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

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

In this episode, ultra-endurance athlete and entrepreneur, Mike Trevino, discusses the lessons he’s learned from his remarkable athletic feats, and the training required to reach them. Not only is Mike’s advice practical for those looking to take their endurance training to the next level, but his lessons and insight are extraordinarily applicable to living everyday life. We discuss: Mike’s background, his crazy birthday tradition, and his transition from power to endurance [6:30]; Mike’s breakthrough year: setting a course record, and completing the Badwater 135 [16:00]; Race Across America (RAAM), perseverance, and extreme sleep deprivation [25:30]; Mindset, nutrition, fasting, and other advice from Mike for those looking to take the next step in their training [49:00]; What getting a parasite taught Mike about fasting [59:45]; The risks involved with cycling [1:03:00]; Mike setting the trans-Iowa (RAGBRAI) record [1:10:15]; PEDs, stimulants, and their effect on performance [1:15:00]; What motivates Mike (and others) to do this extreme stuff? What led him to eventually pull back? [1:22:00]; Life-lessons learned from training, and how to impart them to his kids, and others [1:35:30]; The greatest beer in the world remains a mystery [1:46:15]; and More. Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia. The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peteratia-md.com.

Welcome to this episode of The Peter Tia Drive. This was a really fun one for me to do. I mean, it was done relatively without much preparation or prompting. So in this episode, I interviewed one of my really, really close friends, Mike Trevino. Mike and I have been friends from the moment we met, which was about five years ago. And, you know, they're just the number of things about Mike that are really interesting. And you'll learn a lot of them in this episode. Starting with the fact that Mike is arguably the most accomplished amateur endurance athlete.

Certainly that I've ever known, but you have a hard time making a case for any other amateur endurance athlete, period. His accomplishments are beyond legendary. And we go through many of them here, though not all of them. And that's sort of why I wanted to have this discussion with them. I was like, Mike and I see each other every week. We somehow figure out a way to time our travel such that there's one day a week, at least

three weeks out of the month when we're not traveling and we can go out and do a ride. And it's a relatively short ride. We ride about 40 kilometers, but it's just kind of this amazing time when we get to catch up on life and all of the things that we think about together. And so Mike shares a lot of that stuff today. He gets into, again, I think you could listen to this and easily come away overwhelmed in thinking, wow, there's nothing about that guy's experience that I can relate to because he's basically setting world records and running and cycling.

He's doing these things like the race across America that I think it's almost impossible for a normal person to fathom what that means. It's impossible for me to fathom what that means and I have some experience in these sort of all-tradistance world. But I think he also is able to make the case that the lessons that he learns in doing these things are applicable

to life and they're applicable to specifically things that you might want to do for your own endurance. You know, if you're currently able to run a 5K and wondering what does it take to get to the 10K or the half marathon or you're running the half marathon and you want to run the marathon, what does it take? Well, in many ways, it's sort of taking a page out of Mike's playbook. Mike's a really special guy to me. Mike and his wife, Nada, who are a very close friends, have been there for me during arguably one of the most

difficult periods of my life. And they were the first people to basically show up when I needed to be picked up. And so I'm forever grateful to Mike and his family. And I just find that our weekly bike rides on Sunday mornings, which are usually when we do them are among kind of the most cherished things that I do outdoors anymore. So much of what I do is now alone. I lift weights alone. I ride my Peloton or my Wahoo kicker alone and this is kind of the one time a week when I get to go and be with somebody else for You know our an hour or 75, half an hour and a half, and I value it greatly. One anecdote that I'll tell before we jump into this episode,

just to put in perspective for anybody who is themselves a cyclist or a reasonably serious athlete, just to put in context, mics, accomplishments, and just his ability. So, about four years ago, when I was, you know, training very hard as a time trialist, and at this point Mike was, he was running but he was kind of done with his all-traditions career and had not been on a bike

in probably a year. And he was like, I'm going to come out and join you one day for one of your workouts. I said, that would be great. And I couldn't expect that he could even come close to keeping up with me because at the end of the day, just conditioning seems to matter and how much preparedness you have matters. And so we went out to Fiesta Island where we train, and there's a loop that you do that's part of the training. So we did this workout together, and it was a very tough workout.

Lots of sort of three minute, four minute, all-out intervals. And at the end of the workout, we decided to do two hot laps. So that's two laps of the big loop of Fiesta Island. That would be about almost 14 kilometers for those two laps. And I was fit. Like I was training for races.

And I guess, as I said, 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 believe it when I crossed the line for the second lap. I mean, I expected Mike to be three or four minutes behind and I look back and he's all of 15 seconds behind me. And I was like, wow, 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 take my game to the next level. And he's pretty much right where I am

just out of the gate. And that was kind of an interesting wake up of like there are guys that are just at a different level. And these guys train and they're forget about it. They're in another world. So I hope you enjoy this episode. It's really geared towards people who have some sort of interest in physical performance. But I really people who have some sort of interest in physical performance, but I really think there are enough sort of life lessons placed within here that I think anybody, even someone who has no desire to run a marathon or do anything crazy like that, is still going to find something in it. And finally, at the very end, so if you just don't want to hear anything else and just want

to skip to the very end, we do disclose what we consider the second best beer of all time. Again, we do not disclose the best beer because I've got my reasons for that. But I'm at the very least, those of you that are interested in great beer will get a little tip at the end. So anyway, I hope you enjoy. I'm super excited to sit down and talk about all this stuff

with you. We've known each other for such a long time now, but you're such a mild man or understated guy that if someone Googled your name, they wouldn't realize a fraction of what you've accomplished. And I think there are a lot of people who are going to listen to this, who are going to be, I think we'll learn a lot from this

and be able to apply it to what they're doing. I doubt many people who listen to this are ever going to want to go and do RAM or try to set 24 hour world records in cycling and running. But I think the principles that you've learned over the years are applicable to someone who's going on to try to run their first 10K or whatever. But let's start with a funny story, which is what you do for your birthday this year. I ran.

So how old did you turn? 43 in December. And what is your stick on your birthday? Starting at 40, the new goal became run my miles and years, years and miles. So this year was 43 miles. So I remember when you called me later that day after you did your 43 mile run, which in and of itself was crazy. But the part that I found most impressive was your nutritional strategy.

Yeah, this year was a new experiment. I thought it was in good shape and decided to try the Ron No Calories. So self-supported, but no calories just to see if I could pull it off. So I left with a couple crystal light packets for flavor on hydration and 20 bucks to buy a worst case by a banana, like a 7, 11 or something like that. And I pulled it off. Yeah, so you had had dinner the night before. Yeah, I started fasting at five the night before

had a beer. Just by the way, I just wanna state for the record, the beer that we drink, we never mentioned, we never ever ever. Okay, just yet, so don't let that ever slip out in case that was the beer you had. So you had a beer at 5 p.m. Had a beer at 5 and went to bed 9 or 10, up at 4 and out the door by 5.

No breakfast. No breakfast. And that was it. Started running. And you ran about 8 minute miles for 43 miles. Yeah, just over 8 with some hills, went south. I went left North County, San Diego, went to the coast, ran up Torrey Pines, gorgeous morning,

and just kept going down the coast. La Jolla and Pacific Beach and down the point Loma and then turned around and stopped at Pacific Beach at the pier where I met my family at Noonish, and we had brunch. And you said you weren't even really hungry when you were done. I wasn't. I wasn't. I expected it. You know, we were ready to have a big brunch and bloody marries and celebrate, you know, my wife brought the kids and balloons

and we ate at our favorite restaurant. And not it was great. it was a wonderful day. Yeah, so in the parlance, that's what we call fat adaptation. Because if you do the math, it'd be extent to which you're expending energy, you're probably expending somewhere in the neighborhood of six to 700 kilojoules per hour. And if you were trying to get access to that

just from glycogen, I mean, you'd be done in probably two, three hours of the month. Two or three at most. And I was fairly aggressive pace, right? So, you know, there's a series of energy stores that you tap into depending on your output and duration, you know, that well. So, now I try to keep an even pace and stay hydrated. I didn't really stop.

It was actually nice because in prior runs, you have to stop at a 7-11 and you wait in line or stop at a gas station and get something to drink and buy a banana or granola bar or something and then you get tight. So I was able to just keep moving. How did you drink? How did you stop getting it hard? I had 20 ounce handhelds and fortunately I was able to refill. There's a little drinking fountain at Toy Pine State Beach and there's one in low-ay shores.

I didn't know where all the stops are. So I just planned it in a little 30 second to versions. By the end I was just doing straight water, which felt tasted better. I turned around Point Lama OB and then went back up North and to one last water, which felt tasted better. It turned around Point Lama OB and then went back up north, and to one last water, stop in South Mission Beach, and ended in Pacific Beach. So I remember one of the first times we hung out, we were introduced by a mutual friend. This is probably in 2013, and this is back when I was cycling pretty seriously. You were running pretty seriously, but you weren't cycling much at the time. But I was telling you about this

shake that I make, this generation you can, I call it the Peter Kaufman where I take the generation you can and I mix it with heavy cream and almond milk. And it's like the best meal you can have in a shake, right? And I was like, Hey, you know what? Why don't you come over after your workout on Sunday and I'll fire this up for you. And you said, sure, I'll be there. And you came over, but the part that blew my mind is you ran over and it was a 50 mile run. You know, even though we only lived, like you lived in La Jolla at the time.

So we only lived maybe 12 miles away from each other, but you had turned it into a 50 mile run to end at my place. I forgot about that. Yeah, of course, because for you, that's nothing. Well, no, it was actually one of my longer runs training for, so that was 13 and that Sunday, or Saturday or Sunday, was one of my long runs training for, well, it was supposed to be a 300 mile run down the coast.

And so I think I peaked around 50 or 60 in terms of, and I was doing 130 mile weeks getting ready for that. 170 you hit one week, didn't you? Yeah. No, the week of the run I hit 3, 15, 3, 13, 3, 15. And it ended up being by 275 miles, the run itself, which was Gavio de State Beach to San Diego, to raise money for the Navy SEAL Foundation. So that 50 mileer was training for that, which was five, six weeks after your shake. I

remember your wife and daughter saw me standing in the driveway and she kind of looked at me out of the corner, her eye and just ran in the house. The pool of sweat. It was incredible. Yeah, a lot of sweat. But yeah, you came in and fired up the shakes, so I'm really glad to have microscopically contributed to that recovery that there. Yeah, it was all about that shake. So where'd you grow up?

Grip in Iowa. And were you like a cross country star in high school or so? No, no, I was actually a football player, wrestler, in Iowa. I started riding my bike at four and was out the door independently by six and then, you know, doing 50 and a hundred mile rides. By the time I was 10 or 12, did Ray Brighrye, which is a bike ride across Iowa. First one was in 87 when I was 12. I was 400 miles across the state. So I mean, I always liked the endurance stuff, but most of my time was spent. My dream was to play across the state. So I mean, I always liked the endurance stuff, but most of my time was spent.

My dream was to play Notre Dame football. That was my dream. You're dad went to Notre Dame, right? My dad went to Notre Dame. My grandfather did. My mom went to St. Mary's, which is the sister college there. So my dream was to, you know, Notre Dame football. So that was big too, you know,

I weighed about 200 pounds in high school and wrestled heavy weights. I didn't want to lose weight. It's offensive lineman, offensive tackle in high school, and then went and played football in college inside linebackering college. And I remember the first time you told me that, I was like, how were you a football player? Like you just, you don't have an ounce of extra weight on you at this point. And so what was that metamorphosis like to transition from being kind of a power athlete

to an ultra endurance athlete? It wasn't planned. You know, it was college became about college, and I played a year and a half of football, and I wanted to finish college early. I just didn't want to go the whole four years. So I just loaded up on classes and realized I was there to study and work, and not necessarily play football. So I quit football, played rugby, and my first job at a college was actually a startup in Europe. And the interesting byproduct of that whole transition was I was learning German, I was living in Heidelberg, Germany, and I was running sales and marketing for this tiny little startup there.

