:59:20.060 And it is part of the strategy. And I would argue in terms of optimizing performance should be part

00:59:27.020 of your strategy, but you only get one shot at it. So if you're doing a hundred, if it comes before a

00:59:33.460 mile 80, you better know what you're doing because after that, if you're going to take a Mountain Dew,

00:59:38.560 don't do it a mile 20 because at that point, all bets are off. Your body is now shifted into a

00:59:43.600 completely different world and it's going to want to stay in that world. And you know that well.

00:59:48.280 So I came back from the Himalayas in 02. I spent a couple months over there in Tibet on Everest and

00:59:55.040 we were eating yak meat, which you can't cook at 25,000 feet. And so I came back with just crazy

01:00:01.900 parasites, which I later learned in 03. And so the other part of this, to answer your question about

01:00:07.400 sort of backing into it is the only way I was going to get rid of the parasites was to essentially go

01:00:12.500 nuclear on my own body, which meant like a 10 day fast. So I did the Eastern Western thing.

01:00:16.640 So I went to, you know, infectious diseases guy, you know, San Diego or UCSD. And I said, well,

01:00:22.280 how do we get rid of this stuff? How do we, he's like, Hey, I'm going to give you some stuff and

01:00:26.660 it's going to be really hard on your body. I need you to take it. And I said, what have the people

01:00:31.140 been doing for thousands of years? Cause you know, tapeworms and other stuff has been a problem for

01:00:35.100 a long time is you starve yourself. Just starve it. You starve it. Eventually, you know, get rid of it.

01:00:39.800 So I did both. So I said, give me the meds. And I did the meds and I didn't eat for 10 days.

01:00:45.760 So I just drank warm water every day. Didn't really train and did other crazy stuff to just

01:00:51.700 completely cleanse myself. And by day three, day one and two was brutal by day three. I just,

01:01:00.640 it's like my whatever, 170 degree vision went to, I could see around myself, right? I could feel

01:01:08.140 stuff. I could smell stuff. And it just turned into this journey. It was of course, fixed the

01:01:13.680 problem, got rid of it. And I was, I was developing exercise induced asthma. I became allergic to

01:01:19.300 certain foods and I was allergic to myself. I was actually, of course, fighting these parasites,

01:01:24.160 but I didn't know it at the time. All that went away in 03 by fasting and I felt better.

01:01:32.320 And so I backed in. So I was obviously in ketosis because I started training again by day seven.

01:01:38.140 I wasn't eating, but I started training again and I felt fantastic. And that's when I realized

01:01:43.000 like, holy cow, like it was accidental, but between the fat and understanding that that's

01:01:48.800 a component of performance and then the fasting, which was again, just to get rid of parasites,

01:01:55.120 I realized like I can actually perform even better throwing everything else out the window.

01:02:01.040 It is amazing. I actually didn't know that story about you. I didn't know that you had to do this

01:02:05.080 tend to, I didn't even know about the whole parasite thing. And those, you know, it's really

01:02:08.200 interesting because I, I know a lot of people who have had that experience, right? They go off

01:02:12.640 and they climb Kilimanjaro and they come back and they're never the same. You know, one of the people

01:02:17.200 who was actually helping me in that trans Tahoe swim had just come back from Kilimanjaro.

01:02:22.220 And so this person's kayaking, one of my kayakers, and I mean, had to literally hop out of the kayak

01:02:29.200 and take a shit in the water about every, I don't know, hour. I mean, devastated by these parasites,

01:02:35.940 but it's really interesting. I mean, I can, it certainly strikes me as relatively low downside to

01:02:41.380 at least give a trial attempt of fasting coupled with the medical therapy. I mean, certainly there's

01:02:47.840 evidence to suggest that fasting coupled with chemotherapy can increase the efficacy of

01:02:51.900 chemotherapy. I mean, this has been now actually demonstrated. Walter Longo has talked about this

01:02:56.340 quite a bit, but you know, Dom D'Agostino has been talking about this for at least five years now. So

01:03:01.200 I didn't know that about you. I love that. I feel like I know everything about you. And yet

01:03:05.460 I've already learned like six things about you in the last hour that I didn't know.

01:03:09.380 Let's close out the RAM story just because I, again, I'm, to me, your RAM exploits might be your second

01:03:15.600 most impressive story. We're going to come to the most impressive feet of them all in a moment,

01:03:20.320 but there was a really sad ending to Robic, wasn't there? Yeah. In fact, there was a sad ending to

01:03:25.540 Robic and Bob Breedlove. So Bob Breedlove died in 05 on the RAM. I was a few hours ahead of him.

01:03:34.480 These aren't, I think at the time I did Everest, it was one in eight people would die. So you're not

01:03:39.740 talking about people are asking me about finish rates. There's death rates to some of these races. So

01:03:44.240 one in eight die on Everest. I don't know what the stats are today. K2 is even worse. K2 is like

01:03:49.140 one in three or something crazy. Yeah. There's a few that are just, and that's, you know, that's why

01:03:54.400 with young family, I'm not, you helped me a few weeks ago, pull a tree down and I had my climbing

01:03:59.800 gear out for the first time in 15 years, wrapping slings around a tree. I walk over and I see you with

01:04:05.600 a chainsaw and a fricking 80 foot tree. And I'm like, Hey Mike, do you need a hand?

01:04:10.380 Yeah. That's the first time my climbing gear has been out in a while. So yeah. So Robic,

01:04:16.200 unfortunately, I had a fantastic performance a number of years after we raced against each other

01:04:22.400 and he died on a bike in Sylvania. Gosh, it's been, it's been a few years.

01:04:29.440 He was riding down a hill or something. He was riding down a, as I understand it,

01:04:32.700 riding down a gravel road, fire road or something in Sylvania and crossed the center line and

01:04:38.060 ran into a car coming up and went over the top. I don't, I mean, I've, I've been there. I mean,

01:04:43.560 I've crashed several times and I just, there are so many people I know that have died on bikes,

01:04:50.460 which is why I just don't ride as much anymore. Eventually it's just law of large numbers,

01:04:57.020 right? You're out there enough. Something's going to happen.

01:04:59.960 Yeah. I had that wake up call in, um, maybe 2010. There's a guy named Nick Venuto. I don't know if

01:05:06.960 you knew Nick, but he was the CFO at our company. And this was back when I was working at a biotech

01:05:11.220 company and a amazing cyclist. He actually won the Mount Palomar time trial a couple of times.

01:05:16.800 So for people who are around here and understand what Mount Palomar is, it's basically Alpe d'Huez

01:05:21.140 in terms of rise grade and including the same number of switchbacks. So it's a serious climb.

01:05:27.700 And every year there's a time trial and Venuto would win it. And I remember on one afternoon,

01:05:31.960 I was leaving, this was back when I was, could call myself a cyclist. And I was like buggering

01:05:37.360 out early. It was like five o'clock cause I wanted to go home and I had intervals to do that day.

01:05:41.160 And on that day, I remember I had the luxury of calling an audible, which was I could either do

01:05:46.100 repeats on Torrey pines, uh, which would be hill repeats, or I could go out to 56 on the bike path

01:05:52.360 and do VO two max repeats. Cause it's not as steep, you know, you're only climbing like sort of 4%

01:05:58.180 as you ride from Carmel Valley out to Poway. And I just decided, you know, I'm going to go ride

01:06:03.180 Torrey pines today. So I did. And I remember walking out my door cause Nick and I opposed each other.

01:06:08.580 And, uh, I said, and he was like, he, you know, I know everybody says this about everybody,

01:06:12.220 but he literally was the nicest dude on the planet. And I remember saying, all right, Nick,

01:06:15.220 see you later, man. And Nick used to ride to and from work every day. He was such a devoted family

01:06:20.240 guy that he just didn't want to waste time training outside of his commute. And he lived far away.

