Transcript of Episode 553: Ken Rideout: How The World's Fastest 50-Year-Old Marathoner Traded His Darkest Habits for Incredible Strength New

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

So on this podcast, Kim, what we do is we do a healthy performance shot before we start. And this is by Magic Mind. I'm scared. This one actually is like, I think it's like the Magic Mind Max, which is 3 times the caffeine. Can you handle that?

Let's go.

I don't know. I'm scared. I've taken like 3 of these already.

You're talking to like a professional former drug addict. The idea of some extra caffeine doesn't exactly like make me start to sweat.

That's true.

If you told me we're going to smoke DMT, I'd be like, oh my God, I don't want to die again.

You're right. So a little extra caffeine and a little lion's mane and a little ashwagandha is not going to really hurt anybody. Okay, here we go. Do it. Wait, aren't you going to cheers me? And then I can't do the whole thing because I have had like 4, but you should do it. We'll watch you do it.

Oh, it tastes pretty good.

It's good. Yeah, it's not like those other shots that you like to promote. Very different shots. Exactly. Oh, okay, you guys, you are, you are in for a treat. Ken Rideout is someone who literally is the epitome— like, if you were to look up habits and hustle in like the, like, on, you know, on ChatGPT now, or Google, or Wikipedia, your face would be there because this guy is a crazy. Like, he's a killer in all the good, the best ways. And his story is extremely aspirational, inspirational, and all the things. And I met him— well, actually, I saw him at one of these Jesse Itzler running events. Hell on the Hill.

Is that what it's called? Yep. Hell on the Hill.

And he was like really kind of in, like, just like kind of like in focus mode. And he basically didn't even look my way, but I looked your way and 4 years later you're on this podcast. So anyway, Ken has a new book. It's called Everything You Want Is on the Other Side of Hard, and I finally have you on this show. So thank you for being here.

Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure.

It's my pleasure. We actually even did a podcast before the podcast, which kind of happens when you like click with somebody. But can you kind of just give my audience a little bit of like a origin story, like who you are beyond what I just said? Like, what, like, what you kind of like, who you are and where you started. Because it's pretty spectacular where you started and where you are right now.

I'm going to give you the abbreviated version because there's a whole book of it right there.

That's true.

I'm originally from Boston. I grew up in the inner city, grew up in kind of a rough environment, rough childhood, a lot of abuse, drug addiction, very hostile environment. But from my youngest age, I just remember feeling like I'm not supposed to be here. I don't know how I ended up in this, in this place in life. But I knew I wanted to get out of there. And I don't know why I didn't have role models or mentors necessarily that were pushing me towards going to college, getting like working in a professional setting. Like, you know, in my— to— at that time, it was probably expected that you would have either like a blue-collar job, which I'm cool with, like, but that— what the aspiration was to like get a job for the state or the city and like work for the sanitation department or the city doing like road work, or, you know, maybe work at the prison, which is what I ended up doing. I played, I was very athletic in the sense that I played a lot of sports. I played football and hockey in high school and then also in college, played two NCAA sports, neither one really well.

And when I graduated from high school, I started working as a guard in a prison and that was my first, or corrections officer. It's when I call it a guard, sometimes the prison community, the prison social media crowd attacks me for calling it a guard. Corrections officer.

Why?

Why?

It's just like, it's not semantics. It's not. Yeah. Is that PC, basically, is what you're saying?

It's just, it's weird that people get hung up on some things like this, but I was a corrections officer. To me it was, I was a prison guard.

When you were 18, right?

Yes. For how long?

2 years?

I probably looked like I was 15. No, 4 years while I went to college. So I worked there full-time in the summer and then a few nights a week while I was in school. And, you know, it was exactly what you would expect, like an aggressive environment and a very steep learning curve. But again, most of the people that I knew in there, prison's very segregated. So I knew most of the white guys going in there. Matter of fact, there was a, one of the other corrections officers was a guy called Mickey Ward. They made a movie called The Fighter about him. Mark Wahlberg played him, and his brother Dickie Eklund was an inmate played by Christian Bale in the prison that we were both working at. And then eventually my, my stepfather had already been an inmate there, and my brother, who's 11 months younger, would end up being a prison, an inmate there multiple times. And my brother, just to give context as to how I grew up, my brother was 11 months younger, growing up in the same environment, same exact conditions, and never graduated out of high school, never had a real job, career criminal, in and out of prison, heroin addict, the whole nine yards.

And he— so he ended up getting sentenced there shortly after I stopped working there. And I— so I worked there for 4 years, got out of college, and moved to New York as a pharmaceutical sales rep for like 6 months. But I was playing in a men's hockey league in, um, in New York and met a guy who was working in finance on a trading desk, and he got me a junior trading assistant, trading job on a trading desk, like an institutional trading desk, like a real finance Wall Street trading desk. And it was, it was everything that I wanted to do. It was aggressive. It was like being on in a sports locker room. It was hypercompetitive. But I was also getting like hazed essentially and bullied, which is crazy because I was boxing for the New York Athletic Club. I wasn't like someone you would think would be bullied or picked on. And not that I was letting them, but they were trying to do that. And then eventually, after a couple of months working there, I slapped someone in the face after just too much of the bullshit and they fired me.

and I was so naive. I didn't realize we had competitors. I didn't even, I mean, I was so happy they gave me 2 weeks severance. I didn't know anything about anything. I had never had a professional job. I mean, I, at the pharmaceutical company, but I was like a remote sales rep out in the field. Like I worked from my home and some of the industry traders heard what happened and they loved it. Some of the traders were like, oh, this guy is crazy. I want him to be my sales coverage at this, at a, my, you know, trading, my sales coverage at a trading desk. So the big Enron trader would call into the trading desk and be like, hey, buy buy me this, sell that. And we would put these trades together and get like paid an exorbitant amount of money. So after getting fired, within 2 days I had a job. I was making 40 grand. I had a job making 80 grand the next Monday, which was crazy to me 'cause that was like more money than I could ever imagine at the time. This is in 1997-ish.

Okay. Can I stop you? 'Cause I've got millions of questions already.

Sure.

'Cause this is like, I, 'cause like the, your whole story, I mean, you gotta, guys, you have to read the book because it's really, it's fantastic. But let's just start from the beginning because here you are working as a correction facilities officer, prison guard, whatever. Your brother was in jail, your father, like you kind of like just skip around it like it's no big deal. Like, you know what I mean? And then you went to be a pharmaceutical rep, like it, and you were like, it's just no big, like how did you kind of like, that's a very traumatic experience. Like the fact that you even went to college That to me is like something that you just kind of like, you know, blip, skipped over. Can you describe what kind of environment you were living in? Like, where was your mom? Like, how did your dad— what was your dad in jail for? Why was your brother in and out of jail? Why did you not take that same path? Like, there's so many things that you could have like done differently that would have taken you on a whole different trajectory.

Yeah.

Before becoming a pharmaceutical rep. That's right.

So I— my parents would have me when they were 19 and 20. My mom was 19. My dad was 20. They were divorced like within a year after to have me and my brother. Then my mother had a series of different boyfriends and then married this guy from Alabama who was much younger than her. So wasn't much older than me. I mean, he was obviously, he was older, he was an adult, but he was like completely immature. And they would like beat the shit out of me all the time.

How old were you at this point?

They got married when I was 8. So I was 8 to 18. And then he was gone for a couple years when he went to prison. But he went to prison for like stealing credit cards and like, you know, using stolen credit cards. Like complete nincompoop behavior. Like knucklehead. And it's crazy. It took him as long as it did to get caught. It took as long as it did for him to get caught. And then so then he went to this prison called Billerica House of Corrections. And, and they would beat the— he'd beat you up, slap the shit out of me. Yeah. Like hit us with a belt. Yeah, it was crazy. And then I had a date. He has a son with my mother, so I have a stepbrother who's 8 years younger and who's now a drug addict and doesn't work. It's— they're a mess. But I wanted— going to college was, was never like a, a— the thought of not going was never even in my mindset. I just knew that I— that was the next step of life. I didn't know why I knew that, but I just knew. And I wanted to keep playing sports.

So when I went to college, it was easy to plan to go to college. So I'm gonna keep playing sports. That's all I wanted.

Like, so you worked like while you were in college? Yes. But how did you make money to get to college? And how were you a bit stupid?

I went to a state school. It wasn't very expensive. I went to crappy state school, Framingham State. I always call it the Harvard of Framingham, Massachusetts. Massachusetts. And, um, you know, it was not very expensive and I paid for it working in the prison, took a bunch of student loans. And it's crazy 'cause I had all these student loans, but as soon as I got the new job in finance, I paid the money off in like 2 months.

So did you, as a kid or like as a younger person, like a teenager or whatever, did you have big dreams, big aspirations? 'Cause you grew up in an environment that didn't seem like that would be a norm— normal type of way to think. Did you always have a different type of mindset? Did you have like some kind of —like you were playing sports. Did sports actually like kind of like tweak the way you think? Or what— how did— like, to me, that's not normal what happened to you.

All I wanted to do was play sports, so I wasn't worried about— I wasn't even worrying about what I was studying in college. I got to— I got my freshman year of football— a freshman year of college, I got there and I was playing football, and a bunch of the like knuckleheads on the football team were like, oh, take sociology, that's not very challenging, right? And I was like, oh, okay. And that's how I end up studying sociology. Obviously, in hindsight, I would have went to the Naval Academy, studied business, got out, gone to Harvard and get an MBA. I wish I could do it all again. I would've like made my life a lot easier. And then when I got out of school for a year or two, I was still living in Boston. And when I going into my junior year, I got cut from the hockey team because of my attitude. And I was like just struggling, like being an adult. I had no, I had no like role models. I, I mean, I'm not making excuses. I was just lost. Yeah. And I was like behaving like an asshole. And the coach was like, Your attitude's terrible.

And I ignored several warnings and they were like, we don't need you. And I was like, oh my God, I'm screwed. Like, I'm lost. But my grades were terrible. And when that happened, I also at that point was floundering socially and started doing cocaine. And then with all my buddies in Boston who were like literally like crazy people, and we would just go out, do cocaine, they would get into fights every single night. It was like a I mean, 2 of like my 5 best friends are dead from either drug addiction or violence. Like, it was crazy. It's like, it sounds hyperbolic to talk about it this way, but it was— people who know me and know where I was like living understand that that was a very much a reality.