And the family teaching me German, one of the daughters was dating a rugby player that played for the local semi pro rugby club. And when he found out I had played rugby, he said, come practice with us. And their practices at the time were runs in the mountains, in Bavarian, southern Germany. So I just fell in love with the trail running. So it just, and I ended up playing rugby with that team, which was fantastic, it was a blast. But I also ended up losing weight.

And that's just sort of fed on itself. So by the time I got back to New York, you had lost 15 pounds and just kept training, kept running, didn't lift as as much and it just fell off. I mean, I was at my peak 218. I'm 170 now. When I was racing, I was 155, 160. So I lost 560 ish pounds over the course of 510 years. But the amazing thing because I've seen so many pictures of you back, like the picture, there's a great picture of you that hopefully will figure out a way to sort of link do it in the show notes. But at the beginning of the 2000, I think 2004 RAM maybe, and it's like 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 beast. Yeah, it was never about looks, but it's just, you know, you become purpose built. We've talked about this, you know, being an engineer, I've always just looked at my bodies just to utility to achieve an outcome. So how do you engineer the outcome that you want? I made a transition from running to cycling. And hindsight, it was a fairly short transition. I was riding a lot cross-training

when I was competing in ultra-as-running, 2001, three, but I knew I wanted to do race cross America. And so I was always, I mean, I was still riding 150 miles a week when I was running 100 miles a week. So I was still riding quite a bit, but then as soon as I stopped running and started riding, my body just changed. I'm a massage therapist who's still my massage therapist today couldn't believe the transformation. As your body just changed overnight,

but that's all I was doing. All I was doing was training. You have that sort of unique ability where you can go out and run a sub three hour marathon, which that's a very fast marathon, but at the same time, you're setting 24 hour world records on a track and running. I mean, you ran almost 150 miles in 24 hours, right?

Yeah, yeah. I didn't set any world records on the track running. I mean, you ran almost 150 miles in 24 hours, right? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't send any world records on the track running. I did set some course records on a track 24 run in a one, which was the San Diego one day. And I swear I would never run on a track. Again, it was probably the hardest ultra single day ultra I ever did because it's just so monotonous. You run a quarter mile track. A quarter mile track, Kriomaki College, and you know, South San Diego running 24 hours, it's going, you know,

you looked forward to every four hours or every six hours, they'd change direction, they blow whistle and you cross the chip tracking was and then you'd change direction and you'd run the other direction for four hours. That's what you look forward to. And at the time, this is a one. I mean, I was running with the handheld Sony Walkman and I had tapes.

Oh my god. I mean, you know, you know, you'll be like, it's back then that the CDs were still skipping a little. Yeah, CDs didn't work. And and shortly after that, you know, MP3s, you started playing with many discs and other things. But so that and hindsight, you know, I'm running with a water bottle on one hand in a Sony Walkman in the other hand carrying it for 24 hours. And did you have like a big support staff for something like that? I did not have anyone there at that event. In fact, I had a cooler that I brought, you know, I backed my truck up to the, you

know, back of the track and through a cooler in the back, I left the hatch open and I just crude myself for that. I didn't want to bother anyone. I couldn't ask anyone to stay out there. This was sort of your opening thing. Like this, this was the event that kind of put you on the map of like, because again, you didn't, a lot of these ultra-distance guys have been sort of doing that stuff for a longer, but you just sort of showed up and was not like your first big win. That run was actually at the end of what had been my first sort of big year. So I, in 2000, I ran my first 50, you know, made the transition from marathons, and you know, the question was just, can I do a 50? And I did what we call the PCT 50,

the Pacific Crest Trail 50-Moller, Hot August. And I then did a 100-Moller called the Angeles Crest, 100, Starsson Wrightwood, and Zettaro's Bowl, Pasadena, about six weeks after that. And I was doing the 100 because my goal is to qualify for what was, and still is, the the Super Bowl of ultra is the Western States 100 I didn't get into the Western States. This was in 2000, but I submitted for the bad water So that was my goal so in 2000

Applied to get in the bad water. I did for 2001 the July 2001 running the bad water and so 2001 was I stacked a bunch of races I did a bunch of 50 miles actually the Boston marathon you know in there between 250s and so the track run was actually at the end of that season so I did I see you've been doing a bad water and then I actually on September 11th of 2001 I was scheduled to fly to Colorado to try to bag a bunch of 14ers, set a record of 14ers and had to postpone that a week. And did it a week or two after that.

And that was in September of 2001, and then I did the track run in November of 2001. That was the end of my year. So tell people what bad water is, because that out here means a lot, because anyone in Southern California knows what that is, but yeah, so bad water is a running race that is starch and deathfalley in California. So it's nice and cool. It's nice and cool. It's a cool 125 at the peak around four o'clock. You know, it's so hot.

If you run the white line, it's 10 degrees cooler. The surface gets really hot. So the air temperature is 125. The surface can be can 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? It's 135 miles.

And you start in Death Valley at 100 or so feet below sea level. I don't remember exactly. And it now finishes in Whitney Portals, which is 8500 feet. So it's a beautiful. Let me go through all these ecosystems. Starting at desert, the journey over to 395, you're rolling the lone pine, which is sort of a cool little mountain town in California, the base of the searas. And then you start getting on this portals road, Whitney Portals Road, which is about a half marathon, pure, you know, all climbing.

So you do 13 or so miles of climbing up to the Whitney's portal. It used to actually go all the way up to the top of Whitney for safety reasons they stopped doing that. And funny side note is I was doing a lot of climbing, a lot of mountaineering stuff in 2001. So my crew, I did have a crew for bad already, have to have one. So I had two crews.

I actually had a running crew and a climbing crew. And my climbing partner was waiting for me at the portals. I don't think I've ever talked about this with you. So I did the race, 10 am start. I finished, I forget my time. But I finished the next day, round noon or one, and my climbing partner was there, we were gonna go climbs, we were gonna, you know,

hike up to the base of Mount Whitney, and we were gonna climb, I think, the east face of Mount Whitney. And he had all the climbing gear ready to go, and I finished 135 miles, and I said, hey buddy, you don't want me on the other side of the lane, you don't want me on the other side of the lane. You don't want me on the other side of the lane. And so we ended up going down to Lombain and having pizza.

Yeah, they all, they all down the climb. I have a much smaller story than that, meaning like it's a fraction of that. But in 2007, I was, I wanted to swim across Lake Tahoe, was a training swim for a longer swim. I was doing later that summer. Trans Tahoe, you can do it 10 different ways to Sunday, but I wanted to do the longest possible crossing. I didn't do a good job picking a boat cap

and I left it till the last minute. I didn't know how to get someone really good. I just went to some local and said, hey, man, can you pilot me across this thing? It turned out he was clearly drunk. And we only know this because I left accidentally, I left my GPS device on in the boat the whole time we were on the boat. But he didn't realize that the purpose of the guy in the boat is to set the direction. The swimmer sets the speed, the boat sets the direction. He followed me. So we asked our way across Lake Tahoe,

and I mean, it was a total shit show. I ended up like running out of food because of course I only budgeted this to be so many hours and it ended up being like two and a half hours longer. It turned out to be probably the hardest for my life mentally, but I remember that day, I was like, oh, you know, we started at night. So I'm like, I'll be done by 2 p.m.

I told my brother I was like, dude, have the bikes down started at night. So I'm like, I'll be done by 2 p.m. I told my brother, I was like, dude, have the bikes down at Lake Tahoe as soon as I get off. We're gonna ride around the lake, which is like a 80 mile ride or something. And I swear when I finished that swim, I could barely walk to the car. Just, you know, the sun beating down on you, like the mental fatigue.

He goes, like, yeah, I don't know how I thought that I was going to ride around this lake at this point. That's a great, I mean, the training, the training for these things is what prepares you. And not just the miles, not just the time on your feet, but it's stuff like that that mentally is demoralizing, right? It completely humbles you. And I think if I look back on the stories, you know, very few stories come from races. A lot of my stories come from the training. And we all have great story. I mean, I've gotten stuck in the desert.

Sandstorms learn to bring goggles with me to ride my bike and goggles to deal with sandstorms. I had my beam. I used to ride a soft ride and my beam del the laminated, was so hot in the desert. So the carbon sat in this, this carbon beam sat in a aluminum sleeve and it was so hot, it delaminated. So essentially what happened is, is the my seat lowered about six inches. And so I was on my way out east to the salt and sea and I think somewhere around Westmoreland and Brawley I found a machine shop and I went to the guys and none of them spoke English and I said do you guys you have any screws some cheap metal screws and so they had bunch of power tools and they three of us they pulled up on the sea got it to a

relatively close spot where I needed to be and we started drilling sheet metal screws through the aluminum and carbon, because I was 200 miles from San Diego, 150 miles from San Diego. And it just wouldn't occur to you to call a friend and come pick you up. Well, no, I mean, yeah, you're on your own as part of the journey. And this is, I had a flip phone that I turned off because you had no reception out there. So I don't think I probably even could have called a friend at the time. The stories are endless on stuff like that. Another Whitney story, we tried to rock climb Whitney in May and it was still all snow and ice and what should have been a six or eight hour climb turned into a 22 hour climb.

No food, no water, and brutal. Same deal. We had planned to meet some people afterward, but those are the most memorable stories. It provided you get out alive. Provided you get out alive. That's the caveat. So you very briefly, a moment ago, alluded to RAM, which again, anybody in the cycling world, especially in the ultra world, will understand what RAM is. It would generally be regarded as the single most challenging cycling event. Again, I don't even know how you can pair it to the Tour de France. Obviously, the Tour de France or one of the grand tours, like the Giro or the Vuelta, those are remarkable feats that only the best professionals in the world are going to do.

Whereas RAM, you know, it's an amateur event, although some pros have done it, but I don't even remember when I learned about RAM. Like like it was always something I knew about and couldn't fathom that people could do it. So you obviously decided to do it, but tell us what RAM actually is. RAM is the race across America. It's a bike race across America. It started in the, I think it's the early 80s. And my first exposure to RAM was actually when I was a kid, there was a guy

named Bob Breedlove who was a surgeon in Des Moines, Iowa, who was doing this crazy race across America. So I learned about RAM. And I was already riding my bike and it's just holy cow. These guys can go 3,000 miles across the country, nonstop. So it's the same length as the Tour de France, but it's the same length as the Toyota France, but it's not in the stages, unless you decide to make it in the stages, you just go nonstop. So the whistle blows and first person to these coast winds.

And to put that in perspective, the Toyota France, which is ridiculously grueling, is about 22 days. It's about 22 days. And the winner is gonna do RAM in how many days? Eight. And depending on the route in the year, it's over 100,000 feet of climbing.

And you're going through the desert of California, the hills of West Virginia, of course, to the Rockies, and Kansas, and the flats that are windy. And the year I did it, it was very windy, crazy rains. So, you know, the thing about ram is it's not just the person riding the bike, it's the logistics, it's the crew, you know, dealing with rules, crazy race rules. And so it's a really multifaceted, I mean, you have to really engineer the race to do well, right?

So of course, you have to prepare for it, but you know your bike equipment you have the vehicle equipment you have race food, racer food you have crew food and then you think about everything from batteries to we were rigging the car to get power extra power we had speakers on the vans and I mean it's just crazy logistics getting ready for something like that which is part of the fun as part of it's you know all the different variables you have to control for. I've seen world-class racers bail before they even hit Arizona, because they just their crew blows up.

My crew in 2004, when I did it, only one was a cyclist. It's kind of like building a company. Problem solving comes best from people that represent different functional areas, right? So I had massage therapists, I had a doc, I had a one cyclist, I had a software engineer, my sister, you know, I had a really mixed team. None of them except for one knew how to change a tire on a bike. And I figured we could teach him that. Yeah. And the crew dynamics is the biggest part of pulling that thing off. It's all about the crew. You know, when you're talking about eight, nine days,

that's unbelievable. I always felt the highest compliment that I ever felt or the greatest unsurprised I probably ever felt during my marathon swimming days was when I got asked to crew chief for one of my fellow swimmers. So when I was doing the swims, you know, I have to have a crew chief.