01:06:24.540 So, you know, he'd get in like 40 miles a day training just on his commute. He's riding home

01:06:30.880 on the 56 bike path, the same road I was going to, I could have been doing my intervals on.

01:06:36.280 And if I showed you where it happened, it's the last place you think this could ever happen. But

01:06:41.240 a woman driving her SUV decides at that moment, she's just got to check her cell phone and she

01:06:47.340 drives up the embankment through the fence and hits Nick and kills him. And I couldn't believe it.

01:06:53.500 I mean, I just, you know, to think like I was just with this guy two hours before.

01:06:58.080 And unfortunately that's just not an uncommon story. Like, you know, obviously since then have

01:07:03.040 known of other cyclists that have died, but I didn't know any as well as him. And yet, you know,

01:07:06.420 given what you've done, you really know a lot of people who have met this horrible fate on a bicycle.

01:07:11.980 And a lot of times actually the cyclist is a hundred percent not at fault. You know, in the case of

01:07:17.040 Nick's case, I mean, he's on a bike path, nothing he could have done to prevent that. That is a

01:07:21.280 lightning strike. Um, you know, to be hit from behind when someone veers off a freeway going

01:07:26.920 75 miles an hour and hits you, I mean, like you're done, you're done. And on a bike path that's

01:07:31.820 protected, you'd think that, you know, the worst you can do is make a mistake and go down or someone

01:07:36.560 else on the bike will hit you, which is probably non-lethal. You know, my brother, who's a really

01:07:41.500 good mountain biker, the reason he's just so obsessed with being on a mountain bike, he goes,

01:07:45.440 look, here's the difference. When I used to ride on the road, if something bad was going to happen,

01:07:49.340 statistically, it was the driver's fault on a mountain bike. When something bad happens,

01:07:53.400 it is always my fault. That's right. That's right. And it's a broken collarbone or, you know,

01:07:57.740 broken arm. It's not a, it's usually not lethal. It's part of the reason why I don't ride as much

01:08:02.640 as I did. And I was hit actually similar driver. I thought she saw me, she looked right at me.

01:08:11.180 I don't know if the sunlight sun was setting, but I was also bike commuting, leaving work and she

01:08:16.940 accelerated right through me. She had a stop sign. She just rolled through it. I was doing about 35,

01:08:22.780 just, just rolling down a hill and I'll never, it was slow motion. And, you know, I've had other

01:08:28.000 accidents, but that was probably the most mentally. I mean, that's when I bought my compu trainer.

01:08:32.100 Actually, my wife got it for me. Cause she just, I just wouldn't get on the bike. Cause I really

01:08:36.280 thought she saw me and I couldn't, I hit my head and I couldn't move the right side of my body. And I

01:08:40.780 apparently was making this crazy noise sound, just moaning on the pavement.

01:08:45.520 What year was this?

01:08:46.320 This was in, Oh, I think it was 06, 07. And that's was when I, I mean, it took me,

01:08:53.580 she was absolutely hard about it. I mean, she was just devastated. I mean, I went over the hood and

01:08:58.500 the back of her car and the bike went one way and I went the other. And we were both, you know,

01:09:02.160 by then doing 40 and just, you know, I hit the pavement and rolled. And, and fortunately my wife was

01:09:08.260 a mile away and called her and said, come get me. And I tried to walk it off. I was going to try

01:09:13.900 to ride home. And I just literally was, it shook me up. It shook me up. And after that, I just said,

01:09:20.500 you know, it's, and I have to, you know, many deaths, friends and guys like Robic and others

01:09:26.320 just said, you know, it's going to happen eventually. It's going to happen.

01:09:30.060 Yeah. By the way, going back to the compu trainer, you're probably one of the only people

01:09:33.620 that's broken a compu trainer twice, twice. Yeah. The compu trainer at this point is a

01:09:41.080 resistance trainer and I've stopped replacing them and I just get on, I have this old Slocum

01:09:45.920 stand, which I've had powder coated a couple of times from the sweat and the rust. And I used the

01:09:51.160 first time I saw your compu trainer. I was like, dude, what have you done to this thing?

01:09:55.760 Well, I, I have my contraption I've engineered for the, the PVC, you know, at the time it was a

01:10:01.260 Blackberry and computer stand and other stuff. It's now an iPad holder. And so my contraption

01:10:07.320 strapped to the front of it, bracketed to the front of it for my screens.

01:10:11.500 So of all the incredible things you've done. And as I, you know, as we become closer over the

01:10:17.100 past five years, I've gotten to know all of these things, but you're so unassuming that I have to

01:10:21.460 like pry them out of you, but I don't know what it is about trans Iowa. But when you finally told me

01:10:27.160 about that, I was blown away. I think trans Iowa might be the most ridiculous feat in the history

01:10:33.780 of cycling, certainly as far as a one day event goes. So explain the motivation for that. What

01:10:39.840 the hell you did, how fast you went, like, well, talk to me about trans Iowa.

01:10:43.920 Well, you know, growing up in Iowa and having done the bike ride across Iowa, RAGBRAI, the

01:10:49.600 registered annual great bike ride across Iowa many years, I always, you know, asked myself,

01:10:54.720 how fast could you do this in one go? Even when I was a kid, I'm like, why are they stopping?

01:11:00.740 You know, I get people drink at night and party and it's a fun time, but why isn't anybody doing

01:11:06.120 this in one push? It's possible. And so it's been a bucket list thing, right? A lot like hearing about

01:11:12.540 Bob Breedlove in the eighties about Ram, that was, it became a bucket list thing. So Ram became a

01:11:17.680 bucket list. Trans Iowa became a bucket list. And, and so no, did Ram in 04 and lots of other stuff.

01:11:24.500 And decided that I could work at my own sort of attempt at trying to set our speed record across

01:11:29.720 Iowa. It's where I'm from. And it was a bucket list. And so I got, um, actually my Ram crew chief

01:11:35.140 was the official cause there, you know, to be a rec true record, the UMCA has, you have to have an

01:11:40.480 official and he was a UMCA official. And my uncle, uh, best friend from high school and, you know,

01:11:45.720 had some, a couple other people crew me for it. And it's a, you know, depending on your route,

01:11:52.000 you can pick your route and, you know, there's UMCA recognizes record attempts. We're looking at

01:11:57.380 it just a few simple criteria. So I picked my route, set my date and pick my official.

01:12:02.940 And the distance was what?

01:12:04.400 270. So the, you know,

01:12:05.700 270 miles.

01:12:06.540 Yeah. 270 and change, actually more climbing than you'd think. Most people think Iowa's flat,

01:12:11.340 but it's not. How many feet vertical? I'd have to go back and look at the stats,

01:12:15.220 but several thousand feet of vertical. So you start at one river and end at the other,

01:12:19.660 right? One East to West and, uh, was able to do, I didn't have to unclip. It was pretty cool. I,

01:12:25.760 I, there was halfway through some guys doing construction on the road and the guy had a stop

01:12:30.180 sign, you know, one lane open at a stop up. And I waved to him. I said, just let me through.