So then you go to New York and now you're living— now you're a trader.

I mean, so when I got outta school, I was like, I gotta get a job. I gotta get into sales. And the last 2 years I studied like a savage and got on the Dean's List every year. 'Cause I wasn't dumb. I was just lazy. I hated school. Yeah. But once I focused, I was like, just like with running races, I was like, I was like, I'm gonna out hustle everybody.

Right.

And I got good grades and I graduated and I needed a job. And a friend was doing pharmaceutical sales and he is like, my buddy's the sales manager. They're looking for someone in New York. And I was like, I'll do that. And I mean, it was like $36,000. I had a rent apartment. By the time I paid all my bills the first 6 months, I had like $50 left over. I didn't, I would, and I was like, how am I gonna do this? And I was like using credit cards and surviving. But for some reason I had this insane delusional self-belief that I'm like, I'm gonna figure this out before the money runs out, before I like really get too I'll figure out the next move. So I was always like in a job and not a career. And I'm like, I'm going to fuck— I'm going to figure it out. Met this kid in finance and I saw all these guys working in finance at the gyms that I was training at because I was always exercising. And I was like, these guys are dopes. If these guys are making money doing finance, that's what I need to be doing, right?

So that's how I end up in finance. And then I'm working on this trading desk and very quickly start establishing myself. It was like kind of like the law of the jungle there. Like you had to be aggressive and I just— Boiler room kind of. Yeah. But we weren't talking to like retail investors. We weren't talking to like individuals. We were talking to institutions. You couldn't be like, right. No one was lying and stealing. Yeah. Like you'd get, this was highly regulated, like legitimate finance. And so we were trading with Enron and Goldman Sachs and like, we weren't running people over. No one was, but we were making a lot of money. And so when I get the new job making 80 grand, now I'm covering Enron is my client and I start making like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And within a year or two, I get hired by Cantor Fitzgerald to go to London to run European and Asian commodities sales and trading for Cantor. And now I'm making millions of dollars and I'm flying the Concorde back and forth, New York to London. I've got a brand new Porsche at that time.

Throughout all this, I'm suffering with this like imposter syndrome and fraud complex. I'm like, they're gonna find out that I'm stupid and I shouldn't be here. And I like had no— on the surface I had confidence, but deep down I'm like, I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm just figuring it out on the fly. Like it was all happening so fast. I had an ankle surgery, got prescribed some opioids, and I was like, see you later. I'm like, I'm the most confident person in the world. I'm good. I don't have any concerns. And that started like a 10-year, like 24/7 addiction to drugs.

But you were like a functional, like a functional drug addict.

Yeah. No one ever knew that I was doing drugs. I mean, they probably thought I was a weirdo, but not on drugs.

Like I even saw something like you was in your book. I think it must have been or something when I was researching all of your stuff, like You were like, your wife had no idea. You got married and she didn't even know you were a drug—

that you even did drugs. My wife is very much like a straight-laced square. Like, she had never— she's never done any drugs in her life, like, ever. She drinks, she, like, not excessively, but she'll have a drink. But she's, like, completely naive. Like, early in the relationship, we walked by someone smoking weed and she's like, is that weed? And I'm like, are you insane? Didn't you go to college? Like, you don't know what weed is? She's like, I didn't— for now, I've never— I didn't hang out with those people. I was in a sorority full of nerds. Like, we didn't She just didn't— wasn't exposed. She's not a nerd. She's like, I mean, she played sports, she's into shit, but she was just like naive to those kind of things. So, I mean, eventually she realized like something's up. And but I was never like relishing in my addiction. I was always like, I got to stop these drugs, but I can't do it. I can't stop. It was like a— But how did it start?

Like, where were you in the career part? Like, at what point? Like, what made you decide, like, to— what made you start in the first place? Like, yeah, you were doing coke and all this stuff when you were younger with your friends.

I stopped doing coke when I moved to New York because I'm like, this is a, this is a losing proposition. But the, the OxyContin, fentanyl, and all those things, like, they just made me feel good. And, and what was your drug of choice? Opioids, like OxyContin, Percocet, fentanyl. Like, the stronger the better. And I would take them in the morning before I got to work. I'd take them at lunch and I'd take them in at dinner, like, so I would take like 30 to 50 Percocets a day.

And this is when you were actually like, like making all these millions of dollars.

Yes. And I had so much money, like I had connections on the street. I'd buy like a whole prescription bottle of, you know, when you get the prescription filled and it's like 1,000 pills and they put it in the bottle and then put the bottle back. Yeah. I had like shady guys that would sell the entire bottle. Like, I don't know if they would steal it or how they'd get it, but I was the worst because I had means and I had, and I was resourceful. So I would know how to connect with degenerates because I had grown up with these type of people. And so, I mean, I'd find connect— I had talked about it in the book. I found like a shady doctor in London. I had guys, doctors in Chinatown in New York. I could just go in, skip in front of the whole line of 100 people in his waiting room, give him $100, he'll write a script for anything that I wanted. So it was like the worst scenario, and I couldn't stop. I was physically addicted. I— when I would stop, I'd get physically sick like a guy withdrawing from heroin.

So I kept like and, and a couple times I did it, I like just white-knuckled it. I just got sober and like locked myself in my bedroom. I was just like, I'm just gonna be sick until it's over and then I'll emerge from this like death tomb. And I'm, I'm skipping around, I'm, I'm fast-forwarding a bit, but eventually my wife and I get married. She knows I'm struggling this. I had used this other drug called Subutex, which is like, like methadone. It kind of helps you get off the opioids, but it's supposed to be just a transition. But people are on those things long-term and those become super addictive. And just as hard to get off. So when we got mad, we adopted a daughter from Ethiopia after we got married. And when we— when I realized, like, the clock, the runway is— I'm running out of runway. I have to do this now or never. And I was like, if I don't do this, I might kill myself because I can't live like this. I'm not a loser. I didn't want to be a loser, but I was behaving like one. And I had very high self-esteem before this happened, and now I was, like, destroying myself emotionally.

And I went to an outpatient detox facility in New York, and they gave me, like, some— like, I basically like a medically assisted detox where they gave me Ritalin to stay awake, Xanax to calm down at night and to sleep, and Ambien and blood pressure medicine. And there's a— there's an important story in the book where I— my wife finds me on the floor unconscious in the middle of the night in our apartment, which is like this beautiful, like, glass high-rise, like 50th floor, gorgeous views of the city. And I'm like basically living in hell. And she finds me in there and I just like come clean and tell her everything. I said, I'm trying to go through this one-week detox. 'Cause when the week is up, I can take this other drug. I can get an injection of a drug called Vivitrol that's an opioid blocker. So you cannot get high. If you take the drugs, it won't affect you. It like basically occupies all the opioid receptors in your brain. So it's like a, it's like a safeguard. But to take the Vivitrol, you have to be completely clean for a week, which most addicts can't do because it's, you're sick, like sicker than you can ever imagine.

Yeah. So I did it and I got through it and I told her and she was like, oh my God, this is so good. Crazy. And then I got the Vivitrol shot and I was good. And then I just, you know, I've had a few relapses along the way, but not enough.

Like, wait, wait, hold on a second. So, so basically that Vivitrol that you're talking about, it like, if you take up, if you take your drugs, take your pills, it just doesn't affect you?

None. No effects. Believe me, because I tried it. You cannot get high.

So how does that affect you? Like, so if you're not getting high, what did it do to you mentally? Like, were you just like, what was that? Wasn't it panic or anxiety or what? Yeah, all of those things.

But you know, your body is so resilient. I mean, think about when they tell you Tylenol, don't take more than like 4 Tylenol in a day. I'm taking fucking 6 at a time, multiple times a day. Like, my body just like— the fact that I survived this and in my addiction relative to like when you see a real hardcore heroin addict or fentanyl guy, you're like, how is this guy alive? Like my friend Zach, my friend Zach Clark, who was like shooting heroin and smoking crack. 24/7 for like a couple of years. I'm like, I can't believe you're alive. But that's— your body is like magical, which is why now I look at it, I'm like, I would never put that shit in my body about like, you know, processed foods. And my wife's like, you're crazy. She's like, you're worrying about cereal?

Exactly. Gluten. Yeah, exactly. You won't eat gluten, but you'll like do all these crazy things. But then like, how long do you need to take that drug until you just kind of titrate off of that?

Like, yeah, no, good question. So you take it for 30 days and then after 30 days, if you don't like take it again, so you take it for about And basically after about 7 to 14 days, your brain, you form new, new habits, new addictions. Like the same way you can take a drug for 7 days and become physically addicted. Yeah. If you cut it out for 30 to 90 days, which is why they always tell people like 90-day rehab with 28 days, that basically is enough time to reset your brain. So then you have a clean slate and if you are an idiot, you'll start using again. And if you'll like, if you have discipline, you'll stay sober after that. I just, I just needed to get it outta my system where I could like get a fresh start, which is one.

Wow. So after that 30 days, So for 30 days you were fine? 90.

I got the shot 3 months. I got— after the first month I went back and got the shot.

Okay, so for 90 days, and then you were like, you, you said you had a couple of like mishaps. Yeah. How old were you when that happened?

So when I got sober in 2010, I was 39.

Okay, so at 39, so finally, like for 10 years before that, you were like taking it like 50, 60 pills a day every day. Every day.

Or I was on Subutex for like a month at a time.

And you were at it. And at that, in those 10 years, was that like your highest, you know, money-making? We'll get to now, late, you know, we'll get to like the present after. But in those 10 years, you were making millions of dollars. Yes. So it never ever affected what you were doing?

Well, probably did. Maybe I would've been making tens of millions. I was gonna say, who knows? But I was also spending money as fast as I was getting it because when you're doing that kind of shit to your brain, all of a sudden all the natural, like, all the natural, like, dopamine receptors and all the feel-good chemicals become dull. Like, so for a very long time, like year plus, the things that normally make you happy, like waking up in Hawaii, looking at the sunset, having sex, like these kind of things, they just don't fill that void. It's not the same kind of high because when you hijack your, like, reward system by artificially multiple times a day, like getting your, like, dopamine, like, boom, through the roof. Feel like, no, that's the high that I'm looking for. This other stuff is like, they're not even moving the needle until you like get— pay it back to baseline, and then you have to reset everything. So you just— but that's what makes it so difficult, because people eventually then a lot of times will give up and be like, I need to feel good for a minute.