And that person basically is the one that is designated in charge. There is one and only one boss on that ship. And everybody does what they say, no matter what the fuck is going on. That's right. So you have to trust that person with your life. They're the ones that make the decision on when you have to change feeding, if things are going wrong.

They're the ones who pull you out of the water if they think you're failing. That's like the guy in the corner who can throw the white towel and when you're getting the crap beat out of you. So, because, you know, athletes when they're doing these ultra-distance things, they can become delirious and then you have to think about their safety. A number of occasions, I got to crew chief for friends of mine who are doing some of the most ridiculous swims I've ever seen like, for us Nelson is a friend of mine who, again, outside of the swimming community, nobody would know him, but he's the guy's

ridiculous. I mean, he's soloed around Catalina Island. That's a 50 mile swim. He's done a double crossing of Catalina in the winter, which is, I mean, just from another planet. And yeah, you realize, like, you know, the responsibility that's on you and you are responsible for making sure the other 10 people on the boat aren't screwing up their jobs. And you are 100% responsible for everything that swimmer is doing, counting their stroke right, all those things. And again, the longest I've ever had to crew is, you know, be a chief is maybe 36 to 48 hours.

I can't even imagine what a crew is going through for nine days, eight days. It's nine days. It's nine days of the most intense. And, you know, these are first world problems, right? This is an invented challenge, right? That we should keep that in perspective. So, but when you end the moment, when you're in the race, and there's other crew out there, and there's other racers out there, and especially as you get more and more sleep deprived, and vested in the outcome, it's as real as it gets. So that's exactly right. In fact, my crew chief, the first year was the only cyclist.

He had brought his brother, I think his brother was a math professor at MIT or Columbia, and they ended up getting into a fist fight in the parking lot of a grocery store in the Midwest. But I heard screaming out, I was down for a sleep, I heard screaming outside the RV, what's going on, by her and a Jerry or in a fight? What?

And it's come to blows. And they didn't speak for the rest of the, I mean, that was the, I mean, these are brothers. So that was one of many things that happened that year. But I broke my crew in the first 45 hours. I didn't, I didn't get off the bike for 28 hours. I didn't sleep for 45-ish hours. And when I was supposed to go down from my first plan, the goal was to

sleep two hours a day after the first night. So I ride through the first night and then sleep into the second. But it's a funny story. I came off the bike 44 hours, just outside of Mexican hat Utah, in second place. Tell folks where the race starts. The race started in 04, the race started in downtown San Diego. So, star of India, or start in San Diego, and you start head and east. Go through here and show them. It's not just that you're crossing the country, you're diagonally crossing the country. You're going from the bottom left corner of the United States to the top right corner, right? That's right.

It's an easy one. It finished that year in Atlantic City. And so we, I don't remember how many miles, but call it 800 miles into the event. I went down from my first sleep, and I'm naked, getting massaged, and my massage therapist is just trying to put me to sleep. And just as I'm falling asleep, I feel this rocking and the whole RV is rocking.

And I, like, for whatever reason, something fires and like, wait, that's the wind. And so I jump up, completely naked, run outside the RV and I'm standing on the highway. I'm like, which way is the wind blowing? Which way am I going? I didn't even know which direction I was going. And crew had just slept. Just everyone's asleep, and I was probably half hour after I had gone down.

I hadn't slept yet, and they realized, I wanted to, if that's a tail, when put me back on the bike, and it was. And it was. And so they put me back on the bike. So they got me all dressed and getting me dressed.

It was a process, because at that point, I was sunburned and pretty beat and sore and shaved. They got me dressed, got me dressed, you know, I was a process because at that point, I was sunburned and pretty beat and sore and shaved. Got me dressed, got me back on the bike and I started riding and I saw the guy in first place, I passed the guy in first place who was just coming out of his first lead slip for an hour. This was probably a big, so you're very rubick was had just slept. I passed him and I was there then in the lead wasn't by design, but then what happened is he and I

Then rode for four or five hours and pushed into Utah You guys gaped the field we gaped the field and what happened is that wind was a storm And so if I had stayed I would have gotten caught in the storm And so what happens we gap the storm There's one guy behind me named Wolfgang Faschen. It was a world class endurance athlete and seven summit sky, Austrian guy, greatest guy. He was behind me, but if he was behind me,

it'd blown up in the desert. Just a lot of the European guy struggle with the heat because they just can't train in the heat over there. So Yuri, Robick and I ended up pushing 10, 12 hours ahead of everybody else, and everybody else got caught up in the storm. So I ended up pushing 10, 12 hours ahead of everybody else, and everybody else got caught up in this storm. So I ended up being a really very good strategic move to get back on the bike. I ended up sleeping around the 48, 50 hour mark.

I did get my hour and a half. And at that point, we were ahead of everybody else, and everybody else was just playing catch up for the next six days. It's unbelievable. I mean, we'll come back to talking about Robick who would go on to become probably the most storied writer in Ram history, correct? Yeah, he is. Five time champion?

Yeah, I think four or five time. Yeah, there's a book that talks about Ram, and I've read it, and I'm blank on the title now. We'll definitely link to it in the show notes. Do you remember the book I'm talking about? I don't. Well, you're in it, but barely, because I remember talking about it with you a few years ago,

and I was like, Mike, this is the year you were second in RAM, and you're like, yeah, I didn't want to talk to the reporter. But I, anyway, we'll figure out what the name of the book. It's a great book, because, you know, if anybody's listening to this and thinks, what the hell, I want to understand a little bit more about this. You go into it. And the book, because, I mean, Robic must have been able to speak with the author, you know, you just get a great picture of this crazy dude. What he's Serbian, right? He's Slovenian. Slovenian, okay. Yeah, so he was riding for the Slovenian army, he was a soldier, and his full-time job was to be an endurance athlete, and he was just a beast, strong, you know,

just in his mental patience was just phenomenal. Although that year if I recall First of all, you're a rookie. So a rookie is not supposed to be I was not supposed you were not supposed to be riding Challenging him. Yeah, in fact that year was the race directors couldn't figure me. I was a runner Who is this guy? Then I just didn't know any bad was young. I didn't know any better I just hammered and just I but I was young. I didn't know any better. I just hammered. And just all along, it was part of my plan. I was actually off my pace. I'm all about looking at my expected pace over 55 time stations and altitude gain and loss and planning it all out.

I was off my projected pace. So I was a little bit disappointed with where I was. But that's eight days of 3,000 miles. So things get out of whack pretty quickly. So you know, it's all about just being an adaptation, right, in real time. Now was this the year or was it the following year when Robick's team basically accused you guys of cheating?

That was that year. So that year, like Robick thought he was gonna win it. He had been preparing. He should have won by a day. Yeah, he expected to. And so his crew, all, you know, armed forces guys, about halfway through the country when I was still in it. And they, for whatever reason, they just, I just wasn't sleeping.

For that year, I just didn't, I could not sleep. I, you know, over the eight and a half days slept 10 and a half hours. Oh my God. I just couldn't sleep. And, you know, we can talk later about the mental effects of not sleeping. And we sleep, I've found, is more important than food and hydration when it comes to thermal regulation and muscle glycogen restoration and synapse repair information. I mean, literally when I was clinically insane by the end of that race,

fully delusional by the end of that race. But I just kept hammering. And so the Robic team, what, who is this guy? What does he do? And he has to be cheating. And it's legal to spot people. So they sent a van back and they just attached him to my team. And apparently this is sort of race tactics. The Ram is famous for other racers playing mental games.

And the race director has kind of encouraged it. And that was all new to me. I mean, I'm kind of a pure clean, just going hammer and let the best man win. And they love that those antics, right? The mental games. The mental games. And so the accusations of cheating were chalked up as all

their just mental games, but it did become more than that for me because the racetrack, you know, first of all, I had the press, which is why I wouldn't talk to the press after that. I had the press asking me, what do you think about the accusations? My team hadn't told me yet. In Robux Crew, just accused me of cheating. So the officials would, you know, scrutinize me and they intend with, eventually they withdrew their accusations and, you know, it was all fun.

The damage had been done. I had one really, really bad night. I think it was in Kansas or a little bit past that. And it came after I, Robick told me flat out you're gonna win. And he said, you just don't need to sleep. You're gonna win. And I said, we've got 1,000 miles to go.

You know, good luck. So you and Robick would actually be riding together at some point? Is that even legal? You're allowed to ride together for 20 minutes, every 24 hour period. And so we rode together and his wife was pregnant at the time and in 04 when we were riding, we were talking about his, I think he knew it was going to be a boy.

So he's talking about his soon to be born kid and asked me where I was from. And so we talked a little bit. His English was okay. And actually had a great time. And then I told him to go ahead and he said, no, you go ahead. And so I ended up riding ahead and got ahead of him a bit. And he was hurting at that point. Because I think he was just like,

what, and I was, I did my best to look fresh and was smiling and joking. And acting like, this is just a little stroll in the park. So mental games, but shortly after that, his team accused me of cheating. And it all played out over a day or so. What's interesting is one of the race officials, I almost, I don't think we were talked about this,

but I quit, I quit the RAM. I think we were in Indian, we were outside of Indianapolis. And it all came to a head. And the race official, his name is Johnny Boswell. And Johnny came up to me and he said, we're so sorry about everything that's happened. I heard you were withdrawn from the race. Is there anything we can do to keep you in the race? And I said, this isn't why I came out here.

This is crazy. And mind you, I've, you know, just 2,000 miles into it. Yeah, with no sleep, you're not even able to think crazy. I just got off the bike. Robic at that point was four or five hours ahead of me. It was completely demoralized, right? And my team's having to answer questions about why they pulled me off the road

to sleep in the RV, just crazy stuff, right? All within race rules. And so I told John, it's, the only 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, because there were crew or press fans cruising up alongside me, trying to take pictures, trying to interview me. And I said, I want everyone to leave me alone. The only way I stay in this. And at that point, I'd felt like, you know, the race is lost. I'm not going gonna win this race. Grow Bix too far ahead.

So four or five hours with how many miles to go is in Surroundable? Eight, eight, around 800 I think. It was around 800 miles. I'd have to go back and look and believe it or not, I went for a run. I went, I would say I don't believe it, but you went for a run before we rode our bikes today.

I did. You just decided at five, third in the morning, you knew you, but you went for a run before we rode our bikes today. I did. You just decided at 5'30 in the morning, you knew you had to go for a run, just to get a little workout in before we got on our bikes. So I ask myself, what's the one thing that'll center me? And for me, Ronnie has always been my, call it meditation, but it's just, I get centered, right? So I asked my crew, I said,

do you get, find my running shoes and I, you know, what? And I went for a run and I found a park bench in a little town in the Midwest and I ran, I mean, on model or two and I just sat under a park bench and I checked myself and it was, you know, you could say I was sleepy, but I was of probably the clearest mental, I knew exactly why I was there and what I was doing and I asked myself, do I want to do this to my crew? They were demoralized. I was hurting and I ran back and I said, all right, I will do it under these conditions. I will get back in the race and do it under these conditions. And I did. And the official stayed with me kind of protected us the rest of the race.

And it was fantastic. They gave us space, but they just kept an eye on us, the rest of the race. And it was fantastic. They gave us space, but they just kept an eye on us, the rest of the race. And I've, you know, since I still exchanged Christmas cards with Johnny Boswell. And we'll always think of him as a friend because he saw what we were trying to do. And I think a lot of people like, what's this guy doing? And what's it once is, so what was the strategy that normally people took to RAM as far as how much time on the bike versus how much sleep time. What would be considered the sort of best practice? 22 hours on the bike, 2 to 4 hours to sleep. You know, so you want to sleep if you're at a minimum 18 to 20 hours over the course of a week.