01:12:35.780 You forget the car behind me. It was my, my crew vehicle. Um, but let me through and he flipped it

01:12:40.880 around and, you know, so I didn't have to unclip for the entire state and managed to do in about

01:12:45.980 10 hours and 40 ish minutes. I can give you all the stats if you want, but I did about 25.7 miles

01:12:52.260 an hour average, a little tailwind to start a crosswind. It was beautiful day. Conditions were

01:12:58.840 perfect. You know, in fact, there were storm chasers out the night before there were tornadoes

01:13:03.360 all over the place. It was in May. And so this was the lead up to Ram 05. So this was an 05. So it was,

01:13:10.200 it was a great day. So you start with a bit of a tailwind and you, and you got a crosswind in the

01:13:13.920 middle and you ended with about a tailwind with a, you got a headwind. Headwind, ended with a

01:13:17.540 headwind. And I felt fantastic. In fact, I thought about continuing on and like, well, let's go do the

01:13:25.340 next state. But you know, it was, it was, it was a fun day. I'll never forget looking down at my,

01:13:31.220 at a polar heart rate monitor at the time. And I just couldn't believe the numbers because I,

01:13:36.040 you know, I've done coastal stuff training here, right? I'll ride up to Newport or whatever and

01:13:41.660 do one days or one push rides with two water bottles. Don't stop. Don't unclip if you,

01:13:47.120 unless you have to. But I looked down and I just covered my home state in 10 and a half hours.

01:13:53.020 And it was fun. Yeah. I mean, you didn't have a power meter at the time, but I remember when I was

01:13:58.780 time trialing, I used to have so many models that I could basically estimate power by CDA, wind speed,

01:14:04.580 velocity, et cetera. And I remember calculating you were probably doing about 310 watts to 320 watts

01:14:12.220 for 10 hours and 40 minutes. That would have been your average power. Obviously you would

01:14:16.440 have ebbed and flowed. And I remember thinking, wow, we're in a different league here. People like,

01:14:22.260 you know, like, you know, you're really a professional cyclist at that point. You're not

01:14:27.640 really amongst the amateurs anymore.

01:14:29.420 Well, the metric in professional cycling is watts per kilo, right? So...

01:14:33.640 And you weighed what at that point?

01:14:34.960 Ah, 160.

01:14:36.660 So that's what, 72 kilos. Yeah. I mean, so you have to figure that if you were averaging 310 to 320 watts

01:14:43.920 for 10 and a half hours, your FTP was probably very close to 380-ish, maybe 400 watts. I mean,

01:14:52.940 that's a professional level, at least a non-EPO professional level FTP. EPO certainly probably

01:14:59.560 gives you about a 10 to 15% boost on that. But, you know, like the best guys in the tour during the

01:15:05.360 sort of more EPO-driven eras were putting out... God, I used to know this stuff so well. I think

01:15:10.900 they were putting out about 6.3 to 6.4 watts per kilo at FTP.

01:15:13.940 Anything over 5 is 5 sort of the...

01:15:16.720 Well, 5. I mean, if you can do 5 without drugs, that's incredible FTP.

01:15:22.840 And that's kind of where I try unintentionally. Because I, you know, I had no... For me,

01:15:29.080 this has always been sort of a sacred endeavor, right? I knew how to make money. I didn't,

01:15:34.280 you know, to the extent that I needed to for RAM, I had sponsors. But for me, I love the product side

01:15:39.940 of getting into clothing and other gear production and design. But for me, it's never been about

01:15:45.820 monetizing it, right? So I, you know, been invited to join professional cycling teams and train with

01:15:51.440 them. And, you know, teams come out here in Arizona. And it's never interested me. It just

01:15:56.260 was never something that I wanted to do that wasn't part of the deal. For me, it's always how good

01:16:00.400 could I be? And I knew the drug side of it as well. And that's something that had no interest in...

01:16:04.900 Was there a lot of drug use in RAM and in these sort of...

01:16:07.300 We were drug tested throughout. I don't know. I don't know if anyone else was. It's one of those

01:16:13.140 things where I think that so... It's such an epic event. I don't know what you would do

01:16:20.220 because there's so many components to an optimal performance, right? So I don't know what drug you

01:16:26.900 would do. I mean, stimulants would eventually blow you up.

01:16:30.460 Yeah. I mean, modafinil. I mean, I think modafinil is banned on WADA and USADA, but modafinil

01:16:37.020 would certainly help.

01:16:38.460 What is that?

01:16:38.960 It's a drug that's approved. It's only FDA indication is for narcolepsy, but it's a non-stimulant

01:16:45.300 that keeps you awake. So it's actually a pretty interesting drug. This was our drug of choice

01:16:49.320 in residency. We abused the shit out of this drug. I was during residency taking two to 600 milligrams

01:16:56.760 daily. The maximum it has ever been tested at is 600 milligrams. But in the Air Force,

01:17:02.260 they had done a study, which is the study that I clung to, which was they put a bunch of pilots into a

01:17:06.900 simulator, flight simulator. And so the placebo group has nothing. And predictably over the

01:17:12.500 course of 24 hours, their performance declined. So, you know, but not surprisingly. And then you

01:17:18.060 had like a caffeine group and their performance got a little bit better initially, but then sort

01:17:21.940 of petered out, if not outright crashed by 24 hours. And of course I could be completely mistaking

01:17:27.660 some of the details on this, but this was the gist of it. At 200 milligrams of modafinil,

01:17:32.300 which is the standard dose performance was maintained for a very long period of time.

01:17:36.600 But at the end of the 24 hours, it fell off. But the thing that I always clung to was at 600

01:17:40.840 milligrams, I think performance actually just got better monotonically over 24 hours. And so I found

01:17:47.060 this to be the most amazing drug in the world because basically in residency, you're sort of

01:17:51.760 sleeping about four hours a night on average, but it never works out to that. So it's like, you'll have

01:17:56.360 zero and then you'll have six and then you'll have seven and then you'll have zero and then you'll

01:18:02.200 have three and then, you know what I mean? And so being able to take modafinil was huge. And, um,

01:18:07.180 you know, modafinil has a number of interesting properties. I don't really use it more than a few

01:18:10.760 times a year these days. I only really use it around jet lag, significant jet lag, but it strikes

01:18:15.700 me as being a pretty impressive drug. Again, not withstanding the fact that I'm pretty sure it's

01:18:20.300 WADA and USADA. It probably is, but that goes back to the point that I had no desire to be

01:18:26.940 professional because I didn't, I mean, for me, it was very simple, which is natural performance.

01:18:32.820 And if you're augmenting with things like that, it's just, you're not answering your question,

01:18:38.520 right? You throw into these other variables that are called unnatural. And where do you stop?

01:18:44.180 IVs have always been sort of a disputed territory for ultra athletes. I've never, if you go in

01:18:50.180 intravenous, you're done in my opinion, right? You should not need an RV. That's not natural to

01:18:54.380 me. Even if it's just saline, it doesn't matter. A lot of people disagree with me. And that's just

01:18:59.800 my personal opinion. There are a lot of guys that design their whole plan around being able to

01:19:04.440 go intravenous and get, you know, oil change. And, and I haven't, I mean, that's just me.

01:19:10.220 It's just my own standard. There are very few things I think drug wise that would, you'd.

01:19:14.960 Yeah. Ram is a tough one. Ram's a tough one.

01:19:17.060 It's not clear to me that EPO would help you that much in Ram. It's not even clear to me that

01:19:22.620 anabolic steroids would help as much as they do in the tour. I mean, I think EPO is a much more

01:19:28.760 important factor in grand tours than even the anabolic steroids or the glucocorticoids or

01:19:34.340 corticosteroids. And the stimulants, I mean, that used to be the drug of choice up until the,

01:19:39.400 about the eighties in professional cycling. But as you pointed out, I mean, stimulants,

01:19:42.840 you better know when you're using them and for how long, cause it's, you can fall off a cliff

01:19:46.900 pretty quick. Yeah. And I've seen guys do that. I've seen guys do that. And I've been part of a

01:19:51.500 few studies that have tested down at, it's now Liberty station. And I think it was the NTC down

01:19:57.660 in Point Loma, um, the Naval hospital. I participated in a few studies with a Navy SEALs and they were

01:20:05.280 testing different things and the SEALs and special forces there on a whole cocktail, right? Depending on

01:20:10.840 what they're doing. If they're in transit, they're taking one thing. If they're getting ready,

01:20:15.100 they take something else and they should. And modafinil is a great drug in that setting,

01:20:20.640 because when you consider that the alternative is stimulants with their horrible cycle, you know,

01:20:26.240 well, not to mention the psychological, I mean, stimulants throw you, right? Throw your judgment

01:20:31.460 and do other things. So I agree. I agree. You know, I've never tried Adderall even once all of the

01:20:38.460 time I've taken modafinil. I've never once tried Adderall. And yet, uh, I've talked to a lot of

01:20:42.260 people who swear by low dose Adderall for, you know, mental clarity, like 10 milligrams or something

01:20:47.360 like that. But I don't know. I just, I don't feel like stimulants would sit well with my system.