Which is what would happen, is I'd be like sober for like 6 to 12 months, and I'd be like, I'm gonna get high just to have a day. I need a day off from life. And it would take like a day or 2, 3, 4 days of like being high around the clock to be I'm like, what am I doing? And then my wife would also start to figure it out. Like, she would notice the shift in my personality. And you can look at someone's eyes and tell right away. The pupils dilate. Like, I know I can look right at someone and be like, dude, that guy's fucking whacked out of his mind. So my wife will be like, why do you know? I'm like, look at his eyes. Okay, that's what I don't understand.

How did your wife not know? Well, she only knew me on drugs.

How long were you dating her? 5 years. If you only know someone as like a crazy person who's like— for 5 years? Yes. But you were sober in those 5 years? Well, I was on Subutex So I wasn't on crazy— I wasn't like high and low, high and low. I was like steady. But that also made me like a grouch and very like jumpy. Like I would be normal. Someone would cut me off in traffic. I'd be like, I'm going to effing kill that guy.

Rageful.

Kind of, but not as— not like— not like off the reservation. I would just be like high-strung.

So then when you got off the drugs, were you then still working in finance?

Yeah. So when I got sober, I was working at Credit Agricole trading fixed income products. So like corporate bonds. And then in 2013, when we had our third child, we were living in the city. We moved to Westchester County to a place called Katonah that was like idyllic. It was gorgeous. But I was commuting to the city. So I was driving into the city like 40 minutes in the morning to get into the city at like 5:00 AM, running on the West Side Highway. Yeah. Training like crazy. Then I would come home, it would be like an hour and a half drive. And it was, it was driving me crazy. It was ruining my life. 'Cause I, like 3:30, I'd start looking at my watch and looking at ways and looking at my watch. And I'd be like the first person out of the office. And at that time I was working at a financial technology firm that I helped start with a friend of mine called Mark Kuchinad, who was, ran structured credit trading at Goldman Sachs. We started a company called Electronify that was an electronic trading platform for corporate bonds for end users.

Like PIMCO could trade directly with State Street instead of trading through the banks and them taking a fee. Anyway, it was a long shot that it would work, but I wanted to go to California to cover the West Coast clients, and I just wanted the change of my life. And it was like, it was in hindsight, it was so insanely stupid and risky for me to do this because there's no trading desk in LA that I can work on. If this doesn't work, I'm in LA and I don't have— the only thing I've done is work on trading desks and they're all in book. So I was like, I'm gonna just take a chance. And I have 4— I had a— my 4th son was brand new. He was like less than 6 months old. I moved the whole family across country to LA. I rent a house in the Palisades that's like obscenely expensive. I'm burning through money like it's on— like, we're like throwing money overboard. I'm just like, I can't believe how quick my money is running out. And at that time, I was training for Ironman in Hawaii, which I had done a few times previously, because when I got sober, I was like really into endurance sports.

It became my new addiction.

That was what I was going to ask you, but But so that's what I was going to say, because now that was a good segue. You were still doing financial stuff though when you got sober. Like, you didn't lose— like, it wasn't— you kind of— you got sober because of your own will. It wasn't because you were going to lose a job or anything, because you were still— I was having kids and I was like, you're still thriving financially and in your profession. It was just more like you've— now you're having kids. But then did you then use the running as like your new addiction? Yes. Yeah. And how did it start? Because you were playing hockey, like, you were always athletic and did hockey, but you were never track star?

No, I started running when I was like right before I like finally got sober. I was like on Subutex. I couldn't get off that, but it wasn't like hugely negative— negatively impacting my life. I could still exercise and stuff, and I just became obsessed with exercising and training. And then when I was— went through that with that detox, I started running every day. And the woman, the nurse, would be like, all right, listen, you're gonna feel terrible. I'm like, I've done this a million times. I know what the fuck I'm doing. Like, I know, I know what's coming. Like, spare me the, like, lecture. Yeah, I'm pissed. I'm— I hate myself and I'm angry. Like, I got it. So then I would just go after work and, like, flog myself running 10 miles every day. And I would be like, I'm sweating, I'm freezing, I'm like hot, I'm going to drop dead. And I just was like, nope, this is my penance. I deserve this. Fuck you, you're running. So I just started doing it every day and it became like a habit. And I was like, okay, I'm feeling better now. I'm getting faster, I'm getting stronger.

And it just became like my own source of pride and punishment. It was like, you, this is your punishment. I, I've like levied this punishment against you and you're not getting out of it. And I just built this like resilience and discipline. Like, like I know I gotta do this. My wife'd be like, let's get up and go have breakfast. I'm like, what time do you wanna go? 10? All right, I'm gonna get up and run at 6 or whatever. You know, I would just do it.

You reverse engineer everything. So you run and you've been running every day for, for 5 years, you said 10 miles a day.

Yeah. I would, when I was doing the Ironman stuff, I would swim, bike, or run, I would work out once or twice every single day. But when I started, when we moved to LA, I was training for the Ironman. And so I was biking a lot. So I would either run or bike every single day. And there was a guy in my neighborhood in the Palisades who was into cycling. We started riding together. He had an asset management firm, you know, and he didn't have a business development person, but he had like $2 billion in assets under management. And I said, let me run business development for you and help you grow the firm. And he was like, you don't have any experience. And we're friends. Like, I don't want to have to fire you. It's like, we're like too close. Like, I couldn't do that. And I said, let me come and work for free for 3 months and see if it works out. And it worked out like really well. And after a few weeks, he's like, okay, here's a real finance salary. And all of a sudden I was like back and at least had a job.

And, um, but it didn't seem like you were ever like hurting for money though. Like, it didn't—

like, you weren't struggling? No, but I was running out of money. I wasn't like— no one would have known I was struggling, but I was like getting low. Like, I was getting low because—

were you overspending what had, basically. Yeah.

Like, I was like, I had a crazy expensive apartment in a gated neighborhood up in the Palisades. I was like, I didn't need all this stuff. I had nice cars. And I was like, I gotta figure out a way to make more money or it's gonna run out. And I got like dangerously low on cash. But I never told my wife, hey, we're low on money. And that's the relationship we have, though. She— we have very traditional relationship. She handles the kids, she manages the house. She doesn't ask about money. I don't tell her what to spend. She just— she's like, oh, I want to do this, I want to do that. I'm like, yeah, go ahead. Or sometimes she'll be like, can we do this, this, this? I'm like, can you wait till next month? Or yeah, do it. Normally I'm just like, do what you want. She's not like into labels. She would never buy like a fancy handbag. She'd be like, I'd rather have the money. Yeah, right, right. So that was the— that was the saving grace. And, um, no, then when I got through it all, I was like, you know, telling her all.

She's like, oh my God, I'm so glad you didn't tell me what was happening. I would wouldn't, because I was like, there's no sense in both of us not being able to sleep, right?

That's so true, right?

But I figured it out, and, and, and then my life changed dramatically. This guy Jack McDowell at the Palisades Group changed my life. He gave me an opportunity to do that, and I rewarded him. We, we grew from $2 to $5 billion in assets. We were managing, like, we had a series of separately managed accounts. They're called SMAs in finance. The finance nerds will get this. But we would manage these huge pools of capital for big institutional investors like Soros, Oaktree, like all these like top-in-class managers. But we managed a very specific strategy of whole loan residential mortgages. So we would buy non-performing loans, remedy them, and then sell them off as re-performing loans once you fix the, the missing documents in these mortgages. And not you, contrary to popular belief, you would never buy like a pool of mortgages that people aren't paying and then evict the people. That's the worst outcome for everyone. You want to like keep them in the house, so you might restructure the interest, you might forgive the back payments and get them paying again. 'Cause as soon as they have like a year of payments, the mortgage is now reperforming and a bank and an insurance company can buy that, but they can't buy distressed non-performing assets.

So it's a lot of boring shit. But point is, we had a really niche strategy. Yeah. And there was an opportunity to build, to start our own essential internal, like private equity fund, like a, like our own discretionary fund where people give us money and we manage it to our liking versus is separately managed accounts. You are nego— you are managing it in conjunction with the other manager. Yeah. And the fees are appropriately much smaller for an SMA. But on a private equity style fund, we were getting paid no management fee 'cause we didn't need the management fee to run the business 'cause we had $5 billion in capital. But we took 30% of all the profits we made and we, we tried to hire people to help us raise the money and they laughed us out of the office and, and they were like, why do you think you can do this? And I was It's like, I think I can win the Boston Marathon until someone beats me. Of course I think I can do it. I had no— I didn't think I could, but I was like, I'm gonna convince, I'm gonna convince everyone around me that I can.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we did it and we raised like $35 million and in 2 years made $10 million. And the, and the clients all doubled their money minus 30%.

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Is it that— illusionally optimistic in my abilities. Because if I sit down and think, I would tell you like, I don't think I can do that again. I don't think I can win another race. I got lucky. Like, the people that showed up weren't very good. Or if I did a good business deal for a long time, I'd be like, man, I'll never be able to get a deal done like that again. And then eventually I just was like, you know what, I've done this so many times, like, I gotta stop thinking that it was luck.

But it's also like, you must be exceptionally good at sales. People like—

If you, if someone who's into sales and sales processes sat me down, they'd be like, well, how did you reframe this? And why did I'm like, I have no process. That was like my biggest, that was my, the guy who hired me, Jack McDowell, that was his biggest like bone of contention with me. It drove him fucking crazy. Right. He would be like, I can't. He's like, do you know how much it pisses me off? You're the last one in, the first one out. You don't take notes. You never send updates and reports. But when I tell you we need to, we needed to raise $5 million, for the operating company, which is crazy hard, right? Basically take a stake in this manager that isn't really making a lot of money. And I did it. Then we wanted to raise discretionary funds. We couldn't even hire people to help us. And I did it myself. And he was like, this is crazy. He's like, nothing that you're doing makes sense, but you keep getting it done so consistently that I don't even doubt it anymore. When I tell you I wanna do something, my inner dialog is like, we're never, he's never gonna be able to do this.