So did anybody ever experiment with, I'm going to ride 18 hours and sleep a full six? A lot of guys have talked about time-trolling, right? So yeah, you ride 300, you hammer, and you go off, you ride for, call it 18 hours, and then you get off the bike and you sleep six. And I think there's something to be said for that. I mean, that's the ultimate, if you can do that and sustain it and still put the same performance in

on your six or seventh, 300 mileer than that may be their, you know, it's just math. If cumulative time elapsed is less than just hammering the whole time. It's tough though, I'll tell you, it's tough to get off the bike. It takes a lot of patience, especially early on the race,

when the other guys are, you're gonna see like Jesus, I'm gonna sleep for six hours when some dude's sleeping for two, like I'm gonna wake up You know given the difference in speed three hours behind a guy. That's right and there's a guy here in San Diego That his name's Pete Penn Sears and he held the transcontinental speed record for a long time You know it's 15.4 miles an hour for eight and a half days. That includes off the time off. Yeah. Yeah

That's ridiculous. So his on bike speed is 20 miles an hour. He's fine. And he didn't stop much. But he said there's really toothed, and I, and eventually experienced this, there's two things that will determine whether or not you can win RAM. One is, what is your RAM speed? And really, what is your speed? What speed can you maintain on the bike after you've depleted your muscle glycogen and

you're just cruising? Because that's ultimately going to determine how fast you can really go. We used to call that your all day speed in the water. This is where it will be on thresholds, we're just talking about something totally different. That's right. You're no longer trying to stay 5% of thresholds, you just you're done, right? That's that's one. And the other is what's your rem cycle. And he taught me this and his wife used to do it for him is she would watch him sleep and then watch when he would come on a ram and she would chart it. And they would do this before the ram because obviously it changes over time. And so right up before the ram, his wife

would watch him sleep, time it, and then she would wake him up. And the whole point being, don't wake yourself up in the middle of RAM because you're going to be sleepy and not be able to perform. So she'd look at his eyes until, because theoretically, you go from RAM, you, if it's late enough, you might go out to stage one, too, which is a perfect time to wake somebody up. So she would wait till his eyes stop moving. She would wait till his eyes stop moving, bring him out. He would feel rested, even though it was two hours. And he said, look, if your RAM is 90 minutes instead of 2.5 hours, you're going to win.

Wow. That is freaking incredible. Sleep engineering. Engineering, the sleep. And then we talked a lot about staying you know, staying liquid because it's, you know, you don't want to move blood you're got while you're riding because then obviously you're taking blood away from your legs. So stay liquid, try to let your body do his little work digesting, but you want nutrient dense calories, right? And nutrition, nutrition and hydration should be one of the same to the extent that you can tolerate

that. So yeah, you're engineering, you're sleep, you're engineering, you're intake, of course you're engineering, you're training, and race strategy, and then people engineer the shit out of their bikes too. I mean, people are doing all kinds of crazy things to get their bikes styled. Now, you got to know panceros pretty well

and you got to ride with him. You told me a story about him once and I couldn't believe it. Like, how old was he and how fit he still was? Yeah. In 04, I was introduced to him in 04 and went out and rode with a group of guys that still ride. And he invited me to ride with them. So I rode up there in North County, San Diego.

And I rode up, did six to 70 miles to meet them and we rode. And we were, rode up a hill that was a 26% grade, probably a hundred or so miles into our ride. I was about 140 or so for me. And we rode up the hill, we were leading this crew, and I looked over to them at the end of the hill, 26% grade in North County, I think it was up near Falbrook or Vista, where he was former nuclear engineer at Santa Nofray. And he said, what's your heart rate right now?

And I said, I think it's like 188. And I said, what's yours? And he said, it's 181. So he's 60. I don't know how old he was. He was mid 60s then. And his heart rate was like 180. And I said, what's the highest your heart rate has ever gotten?

And he said, I just hit the highest heart rate I've ever seen. So here he is in his mid 60s. And I asked him, I said, you say, I've never gone up this hill this fast. I've never seen that heart rate. So here's someone in their mid 60s. And if you do the math, right, 220, less your age and that's your that heart rate. So here's someone, and they're mid-60s, and if you do the math, right, 220, lesser age, and that's your max heart rate, that's, that's, so, you know, he should have been around,

let's call it 160. Maybe max heart rate for highly trained, adapted, some of my professional athletes, wheel class athlete, transcontinental speed record holder at the time, and here he is hitting 180, and he just did a little bit. I'm still reeling in the 26%. I mean, admittedly, I've never been able to climb

particularly well on a bike, but I don't actually think I could pedal a bike up 26% grade unless I had a mountain bike or something. Like if I took my road bike now, which probably, I can't even remember if I have a compact crank, I probably do. So I'm riding like a 34, 23. I don't think I could get up 26.

Like that hill when we're coming around like Hodges, as we're, you know, when you come to the light before you get to Del Dios, that's maybe 18%. Maybe, and it's a, and it's only like 16th of a mile. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's nothing. It's nothing. Yeah, in fact, he told me, most guys,

what they call paper boy, so they weave back and forth to get up that. So they'll paper boy. And then the role used to be, they would go, there's an avocado grove, it gets to the top of the hill. And when there were kids, or younger, they would go grab avocados and they would start, all you have to do is lay it on the road

and avocados would roll down and start bouncing down the hill and they'd try to nail guys on their bikes on avocado and sand. So if you're slow you're going to get beaten by avocados. So Pete came up to me right before the race and it's a good luck. That record needs to go and I wish you the best. He taught me so much. I mean, very early on. I haven't talked to him in a few years, but he taught me a lot. And just this whole notion of engineering,

the sleep, the nutrition, the training plan, the race strategy, of course, all the crew stuff, and that's, a lot has to come together. There's so much more I want to talk about on that front. And I want to come back to Robick because I don't want to forget this. A lot of people listening to this, they just can't relate to what you're talking about. Let's call this beta spade. I doubt there's anybody listening to this who's ever going to go out and ride RAM, let alone, you know, do any of the other crazy, ultra-endurance stuff. But I get, I am sure there are a lot of people here who are thinking, I really want to run

a marathon one day, or I really want to do an Iron Man. You know, I want to take that leap from Olympic distance to Iron Man. What can they learn from you to make that transition, which, you know, for many people running a marathon, is as crazy as doing a 24 hour run. And for many people doing an Iron Man, for them is as big a stretch as it was for you to do RAM. I think we all have the physical ability. We all natural born athletes, everyone.

Some people may have, I believe that, I firmly believe that. Now some people may have better genetics or better biomechanics, but look, I was heavy and a jock, football player, and I'm not the best endurance athlete in the world. I was able to engineer myself, kind of, my way to positive outcomes. And if I can do it, I think anybody can. People may have different goals. So I think the biggest thing is just assume that you have in you somewhere of the ability

to do great things. The other piece of it is change your mindset, right? Whatever your goal might be, whether it's run a half marathon instead of a 5K, if that's what you wanna push yourself, is there should be no sacred cows, right? We have these constructions on our mind about limits. And I'd say that's the biggest thing.

I've talked to people about this before. It's just change your perspective on what you think you can do. Just throw it out the window. It's the classic, you know, if someone gets electrocuted and they get thrown up across the room, it's not the electricity throwing them across the room. It's their body. They have the innate ability to do amazing things.

There's, most people haven't figured out how to tap into that. So that's my only piece of advice. Just check your assumptions at the door and just open your mind up a little bit. We talked about all these things you've done and what's missing from the story is you were working 60 hours a week as an engineer at Qualcomm during this period of time. in 60 hours a week as an engineer at Qualcomm during this period of time. Yeah, in the early 2000s, I was running a software company and we had test engineers and programmers, et cetera, working at Qualcomm and lots of other places.

That's right. So I actually, but it fit very nicely with my routine. So I would get up at three-ish, run, ride into work. It was just to be clear that's 3am. 3am, run, and run how far? What would be, give me a day in the life of training for? Day 12, 12 was sort of my staple. Run 12, jump on the, you know, no shower,

jump on the bike, ride in to work, shower, ass and seat by 630. And I was a programmer at the time. I mean, even though I had people, I loved the architect and build stuff, right? So, somewhere in there,, prepping for my run, I would make a smoothie with way protein ice-flatin, algalutamine, and glucosamine, and flaxseed oil

and all the stuff I needed to recover. So, I'd have that in the freezer, come back for my run, grab that, throw it in my pack, throw my computer in my pack, jump on the bike, and then I'll put my feet up. And so, from 6.30 to noon, I would sit on a smoothie that was super cold and eat over time. Those would be my, that was 2000 calorie shake, essentially, right? And so that was my routine, but it worked because that was my recovery time.

And occasionally I would go out and run, or when I was running for bad water, I learned that bad water was all about just becoming like a human water filter. Because you have to push so much fluid in that water, just because you sweat so much that I would go and do sauna time. So I would run over to a fitness facility that had a nice on and it's accusing. I just focused on raising my body temp. So I'd sit in a sauna, then I would go sit in the just cozy and I've just pound waters and I would go back and work for a few hours and jump on my bike. So you'd find yourself

to be hot and to basically process as much water as possible. Did you have to pay attention to your minerals and electrolytes? Because, you know, at that level, you can start getting into concern around hyponatremia and things like that. Exactly. Yeah. In fact, I learned to love salt. So I would actually find, it kind of became a salt geek. So I would find different salts with trace minerals and elements. I fell in love with the Celtic sea salt that I found. And it just felt like electricity. You put it in your mouth. And I would actually just do teaspoons of that.

So I would do grams of salt. And of course other things magnesium and potassium, et cetera. So without a doubt, salt was a big part of it. And then of course, fat, and whether it be a tablespoon of coconut oil or something else, I would do that throughout. Yeah, you were kind of far ahead. I mean, I think today, most people,

if they're gonna be objective, so let's dismiss all the sort of zealots on all sides of the equation. But if you're going to be objective, there's no doubt that if you want to be an ultra-distance athlete, you have to be fat adapted. Now that doesn't mean you have to be a nutritional ketosis, but you must be fat adapted. 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 backed into that because there wasn't anyone to look to 15 years ago There weren't people doing this stuff or talking about it the way there are today

When did you figure that out and what made that so clear to you? There were a couple things and you're right It was it was accidental I backed into it and it was through experimentation again Just checking all your assumptions at the door. There was this first of all back then There was this idea you shouldn't run more than a marathon or two a year, which at one point I was doing one a day. And just as part of my training regime. So what about this whole idea of car bloating? Really? Because I always felt bloated and it didn't, you know, my performance the next day, my heart rate, and, you know, blood was still in my gut. And so metric for me often, when I woke up the next day,

about whether or not I was going to run, or train was my metric for me often when I woke up the next day about whether I was gonna run, a train was my heart rate. My rest in heart rate used to be 37, 38. And if it was ever above 40, I would just stand back. I wasn't adapted and there was no point in stressing myself further because I would break into overtraining. Well, that in and of itself is pretty impressive because I'm guessing many people listening to this

are thinking this guy's just a hammerhead He's just a robot, but that takes I remember from my days The hardest decisions were the days when I pulled back on training That's right because that was like you're struggling with your own demons Am I good enough? Am I I'm gonna stay in and not train today? But my opponents out there training. Oh my god. What am I doing? But you this is almost where it helps to have a trainer. That's right, who you can outsource that decision to, but you had the discipline to do

that. But after a lot of research, so a couple of things, I want to come back to fat adaptation and the car bloating, so I had some fairly objective indicators that I would use to make decisions. Because a big part of doing this consistently over time is just to be objective with yourself. Am I really in course record shape, or am I just fully myself?

And so what are the metrics? What are your times? Time doesn't lie, right? Time is objective, your heart rate, it's objective, it's a great metric to use. Course power if you're on the bike is the absolute. And if you're at altitude, there's some other things you can do in mountaineering to keep yourself in check.

In mountaineers are the same way, very disciplined. If I'm not where I need to be by 2 p.m., I turn around, it's not summit day. It's just not gonna work. Because when I talk to those guys that have submitted Everest, especially those, I've talked to you guys, have done it repeatedly, that actually impresses the hell out of me.