01:20:52.340 Yeah. I didn't even know what Adderall was. And some of the guys that software programmers on my team

01:20:57.480 were trading Adderall a few years ago. I'm like, what are you guys doing? And we're going to go

01:21:06.380 outside and we'll be back. And, and, you know, 12 hours later, they're still heads down. It clearly,

01:21:10.980 I've seen it clearly. I mean, it's certain tasks it's works. Yeah. I I've seen, I think that this

01:21:16.500 low dose Adderall strategy for the right person can be remarkable. Again, the question becomes

01:21:20.860 frequency at what point does it become too much? You know, today, when we were on the bike,

01:21:25.280 we were kind of talking about this a little bit, but I remember when I was swimming a lot,

01:21:30.100 it's a very tight knit community. You know, the weirdos who want to do really long swims or really long

01:21:35.060 rides or really long runs or whatever. But it became clear to me a few years into my swimming

01:21:40.540 endeavors that most of the people I swam with were addicts were recovering addicts. So they had,

01:21:45.720 they were former alcoholics. Um, they, you know, you know, recovering drug addicts or things like

01:21:50.040 that. And I remember thinking, God, this is so interesting. Like I'm the only non addict who does

01:21:55.540 this amongst my peer group, but I've come back and revisited that assumption and now realize that

01:22:00.620 of course I am an addict. And just because it's not alcohol or drugs doesn't mean I'm

01:22:05.060 not. And so it makes me wonder like, what kind of person does this stuff? What motivates them?

01:22:12.040 What are they numbing? Where is this coming from? I mean, have you, and it's a more of a

01:22:16.000 philosophical question, but have you ever sort of stopped and said, what the hell drove you to do

01:22:19.800 all of this stuff? Cause at the risk of just being a little blunt, like it ain't normal, man.

01:22:24.860 Like it ain't normal to do any of the shit we just spent the last hour talking about.

01:22:28.380 It's normal to me. It's my normal. No, it's not. It's not. And I learned this on Ram

01:22:34.840 and I've never, I haven't experienced it since, but there's a sequence of mental states that I

01:22:42.240 think you go through in these things and call it normal homeostasis. And then you move to

01:22:47.660 with sleep depth and extreme output, you move to illusions, hallucinations. People talk about that

01:22:54.100 and laugh about it and they're funny, but you're still with it. And then you get truly delusional.

01:22:58.320 This is when you're mentally insane. There's a time on Ram toward the later part of 04 where I

01:23:07.280 literally didn't know why this van was following me. And I somehow concocted this whole story about

01:23:15.360 being chased and somehow crafted that we were going by a power plant and I thought they were spies and

01:23:22.200 I was truly delusional and I was paranoid and I would try to get away from them. And I kept

01:23:28.600 racing away from them and they're still following me and they're turning where I'm turning. I'm like,

01:23:32.480 what the hell's going on? And finally, um, decided to get off the highway. Well, I get off the highway

01:23:37.500 and I'm in a cemetery in the middle of nowhere and I put my bike, it's all I had to protect myself

01:23:42.720 in between me and my crew. And they followed me and this van is here and they get out and I'm like,

01:23:48.600 what are you doing? And they're like, so you didn't recognize them even once they got out of

01:23:52.860 the van? I didn't recognize them. I was confused. This is after six, seven days and maybe an hour

01:23:59.960 and a half, two hours sleep. I slept up of my 10 ish hours, the whole race. One of the three hour

01:24:07.680 block at the very end where I just shut down. So I had very little sleep over six or seven days. I was

01:24:13.800 just, I was losing it. So it's not normal. Right. And eventually came back and the next day

01:24:18.400 in daylight, like a holy cow. And I remember everything. I remember the whole episode and

01:24:22.480 they're like, we picked a fricking cemetery of all places to like peel off the road. It was a

01:24:26.820 cemetery and it was, they were scared. Like, who is this guy? What is he doing? And then, you know,

01:24:31.840 finally we got to New Jersey and 60 miles from the finish and I had completely lost it and threatened

01:24:37.160 to a dear friend of mine, Howard, who's massive college swimmer, former college swimmer. And I decided

01:24:43.740 I was going to get in a fight with him and he just, he stuck his hand out. And I thought I was

01:24:49.840 going to get into a fist fight with Howard and I was 160 and he was 220 and twice my size. Now you lose

01:24:55.580 it. Yeah. What, what's the, but more deep seated. And I think that's your question, right? What

01:24:59.860 motivates this? I started the marathon. I was living in New York city, actually living in Stanford,

01:25:05.740 Connecticut in 97, 98. And I moved back from Europe and came to New York, was working for

01:25:13.680 Pricewaterhouse and was living with guys I went to school with, you know, they're Goldman Sachs and

01:25:18.860 et cetera, et cetera. And they were bringing home a case of beer every night. And I was sleeping on a

01:25:23.820 couch because I was tired in New York city. I just wanted to get out of New York. And so I crashed on

01:25:28.260 their couch in Stanford. I was always on the road. And after a week of those guys bringing beer home

01:25:34.360 every night, I'm like, this isn't what I want to do. So I needed an excuse. So believe it or not

01:25:40.060 for me, and by the way, when you're on the couch, you can't get away. So these guys would sit and

01:25:44.660 watch TV and drink beer and five guys sitting around, you know, living like they were, they were

01:25:49.860 in college taking the train into New York, you know, every morning to five 30 and just doing the

01:25:54.080 drill. So I, it was actually an escape for me. So I started training for the 98 New York marathon

01:25:59.920 in the spring of 98. And that was my excuse. Sorry, I can't drink. I'm got to get up and run

01:26:06.000 in the morning. And that's what I did. So that's how it all, that's how it all started. It right

01:26:10.880 around the same time was going through a brutal breakup with my college sweetheart. And I think

01:26:15.780 that was the second component of it, right? I just had no desire to socialize and just wanted to

01:26:21.040 get back to some foundation that I could find for myself. So a lot of transition. So I'd say,

01:26:27.640 you know, running away from stuff is where it started. And then of course it evolved to,

01:26:32.380 you know, once I did my move to Chicago, did the Chicago marathon, then did New York,

01:26:37.380 which was my goal, did New York as Batman in 98. It blast, fricking blast, you know, running,

01:26:43.980 just didn't know, didn't worry about time, just had a good time, but then realized that, you know,

01:26:48.340 I could actually pull off some decent times. It's not that hard. I've hardly trained for this and I

01:26:52.500 did well by my, my standards. And so that's when I moved to San Diego in 99 is I said, you know,

01:27:00.400 I'm going to get serious about this and really focus on it. Obviously, what, what do you think

01:27:06.060 about, this is a big question I get, what do you think about when you're out there for so long? And

01:27:10.320 I've, do you get bored? I've never gotten bored. And for me, you know, you and I have, I think,

01:27:15.160 similar backgrounds, right? We working class families who care deeply for us, but we've also

01:27:22.240 had a lot of stuff happen to us over time. Right. And for me, it's always been a time to work through

01:27:27.220 stuff and just think about things both past and present. And so it's been very meditative for me.