And then you do it and I just can't believe it. And it's all based on relationships, but none of it is traditional. Traditional, like, let me sit down, explain to you how I like— see when he did this and then I changed my body and then I pointed like this, like a Tony Robbins thing. Like he reframed, you can see him reframing with his hands and then he points to get his— that I don't, I, that shit's foreign to me. I'm just like, hi, I just want to do a deal. Here's the deal. I want to, I'm an, I'm an honest person. Here's my background. It's everything's publicly available. I've never been involved in like a financial conflict in my life. I've never been party to any lawsuit. I'm like, I also think, like we were talking earlier, if someone has a dispute about money, I'm like, just keep it. I don't need that energy in my life. I don't, I'm not desperate for money. I'm not desperate to do a trade. And when I think when people sense that you don't need to do something, they want to be in business with you because it's just sincere desire to do business, not like desperation or necessity.

How much of it though is likability, right? Because I think that in order to be extremely successful in life, I think the most underrated underrated skill is likability. Because if someone likes you, they'll give you their money. Yes. They'll want to hang out with you. They'll want to, they'll want to like be in business with you. That's right. Right? You can have all the credentials in the world, but if you're not someone that they like, then it doesn't matter anyway. Right? That's exactly right. And so my question is to you is like, can you even teach someone that? Those skills? No. No. Right? Like, isn't that kind of like either you have it or you don't?

It's something that is like, it's a little bit frustrating to me because I'm like, I don't know how to quantify what I'm doing. I don't know how to explain it to someone— I've had— I've mentored a million different kids over the years working with me formally and informally, and I'm just like, I can see them trying to emulate some of the things I do. And I would always say to them, like, dude, do not try to do things the way that I do them. Take the style that I'm using, put your own— put your own personality into it, but you can't talk like me. It sounds crazy. It sounds crazy when I hear myself talk, but hearing you try to talk like me is not— and I don't know teach that. But like, when I talk to my kids, I can tell them what my mindset is, and I can explain to them— like, my son was struggling with school, and he's 14, and I'm like, listen, you think anyone likes school, buddy? You think I like school? But here's the thing with life: you are going to pay these dues right over here. You're gonna pay these things now or later, and it's up to you.

And they keep getting more expensive if you go later, meaning if you don't do your work now, that work is gonna get exponentially harder next year. But the people that are smart will pay their dues now so that later in life, if you do the— handle your work now, go to the right schools, whatever your profession is, get the right degrees, do the hard work early. It's like bankers. You— 5 years of your life are gone. They're gonna own you. They're gonna torture you. But if you do those 5 years, you're gonna be rich for the rest of your life. Right. And so you could pay me now or pay me later, but everyone's paying. Everyone's paying the bill.

Exactly.

And if you don't pay now, you're gonna pay a little over time and your life's gonna be miserable because you're You're gonna do things you have to do versus things you want to do. And it's like, people will like, in finance now, be like, I wanna do what you are doing. I'm like, I don't even know how to describe to you what I do. Like, I, I, how'd you make the move from finance? I said, if you're waiting for the stars to align, they're never gonna align. I basically almost went broke, backed myself into a corner and just put all my chips on the table betting on myself. That's the thing though.

Like, you're authentically who you are. You are you, right? Yes. And I think that people gravitate to people who are very authentic, right? You're not trying to be somebody else. You're not doing something that, like, you're not trying to fit into a box. And that is attractive in itself. But your mindset and your mentality and your, like, ability to, like, really kind of, like, like, to do the thing that nobody wants to do is so intense. How does that, like, how does that even, like, how do you even teach that? Like, you can't even teach that. Can someone even, like, like, you have a whole book on how important it is to do, like, the hard things, right? So do you have like a framework where people would read this book and be like, okay, how can I be even 10% more gritty than I am right now? Would they be able to find these actionable ways to do it?

Yes, because I'm not telling anyone how to do anything. I'm just showing you in the book how I did it. Here's how I changed careers. Here's how I got sober. Here's how I got married. Here's how I adopted children. Here's how I raised my kids.

Finish that sentence. Here's how I did it blank. How did you do it?

To do it. Everyone is scared of any kind of change. Anything that you're thinking about doing that's hard, of course it's scary. So I use my kids as a lot of examples. My one middle son is very timid, but he's very athletic. He's playing baseball, so he's up at bat. Every time the pitch comes, he steps like away from the box. And I'm like, so after the game— and I, I parent them all differently because they're all different, and I try not to be intense, but it's hard enough for them to be my kids because they know that I want to die to win. But I don't try to put that on them, but they— it's inevitable that they pick up on Yeah, it's inevitable. So it's hard for me to like, because all I stress is effort. I don't care about winning, and I, it's, well, we'll get into it more. But so I said to him, buddy, every time the guy throws the pitch, it looks like you're scared, you're stepping out. And he's like, I am scared. And I said, okay, at least we know where we're starting. Guess what? Everyone's scared.

You need to learn how to do this while you're scared. I'm scared about everything. There's the picture of the, on the COVID of my book is from the Gobi Desert, a race I did in Mongolia. Yeah, I had never run an ultra in my life. I had never slept in a tent, run with a backpack, and now I'm doing a 155-mile stage race over 6 days across the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Sounded like a cool challenge until I'm boarding the plane and thinking like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm so scared. But when I walked down the jetway, it was a very distinctive moment, like very memorable moment, because I was like, I'm so scared. Like, for the weeks leading up to it, I'm like, what have I done? I have sponsors. I'm like, gonna— I could humiliate myself. And as I walked on the plane, I was like, You know what? F all this. I'm gonna kill everybody and I am going to convert my, all of my fear into aggressiveness. Like hell on the hill. My legs were destroyed running down that hill at Jesse's house. Like I couldn't walk the next day and I knew it was coming while I was, oh my God, that is, that race is so hard running down that hill and that eccentric load on your muscles destroys my legs worse than a marathon, worse than an Ironman.

I mean, you're going for 3 hours running up and down a hill at 18% grade. It's like you're braking, braking, then like using all muscle to get up the hill. I don't want to, I don't want to do it. I'm like intimidated and scared. But you saw the mindset that I get into is like, no, it's time to attack because you are either going to kill or be killed. And when I get into those positions, and if, if anything, that's what I would say is the main overriding theme, is like you get to the point in your life where you either accept mediocrity or you realize that if I want to do hard Guess what? If it was easy, every asshole would have already done it. And I want to do things that other people can't do. And the only thing separating me— I have no natural gifts. I mean, you saw me, you walked in, you're like, oh, you're not as big as I thought you were. Like, I'm a very average guy and I know that. I have no— nothing special except my mind. And that's the thing is for everyone listening, it's all internal.

Andrew Huberman the other day said a psychologist or a psychoanalyst told him it's all internal. Meaning you win a race, no one comes over and sprinkles dopamine on you. You generate those feelings internally. And when you realize that you're also generating the fear, the anxiety, and all that shit is self-induced, the same way that those emotions start to get embedded in your brain, whether you like it or not, you can also control that experience and be like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not afraid. They better be afraid. Even if you don't believe it, if you repeat it enough times and act on it. Once you start acting on it, it's a reality. You would never know I'm scared. I'm standing on the start line of every race wishing I was anywhere but there, scared shitless. But outwardly I'm like, you're all dead, I'm killing everyone, even though I love everyone. But that's the process I have to go through because I know I'm not special, but I know that the things that I can control— most people don't know how to do that.

Well, you made yourself special actually. Yeah, because of your mindset. Like, to me—

but that's available to anyone.

Well, right, But what, but you said something that was really important, which was everything in life is a decision, right? You can decide to be a superstar or you can decide to be a loser, right? Depending on what you do with it. Right. But you said the thing that was very true. It's the action you do. The more action you take on something, the more you give yourself the self-confidence and self-esteem that you can like do a hard thing and then do the next thing and do the next thing. You've just done so much of it that now you're, you're you have so much confidence that, like, maybe if you don't even know how to do it, like, that race, that, that go— the, the 100— the ultramarathon is so insane. Like, you know, you could— even if you have never done it before, you know you can actually finish it because you've done 100 other races.

Well, I didn't know. I was nervous, but I wasn't going to show anyone else I was nervous because, like, people are animals. Where people— we're animals. The same way I look at my kids sometimes playing, I'm like, they might as well be like puppies or lion cubs. Like, the boys are roughhousing, my daughter can't get away from them fast enough. And when you realize that dogs can sense if you're afraid, like, you ever say— I'm not a big dog person, and when dogs are super aggressive and I'm like, oh my God, don't let the dog look at me, the dog knows exactly who's afraid and they go right to them. And I'm like, oh, exactly true. But then when you turn at them and like get aggressive with them, they'll like be like, oh no, that guy's crazy. Yes. And people are the same thing. When they sense like weakness, even if it's subconscious, they can see, oh, he's scared. The same way they see you scared at the start of race to be like, that guy's crazy. Like you seeing me at the race, like, that guy's fucking crazy. Look at how he's running.

Even though it doesn't matter what's going on inside of me, I'm only projecting what I want people to see. And that's like, I'm here to kill.

Yeah. And you're also just like the tunnel vision and the beast mode of like, just, you wanted to get this thing done. That's right.

I want it over with.

I want it over with and done. So I'm like, I'm not going to bother them. I'm not going to— I'm going to leave them alone. But okay. So the thing is though, that we like, we— you haven't said it yet. I haven't said it Yeah, this, like, you are like the fa— like, this guy is like the fastest guy, like, in your, like, over 50, and you started when you were 40, in your 40s. Yes. I mean, that is like abs— like, insane. Number one, that even shows, and I think you even talk about it, that like where you started from has nothing to do with where you're going to end up, right? Again, this is, this is literally sheer grit and mindset that people could reframe for themselves. Like, they don't have to be stuck where they are. That's not their— that doesn't have to be their reality. They can always shift and move if they want to.

Think about all the entrepreneurs that are out in the world that have like stories of like 100 different failures. I was reading about this kid, I don't know a lot about him, but the Alex Hormozi. Yeah. Oh my God. Guy had like 3 or 4 businesses that failed miserably. Oh my God. And now he is worth, I don't know how many hundreds of millions. He's writing books. He's got like, that guy, like he's got the same mindset. He just applies it to business. Business just doesn't apply. Like it doesn't get me excited the way I like a competitive race wood, but he, like, had gyms that filled, then he had other gyms that filled, then he created some software for gyms, and now he's worth, like, hundreds of millions of dollars, seemingly.