Live the climb another day. It's that simple. So I borrowed from Mountaineering, and I'll get back to the fat thing in a second, because there were indicators, early indicators, in terms of just being in ketosis, and what your body does over time to optimize endurance. So Mountaineering's actually where I learned about fat,

and I'll get back to that in a second. So the carb thing didn't work for me, right? And I learned accidentally that you can actually fast and do better and feel better and feel cleaner. And so, I just started phasing things out, right? So, I started phasing carbs out, drank very little alcohol, and very monastic lifestyle.

For a long time, there had no girlfriend, lived in a little condo by the beach, and a very monastic lifestyle. For a long time, there had no girlfriend, lived in a little condo by the beach and just worked my tail off and trained. And loved it. It was a very simple life, no drama outside of just maybe not feeling good about my run that day. It was a very simple life, engineered intentionally

to be that way. So I did learn that the traditional thinking was wrong. And I also learned that the assumptions around what a human body could do were wrong and learn that through experimentation. So back to the mountaineering thing. So there's a great book called, I think it's called Fast and Lighter, Moving Fast and Lighter. It's a mountaineer named Mark Twight who's a batshit crazy mountaineer who's doing all kinds of stuff in the 90s. And I've always been intrigued by doing endurance stuff and in the mountains. And there's guys now doing what I knew would eventually happen. I came to it late and of course had a family who decided risking my life wasn't worth it anymore. But we knew that metabolizing your body is very different

at altitude. And actually taking a shot of oil at altitude was better than eating a bowl of spaghetti. And it's written about. And that's where I learned sometimes it's better just to take a shot of olive oil. Never forget reading about this. And I'm like, I'm an experiment with that. If they're doing this at altitude and it's working and it's actually helping them, right? First of all, a little Nalgene vial of olive oil or flaxseed oil to take in your pack if you're doing it on summit day, to not have to carry a bunch of food. Yeah, from an energy density standpoint, it's the most energy dense way and your fat adapted

and your body has a hard time metabolizing the fat and anything else at altitude And it's hard to cook stuff at altitude, which is is another story So I learned that fat fat's actually not bad and also learned your sugar is not good when you're doing long events because you insulin response and you bonk and You know, so sugar is great. It's like a drug though, right? We've been chasing the drag and once you have your Twix at mile 20, you're going to want another one at mile 25. You're your host.

You have now committed to a pure glycolytic strategy and you better have it timed perfect. You have to. And it is part of the strategy. And you know, and I would argue in terms of optimizing performance should be part of the strategy. And I would argue in terms of optimizing performance, it should be part of your strategy, but you only get one shot at it. So if you're doing 100, you better,

if it comes before a mile 80, you better know what you're doing. Because after that, if you're going to take a mountain do, don't do it a mile 20, because it is at that point, all bets are off. Your body is now shifted into a completely different world, and it's going to want to stay in that world. And you know that well.

So I came back from the Himalayas in 02. I spent a couple months over there in Tibet, on Everest. And we were eating yak meat, which you can't cook, at 25,000 feet. And so I came back with just crazy parasites, which I later learned in 03. And so the other part of this to answer your question about sort of backing into it is the only way I was

gonna get rid of the parasites was to essentially go nuclear on my own body, which meant like a 10 day fast. I did the Eastern Western thing. So I went to infectious diseases guy, San Diego or UCSD and I said, well, how do we get rid of this stuff? Well, how do we, he's like, I'm gonna give you some stuff

and it's gonna be really hard on your body. I need you to take it. And I said, what have the people been doing for thousands of years? Cause, you know, tape worms and other stuff has been a problem for a long time. Is you starve yourself? Just starve it.

You starve it eventually. You know, get rid of it. So I did both. So I said, give me the meds and I did the meds and I didn't eat for 10 days. So I just drank warm water every day. Didn't really train and did other crazy stuff to just completely cleanse myself. And by day three, day one and two was brutal. By day three, I just it's like my whatever

170 degree vision went to I could see around myself, right? I could feel stuff, I could smell stuff. And it just turned into this journey, of course, fixed the problem. And I was developing exercise induced asthma. I became allergic to certain foods. And I was allergic to myself. I was actually, of course, fighting these parasites, but I didn't know it at the time. All that went away in 03 by fasting. And I felt better. And so I backed in. So I was obviously in ketosis because I started training again by day

seven. I wasn't eating, but I started training again. And I felt fantastic. And that's when I realized, like, holy cow, like it was accidental, but between the fat and understanding that that's a component of performance. And then the fasting, which was again, just to get rid of parasites, I realized like, I can actually perform even better, throwing everything else out the window. It is amazing.

I actually didn't know that story about you. I didn't know that you did this. I didn't even know about the whole parasite thing. And those, you know, it's really interesting because I, I know a lot of people who have had that experience, right, they go off and they climb Kilimanjaro and they come back and they're never the same. You know, one of the people who was actually helping me and that trans Tahoe swim had just come back from Kilimanjaro. And this is person's kayaking, one of my kayakers, and I mean had to literally hop out of the kayak and take a shit in the water about every, I don't know, hour. I mean, devastated by these parasites. But it's really interesting. I mean,

I can, it certainly strikes me as relatively low downside to at least give a trial attempt of fasting coupled with the medical therapy. I mean, certainly there's evidence to suggest that fasting coupled with chemotherapy can increase the efficacy of chemotherapy. I mean, this has been now actually demonstrated. Walter Longo has talked about this quite a bit, but you know, Dom Digasino has been talking about this for at least five years now. So I didn't know that about you.

I love that I feel like I know everything about you, and yet I've already learned like six things about you to in the last hour that I didn't know. Let's close out the RAM story just because I again, I'm to me, your RAM exploits might be your second most impressive story. We're going to come to the most impressive feet of them all in a moment. But there was a really sad ending to Robic, wasn't there? Yeah, in fact, there was a sad ending to Robic and Bob breed love. So Bob breed love died in O5 on the Ram. I was few hours ahead of him. These aren't, I think at the time I did Everest, it was one in eight people would die. So you're not talking about people are asking me about finish rates. There's

death rates to some of these races. So one in a die on average, I don't know what the stats are today. K2 is even worse. K2 is like one in three or something crazy. There's a few that are just, and that's why with a young family, I'm not, you helped me a few weeks ago, pull a tree down and I had my climbing gear out

for the first time in 15 years. Right, and slings around a tree. I walk over and I see you with a chain saw on a freaking 80 foot tree. And I'm like, it might be need a hand. That's first time my climbing gear has been out in a while. So yeah, so Robick, unfortunately, I had a fantastic performance a number of years after we raised against each other. And he died on a bike in Slovenia.

Gosh, it's been, it's been a few years. He was riding down a hill or so. He was riding down a, as I understand it, riding down a gravel road, a fire road or something in Slovenia and cross the center line and ran into a car coming up and went over the top. You know, I mean, I've, I've been there. I may have crashed several times and I,'s just, there are so many people I know that have died on bikes, which is why I just don't ride

as much anymore. Eventually, it's just law of large numbers, right? You're out there enough. Something's gonna happen. Yeah, I had that wake up call in late 2010. There's a guy named Nick Venuto. I don't know if you knew Nick, but he was the CFO at our company. As was back when I was working on a biotech company and an amazing cyclist. He actually won the Mount Palomar Time trial a couple of times.

For people who are around here and understand what Mount Palomar is, it's basically Alp Dweez in terms of Ryze, Grade, and including the same number of switchbacks. So it's a serious climb. And every year, there's a time trial in Venudo would win it. And I remember on one afternoon, I was leaving. This was back when I could call myself a cyclist. And I was like buggering out early. It was like five o'clock because I wanted to go home and I had intervals to do that day.

And on that day, I remember I had the luxury of calling an audible, which was I could either do repeats on Tory Pines, which would be hill repeats, or I could go out to 56 on the bike path and do VO2 max repeats, because it's not as steep. You're only climbing like sort of 4% as you ride from Carmel Valley out the powe. And I just decided, you know, I'm going to go ride Tory Pines today. So I did. And I remember walking up my door, because Nick and I opposed each other. And I said, and he was like, he, you know, I know everybody says this about everybody, but he literally was the nicest dude on the planet. And I remember saying, all right, Nick, see you later, man. And Nick used to ride two and from work every day. He was such a devoted family guy that he just didn't want to waste time

training outside of his commute. and he lived far away. So, you know, he'd get in like 40 miles a day training just on his commute. He's riding home on the 56 bike path. The same road I was going to I could have been doing my intervals on. And if I showed you where it happened, it's the last place you think this could ever happen. But a woman driving her SUV decides at that moment, she's just got a checker cell phone, and she drives up the embankment through the fence and hits Nick and kills him. And I couldn't believe it.

I mean, I just, you know, to think like I was just with this guy two hours before. And unfortunately, that's just not an uncommon story. Like, you know, obviously, since then, have known of other cyclists that have died, but I didn't know any as well as him. And yet given what you've done, you really know a lot of people who have met this horrible fate on a bicycle. And a lot of times actually the cyclist is 100% not at fault.

In the case of Nixclay case, I mean, he's on a bike path, nothing he could have done to prevent that. That is a lightning strike. To be hit from behind when someone veers off a freeway going 75 miles an hour and hits you, I mean, like, you're done. You're done. I'm not a bike path. That's per capita.

You'd think that, you know, the worst you can do is make a mistake and go down. Yeah. Or someone else on the bike will hit you, which is probably non-lethal. You know, my brother, who's a really good mountain biker, the reason he's just so obsessed with being on a mountain bike, he goes, look, who's a really good mountain biker, the reason he's just so obsessed with being on a mountain by he goes, look, here's the difference. When I used to ride on the road, if something bad was gonna happen statistically,

it was the driver's fault. On a mountain bike, when something bad happens, it is always my fault. That's right. That's right. And it's a broken collar bound or broken arm. It's not, it's usually not lethal. It's part of the reason why I don't ride as much as I did.

And I was hit, actually similar driver. I thought she saw me. She looked right at me. I don't know if the sunlight, the sun was setting, but I was also bike commuting, leaving work, and she accelerated right through me. She had a stop sign. She just rolled through it. I was doing about 35, just rolling down a hill, and I was slow motion. And I've had other accidents, but that was probably the most mentally. I mean, that's when I bought my Compute Trainer actually my wife got it for me,

because she just, I just wouldn't get on the bike, because I really thought she saw me. And I couldn't hit my head, and I couldn't move the right side of my body, and I apparently was making this crazy noise sound just moaning on the air. What was this? This was in O, I think it was O607.

And that was when I, I mean, it took me, she was absolutely hard about it. I mean, she was just devastated. I mean, I went over the hood and the back of her car and the bike went one way and I went to the other and we were both by then doing 40 and just you know I hit the pavement and rolled and and fortunately my wife was mile away and caller and come get me and I tried to walk it off I was gonna try to ride home and I just literally was it shook me up it shook me up and after that I just said you know it's and I have to you know many deaths friends and guys like Robick and others just said, you know, it's gonna happen eventually. It's gonna happen.

Yeah. By the way, going back to the Compute Trainer, you're probably one of the only people that's broken a Compute Trainer. Twice. Twice. Yeah, the Compute Trainer at this point is a resistance trainer and I've stopped replacing them and I just get on, I have this old slope com stand, which I've had powder coated a couple times from the sweat and rust.

And I used the extra one. I saw your computer trainer. I was like, dude, what have you done to this thing? Well, I have my contraption. I've engineered for the PVC. You know, at the time, it was a blackberry and computer stand and other stuff. It's now an iPad holder. And so my contraption strapped at the front of it, bracketed to the front of it for

my screens. So of all the incredible things you've done and as I, you know, as we become closer over the past five years, I've gotten to know all of these things. But you're so unassuming that I have to like pry them out of you. But I don't know what it is about trans Iowa, but when you finally told me about that, I was blown away. I think trans Iowa might be the most ridiculous feat in the history of cycling, certainly as far as a one-day event goes. So explain the motivation for that, what the hell you did, how fast you went, like, well, talk to me about trans Iowa.

Well, you know, growing up in Iowa and having done the bike ride across Iowa, rag-brie, the registered annual great bike ride across Iowa many years, I always, you know, asked myself, how fast could you do this in one go? Even when I was a kid, I'm like, why are they stopping? You know, I get people drink at night and party and it's a fun time, but why isn't anybody doing this in one push?