01:27:34.080 And unfortunately, and I've learned over time to somewhat mitigate this, but it's where I found my

01:27:40.320 happy place. Right. I'll never forget. I just saw this a couple of years ago in my application for

01:27:45.660 bad water in 2000 for the 2001 bad water. Why do you want to do bad water? And I said, I love ultra

01:27:52.340 running. And, you know, the follow-up question is, is why? And I said, you know, it's the only time I

01:27:57.460 feel normal. And I like to feel normal. I feel normal when I'm out there doing that stuff. It's just,

01:28:03.780 it feels right, right or wrong. That was my comfortable spot.

01:28:08.980 Now, at least going back to that time, what felt abnormal when you weren't running?

01:28:14.720 Probably the biggest thing that felt unnatural, maybe not abnormal, is I just, I've never been

01:28:21.180 terribly social. I never, when I moved to San Diego, I, you know, I, I like to build stuff.

01:28:27.040 I like to challenge myself and I just didn't fit in in New York. I didn't fit in out here and I liked

01:28:35.720 just pushing myself. And that was abnormal. That was unusual. And I would have people ask me all the

01:28:42.180 time about this sacrifice that I was making to do what I do. And my response has been, it's a privilege

01:28:49.100 to do what I do. I love doing what I do. It's fantastic. It's not a sacrifice. If it was a

01:28:55.640 sacrifice, I wouldn't be doing it. So that's in my mind abnormal. And this isn't, I don't judge people,

01:29:02.080 right? I mean, I don't judge people for not doing this, but it's just, I don't choose a path of

01:29:07.560 accepting that I have certain limitations and certain things aren't possible. I think that's

01:29:11.800 bullshit. I just refuse to accept that certain things are not possible because most of the time

01:29:18.100 they're wrong. It's amazing. I mean, you, you know, people listening to this who obviously don't

01:29:21.920 know you won't necessarily appreciate some of the nuance in this, but, and obviously I won't mention

01:29:26.760 names, but one of my favorite stories is there's a piece that came out about you in Vogue men's

01:29:33.120 Vogue. I don't know, God, it's gotta be 12, 13 years ago. And it's an amazing piece. We'll make

01:29:38.040 sure we link to it in the show notes here. And it's amazing. Like it's a really great piece that

01:29:42.560 gets into it. And one of my favorite stories is how on the day of the Oscars that year, you get a call

01:29:47.660 from someone basically saying, Hey, so-and-so wants to invite you up to be her guest at the Oscars

01:29:54.520 tonight. And it turned out to be like one of the biggest a list actresses of our generation.

01:30:00.600 And you just decided, nah, I don't want to go. And I'm thinking you remember you told me this story.

01:30:07.420 I was like, Oh my God, I would have fricking walked to LA backwards or on my hands and knees

01:30:15.240 just to have had a chance to have met her, let alone have been on her arm all night.

01:30:20.200 Yeah. But you just don't care. I love it. Yeah. I don't care. I wish I could say I didn't care.

01:30:26.860 Believe it or not, I, out of everything that I considered in that, and I think I mentioned this

01:30:32.620 to you when, when I first, I just told you this story recently, although it was written about years

01:30:36.160 ago, someone that knew my mom knew how to get to me. That's how the introduction came and talking

01:30:42.540 through it. I'm like, I just don't want to go to LA. I do not want to go to LA. I don't want to do the

01:30:47.600 drive to LA. That is, I don't, if it were here, sure. I, no big deal. I'm not doing anything today,

01:30:53.240 but it might be fun, but I don't want to deal with that. But, you know, I think a big part of

01:31:01.460 the mindset, my mindset at the time was I was really good at saying no, I'm not so good at that

01:31:08.880 now. Right. I say, I say yes to a lot of things and at a detriment to time with my family or kids.

01:31:13.960 But at the time I was very disciplined about saying no, if it wasn't on the critical path,

01:31:19.240 I wouldn't do it. And I was very focused and I was just great at saying no. In fact, there was a time

01:31:25.460 there for months where I just told my family, I'm busy. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to

01:31:32.200 communicate with you. I'm going to be laser focused and I want to eliminate every potential

01:31:38.240 distraction I can. And at the time that for me would fell into that category. It was just a distraction.

01:31:43.960 When do you think you made that transition to, you know, today your priorities are clearly split

01:31:49.880 between mostly two things, your family first, your company second. You obviously still exercise much

01:31:57.060 more than the average individual could ever fathom, but you know, you're not trying to set world records

01:32:01.740 anymore. What led to that transition? Was it simply meeting your wife? It was my wife. Yeah. Yeah.

01:32:07.720 I mean, there's a funny story here. I met or didn't meet, but saw my wife two years before I

01:32:16.260 formally met her. And I thought she was an angel, right? I saw her and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is

01:32:22.180 the woman of my dreams. But I was trending for Ram. That was the end of that. Didn't even talk to her.

01:32:27.100 May have walked by her office once or twice. And that was the end of it.

01:32:31.180 She was also an engineer at Qualcomm, right? Yeah. She was an electrical engineer and at the time was

01:32:35.880 at Qualcomm. And so saw her love at first sight, didn't talk to her. And I'm relatively shy. I'm not

01:32:43.720 a big fan of hitting on, that just wasn't my deal. So a couple of years went by and we were both in the

01:32:51.900 spin room a couple of years. After that, I had a cast. I had shattered my elbow training in 06,

01:32:59.720 training for Ram and had reconstructive surgery and had a cast that I drilled holes in. So it was

01:33:07.080 from my armpit all the way down to my wrist and I was drilling holes in it so I could shower with

01:33:11.600 this cast. And I had pins and wire and crap in my left elbow. And she came in and I had a pool of

01:33:18.640 sweat. I'd gone in. I was doing 12 hour. I couldn't ride outside with my cast. It was too

01:33:24.040 dangerous. But I was doing 12 hour sessions on a spin bike in the Qualcomm training room. And I had

01:33:31.200 gallons of water there, towels, of course, and carrots and celery. That was my nutrition for the

01:33:38.100 fiber. And so in a stack of DVDs, I was there at three. She rolls in at six or seven. And at that

01:33:44.760 point, I think I had taken my shirt off and was just hammering, right? I was not expecting anyone

01:33:49.380 to come in on a Saturday. And so I throw my shirt back on and she gets on a spin bike. And it's a fun

01:33:55.820 story, but I won't tell it now. But it was her, right? So I met her and we eventually went on a

01:34:01.580 date. And she and her dad, the Furnace Creek 508 were my crew on the Furnace Creek 508 later that year.

01:34:08.940 She got me. I mean, we went to Hawaii shortly after we met and I ran up Haleakala. So I ran from

01:34:16.020 Pae at the beach up to the top of Haleakala on the last day of our stay. And this is six weeks

01:34:22.180 after we met. And I'm like, she gets me. She crewed me in the middle of the night running, whatever,

01:34:26.740 40 miles up to top of this volcano. Hey, all right. She's the one. We decided to get married after our

01:34:34.760 third day. So she changed. I mean, it was, I'm done. I, you know, I'd answered the questions,

01:34:39.920 most of the big questions. I still had some bucket list things, but you know, where do you draw the

01:34:44.480 line? Right? So I, it really comes down to the, I found myself asking the question, what am I doing?

01:34:52.480 So I'd be out in East County doing my 300 miles training for a, I did the UMCA 24 hour race that fall.

01:35:00.280 And in training for that, for the first time, I had never asked myself that question.

01:35:05.120 What am I doing out here? It's kind of like Forrest Gump when he's running back and forth

01:35:08.680 across the country and he sort of stops and realizes he's done. Yeah. Like that's, it was that. And I,

01:35:14.060 that was my last ride in East County that, you know, 10, 12 years ago, like I asked myself that

01:35:20.600 question and I knew I was done because I wanted to be with her. And so it was that simple.