You know what's interesting? Seemingly. You know what's really interesting, though, is because he found something that he was good at. Like, to you, like, what's interesting to me with you is, like, this is a whole other career path, right? Like, this endurance— like, you're, you're, like, a very— probably one of the best endurance athletes there are, right? That's how I was introduced to you anyway, which is— and it And it, and it's true. And that in itself is its own business career. Like you may have been terrible at something else, but you may, like this in itself could be an, this is an entire business as an, as how you're doing it. People, you've actually keep on like reinventing, like reinventing yourself into this new person. You were a finance guy and then you were like, now you're an endurance athlete. You also have like a, you know, like a, a marketing agency. Agency, but like the through line is your self-belief and that, you know, like you don't really care. You're not putting yourself in a box. You're like, I'll do this box for a while and then I'm gonna shift and then I'm gonna try this thing.

And then if that doesn't work, most people don't have that, um, that ability to see themselves beyond like the myopic view of themselves. Right. And so besides action, what is something else that people can like learn from you that can help them move even like a little bit for like further?

When you were just describing that, the only thing I could think was like, yeah, I've tried a million things. I've failed at a bunch of stuff, but guess what? I'm not afraid to do? Lose. Because guess what? If I'm not losing occasionally, I'm not really trying. And if you're afraid to lose, like starting the agency, like I didn't know if the agency was going to work. I didn't know if doctors and scientists were going to work with you.

Was that your idea?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, me and like, and that the John Bear was instrumental in saying like, you should do this, you've got to go. Jesse Itzler was like pushing me to do this for years. He's like, you should manage fighters. So initially my thought was, because I had a, I had a podcast for a long time called The Fight with Teddy Atlas that was huge. And we like, that's how I met Dana White. I've interviewed Jake Paul, Dave Portnoy. We had every fighter, we had every champion in the UFC at one time on our show. So that's how I got introduced to like combat sports. And now my youngest son is into jiu-jitsu and wrestling, and he's friends with Dana. So Dana will invite him to like huge fights and we sit not in the front row, like against the cage. It's unbelievable. Like I've got pictures on my Instagram of my— when he was 8, my son with his— in Boston with a Celtics jersey with his own name on the back. Because when we bought him the Celtics jersey, I was like, do you want like Jason Tatum? What name of player do you want on your back?

He's like, I don't want another man's name on my back, I want my own name. He was 8. He must have heard me say that because I would always say that. I'm like, I'm not gonna wear— I mean, maybe Larry Bird, but I'm like, I'm not wearing another guy's name on my back. No one's better, they're worse than me. I'm like —my own jersey. And he had a— he had a leprechaun hat on. And Dana loved him. Dana. Dana comes over before the main event of this huge pay-per-view fight in Boston, goes, Cameron, give me your phone. My kids don't have phones. I said, here, take mine. So he brings him over, interrupts the broadcast, sits him with Rogan. And I'm friends with Rogan, too. He's taking pictures of my son with Rogan. Then he's got Bruce Buffer, the announcer, holding his hand up with the tuxedo on, pointing the camera like he just won a fight. Then Dana comes around, he goes, Cameron, get in the cage. Cage. You can see in the background, there's a picture on my Instagram, the place is packed because the main event's about to start. Yeah. And Cameron's standing in there with his hands up like a fighter, and he gets out of the cage and he says to Dana, Dana, the next time you see me in the octagon, I'm not going to have my shoes on, because he had like Celtics-colored Air Jordans on.

He's just like a cool, kind little guy. Yeah. And, um, but so I had that podcast. So when I started the agency, I was going to manage fighters. So we managed the UFC welterweight champ for a while, Belal Muhammad. I've done work Dana, Dana, Dustin Poirier, although I'm not his manager, but we've done like, we've brought them deals. And then very quickly though, we started working with a couple doctors and scientists and thought leaders in the health and wellness space like Jeremy London, Brian Hoflinger. I've done some stuff with Andrew Huberman. And very quickly we started to carve out a niche. We've worked with Kristen Holmes at Whoop and all these people that I'm friends with, and I started showing them deals. And again, not in a transactional way. I was like, hey, Hey, no, no exclusive arrangements, but can I show you deals? And because I had all these relationships with brands, because I raised money for a bunch of them and I had an inventory finance company for a couple years, another example of a failure, that business didn't work. We sold it for next to nothing in, in, but, but I learned a lot.

And through that, everything you're doing, you, you're gathering intel, you're learning information. I learned how about CPG brands and how difficult it is managing their cash flow and building out inventory. Inventory and getting terms with manufacturers, contract manufacturers, the whole shit. It was a lot of crash course in CPG and entrepreneurship because I worked with the founders. And through all that, I just had all this experience and, and, and, and I was getting influencer type deals from the running I was doing. I had a shoe deal with Reebok, which was crazy. They only had like 3 athletes, me, Shaq, and like Angel Reese. It was crazy. And I started to get so many deals that brands were coming to me and I'm like, I can't do any more brand deals, but I know a guy that would be a good fit for you. And I just— for years my wife would be like, you're doing all these intros, like, why don't you try to make that a business? Like, it seems like you're creating just a bunch of extra work for yourself. And I'm like, I'm just— they're my, they're my friends. I'm building relationships.

I never wanted anything in exchange for being a good friend. Yeah, yeah. And it just morphed into a career and a job. And it's the same thing with running. I didn't set out with running like, hey, I'm going to be a run influencer and people are going to know me. Know me. Like, I freaking toiled in darkness and anonymity in those hills above Malibu and Calabasas for so long. Like, I met Reggie Miller up there. Reggie Miller's riding his bike, I'm running. Every single day we see each other, we're the only people out there for miles, and we just developed a friendship. He wrote a blurb for my book. We DM back and forth. I'm like, Reggie Miller is one of the best basketball players in history. He's like freaking Michael Jordan. And the fact that he's like— but he respected me because he saw me there every day. And, you know, going up a mountain on a bike and running, you're basically going the same speed. We'd be right next to each other for like 10-minute And he'd be like, "Man, you're getting after it." I'm like, "Well, you're right here too." And we were just— and he's like the same age.

And all of this stuff of just putting out good energy and effort, it all morphed itself into this niche-y, weird career that I have now that I'm like incredibly grateful for. I say to my wife like once every couple of weeks, I'm like, "Can you believe I don't have a job?" When I was working on a trading desk, I'm like, "I'm in hell. Like, they own me. I can't— I'm there 12 hours a day, sitting in a chair." sitting like side by side with other men all day, trading, fighting, bickering. You know, guys like got his phone up too loud. You're like, dude, turn that effing phone down, I'm gonna throw it out the window. Of course it's all alpha guys, they're like, eff you. I'm like, you turn that phone— you know, it's like crazy shit like that, constant conflict. Now I have no conflict in my life. If someone is like doesn't gel with me, I'm like, I don't need to do this business, I'm gonna go do something else. Do something else.

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You're not doing drugs now. So that just becomes your new like addiction basically, right? So like, when did you become competitive with it? Like, when did you kind of see that you were like faster? Like, what's your time? It's like 5:40 an hour. Like, it was like some crazy time.

5:40, 5:39 per mile is the pace that I ran. My best marathon was 2:28, but I've run 2:29, sub 2:30 after 50, like 5 or 6 times. So I set out, so I was running in like 2016, I moved here, I'm running '17, '18. I started to like recognize, oh man, I'm getting pretty good. And I won the Malibu Half Marathon one year in like 2017 or '18. Okay. And then I was like, wow, I can't believe I won a race. It wasn't crazy fast. It was like an hour and 12 minutes, but it was fast enough to win. And then in 2020, I won the Pasadena Half Marathon, which was like 9,000 people finished in the Rose Bowl live on KTLA. And I crossed the finish line and the newscaster was like, oh my God, here's the first place finisher. What's your name? And I'm like, Ken Rideout. And she's like, how was it out there? You're the first place finisher. And I go, uh, doesn't say much about the competition.

And she was like, oh, I don't say that.

It was kind of like an insult to everyone, a subconscious, subliminally. But I was like, Oh no, no, everyone was great. But that's always been my mindset about races. Like, the day before I turned 50, I won the Myrtle Beach Marathon, the whole thing. Like, not my age group, I won the whole race. And my wife was like— and I wanted to win a marathon for a long time. My wife is like, oh my God, she's crying. She's like, you did it! We're on the phone and she's like, you don't seem that happy. I'm like, there was no real good competition here. She's like, how much did you win by? I said, less than a minute. She goes, what the hell? Like, what would you have been happy with? I said, I should have run under 2:30. But that was my default setting, was like— and it's not, it's, it's not like I'm not saying this in a bragging way. I wouldn't want anyone else to feel this way, but it is what it is. I was just like, it was never enough. I was like either not running fast enough or the competition wasn't good.

But if I didn't have that mindset, it wouldn't give me the motivation and drive to do the things I did. It's like, it's like if you listen to interviews with like Kobe Bryant or Tom Brady, and not that I'm trying to compare myself to those guys, but it's like there's almost like a tortured soul component to people that are overachievers and doing like great things. And again, that I'm doing great things. But you can't kind of have one without the other. When's the last time you saw someone who's like top of their game in any category and they're like, oh my God, I'm so well-balanced, everything is great. Yeah, yep, I did everything I had to do today and everyone likes me and I like everyone else. Never. No, right? There's a component of it that's like, that guy's a psychopath. The guy who won the gold medal? Yeah, he's a nut. Oh yeah, I guess you have to be nuts to be like the, the kind of drive and determination it takes to do some of these things takes that kind of mindset. Unfortunately, it does.

Look, I mean, I'm glad you said that because the, the whole thing about balance is completely nonsense. I mean, if you wanna be extraordinary, exactly, you need to be obsessed and so like just insanely focused to be a psychopath. Like you have to be. The fact is like, you're right. I've never met one ma— like really good athlete or really good person who's super, like someone who's super successful in any field who's just like laissez-faire about life, you know what I mean? It's just, I've never seen it yet.

Well, like Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese would be an example of someone who, they're super successful and they're very peaceful, but go to their house in their 50s, they're like freaking almost drowning themselves every day. They're getting after it to an extent that most people can't comprehend. But it becomes your normal.