It's possible. And so it's been on bucket list thing, right? A lot like hearing about Bob breed love in the 80s about random. That was, it became a bucket list thing. So ran became a bucket list, trans Iowa became a bucket list. And so no, it did Ram and 04 and lots of other stuff and decided that I could work at my own sort of attempt at trying to set our speed record across Iowa. It's where I'm from and it was a bucket list.

And so I got, actually my Ram crew chief was the official, because to be a right true record, the UMCA has, you have to have an official and he was a UMCA official. And my uncle, best friend from high school, and some of the other people crew me for it. And it's a, you know, depending on your route, you can pick her out. And you know, there's UMCA recognizes record attempts.

We're looking at it just a few simple criteria. So I picked my route, set my date, and picked my official. And the distance was what? 270, so the know, 270. 270 and change. Actually, more climbing than you'd think. Most people think I was flat, but it's not.

How many feet vertical? I'd have to go back and look at the stats, but several thousand feet of vertical. So you start at one river and end at the other, right? One east to west, and was able to do, I didn't have to unclip. It was pretty cool. I, there was halfway through some guys' own construction on the road and the guy had a stop sign,

I had one line open, had a stop up and I waived to him. It just let me through, forget the car behind me. It was my crew vehicle, but let me through and he flipped it around. So I didn't have to unclip for the entire state and manage to do in about 10 hours and 40-ish minutes I can give you all the stats if you want but I did about 25.7 miles an hour average a little tailwind the start across wind it was beautiful day conditions were perfect you know in fact there were storm chasers out the night before there were tornadoes all over the place. It was in May. And so this was the lead up to Ram 05. So this was a 05.

So it was a great day. So you start with a bit of a tailwind. And you got a crosswind in the middle, and you ended with a tailwind. You got a headwind. Ended with a headwind. And I felt fantastic. In fact, I thought about continuing on.

And let's go do the next state. But, you know, it was a fun day. I'll never forget looking down at my at a polar heart rate monitor at the time. And I just couldn't believe the numbers. Because I've done coastal stuff, training here, right? I'll ride up to Newport or whatever and do one days or one push rides with two water bottles. Don't stop. Don't unclip if you unless you have to. But I looked down. I just covered my home state in 10 and a half hours and it was fun.

Yeah, I mean, you didn't have a power meter at the time, but I remember when I was time trialing, I used to have so many models that I could basically estimate power by CDA, wind speed, velocity, et cetera. And I remember calculating you were probably doing about 310 watts to 320 watts for 10 hours and 40 minutes. That would have been your average power. Obviously, you would have ebbened and flowed. And I remember thinking, wow, we're in a different league here, people, like, you know, you're really a professional cyclist. At that point, you're not really amongst the amateurs anymore.

Well, the metric in professional cyclists wasper kilo, right? And you weighed what at that point? 160. So that's what? 72 kilos. Yeah, I mean, so you have to figure that if you were averaging 310 to 320 watts for 10 and a half hours your FTP was probably Very close to 380 ish maybe 400 watts I mean, that's a professional level at least a non-epo professional level FTP

Epo certainly probably gives you about a 10 to 15% boost on that if but you know guys in the tour during the more EPO-driven eras were putting out, I used to know this stuff so well. I think they were putting out about 6.3 to 6.4 watts per kilo. Anything over five is five sort of the... Well, five or five. I mean, if you can do five without drugs, that's incredible. And that's where I try unintentionally, because I had no,

for me, this has always been sort of a sacred endeavor, right? I knew how to make money. I didn't, you know, to the extent that I needed to for RAM, I had sponsors. But for me, I love the product side of getting into clothing and other gear production and design. But for me, it's never been about monetizing it, right? So I've been invited to join professional cycling teams and train with them and teams come out here, Arizona. And it's never interested me. It was never something that I wanted to do. That wasn't part of the deal.

For me, it's always how good could I be? And I knew the drug side of it as well. And that's something that had no interest in it. Was there a lot of drug use in RAM and in these sort of damage? We were drug tested throughout. I don't know. I don't know if anyone else was. It's one of those things where I think that so it's such an epic event. I don't know what you would do because there's so many components to an optimal performance, right? So I don't know what drug you would do. I mean, stimulants would eventually blow you up.

Yeah. I mean, I think Modaphanol is banned on WADA and USADA, but Modaphanol would certainly help. What is that? It's a drug that's approved. It's only FDA indication is for narcolepsy, but it's a non-stimulant that keeps you awake. It's actually a pretty interesting drug. This was our drug of choice in residency. We abused the shit out of this drug. I was during residency taking two to 600 milligrams daily. The maximum it has ever been tested at is 600 milligrams, but in the Air Force, they had

done a study, which is the study that I clung to, which was they put a bunch of pilots into a simulator, flight simulator. And so the placebo group has nothing and predictably over the course of 24 hours, their performance declined. So you know, not surprisingly. And then you had like a caffeine group and their performance got a little bit better initially, but then sort of peedered out out if not outright crashed by 24 hours. And of course, I could be completely mistaking some of the details on this, but this was the gist of it. At 200 milligrams of Modaphanil, which is the standard dose, performance was maintained

for a very long period of time, but at the end of the 24 hours, it fell off. But the thing that I always clung to was at 600 milligrams. I think performance actually just got better, monotonically, over 24 hours. So I found this to be the most amazing drug in the world because basically in residency, you're sort of sleeping about four hours a night on average, but it never works out to that. So it's like you'll have zero, and then you'll have six, and then you'll have seven, and then you'll have zero, and then you'll have three, and then you know what I mean. And so being able to take a metaphonal was huge. And you know, metaphonal has a number

of interesting properties. I don't really use it more than a few times a year these days. I only really used around jet lag, significant jet lag. But it strikes me as being a pretty impressive drug. Again, notwithstanding the fact that I'm pretty sure it's WADA and Usada. It probably is, but that goes back to the point that I had no desire to be professional

because I didn't, for me it was very simple, which is natural performance. And if you're augmenting with things like that, it's just, you're not answering your question. Right? You throw into these other variables that are called unnatural and wordy is stopped. I've always been sort of a disputed territory for ultraathletes. I've never, if you go into Veneas, you're done in my opinion, right? You should not need an RV. That's not natural to me.

Even if it's just sailing, it doesn't matter. A lot of people disagree with me. And that's just my personal opinion. There are a lot of guys that design their whole plan around being able to go intervenious and get, you know, all change. And, and I haven't. I mean, that's just me. It's just my own standard. There are very few things, I think, drug wise that would you... Yeah, Ram is a tough one. Ram's a tough one. Because it's not clear to me that EPO would help you that much in Ram. It's not even clear to me that anabolic steroids would help as much as they do in the tour. I mean, I think EPO is a much more important factor in grand tours than even the anabolic steroids

or the glucocorticoids or corticosteroids. And the stimulants, I mean, that used to be the drug of choice up until the about the 80s in professional cycling, but as you pointed out, I mean, stimulants, you better know when you're using them and for how long, because you can fall off a cliff pretty quickly. Yeah, and I've seen guys do that. I've seen guys do that. And I've been part of a few studies that have tested down it, which is not Liberty Station, and I think it was the NTC, down in Point Loma, the Naval Hospital. I participated in a few studies with Navy SEALs and they were testing different things and the SEALs and special forces there on a whole cocktail, right depending on what they're doing. They're in transit, they're taking one thing, if they're getting ready, they take something else and they should. And my death is a great drug.

It is. And that's setting because when you consider that the alternative is stimulants with their horrible cycle. Oh, you know, well, not to mention the psychological, stimulants throw you, right? Throw your judgment and do other things. So, I agree, I agree. You know, I've never tried Adirol even once.

All of the time I've taken Medaphine, I've never once tried Adirol and yet, talks to a lot of people who swear by low dose Adirol for you know mental clarity like 10 milligrams or something like that. But I don't know. I just I don't feel like stimulants would sit well with my system. Yeah. I didn't even know what adderol was and some of the guys that software programmers on my team were trading adderol a few years ago.

Like what are you guys doing? And we're going to go outside and we'll be back. And you know, 12 hours later, they're still heads down. It clearly, I've seen it. It clearly, I mean, it's certain tasks. It's works. Yeah, I've seen, I think that this low dose outer-alstriology for the right person can be remarkable. Again, the question becomes frequency at what point does it become too much. You know. Today when we were on the bike, we were talking about this a little bit, but I remember when I was swimming a lot, it's a very tight-knit community, the weirdos who want to do really long swims or really long rides or really long runs or whatever, but it became clear to me a few years into my swimming endeavors that most of the people I swim with were addicts,

were recovering addicts. So they had, they were former alcoholics, they, you know, recovering drug addicts or things like that. And I remember thinking, God, this is so interesting. Like, I'm the only non addict who does this amongst my peer group. But I've come back and revisited that assumption and now realized that, of course, I am an addict. And that's just because it's not alcohol or drugs doesn't mean I'm not. And so it makes me wonder like what kind of person does this stuff? What motivates them? What are they numbing? Where is this coming from?

Have you, as if, or philosophical question, but have you ever sort of stopped and said, what the hell drove you to do all of this stuff? Because at the risk of just being a little blunt, like it ain't normal, man. Like, you ain't normal to do any of the shit we just spent the last hour talking about. It's normal to me. It's my normal. No, it's not. It's not.

And I learned this on Ram and I've never, I haven't experienced it since, but there's a sequence of mental states that I think you go through in these things and call it normal homeostasis and then you move to with sleep depth and extreme output, you move to illusions, hallucinations, people talk about that and laugh about it and they're funny, but you're still with it and then you get truly delusional. This is when you're mentally insane. There's a time on RAM toward the later part of 04 where I literally didn't know why this van was following me and I somehow concocted this whole story about being chased and somehow crafted that we were going by a power plant and I thought they were spies and I was truly

delusional and I was paranoid and I would try to get away from them and I thought they were spies and I was truly delusional and I was paranoid. And I would try to get away from them and I kept racing away from them and they're still following me and they're turning where I'm turning. I'm like, what the hell's going on? And finally, I decided to get off the highway. Well, I get off the highway and I'm in a cemetery in the middle of nowhere and I put my bike. It's all I had to protect myself and between me and my crew. And they followed me and this van is here and they get out. And I'm like, what are you doing? And they're like, so you didn't recognize them even once I get out of the van. I was confused. Or this is after six, seven days. And maybe an hour and a half to our sleep, I stepped up of my 10-ish hours, the whole race. One of the, it was

a three hour block and it's very end where I just shut down. So I had very little sleep over six or seven days. I was just, I was losing it. So it's not normal, right? And eventually came back in the next day in daylight, like a holiday count. And I remember everything, I remember the whole episode and they're like, we picked a frickin' cemetery. If all places to like teal off the road, it was a cemetery and it was they were scared Like who is this guy? What is he doing? And then you know, finally we got to New Jersey in 60 miles from the finish And I had completely lost it and threatened to Dear friend of mine Howard whose massive college swimmer former college swimmer and I decided I was gonna get in a fight with him.

And he just stuck his hand out, and I thought I was gonna get into a fist fight with Howard, and I was 160, and he was 220, and twice my size. Now you lose it. Yeah, what's the, but more deep-seated, and I think that's your question, right? What motivates this? I started the marathon.

I was living in New York City, actually living in Stanford, City, actually living in Stanford, Connecticut in 1997, 1998. And I moved back from Europe and came to New York, was working for Pricewaterhouse, and was living with guys I went to school with, you know, their Goldman Sachs, and et cetera, et cetera. And they were bringing home a case of beer every night, and I was sleeping on a couch because I was tired in New York City. I just wanted to get out of New York and so I crashed on their couch and stand for it.