01:35:26.640 So I want to let you get back to your day. I know you got a hundred things to do today.

01:35:31.740 You got three great kids. You are a man that I admire greatly. You've created a tribe

01:35:38.320 where you don't have to leave. I mean, you can, you know, get to work from here. You get to play

01:35:44.100 with the kids. You get to be with the kids most nights. Obviously you still have to travel because

01:35:48.000 you're still running a startup company, but what do you take from all that stuff you learned about

01:35:53.660 being at the, you know, right at that level of being among the world's elites, ultra distant

01:35:58.980 athletes? How do you bring that? How do you bring what you learned from that to your, your ability

01:36:03.380 to be a dad or maybe asked another way, what do you take from those experiences that you want to

01:36:08.560 impart on your kids? That's a tough one because I, I only learned what I learned because I figured it

01:36:16.860 out on my own. And so I want to expose the kids to stuff and let them take to whatever they take

01:36:24.540 to. I want them to know, I want them to be proud of their dad and their mom. You know, we liked my

01:36:29.700 wife played college basketball and still holds records here in San Diego for shooting percentage,

01:36:35.800 et cetera. So I want the kids to be proud of their parents, but at the same time, like, I don't want

01:36:40.040 them to feel like they're, they live in our shadow. I try not to go to the pool. I know a lot of the

01:36:44.020 coaches from my prior life. So I don't want the kids to get special treatment because they're the,

01:36:49.860 the spawn of me. And so I try to actually coach them right now. They're eight. My twins are eight.

01:36:57.940 My son's three. Have fun. It's really pretty simple. Have fun. I hated, hated wrestling. And

01:37:04.080 then I grew to love it when I was in high school. I hated it when I was their age.

01:37:07.000 But did your, did your parents make you go through to get you through that transition?

01:37:10.660 Make me, but it was more pure, right? In Iowa, if you're not wrestling, something's wrong with you.

01:37:16.300 I mean, I started wrestling when I was five. I thought it was ridiculous. Why are these guys

01:37:20.520 crawling all, I mean, this is just crazy. Like, why are you wrestling? You know, it's smelly and I just

01:37:26.900 didn't, you know, didn't, wasn't into it. And then, and then I grew to love it when I got stronger and I

01:37:31.980 saw the strategy in it and loved wrestling in high school, but I grew to love it at my own pace. And so for me

01:37:38.620 right now at the kids, I don't take a lot other than just, Hey guys, you may not, you know, when

01:37:44.220 a lot of it's just nutrition and lifestyle, that's the biggest thing that I try to bring to them is

01:37:49.120 this whole notion. You don't need a carb load. You know, I'll make them this morning before my son

01:37:53.360 went to a swim meet, you know, I gave him some dry nuts and some cherries and my daughter's off

01:37:59.380 for the rest of the day. And so a lot of it comes to nutrition. In terms of the things that I've

01:38:05.840 learned, it really comes down to adversity and hard work. I mean, like you said, we live in

01:38:10.820 Nirvana. I've really tried hard to create an environment for my family. That is, they can

01:38:16.060 feel safe, secure, they can explore, but I want them to see, you saw me out with a chainsaw for a

01:38:21.920 reason. First of all, I love chainsaws. Yeah. You're the only friend I have who chops more wood than me

01:38:26.980 because I thought I was the wood chopping SoCal, like no one in San Diego could be chopping more wood than

01:38:33.440 me. But I will say this in the last four weeks, you have broken me. You've taken it to a new level.

01:38:39.480 And until four weeks ago, I had no idea you even chopped wood. Yeah. We need to take a picture of

01:38:44.600 my pile right now. Yeah. So I want the kids for me, I really want the kids to see that hard work

01:38:51.400 comes in many forms. It's physical, it's mental, et cetera. And I want them to see the perseverance

01:38:56.860 lead by example. And we live in this society where everything gets outsourced. And it seems to be

01:39:03.240 like, I'll let other people do the work for you. Look, like you mentioned, I, you know, we run a

01:39:08.440 small company. There's 15 of us now, but I take out the garbage and I run the company and I'll do

01:39:14.000 that until the day I die. And I want my kids to see that too. I don't think there's, you know, whether

01:39:18.900 it's Iowa background or, you know, I think we were cut from the same cloth that way. Nothing is beneath

01:39:24.980 me. You know, I fully believe in scaling through people and all that great stuff when it comes to running

01:39:29.780 a company. But at the same time, when it comes to my kids, I want them to see that dad will roll up

01:39:36.080 his sleeves and whether it's cutting down a tree, taking care of the yard or taking care of the

01:39:41.580 house, whatever it might be. I mean, just put a new faucet in yesterday. Cause like, why are you

01:39:45.060 down there? Cause I'm fixing the faucet. Yeah. You're so far, you're, I mean, I wish I had that

01:39:49.880 desire, discipline, whatever. Like, you know, I've just taken this opposite approach and I do worry

01:39:55.200 deep down that it's in the long run. It's not the right thing for my kids. Cause I grew up around a

01:39:59.360 dad who did everything. Yeah. My dad didn't do any of that. I did. It's so interesting. My dad,

01:40:04.280 my dad was the handiest dude that ever lived. He could fix anything. He couldn't fix anything. It

01:40:09.900 was a joke. It still is a joke with our family. And he, it's funny. He comes out here now and he's

01:40:14.040 clearing brush with me. So, and he loves it and I love it, but the kids will make their own decision.

01:40:18.860 Of course we could hire someone to put a new faucet in, but I want them. I want them. First of all,

01:40:24.740 I enjoy the accomplishment sense of pride of saying, I just did that. Um, and so I enjoy

01:40:30.400 tinkering around the house, but it's good for the kids to see. The biggest thing for me with the

01:40:34.860 software company has been in terms of taking the lessons from endurance. And so my family and my

01:40:40.280 company are like my two families, right. And never give up. It's that simple. Right. And we've taken

01:40:46.520 a lot of different paths to get to success for my training and my endurance accomplishments,

01:40:52.640 our family. We've done a lot of different things to try to architect the best situation for our

01:40:59.440 family. And we've done the same thing with my company. And, you know, and I sit on the board of

01:41:03.460 a few companies as well. And my only advice is don't give up. It's that simple when training,

01:41:09.020 don't give up a lot of it. You get a lot of adversity, but don't give up. It's usually the

01:41:13.580 person that keeps moving. If you don't win the race, you'll finish the race. So just keep moving.

01:41:18.700 But there's something more to it, right? There's this intelligence, like you knew the days that you

01:41:22.680 needed to back off. And I suspect that your greatest asset outside of your mental toughness,

01:41:29.400 which I just, there's just no way to displace that, or there's no substitute for just the raw

01:41:34.380 mental toughness. But I think it's that you've been, for example, very fortunate in your career

01:41:40.120 to not have many significant injuries. You've had one arthroscopic knee operation. I mean,

01:41:45.020 there's nothing. They like yanked a little tiny sliver of meniscus off it. For a guy who's run

01:41:50.160 tens of thousands of miles and has done all you've done, you know, you've got a broken collarbone from

01:41:57.160 a bike crash. You've got a broken elbow from a bike crash. You got a little meniscal nubbin that got

01:42:02.880 cleared pretty quickly. I think part of that is just the intelligence with which you've been able

01:42:07.160 to approach this, which is like, you sort of know what are the days to push? What are the days to back

01:42:11.780 down? And to me, that's the thing that like, if that knowledge can be codified, that's probably

01:42:17.080 the thing that people would benefit from greatly, right? If you're listening to this and you're

01:42:20.720 thinking, how am I going to run a marathon while I'm, you know, the VP of operations at whatever

01:42:26.080 company I'm at, or I'm the single mom who's trying to figure out how to get two kids off to school and

01:42:31.440 back while working 40 hours a week, but I still want to set these physical goals. Like you got to be

01:42:36.900 able to train smart. Everything you do has to be purpose driven. Yeah. I'm going to read you a text

01:42:42.480 I got late last night. Hey, Mike, quick question. Today was meant to be 20 per Higdon. That's how

01:42:48.220 Higdon, who fantastic marathon coach puts together training plans. Didn't realize I would be climbing

01:42:54.060 a lot. Super awesome. Although after the loop, I only got 12.5 and should I go pound more flat effort?