I was going to say, everything becomes, everything becomes, you can acclimate to anything and that becomes all relative, right? That's right. Everything is relative. So it's not going to be normal to a mediocre average person. Exactly. And you're anything but mediocre. So then here we are, you're basically this, like, you're not like, you know, the competition is not even close to what you're like. You're like embarrassed that you're winning against these people. Yes, that's right. And then what was the first, like, you won the New York Marathon, you won the Boston Marathon.

Well, to be clear, I didn't win the whole marathon. I won that 50 and over in your category. Okay, so in 2021, 2021, I just turned 50, and I think I did Rich Roll, and he was like, what's your goal this year? And, and we're coming out of COVID so for— because coming out of COVID all the marathons were lumped together because they were making up for the— when they were suspended because of COVID So they were all taking place in like 17 months, whereas normally there's only 2 a year. So it would take you at least 3 years to get all 6 marathons unless you ran like one week and then another week. So I just kind of blurted out like, oh, I'm gonna try to win my age group in all the world marathon majors. So Boston, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, London, Berlin. And the first one up was Boston, and I won. I ran 2:30, just on— and again, I crossed the finish line, I'm like, oh, so cool, 2:30 and 20 seconds. I couldn't find 20 seconds, but I won my age group by a lot. By how much? By how much?

Like 5 minutes.

And then by 5 minutes? Yeah. Okay.

So then I went to— no, sorry, London was first. I ran London, and that was the World Championships the first year I turned 50, and I ran that race in 2:30 and, and like 50 seconds, and I crossed the finish line. And they made us— you had distinct, 3 distinct separate start areas, and at 3 miles they all merged together. But you can't see the different start areas because there's so many people. They're like in different parts of a neighborhood so they can get all the people starting at the same time. So I'm standing on the start line of the age— we're all in the corral together in the 50+ age group, and we have special numbers on our front and back so you can identify who you're racing within the race. So we take off and I cross the finish line. No one passed me. And when it merged in 3— at the 3-mile mark, I'm leading my section of the London Marathon. The motorcycles are in front of me. I'm like, holy shit, this is crazy. I'm not winning the London Marathon, but I'm leading my section. It's crazy. And I'm like, I can't even see them behind me.

And I'm like, oh my God, maybe am I going too fast? So I cross the finish line. No one passes me. You know, like 1 or 2 people passed me throughout the race. When you're running that fast, there's like not a lot of movement. You know, you— people get locked into the pace. Yeah, you don't see people running like super fast at the end, very rarely, other than maybe the last mile. So no one passed me. So I crossed the finish line, I'm like, holy shit, I think I just won the age group world championships. I run all the way back to my hotel in Hyde Park at the Four Seasons, I get all my bags, I'm like, later. I get— I'm on my way to the airport trying to catch the next flight out. I was literally on a flight in like 3 hours after I finished. And I called my— the guy who was coaching me, Mario Frioli, and I'm like, dude, I think I won the whole effing thing. And he's like, no, it says you're second, there's a guy in front of you. I'm like, dude, I think this guy cheated.

He does— it's impossible. He— there's no way that got anyone past me. Long story short, the guy started in a different area intentionally. And then the shitty thing is the only two people in the world that care are me and him. Yeah, yeah. But I know what he did because he ran the first 3 miles in like 5-minute flat per mile. So basically what he did was he ran as fast as he could. When it all merged together, I didn't know there was someone up the road because he's supposed to be starting me. I even sent him a message and was like, dude, how did you not start with me? You didn't run past me. He's like, oh, I started in the section with the British National Championships. I was like, that was more important to you than the World Championships? But I know what he did. He fucked me. And I was like, I— what am I gonna do? I wasn't gonna like make a big stink because I'm the only— me and him care. No one cares about some old guy complaining about getting cheated in the race. But I was, I was so angry.

So I got second there by less than a minute. He just barely beat me. If I had seen him or know he was up the road, I would have like poured on and tried to catch him.

But can't you tell the people who are in charge of that race?

I sent the guy an email and I'm like, dude, this is crazy. Like, I spent like a shitload of money to come over here and stay in London for a week. I think I'm running a race and then you're letting this guy start. Like, why even have a special start section if this guy gets to start over there? He was like, you know, basically like, oh yeah, sorry, next year we'll clean it up. I was like, yeah, he was basically like, yeah, I see what happened, sorry about that, nothing we can do now though, we'll fix it next I'm like, what's his name and how old is he? No, I don't want to say. I've already like fucking slammed him.

Why? You should— he should— people should know that you, you are the real thing.

All you have to do is look and see who won in '21 in London Marathon. Okay, 2021.

Or how old was he exactly?

He was mad, even a year older than me, so he was just turned 52. Obviously he was a really good runner. And he's British from the UK. He bamboozled me.

He knows what he did. 100%. See, I would be like— your competitive nature is— you're still pissed about it.

So I'm still angry. So then out like a month after that, I ran New York, and that was one one of my biggest wins ever because I won my age group. But as I'm coming into the finish, Shalane Flanagan, a female pro who won New York, she was running all the marathons in like a month because they, they were all like— so she's just running and I'm coming up the finish chute in New York and I look back and here come— and the crowd starts going crazy. I'm like, whoa, what the hell? They're not, they're not cheering for me. There's like 100 people crossing. And I look back and here comes Shalane Flanagan sprinting behind me and I'm like, oh hell no, I'm not gonna let her run past me in the finishing line and I sprint to the finish. And as it turns out, I won the Masters division, 40 and over, which paid like $5,000. And I won the 40 and over the first time someone over 50 had ever won that. And like the previous two of the, two of the four previous winners were like Meb Keflezighi, who won Boston, New York, silver at the Olympics.

He ran like 2:15. And Abdi Abdi Rahman, who's a five-time US Olympic runner. They're my friends after the race. They're texting me like, welcome to the club, you're the Masters champion. And I I was like, I mean, I only ran 2:33, but I won by 3 seconds. Really? And if Shalane wasn't closing on me, I would never would've sprinted. I was on, I was in hell. I was in so dying.

So what, how does it go? It goes over 50, over 40.

There's age groups every 5 years. So 40 to 44, 45 to 49. But the over 40 is called the master's division. That's like a distinctive category at every race. Got it. Okay. And the ma— and it pays money. And there's guys who are over 40 that are crazy fast. Like those two guys were former Olympians still running competitively at 40. And they smashed that. They like probably broke the course record. What's the—

what's the time that they would have?

2:15, 2:12, like, okay, so that's under 5-minute miles, okay, or around 5-minute miles.

Okay, so get— just, just for, for me and for anyone who cares and listens, like, give me an example. So if you're getting at 2:30 and you're winning at 50 and over, let's just say 2:29, what would be like the best, the greatest time for someone who's 30 35 years old, they would be around—

they probably have been guys who have won at 35 years old. Now you're like low 2 hours, 2 under 2:05 wins.

Okay, yeah, that's like nothing. That's under 5-minute miles. This is crazy.

Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, like, I'm basically like on my best day in a race like the CIM, the California International Marathon, where I ran 2:28. The winner probably ran 2:08, so I was like a little less than a minute a mile behind the winner. But if you look at the difference between where I finished and the average finisher of like 3:30, like, I'm beating like average runners by like an hour to 2 hours, and I'm only losing by like 20 minutes. But that 20 minutes between me and the winners is astronomical. But that's crazy. And even like 5 minutes is huge at that. When you get to the higher levels and you start running competitively, like under 2:30, finding 5 to 10 minutes is really hard.

So when you do your— because you run every day for 10 miles, non-negotiable, minimum. How How long does it take you to run 10 miles?

On average, an hour and 15 minutes, around 7:30 per mile.

So 7:30 is like your everyday kind of situation?

Yeah, 7, if I'm in really good shape, it'll be 7 to 7:30. If I'm like just effing around like day to day and I don't have a race coming up, it'll be like 7:45.

Okay, so A, how often do you change your shoes?

About every, I always have like several pairs 'cause I had to deal with Reebok. I'd have like 4 or 5 pairs of shoes that are rotating through. Yeah. So none of them are overly worn out. And then you can just look at the bottom. As soon as you start to see the rubber wear, wearing, you chuck them. So probably like training shoes. There's a difference between training and racing. Racing shoes are very like, um, a little more delicate. They have like not a lot of rubber on the bottom. They're super lightweight, especially the high-end like Nike, like AlphaFly or VaporFly, the racing shoes. That— those, those shoes will only last about 300 miles. So like when I'm training for a marathon, 3 weeks gone. Reebok made a pair of shoes for $500. Um, Adidas made a pair of shoes for $500 that you could only wear once.

Are you serious? Yeah. Why? How?

Because they don't have a lot of rubber on the bottom, so they're super, super lightweight and they just wear out fast. The foam gets compressed, the rubber wears off, and they're only made to run fast once.

What do you think of Hokas? Everyone's wearing Hokas now. Do you like them? They're very big and like very soft though, but they're like bulky.

Yeah, I think that, um, there's a school of thought that says like that extra cushioning is good for you. There's other people like Gabby Reece would be like a big barefoot person and be like, no, that's too much, it gives you false sense I think like this, it's like people ask me, "What shoes do you wear?" And I was like, "That's like asking the guy who won the Daytona 500, like, 'What kind of tires do you have on your car? I need some for my Camry.'" I'm like, "I—" Or, "I need tires for my pickup truck. What kind of shoes do you wear to run every day?" I'm like, "You have to find shoes that work for you. Everyone's feet are different." And I mean that honestly. It's not like trying to be funny. It's sincere. It's like, "What kind of sports bra do you wear?" "Well, do you like Lululemon? You might like this one." It's like every person is different. Different. Do you have huge boobs? You might want more support. If you have no boobs, you might not even want a sports bra. I don't know. You know, it's like that. It's like, I, I have good, relatively good run form, so I don't need all this extra support.

My— I'm not landing on my heel. I'm not like pronating. I'm very aware of my form. I think that's one of the secrets to running well, is to focus on making sure you're running efficiently first, then worry about all the extra shit. Because if you're running with terrible form, you're like wasting a lot of energy.

So you have this coach who helps you, right? This Mario.

Mario started coaching me once I got to 233 on my— completely on my own without knowing what I was doing. I hired Mario and he helped me get from 233 to 228 in one 12-week cycle.

Really? What did he— what kind of pointers did he give you?