I was always on the road. And after a week of those guys bringing beer home every night, I'm like, this isn't what I want to do. So I needed an excuse. So believe it or not for me. And by the way, when you're on the couch, you can't get away. So these guys would sit and watch TV and drink beer and five guys sitting around, you know, living like

they were in college, taking a train in the New York every morning to 530 and just doing the drill. So I, it was actually an escape for me. So I started training for the 98th New York marathon in the spring of 98. And that was my excuse, sorry, I can't drink. I'm got to get up and run in the morning. And that's what I did. So that's how it all started. It right around the same time was going through a brutal breakup with my college sweetheart. And I think that was the second component of it, right?

I just had no desire to socialize and just wanted to get back to some foundation that I could find for myself. So a lot of transition. So I'd say, running away from stuff is where it started. And then of course it evolved to, once I did my movie Chicago, did the Chicago marathon, then did New York, which was my goal,

did New York as Batman in 98, it blast, frickin blast, running, just didn't worry about time, just had a good time. But then realize that, you know, I could actually pull off some decent times. It's not that hard. I've hardly trained for this and I did well by my standards. And so that's when I moved to San Diego in 99,

is I said, you know, I'm gonna get serious about this and really focus on it. Obviously, what do you think about, this is a on it. Obviously, what do you think about it? It's a big question I get. What do you think about when you're out there for so long? And I've, do you get bored and I've never gotten bored? And for me, you know, you and I have, I think, similar backgrounds, right? We working class families who care deeply for us,

but we've also had a lot of stuff happen to us over time, right? And for me, it's always been a time to work through stuff and just think about things, both past and present. And so it's been very meditative for me. And unfortunately, and I've learned over time to somewhat mitigate this, but it's where I found my happy place. I'll never forget, I just saw this a couple of years ago, in my application for bad water in 2000,

for the 2001 bad water, why do you want to do bad water? And I love ultra running. And the follow-up question is, is why? And see, only time I feel normal. And I like to feel normal. I feel normal when I'm out there doing that stuff. It just feels right. Right or wrong, that was my comfortable spot.

Now, at least going back to that time, what felt abnormal when you weren't running? Probably the biggest thing that felt unnatural, maybe not abnormal, is I've never been terribly social. I moved to San Diego. I like to build stuff. I like to challenge myself. I just didn't fit in in New York. I didn't fit in out here. I liked just pushing myself. That was abnormal.

That was unusual. I would have people ask me all the time about the sacrifice that I was making to do what I do. And my response has been it's a privilege to do what I do. I love doing what I do. It's fantastic. It's not a sacrifice. If it was a sacrifice, I wouldn't be doing it. So that's in my mind abnormal. And this is an, I don't judge people, right? I mean, I don't judge people for not doing this, but it's just I don't choose a path of accepting that I have certain limitations

and certain things aren't possible. I think that's bullshit. I just refuse to accept that certain things are not possible. Because most of the time, they're wrong. It's amazing. I mean, you know, people listening to this, who obviously don't know, you won't necessarily appreciate some of the nuance in this. But, and obviously, I won't mention't necessarily appreciate some of the nuance in this.

But, and obviously I won't mention names, but one of my favorite stories is there's a piece that came out about you in Vogue. Men's Vogue, I don't know, God, it's got to be 12, 13 years ago. And it's an amazing piece. We'll make sure we link to it in the show notes here. And it's amazing. It's a really great piece that gets into it. And one of my favorite stories is how on the day of the Oscars that year, you get a call

from someone basically saying, hey, so and so wants to invite you up to be her guest at the Oscars tonight. And it turned out to be like one of the biggest a list actresses of our generation. And you just decided, nah, I don't want to go. And I'm thinking, I'm reading to me this story, I was like, oh my God, I would have freaking walked to LA backwards or on my hands and knees just to have had a chance to have met her, let alone have been on her arm all night. But you just don't care.

I love it. Yeah, I don't care. I wish I could say I don't care. I love it. Yeah, I don't care. I wish I could say I didn't care. You believe it or not, out of everything that I considered in that, and I think I mentioned this to you when I first, I just told you this story recently, although it wasn't written about years ago, it's someone that knew my mom, that knew how to get to me. That's how the introduction came. And talking 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 drive to LA. That is, I don't, if it were here, sure, I'd,

no big deal. I'm not doing anything today, but it might be fun. But I don't want to deal with that. But, you know, I think a big part of the mindset, my mindset at the time, was I was really good at saying no. I'm not so good at that now, right? I say yes to a lot of things and at a detriment of time with my family or kids. But at the time, I was very disciplined about saying no. If it wasn't on the critical path, I wouldn't do it. And I was very focused and I was just great at saying no.

In fact, there was a time 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 communicate with you. I'm going to be laser focused and I want to eliminate every potential distraction I can. And at the time, that for me would fell into that category. It was just a distraction. When do you think you made that transition to, you know, today your priorities are clearly split

between mostly two things, your family first, your company second, you obviously still exercise much more than the average individual could ever fathom. But, you know, you're not trying to set world records anymore. What led to that transition? Was it simply meeting your wife? It was my wife.

Yeah. I mean, there's a funny story here. I met or didn't meet, but saw my wife two years before I formally met her and I thought she was an angel. Right? I saw her and my god, this is the woman in my dreams. But I was training for Ram. That was the end of that.

Didn't even talk to her. May have walked by her office once her twice and that was the end of it. She was also an engineer at football. Yeah, she was a electrical engineer and at the time was at Qualcomm. And so, I saw her love it first, I didn't talk to her. And I'm relatively shy. I'm not a big fan of hitting on, that wasn't my deal. So a couple of years went by and we were both in the spin room a couple

of years after that. I had a cast, I had shattered my elbow, training in06, training for RAM and had reconstructive surgery and had a cast that I had drilled holes. And so it was for my armpit all the way down to my wrist and I was drilling holes in it so I could shower with this cast. I had pins and wire and crap in my left elbow. And she came in and I had a pull of sweat. I was doing 12 hour, I couldn't ride outside with my cast. It was too dangerous. and I was doing 12 hour, I couldn't ride outside with my cast, it was too dangerous. But I was doing 12 hour sessions on a spin bike in the Qualcomm training room, and I had gallons of water there, towels, of course, and carrots and celery. That was my nutrition for the fiber. And so, and a stack of DVDs. That was there at three, she rolls in at six or seven, and at that point,

I think I'd take my shirt off and was just hammering, right? I was not expecting anyone to come in on Stack of DVDs. That was there at three. She rolls in at six or seven and at that point, I think I'd taken my shirt off and was just hammering, right? I was not expecting anyone to come in on a Saturday. And so I throw my shirt back on and she gets on a spin bike. And it was a fun story, but I won't tell it now. But it was her, right? So I met her and we eventually went on a date. And she and her dad, the furnace creek 508 were my crew

on the furnace creek 508 later that year. She got me, I mean, I went, we went to Hawaii shortly after we met and I ran up Paliakala. So I ran from Paiyat to Beach up to the top of Paliakala on the last day of our stay. And this is six weeks after we met and like she gets me. She crewed me in the middle of the night, night running whatever 40 miles up to top of, you know, this volcano. I hate it. All right.

She's the one. We decided to get married after our third day. So she changed. I mean, it was, I'm done. I, you know, I'd answered the questions, most of the big questions. I still had some bucket list things, but, you you draw the line? Right? So it really comes down to the trick. I found myself asking the question, what am I doing? So I'd be out in East County doing my 300 miles training for a, I did the UMCA 24 hour race that fall. And in training for that, for the first time, I had never asked myself that question,

what am I doing out here? It's kind of like forest gun when he's running back and forth across the country and he sort of stops and realizes he's done. Like that's what I'm doing. It was that, and I, that was my last ride in East County. That, you know, 10, 12 years ago, like I asked myself that question and I knew I was done

because I wanted to be with her. And so it was that simple. myself that question and I knew I was done because I wanted to be with her. And so it was that simple. So I want to let you get back to your dad and you got a hundred things to do today. You got three great kids. You are a man that I admire greatly. You've created a tribe where you don't have to leave. I mean, you can get to work from here.

You get to play with the kids. You get to be with the kids most nights. Obviously you still have to travel because you're still running a startup company. But what do you take from all that stuff you learned about being at the, right at that level of being among the world's elites, altruistic athletes?

How do you bring that, how do you bring what you learned from that to your ability to be a dad? Or maybe ask another way, what do you take from those experiences that you want to impart on your kids? That's a tough one because I only learn what I learn because I figured it out on my own. And so I want to expose the kids to stuff and let them take to whatever they take to. I want them to know, I want them to be proud of their dad and their mom.

We liked my wife, played college basketball and still holds records here in San Diego for shooting percentage, et cetera. So I want the kids to be proud of their parents, but at the same time, I don't want them to feel like they're living our shadow. I try not to go to the pool. I know a lot of the coaches from my prior life. So I don't want the kids to get special treatment because they're the spawn

of me. And so I try to actually coach them. Right now, they're eight. My twins are eight. My sons three. Have fun. It's really pretty simple. Have fun. I hated wrestling. And then I grew to love it when I was in high school. I hated it when I was their age. But did your parents make you go to get you through that transition? They didn't make me, but it was more pure, right? In Iowa, if you're not wrestling something's wrong with you.

And then I started wrestling when I was five. I thought it was ridiculous. Why are these guys crawling all, I mean, this is just crazy. Like, why are you wrestling? You know, it's smelly and I just didn't, you know, didn't, wasn't into it. And then I grew to love it when I got stronger and I 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, right now, at the kids, I don't take a lot other than to just, hey, guys, you may not, you know, a lot of it's just nutrition

in lifestyle. That's the biggest thing that I try to bring to them is this whole noose. You don't need to car-blow it. I'll make them this morning before my son went to his swim meet. I gave him some dry nuts and some cherries and my daughter's off for the rest of the day. So a lot of it comes to nutrition. In terms of the things that I've learned, it really comes down to adversity and hard work. I mean, like you said, we live in Nirvana. I've really tried hard to create an environment for my family. That is they can feel safe, secure, they can explore. But I want them to see you saw me out with a chain soft for a reason. First of all, I love chainsaws.

Yeah, you're the only friend I have who chops more wood than me. Cause I thought I was the wood chopping so-cal, like no one in San Diego could be chopping more wood than me. But I will say this in the last four weeks, you have broken me. You've taken it to a new level. And until four weeks ago, I had no idea you even chopped wood.

Yeah, we need to take a picture of my pile right now. Yes, I want the kids, for me, I really want the kids to see that hard work comes in many forms, it's physical, it's mental, et cetera. And I want them to see the perseverance, lead by example. And we live in this society where everything gets outsourced and it seems to be like, I'll let other people do the work for you. Look, like you mentioned, we run a small company, there's 15 of us now, but I take out the garbage and I run the company and I'll do that until the day I die. And I want my kids to see that too. I don't think there's, whether it's Iowa background or I think we were cut from the same cloth that way,

nothing has been east me. I fully believe in scaling through people and all that great stuff when it comes to running a company. But at the same time when it comes to my kids, I want them to see that dad will roll up his sleeves and whether it's cutting down a tree, taking care of the yard or taking care of the house, whatever it might be.

I'm just putting a new faucet in yesterday because like, why are you down there? Like, I'm fixing the faucet. Yeah, you're so far, I mean, I wish I had that desire, discipline, whatever. Like, you know, I've just taken this opposite approach and I do worry deep down that it's in the long run, it's not the right thing for my kids

because I grew up around a dad who did everything. Yeah, my dad didn't do any of that. I did. I did. So interesting. My dad, my dad was the handiest dude that ever lived. Oh, my dad didn't do any of that. I'm so interesting. My dad, my dad was the handiest dude that ever lived. My dad, he could fix anything. He couldn't fix anything. It was a joke. We still had a joke with our family. And it's funny. He comes out here now and he's clearing brush with me. So, and he loves it. And I love it. But the kids will make

their own decision. And of course, we could hire someone to put a new faucet in, but I want them. I want them. I, first of all, I enjoy the accomplishment and sense of pride. I just did that and I enjoy tinker around the house, but it's good for the kids to see. The biggest thing for me with the software company has been in terms of taking the lessons from endurance and so my family and my company are like my two families, right? And never give up. It's that simple, right? And we give up, it's that simple, right?