01:43:00.720 I'm also running out of time. And my response to him is the general rules to stick to plan. Even if you

01:43:06.040 didn't get all miles as scheduled. In other words, don't try to make it up. And he's the guy

01:43:10.400 training for his first marathon. He's up in San Francisco, a good friend of mine. So I've learned

01:43:15.500 through mistakes. If I push too hard, if I try to make up miles, for example, I'll blow up. How do

01:43:20.680 you codify that? I mean, a lot of it's just, it's just you have voracious appetite for information and

01:43:25.580 research. The literature is there. The information is there. It may not be in context, right? So I've

01:43:32.200 learned a lot about running and fat adaptation, et cetera, through mountaineering and cycling

01:43:37.260 through other. So there's, it's there. It just needs to be translated. I mean, you and I are huge

01:43:41.840 fans of Richard Feynman. And if you look at what Feynman did with the whole Challenger investigation,

01:43:47.200 bringing together a cross-functional team of engineers and physicists, et cetera, in terms of

01:43:52.900 problem solving and scientific reasoning, the best approach is a cross-functional world-class

01:43:59.080 expert team. Cause you've think outside the box and you bring other ideas from other domains.

01:44:04.640 So I think codifying, it comes down to don't limit yourself to just thinking about a marathon or

01:44:09.480 whatever. Think, you know, look at yourself and be objective and figure out what it's going to take

01:44:14.160 to achieve whatever you define as success. If you're a VP of ops of whatever company and you want a

01:44:20.640 marathon, you want a 5k look around you, the information's there, the resources are there.

01:44:25.620 I mean, it's so much, that's the thing, right? We've talked about this. When I used to ride out

01:44:30.720 East in the desert, I would print out maps scanned from a Atlas, and then I put them in a Ziploc bag

01:44:38.100 to keep them dry from my sweat. And I would literally, that was my navigation. I would chart

01:44:42.760 out my 300 miles, my 400 miles. It's so easy now to get information and perhaps too easy. Cause when you

01:44:49.660 have to work for it, sometimes I think it's, you're more vested. So in terms of translating some sort

01:44:56.320 of general rules, don't be afraid to ask questions. My friends ask me, I coach a lot of people informally

01:45:01.680 today and it's generally, you don't overthink it. I mean, while I definitely think there's something

01:45:06.860 to be said for looking at the data and analyzing, et cetera, unless you're looking to break a world

01:45:12.260 record, don't be too hard on yourself and just get out there and have fun. I mean, that's,

01:45:16.380 that's sustainable. You are very data light these days. You know, we were out riding this morning

01:45:21.560 and lamenting the heat and how slowly we were riding relative to what we would like to. And

01:45:27.020 I was like, God, these power meters, they never lie to you. You know, just once I want this thing

01:45:32.080 to lie to me and tell me I'm better than I am today. And you're like, dude, I don't have a power

01:45:36.340 meter. I don't have a heart rate monitor. I'm just out here having fun. And I was like, you know,

01:45:40.440 why the hell do I have a power meter? I don't compete anymore. I don't do this. Take it off.

01:45:44.160 Yeah. Why do I have this data? It's like this. Yeah. Artifacts of the past. I don't even have

01:45:51.100 a speedometer on my bike. I mean, I have my phone in my pocket for emergencies, but it's not even

01:45:56.320 tracking me. Yeah. Next we're going to ride Saturday. So you and I ride once a week. This

01:46:01.040 has been kind of an amazing tradition. You've got me back on the bike. I took a three year hiatus and

01:46:06.380 I've really enjoyed our Sunday morning rides. We only ride 40 K. We ride 40 K and you listen to me

01:46:12.960 rant the entire time. I love every, but the only reason is if I were ranting, I couldn't keep up

01:46:17.520 with you. So it's like, I have to have to let you do the talking so that, you know, it can normalize

01:46:23.000 us a little bit so I can keep up. No, but it's, it's awesome. The last thing I'll say is, and this

01:46:28.620 is going to be disappointing to the listeners because I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag, but you

01:46:33.280 are the guy who has introduced me to the greatest beer in the history of beer. And this was probably

01:46:39.820 four years ago. I came over to your place one day and you gave me one of these things. And I was like,

01:46:44.220 yeah, yeah, I don't really like beer. Then you're like, yeah, just try this. I mean, that was the

01:46:48.460 moment the rat hit the lever and got the cocaine. I was like, this is from another planet. This, this

01:46:54.560 isn't beer. This is all that shit. I thought I hated, you know, Coors Light and Budweiser and every IPA

01:47:01.160 on the planet, like that. I just find disgusting. This was a different animal. And to this day,

01:47:08.880 even though I don't drink much, I might have one bottle a month, including right now. I just

01:47:12.660 finished one as we were sitting here talking. It's hard to put in words how good this stuff is.

01:47:17.520 And I don't know if you know this, but I, you probably do know this. So once you introduced me

01:47:21.460 to said beer, I don't do anything in moderation. So I wanted to make sure I could get enough of it for us.

01:47:26.440 So I had one of my analysts start looking around the country to find it. Cause at the time you were

01:47:31.660 only getting it in Belgium, right? Yeah. I would, I was bringing this into the country as yeast

01:47:37.100 samples. I was ordering it online and the first shipment came as a box of yeast samples, which

01:47:43.660 is, I guess what they did. I, I just ordered it online. Right. And it was like 10 euro a bottle.

01:47:50.400 It was not cheap. Yeah. It's not cheap. And you've since, and I've traveled to Belgium to experience

01:47:55.640 this firsthand. It's a great beer. And so I had a Nick Stenson who was at the time and still,

01:48:02.420 and still actually is working for me. And I was like, and Nick can figure out anything. Like he's

01:48:05.980 just like a savant of figuring stuff out. And I was like, Nick, can you figure out if we can get this

01:48:11.200 beer in the United States? Two days later, he calls me, he goes, all right, 13 bottles up at this

01:48:16.660 liquor store in Alameda, California, 42 bottles in this place in New Jersey. Boom. He rattles off the

01:48:22.140 whole country. And he's like, so how many do you want? And I was like, I'm not sure I understand

01:48:26.380 the question. He's like, well, which of these ones do you want? And I was like, all of them,

01:48:31.160 every single one, 260 bottles of this stuff arrive. And you know, that lasted us for a couple of years.

01:48:38.240 It did. It did. And I've been fortunate. I have stockpiled.

01:48:42.000 Cause the last shipment I got for you was about what? Six months ago we got you. It was about six

01:48:48.260 months ago. So the cellar is full of this beer and every other beer this brewer makes. And

01:48:56.580 they're all fantastic. Are there any, can we give the listener a bone? I can't, I don't want to name

01:49:02.100 this beer because honest, I mean, I'm not to sound like a dick, but I just, I'm not going to be happy

01:49:06.360 if we can't get this beer anymore. And I'm worried that it's such a limited beer that if I say what it is,

01:49:10.720 I'm never going to get to drink it again. So I'm just going to have to be a selfish jerk.

01:49:14.580 Can we name the brewery and not screw ourselves or will people figure it out?