He just gave me structured, very detailed, specific workouts. Whereas when I was training myself, I would just run 10 miles every day. If I felt good, I'd run as fast as I could, right? And then I'd run one long run every week. With Mario, I would do like 2 workouts a week. The long run would be very structured. Every mile would be defined. And it was hard, man. I did this workout one time, a 20-mile workout in Philly. 'Cause when I had the podcast with Teddy Atlas, at one point him and I trained a guy called Alex Vosdick, who was the WBC light heavyweight champion of the world boxing. And Teddy was a— is a famous trainer. He trained multiple world champions and he asked me to be the assistant trainer. And we lived in Philly for 8 weeks in a training camp. Camp, like, like Rocky shit. Like, we were a lot— we were just in this condo. The— we had 3 condos in this apartment building, and we didn't leave. I didn't see my kids. We didn't do anything. We didn't go out to dinner. We had a chef, a trainer, me and Teddy and the fighter.

It locked in. Wow. And I was doing all my training on the Scullykill River in Philly in like August, September, October, because the fight was in mid-October. So it was hot. And I did this run one day, and it was like, okay, 10-mile warm-up at like 6:30 pace. So run 10 miles in 6.5 minutes per mile. Then the workout went like this: 1 mile at 5:45 pace, 1 mile at 5:35, 1 mile at 5:25, and then go through that 3 times. So then the recovery mile is 5:45 pace, which is close to as fast as I can run a marathon. So you're talking 9 miles of like hyperventilating. When I finished that last mile, I literally pulled to the side of this like greenway and collapsed in the grass. And like multiple people were like, oh my God, do you need an ambulance? I'm like, nope, I'm just cover, and I couldn't stand up. And then I got up and ran back to the house. Are you serious? But that's the thing, is when people are like, what should I do for training? I'm like, no one is willing— not many people are willing to do this kind of work.

But then they will think, wow, you're lucky, you're a good runner. And I'm like, I'm the furthest thing from lucky. This isn't luck. It's like, they'll tell you, you know, you're crazy for training so hard, and then when you win, they'll tell you that you're lucky. And it's like, some of these people online, man, you could— if you— if I walked on water, they'd tell me I couldn't swim. I'm not trying to hear from like the haters and the bullshit artists.

It's because most people can't even comprehend what, what you're even accomplishing, right? It's like too much for their— they don't— it's like something that's so out of the realm for what they would even go after, right?

And I don't say that in a braggadocious way. I'm not trying to say, hey, I'm special. I'm just telling you, if you want to get extraordinary results, like, it requires like work to like the brink of death.

Like, what did we say earlier before this? It's like, don't be upset by the results you didn't get by the work you and do. Exactly, you know, you know, and then exactly it.

And I have so many friends that'll be like, yeah, I'm pissed, I hate this job, I should be like the manager, I should be the CEO. And I always think like, trust me, if you should be the CEO, they'd know. Yeah, I don't— yeah, I don't— you don't have to be a rocket scientist to look at someone and be like, oh, that person's special, right? I mean, I talked to you for like 5 minutes, I'm like, oh, she's crazy, she's— this girl is like an overachiever.

Yeah, I felt the same way about you. So then how did you go from going to doing these races, which like marathons, to ultra marathons. And now this is a whole other, a whole other, you know, bag of tricks.

Yeah, but I don't think of myself as an ultra runner. I was just talking to Scott Derue, who was the CEO at the time of Equinox. Yeah. And he was like, oh, he connected— I got connected through a mutual friend and he was gonna run this race and he was asking some advice about running or something. I was like, what's the race? And it just, for some reason, It just like kind of spoke to me. I was like, tell me more. And he's like, oh, it's in 4 weeks or 5 weeks. It's this, that. And I was like, dude, I think I can win that race. And he's like, have you done an ultra before? I'm like, no. You mean the Gobi one?

Yeah.

He's like, have you? I've never run anything more than a marathon. And I, long story short, he's like, go for it. I don't think you can do it, but go for it. And Equinox like sponsored me, Reebok, Athletic Brewing, like all these awesome partners were like, oh, we'll help you like fund that trip. 'Cause it was expensive Because going to a race there, I'm like, I can't get myself in a coach seat for 14 hours going to do this race. I'm like, I needed to get a business class seat, $14 grand, you know, like I wanted to stay in a nice hotel before the race started, which was the furthest thing from nice in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Well, I was gonna say, how nice was it?

Probably not that nice.

Oh my God, it was horrible. Like the tiles were falling off the shower.

It was crazy. And that was your 5-star hotel?

That was the nicest hotel in in the city. And, um, so I just bought some backpacks and started training in the Nashville heat. I put towels and bottled water in the back to simulate the 20 pounds that I figured I would need because you had to bring your own food. So I had to like research everything— freeze-dried food, what should I bring for food. You had to have mandatory safety equipment, a whistle, a blank, like a tinfoil blank, like all this shit, like insurance for the insurance purposes you had to have. So I just started training, showed up, and like I said, I was scared going there because I'm like, I could humiliate myself. And then I just got there and attacked it, and I just didn't have experience doing it. But like, it's the same thing when I took the job in finance with that guy Jack McDowell. He's like, you don't have experience. I said, no one has experience until they effing do the job. Like, some point someone's got to give someone a chance. Yeah. And if you don't want to give me a chance, I'll give myself a chance. I'll do it for free.

And he knew I had 3 or 4 kids. Like, I didn't have the luxury of failing. And it's like that race. I didn't have the luxury of not doing well. I had brands that were sponsoring me. I'm not going to humiliate them. I've talked about, oh yeah, I've been training using, you know, Reebok shoes, this thing and that thing. And then I go there and make a fool of myself. Did you win? And I got trounced the first day. Yeah. Won by 90 minutes. There's a whole chapter in there about the book that you could make. They could write a whole movie script just about the race, all the shit that happened.

Okay. I know. So let's talk about this race cuz I think it's, so a month before you go to this race, you have never even trained for an ultra marathon ever, ever, ever. In a month you get all these big sponsors and then you end up winning the race. Yes. Okay. How did you do it?

Just sheer will? Yes. And I had, I, I had good residual fitness because I had been training a lot and I had been running races. I was like right in the middle of my best year ever. And, um, so I get there in the first day, I get smashed. I get, uh, 4th place on the day. And every day it's like the Tour de France, you get accumulative times.

Yeah, you tell people how it works because I think just—

so it's, it's like 25 to 30 miles a day for 4 days, for 3 days. Then there's a 50-mile stage, then there's 2 more, then there's there's 26 miles, a marathon, and then the last day is like 5 miles. And you're getting a little bit lighter every day, but not terribly, because you have your backpack, a sleeping pad, all your shit in the backpack, and the food. So you're eating a little bit of food, but it's not like it's getting like pounds lighter every day. There's certain— even on the last day, you still had at least 10 pounds in that backpack with all the backpack and the this— I mean, the sleeping bag and all this.

Yeah, all the things. Yeah.

So the second day, I was like, oh my God, I gotta manage my pace. I went out too hard. But I also arrived less than 24 hours before the race started like an idiot. And I just did. Yes. I didn't do anything right. So then I was like, all right, eff it, we're in this now. Second day is 28 miles. I go very conservative. Before I know it, I'm looking around, I'm like, oh my God, I'm leading by a lot, but I'm not killing myself. So then I start to pour it on. I'm like, oh my God, there's only like 5 miles to go. And it's like, literally like, it would be like an oasis. I'd be like, oh shit, there's the finishing village. Start running, get there. It's an abandoned, like, you know, nomad village. We were in the middle of nowhere. We'd see like sheep herders and stuff occasionally, just like a movie. You'd see like guys herding goats and shit, but out in no man's land. And, um, with a few miles to go, I fell down. And, uh, because I was like losing concentration because I was like delusional from like glycogen depletion, and I fell down.

I busted my arm open. My arm is gushing blood. My backpack rips— the whole strap rips off my backpack. I'm like, oh my God, I'm not going to be able to finish this race. I can't run like this. It's a 20-pound backpack and one strap is missing. I get to the finish line because the blood is all over me and I don't know I'm bleeding, so I'm like touching my face. I'm covered in blood. And I get there and they're like, oh my God, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, I'm just exhausted. And they're like, no, you're bleeding. And I'm like, no, my backpack ripped. Anyway, I try to fix the backpack. It's a disaster. Couldn't fix it. I take off the next day, it's kind of tied together. It busts open again and I tied it in a weird way that it got through the day. Thank God. And on the end of the third day, I'm still in— I got second place that day. I, I was down by 12 minutes after the first day. I made up 8 minutes. I'm down 4 minutes going into day 3. I lose another 6 minutes.

So I'm down 10 minutes after 3 days to the same Swiss mountaineering guy who's a sick endurance athlete, not really talking, very stoic. And people are dropping out every day cuz it's, it's so hard. And we're in in the middle of a sand dune setting up at this camp, and a woman dropped out, and I convinced her to let me use her backpack, which didn't fit me, and like just tore my neck and shoulders apart. I had like tape all over me trying to protect my skin, but she gave me her backpack. And, uh, the 4th day was the 50-mile stage, and it's me and the Swiss guy all alone at like 20 miles to like 40 miles. But at 40 miles, he's like, man, I gotta walk a little bit. And we're racing, but it's also like we're alone in the desert, it's like 100 degrees. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'll walk with you for a about because I'm hurting too. And you would get water every 5 to 10 miles. So he's running out of water, so I'm taking my water, which is spare, which I'm trying to use sparingly, and I'm putting on his head.

I'm like trying to help him. I'm like, you want me to carry your backpack? Let's just get to the next aid station, you'll be good. That's so nice. I'm trying to help him survive. Like, this guy may die. Like, we're in the freaking desert. And, um, eventually some trucks came through that were like race support, like checking on people. And I was like, yo, what the F, man? Where have you guys been? This guy's struggling. So they start giving him first aid. I'm like, you guys are good? They're like, yeah. And I just took off like a bat out of hell, and I won that stage by 90 minutes, which is what I ended up winning by. So then I get there at like 5 o'clock that night. We start at 8, but because people were going 50 miles and everyone's finishing at different times, the next day you didn't race. It was— so that was like Wednesday night, we race again Friday morning. I'm like, oh, gotta hang around at this camp for like 36 hours. It was like, hell on earth. Because I'm like, I'm hungry, I'm cranky, I don't want to be around anyone.