And we've taken a lot of different paths to get to success for my training and my endurance accomplishments. Our family, we've done a lot of different things to try to architect the best situation for our family. And we've done the same thing with my company. You know what I said on the board of a few companies as well? And my only advice is don't give up.

It's that simple. When training, don't give up. A lot of it, you get a lot of adversity, but don't give up. It's usually the person that keeps moving. If you don't win the race, you'll finish the race. So just keep moving. But there's something more to it, right? There's this intelligence.

Like you knew the days that you needed to back off. And I suspect that your greatest asset outside of your mental toughness, which I just, there's just no way to displace that or there's no substitute for just the raw mental toughness. But I think it's that you've been, for example, very fortunate in your career to not have many significant injuries. You've had one arthroscopic knee operation. I mean, there's nothing. They like yanked a little tiny sliver of meniscus off it. For a guy who's run tens of thousands of miles and has done all you've done,

you've got a broken collarbone from a bike crash, you've got a broken elbow from a bike crash, you've got a little meniscal nub in that got cleared pretty quickly. I think part of that is just the intelligence with which you've been able to approach this, which is like, you sort of know what are the days to push, what are the days to back down. And to me, that's the thing that, like, if that knowledge can be codified, that's probably the thing that people would benefit from greatly.

Right? If you're listening to this and you're thinking, how am I going to run a marathon while I'm, you know, the VP of operations at whatever 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 back while working 40 hours a week. But I still want to set these physical goals. Like, you've got to be able to train smart. Everything you do has to be purpose driven.

Yeah, I'm going to read you a text I got late last night. Hey, Mike, quick question. Today was meant to be 20 per Higden, that's how Higden, who's a fantastic marathon coach, puts together training plans. Didn't realize I would be climbing a lot. Super awesome, although after the loop, I only got 12.5 and should I go pound more flat, F it. I'm also running out of time. And my response to him is the general rules are stick to plan, even if you didn't get all miles As scheduled another words don't try to make it up and he's just a guy training for his first marathon He's up in San Francisco a good friend of mine

So I've learned through mistakes if I push too hard if I try to make up miles for example I'll blow up. How do you codify that? I mean a lot of it's just It's just you have aous appetite for information and research. It's the, the literature is there. The information is there. It may not be in context, right? So I've learned a lot about running and fat adaptation, et cetera, through mountaineering

and cycling through other, so there's, it's there, it just needs to be translated. I mean, you and I are huge fans of Richard Feynman. And if you look at what Feynman did with the whole challenger investigation, bringing together a cross-functional team of engineers and physicists, et cetera, in terms of problem solving and scientific reasoning, the best approach is a cross-functional world-class expert team. Because you think outside the box and you bring other ideas from other domains. So I think codifying it comes down to, don't limit yourself to just thinking about a marathon

or whatever, think, look at yourself and be objective and figure out what it's going to take to achieve whatever you define as success. If you're VP of Ops of whatever company and you want a marathon, you want a 5K, look around, you, the information is there, the resources are there. I mean, it's so much that's the thing, right? We talked about this. When I used to ride out East in the desert, I would print out maps scanned from an atlas,

and then I'll print them in a ziplock bag to keep them dry from my sweat. And I would literally, that was my navigation. I would chart out my 300-mollars, my 400-mollars. It's so easy now to get information. And perhaps too easy, because when you have to work for it, sometimes I think it's more vested. So in terms of translating some sort of general rules,

don't be afraid to ask questions. My friends ask me, I coach a lot of people informally today, and it's generally, you don't overthink it. I mean, all I definitely think is something to be said for looking at the data and analyzing, et cetera. Unless you're looking to break a world record, don't be too hard on yourself

and just get out there and have fun. I'm surprised. That's incredible. You are very data like these days. We were out riding this morning and lamenting the heat and how slowly we were riding relative to what we would like to. I was like, God, these power meters, they never lie to you.

Just once I want this thing to lie to me and tell me I'm better than I am today. You're like, dude, I don't know how power meter, I don't know how heart rate monitor, I'm just out here having fun. I was like, why the hell do I have a power meter? I don't compete anymore. I don't do this again. I get off. Why do I have a power meter? I don't compete anymore. I don't do this. I get off. Yeah.

Why do I have this data? It's like this. Yeah, artifacts of the past. I don't even have a spedometer on my bike. I mean, I have my phone in my pocket for a Mercedes-Baron. It's not even tracking me. Yeah.

Next, we're going to ride Saturday. So you and I ride once a week. This has been kind of an amazing tradition. You've got me back on the bike. I took a three year hiatus, and I've really enjoyed our Sunday morning rides. We only ride 40k. We ride 40k and you listen to me rant the entire time. I love every... But the only reason is if I work rant thing, I couldn't keep up with you. So it's like I have to let you do the talking so that it can normalize us a little bit so I can keep up. No, but it's awesome.

The last thing I'll say is, and this is going to be disappointing to the listeners because I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag, but you are the guy who has introduced me to the greatest beer in the history of beer. And this was probably four years ago. I came over to your place one day and you gave me one of these things and I was like, yeah, yeah, I don't really like beer. Then you're like, yeah, just try this. I mean, that was the moment the rat hit the lever and got the cocaine. I was like, this is from another planet. This is in beer.

This is all that shit I thought I hated, you know, of course, light and Budweiser and every IPA on the planet like that I just find disgusting. This was a different animal. And to this day, even though I don't drink much, I might have one bottle a month, including right now, I just finished one as we were sitting here talking. It's hard to put in words how good this stuff is. And I don't know if you know this,

but you probably do know this. So once you introduced me to said beer, I don't do anything in moderation. So I wanted to make sure I could get enough of it for us. So I had one of my analysts start looking around the country to find it, because at the time you were only getting it in Belgium, right? Yeah, I was bringing this into the country as yeast samples. I was ordering it online and the first shipment came as a box of yeast samples, which is

I guess what they did. I sort of yeast samples, which is, I guess, what they did. I sort of did online, right? And it was like a 10-year-old bottle. It was not cheap. Yeah, it's not cheap. And you sense, and I've traveled to Belgium to experience this firsthand. It's a great beer.

And so I had Nick Stenson, who was at the time, and still actually is working for me. And I was like, a nicking figure out anything, like he's just like a savant of figuring stuff out And I was like Nick can you figure out if we can get this beer in the United States two days later He calls me goes all right 13 bottles up at this liquor store in Alameda, California 42 bottles in this place in New Jersey boom. He rattles off the whole country And he's like so how many do you want?

And I was like, I'm not sure I understand the question. He's like, well, which of these ones do you want? And I was like, all of them, every single one, 260 bottles of this stuff arrive. And you know, that lasted us for a couple of years. It did, it did. And I've been fortunate, I have stock piled. Because the last shipment I got for you was about what six months ago we got you

about six months ago so the seller is full of this beer and every other beer this brewer makes and they're all fantastic. Are there any I can we give the listener a bone I can't I don't want to name this beer because honest I mean I'm not to sound like a dick, but I just I'm not gonna be happy 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 I'm never gonna get the drink it again. So I'm just gonna have to be a selfish jerk. Can we name the brewery and not screw ourselves or will people figure it out? No, we can't name it. What I love about the brewer, the brewery in Belgium, they're truly authentic. They just don't give a shit.

So they don't care about distribution. They're low volume. They do all these crazy runs. They experiment. They try different things. They do like 300 bottle runs. They just, they tinker. And it's fantastic.

And it's all so bad. Everything. It's some of it's not all of it's great. They have a couple of showers that I just don't care for. I'm not a fan of those, but yeah, from strong bells, nails, you know, quads, and on and on. Everyone I've introduced it to has just been blown away.

You don't have to be a beer drinker, you know? You don't have to be a guy who even likes alcohol. Like there's just something about this that's so good. So here's the bone I think we can throw people. In one of our droughts a couple of years ago, when we were between being able to find more of this stuff, you introduced me to a beer that I think we can share with the general population that I honestly

is 80% is good. It's close. It's not special, but it's fantastic. It's a great mass production beer. I agree with you. And that would be Judgment Day. Judgment Day. Lost day of the evening is a San Marcos, California brewery.

Judgment Day is up there. So it's a strong Belgian quad, as they call it. There are a few others, Shamei, Grand Reserve, and others. But the Judgment Day is a local brewery. It's the closest thing I've ever tried to this beer. It's the closest thing I've ever tried to this beer. There are a few, and I've come at it from a few different directions to try to find something similar to our favorite.

Judgment days, and judgment there's a few other cask aged judgment day equivalents that the lost abbey put out that are fantastic. But in a little soup smoky or a little too oaky or et cetera. The judgment is just the right taste. Judgment is, it is. It's dense. It's a dense, strong 10 plus percent alcohol.

All you need is one. Yeah. And I find it to be the best beer when there are a lot of people over because, A, I'm not gonna drink any other beer. It's so gross. And B, I'm not sharing our special one. Because that's just, yeah.

That's, I've made the mistake. It's funny, I shared this beer with one other friend and he's not a beer drinker either. And he, he said, no, no, no, I drink wine. And I gave him this beer and he had to. And you were thinking, oh my God, that's two of my beers gone. Well, and now he's gonna go and get more.

Yeah, I didn't go. I have stuff dating back to early 2000. So I actually have a stock pile of age, really good stuff. So I, you know, I'm completely out by the way. I have none. I gave you my last batch because I was so grateful for all the help you'd given me. Yeah, you can have one. I got my one for the month today. So they went and bought up everything they

could find. And I've learned, I want to share it, I take off the label, put it into a glass. Yeah, it's other, the world's supposed to be the world's best beer and forget the name of it in Belgium. It's easier to get than this now. All right, so for the listener, oh, and then here's another little point. I was at Bevmo this week, totally opportunistic. I pulled in, I was looking for like a credit union that I needed to go open and account in bubble blah. And it's like, oh, there's a Bevmo here.

I'm gonna go get some more lost abbie because that's where I used to get the judgment day. And I go in and they don't have it. And they're like, yeah, we're not carrying it anymore. It's not profitable enough. I'm like, what the hell is wrong with you people? Who cares how profitable it is? It's the greatest frickin' mass-produced beer

in the history of civilization. So now I'm sweating it. Are we gonna be able to struggle to get judgment day? So what we need to do is go up to the brewery. That's what we need to do, and we'll just fix that. Maybe if enough people are listening to this and they can repeat the demand, we're not gonna bevmo, we might start stocking it again.

It's relatively cheap. I mean, it's 10 bucks for a magnum, basically. Yeah, pine or whatever, whatever that size is. It's cheap. It's cheap. Well, Mike, we've talked about what I consider some of the most ridiculous feats of human endurance, along with probably the most ridiculous feat of beer engineering in the same discussion. If people want to learn more about you, unfortunately, you are a hard guy to learn about. A Google search of your name yields almost nothing.

Is there anything you want people to know about you, read about? We're going to figure out a way to find that Vogue article, which I think is great. We'll link to a page that you have that talk, you know, that kind of lists out some of these things that you've done. Is there anything else people can do to learn about you? No, just go to Peter's website. Very well. I used to have a race website years ago. We've tweaked that to just be a landing page, but I at this point go to Peter's website.

Well, maybe one day when you sell Indigenous, your current company, you know, after you take a little hiatus and really relax, maybe you'll reconsider this idea of forming a coaching company. Because I think in many ways you actually have the perfect skill set, right, which is your software engineer who knows how to build huge products that can be scaled. And more importantly, you bring an expertise to this field that nobody has. And I don't know, I get the sense that there are people out there who would really value being able to access your brain to help them accomplish their goals. So maybe we'll plant that seed here today. Maybe.

All right, man. Thank you very much. And I wish you the best on the remainder of this Smokin' Hot Day in San Diego. You can find all of this information and more at pterotiamd.com forward slash podcast. There you'll find the show notes, readings, and links related to this episode. You can also find my blog and the Nerd Safari at pterotiamd.com. What's a Nerd Safari you ask? Just click on the link at the top of the site to learn more. Maybe the simplest thing to do is to

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