01:49:18.620 No, we can't name it. What I love about the brewer, the brewery in Belgium, they're truly

01:49:25.640 authentic. They just don't give a shit, right? So they don't care about distribution. They're low

01:49:30.220 volume. They do all these crazy runs. They experiment. They try different things. They have some

01:49:35.920 of their, they do like 300 bottle runs. They just, they tinker and it's fantastic. I mean,

01:49:41.920 it's all so bad. Everything share anything. Some of it's, some of it's not all of it's great.

01:49:46.940 They have a couple of sours that I just don't care for. I'm not a fan of those, but yeah,

01:49:50.900 from strong Belgian nails, you know, quads and everyone I've introduced it to has just been

01:49:57.340 blown away. You don't have to be a beer drinker. You know, you don't have to be a guy who even likes

01:50:01.520 alcohol. Like there's just something about this. That's so good. So, so here's the bone. I think

01:50:05.200 we can throw people in one of our droughts a couple of years ago when we were between like

01:50:10.600 being able to find more of this stuff, you introduced me to a beer that I think we can

01:50:15.060 share with the general population that I honestly is 80% as good. It's close. It's not special,

01:50:21.380 but it's fantastic. It's a great mass production beer. I agree with you.

01:50:25.480 And that would be Judgment Day. Judgment Day. Lost Abbey is a San Marcos, California brewery.

01:50:32.080 Judgment Day is up there. So it's a strong Belgian quad as they call it. There are a few others,

01:50:38.920 Chimay, Grand Reserve and others, but the Judgment Day is, it's a local brewery.

01:50:43.640 It's the closest thing I've ever tried to this beer.

01:50:45.880 There are a few and I've come at it from a few different directions to try to find something

01:50:49.920 similar to our favorite Judgment Days. And Judgment, there's a few other, you know, cask

01:50:55.440 aged Judgment Day equivalents that the Lost Abbey put out that are fantastic, but, you know,

01:51:03.740 a little too smoky or a little too oaky or et cetera.

01:51:06.840 The Judgment Day is just the right taste.

01:51:08.240 Judgment Day, it is. It's dense. It's a dense, strong, 10 plus percent alcohol. All you need is one.

01:51:14.820 Yep. You know, and I find it to be the best beer when there are a lot of people over

01:51:19.640 because, A, I'm not going to drink any other beer. It's so gross. And B, I'm not sharing our

01:51:25.280 special one because that's just, like, that's...

01:51:28.240 I've made the mistake. It's funny. I shared this beer with one other friend and he's not a beer

01:51:34.660 drinker either. And he said, no, no, no, I drink wine. And I gave him this beer and he had two.

01:51:42.660 And you're thinking, oh my God, that's two of my beers gone.

01:51:45.700 Well...

01:51:46.300 And now he's going to go and get more.

01:51:47.560 Yeah. I didn't go... I have stuff dating back to the early 2000s. So I actually have a stockpile of

01:51:53.800 aged, really good stuff. So I...

01:51:56.740 I'm completely out, by the way. I have none.

01:51:59.320 I gave you my last batch because I was so grateful for all the help you'd given me.

01:52:03.620 Yeah. You can have one.

01:52:05.560 I got my one for the month today.

01:52:08.680 So they went and bought up everything they could find.

01:52:12.040 And I've learned if I want to share it, I take off the label.

01:52:15.120 Take off the label. Put it into a glass.

01:52:16.900 Yeah. It's other... The world's... It's supposed to be the world's best beer in... I forget the name

01:52:21.060 of it in Belgium. It's easier to get than this now.

01:52:24.740 All right. So for the listener... Oh, and then here's another little point. I was at BevMo this

01:52:29.200 week. Totally opportunistic. I pulled in. I was looking for like a credit union that I needed

01:52:34.300 to go open an account in, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, there's a BevMo here. I'm going to go

01:52:37.360 get some more Lost Abbey because that's where I used to get the Judgment Day. And I go in and

01:52:40.660 they don't have it. And they're like, yeah, we're not carrying it anymore. It's not profitable

01:52:43.740 enough. I'm like, what the hell is wrong with you people? Who cares how profitable it is? It's the

01:52:48.280 greatest freaking mass produced beer in the history of civilization. So now I'm sweating it. Are we

01:52:53.220 going to be able to struggle to get Judgment Day?

01:52:55.140 Okay. So what we need to do is go up to the brewery. That's what we need to do. And we'll

01:52:59.800 just fix that. Maybe if enough people are listening to this and they can re-peak the demand,

01:53:04.840 we're not going to... BevMo might start stocking it again. And it's relatively cheap. I mean,

01:53:08.500 it's... It's 10 bucks for... It's 10 bucks for a Magnum, basically.

01:53:11.380 Yeah. Pine or whatever that size is. It's cheap. It's cheap. Well, Mike, we've talked about what I

01:53:18.800 consider some of the most ridiculous feats of human endurance, along with probably the most

01:53:24.320 ridiculous feat of beer engineering in the same discussion. If people want to learn more about

01:53:29.180 you, unfortunately, you are a hard guy to learn about. A Google search of your name yields almost

01:53:34.100 nothing. Is there anything you want people to know about you, read about... We're going to figure out

01:53:38.140 a way to find that Vogue article, which I think is great. We'll link to a page that you have that

01:53:43.400 kind of lists out some of these things that you've done. Is there anything else people can do to learn

01:53:48.080 about you? No, just go to Peter's website. Very well. No, I used to have a race website years ago.

01:53:53.600 So we've tweaked that to just be a landing page. But I, at this point, go to Peter's website.

01:54:00.420 Well, maybe one day when you sell Indigenous, your current company, after you take a little

01:54:05.620 hiatus and really relax, maybe you'll reconsider this idea of forming a coaching company. Because

01:54:11.540 I think in many ways, you actually have the perfect skillset, right? Which is you're a software

01:54:15.920 engineer who knows how to build huge products that can be scaled. And more importantly, you bring an

01:54:21.200 expertise to this field that nobody has. And I don't know, I get the sense that there are people

01:54:26.260 out there who would really value being able to access your brain to help them accomplish their

01:54:30.900 goals. So maybe we'll plant that seed here today. Maybe. All right, man. Thank you very much. And I

01:54:37.060 wish you the best on the remainder of this smoking hot day in San Diego. It's been a blast. Thank you.

01:54:41.420 You can find all of this information and more at peteratiamd.com forward slash podcast. There

01:54:49.220 you'll find the show notes, readings and links related to this episode. You can also find my

01:54:54.080 blog and the Nerd Safari at peteratiamd.com. What's a Nerd Safari, you ask? Just click on the

01:54:59.920 link at the top of the site to learn more. Maybe the simplest thing to do is to sign up for my

01:55:03.920 subjectively non-lame once a week email where I'll update you on what I've been up to,

01:55:08.100 the most interesting papers I've read, and all things related to longevity, science, performance,

01:55:13.260 sleep, et cetera. On social, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, all with the ID

01:55:18.600 peteratiamd. But usually Twitter is the best way to reach me to share your questions and comments.

01:55:23.840 Now for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does

01:55:28.360 not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services,

01:55:33.220 including the giving of medical advice. And note, no doctor-patient relationship is formed.

01:55:38.100 The use of this information and the materials linked to the podcast is at the user's own risk.

01:55:43.720 The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice,

01:55:48.220 diagnoses, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical

01:55:53.640 condition they have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such

01:55:58.200 conditions. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest very seriously. For all of

01:56:04.220 my disclosures, the companies I invest in and or advise, please visit peteratiamd.com forward slash about.

The Peter Attia Drive - September 24, 2018

#17 - Mike Trevino： life-lessons from ultra-endurance, mindset, hard work, and removing limitations

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