I'm in a tent with 4 or 3 women sleeping on the ground, no shower. I'm washing my clothes with the water. Oh my gosh, it was, it was like a survival experience. But I was like, okay, now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And to the Swiss guy's credit, I mean, he was destroyed. He barely finished. After the— on Friday morning, he got up and came out like a bat out of hell. We freaking sprinted for 26 miles together. And at the end, he ran away from me on a downhill. He was really good going down. Downhill because trail runners are very technical and I'm not. And going the downhill, he just ran so fast, I'm like, I can't believe he's going that fast. If you fall, you're gonna lose your teeth. And he finished like a minute or two ahead of me, but I was so far ahead. And as we're coming across this raging river, there's a rope strung across tied to like a big Ford, um, Raptor truck. And I'm holding— first I was like, I don't need that stupid rope. I walked into the river and almost got washed down the whitewaters, it was so aggressive.

So I'm holding on, I take my backpack off, dunk myself under the freezing cold water, because now I'm like, oh, now I I don't have to wash my clothes. Everything's clean in the river. And, uh, I get across and the guy who designed the course is standing there, really nice, um, Spanish guy. And he is like, how was it? And I was like, dude, that was hard, man. You better call an ambulance, but not for me. And he was laughing. And so I was at that point, I was just having fun. And the last day was 6 miles and there was a really cool, um, Irish guy from, who lived in South Africa, Cillian Ryan, his family owned Ryanair, really nice guy, recovering alcoholic. Like, just really, like, gregarious and just there to have fun. So the last day, he's like, yo, it's only 6 miles. Like, it's an hour and a half. You've won. Like, you can just take it easy. Are you going to let someone else win? And I was looking at him like he was crazy. I'm like, I'll fucking die before I let someone win a stage. I'm racing to the death.

And he was like, this guy's crazy. But I meant it. And me and the Swiss guy got into, like, I'm talking a full sprint. We were running like two lunatics through this little village into this big, like, former Genghis Khan village. Fortress, and it was always so cool. And then I killed him and I ran away, like, and won by a few minutes and ran into there, and I was like, oh my God, I won. And that really was when people started to, like, really pay attention, where I was like, Wall Street Journal, New York Times both called me the best runner in the world over 50, which was crazy for me because there are definitely people who've run faster. But it's like being the Olympic champion. There might have been people that have run faster or done things faster than you, but on that And that day they didn't beat you. So on those days I showed up, I did what I had to do and I won. But Muscle Fitness, Outside Magazine, Forbes were all writing these articles. I was like, this is so surreal. 'Cause I mean, I was like a dead dog loser for like 10 years.

I, even the first time I made it to Hawaii, I write about this in the book about how hard it is to quit. You think in the minute, like, I'm gonna quit, I'm gonna get out of this. And I quit like an idiot. And it changed my life. 'Cause I was like, I will never feel like that again. I will die before I walk home. A quitter ever again.

Tell that story. I think that's a really good story. I saw that in the book about how you quit and like, that was like the most demoralizing experience of your life.

Oh, I could like literally cry thinking about it. Yeah. It's so embarrassing. But embarrassing, my wife would be like, who are you humiliated in front of? I'm like, myself. Right. Which is probably the most important person. I'm like, my opinion of me is the only opinion that matters. Exactly. I had done everything I could to qualify for the Ironman in Hawaii and I, it was like a goal for like 2 or 3 years and I finally I did it. I like, I just got in. I qualified at the New York City Ironman the first year they had it. And when they have new races, they give extra qualifying spots. Yeah. So basically it's like I found all these loopholes and figured a way to get into the race and I did it. And to me it was like qualifying for the Olympics when you're like 40 years old. It's like, you're not going to the Olympics. This is, this is the Olympics on NBC Sports. It's everyone's trying to get there in the sport. And I got there and I just took for granted that I was like, how hard it is. It's like you're doing a, you start running a marathon after running 112 miles, swimming 2.5 miles in the ocean and then in the Hawaii at 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

It would be hard to do that like if you were trained for it and resting. To come off the bike and do that was almost impossible. And I got on the run, it was really hard. And I see my wife and she's recording and it's literally on camera. I run up to her, I'm doing this like, cut, stop recording me. I'm like, I can't do it, I'm gonna quit, I, I gotta go back, I'm, I'm getting— I'm doing terrible, I don't even want to finish with this time. I basically convinced myself it was okay. And as soon as I quit and walked back and got my bike, I wanted to throw my bike into the ocean. I was like, I'm a loser. I can't believe what a piece of shit I am. I'm an idiot. I dragged my wife here for this. They're not even finished. I instantly regretted. I'm like, I would have just— I could have easily just walked and at least finished with pride, right? Instead, I took the easiest way out. And it was like, it was just a reminder of like, yo, every time I've took for an e— looked for an easy way out or a crutch, using drugs to deal with my dip, my emotional shit or deal with my own trauma.

Every time I've taken the easy way out, it never pays well. It never ends well. It's, it's always 10 times harder. You think you're taking a shortcut, but all you've done is sabotaged yourself. And now I have to carry that feeling with me forever. And I know knowing what that feels like sucks.

Did you go back the next year?

Yeah. And then the next year I went back and smashed. I did like 9 hours and 30 minutes in that context. I mean, I, I, I, I mean, to qualify that year, I finished like 6th overall at the Ironman in Wisconsin and won my age group, which was something I would've never dreamed of doing until I had that experience. And I was like, oh, no one's ever gonna see me quit again. I'm bringing the heat every time I show up now. And I crushed, I mean, I could've, I literally could've won that Ironman Wisconsin if I had done a little bit more swimming. I lost like 10 minutes on the swim and I lost by 10 minutes.

Have you ever tried You ever did high rocks?

Yes, I did one. I won the New York City Masters the first year I did it. You did? Yeah.

Of course you did.

Well, but funny, I did it the same year Lance did it. Really?

I know that was like, yeah.

But I was teasing him because he did the open, he did the open category, which the weights are a little wider, and I did lighter and I did the pro category and still beat him. And I was like, oh, I got your ass. Really?

Okay, so how does it— because I want to do one. I haven't done one. It's hard. It's hard, right? So what's the open? Is it open category?

Open and pro. So I don't know what it is for— it's very manageable, I think, for women, even relatively speaking. It's like the weights aren't significant. In the pro category, it was like a 400-pound sled you have to push and then pull. The, um, kettlebells that you have to walk 200 meters with are 70 pounds each. It's harder than it sounds. You have to do lunges with a 20-pound sandbag for 100 meters. This is the pro. Yeah, you had to do wall balls where you take a 20-pound medicine ball, do a full squat, and then throw it up 10 feet and hit a target. That was my Achilles heel. I could— I was so close to breaking the world record for the 50 and over, and I just completely melted down on the wall balls. I end up doing an hour and 10 minutes, but it took me like 10 minutes on like wall balls where it typically takes somewhere about 4 minutes, and I like missed the record by like 4 or 5 minutes. Wow. But I didn't know anything. I only trained for that one for 4 weeks. But then I came back in Boston last year obsessed, training, and completely fell apart.

I made a few mistakes and I did like an hour and 23 minutes. I was so embarrassed. I had to like make a video and be like, dude, I thought I was gonna kill and I got killed. I still qualify for the world championships, but I like didn't like win. I didn't— I got humiliated.

Have you ever done like— I want to try high rock. Would you do that with me? Can we train that? Because I want to have accountability.

Oh my God, it is so hard. But I'll tell you this, like, I posted this in pictures that I posted online where I look huge doing that, because I'm telling you, when I was training the Hi-Rocks. I came up from the basement one time. I have all the stuff at my house. Like, I have a turf strip in the driveway. Like, it's not permanently installed. I just bought it. I have a sled. I have all the equipment. And came out of the basement one day after lifting weights because I had been running for so long. And my, my kids and my wife were like, Jesus, what are you doing? I'm like, what do you mean? They go— my, my oldest son was like, Dad, you have huge muscles. And I got— I mean, I got strong, crazy strong. Really? Your body will adjust. Like, nothing got me in shape. Shape like that because you had a combination of like endurance. Like there's a lot of running, but the strength stuff, which I had never really done that extensively. But when you have a goal and are focused and driven, I was training like every single day.

I was so—

I know, but I mean, I was big, really bigger than this.

Oh, it's like 20 pounds heavier of muscle.

So have you tried DEKA? No, but similar. It's similar, right? I want to try the HIIT Rocks. I really wanted to do this year, and then like I got busy and life happened, but I want Will you do it like the next 6 to 8 months?

I have, um, I've qualified for the World Championships in June in Stockholm. I'm signed up for it.

Okay, yeah, you can do the open one.

Not in— yeah, yeah, you can do the open one and qualify for the World Championships up until like end of May.

I, I won't be able to do the World Championships. I could do the open. Yes, I would know.

Of course you could. That's what I would suggest. Yeah, I mean, I could—

I would never. Okay, what about— okay, how about now that you're 54 though, are you still planning on doing another— would you ever do another ultra?

Would you ever— I might run an ultra, but I think I'm done. Like, with the— I was talking to Rich Roll about this yesterday. Like, I don't want to feel like it's performative and it's like my whole identity is as a runner. Like, I am so much more than just a runner. And I don't know, it's kind of like the competitive part of it has lost a little bit of appeal. It's like the ultra, like, when I heard about it, I was like, I'm fired up. When I heard about High Rocks, I was obsessed and trained obsessively. I can't get obsessed anymore about running. And I also don't want to feel like— I don't know, it's weird. It's like if I've won the age group world champs, like, what else can I do? I almost feel like it's like winning a local race multiple years in a row. It's like, stop being a bully. Like, let someone else have a crack at it. Like, winning a race is awesome. I don't need to like keep showing all my neighbors like, I won the neighborhood Turkey Trot. Like, in the Palisades, I'd run the Turkey Trot every year, and the Palisades Fourth of July race.

And it was like, like, we got it. We know you're really, really fast.

It's like, yeah, you know, you come to the local race and like bully people, like someone else, or just like you blast through everybody.

Like, it's like it's not even— it's like it's not even fair. It's not even fair anymore.

It's like going to Hell on the Hill and emptying the tank again. I'm like, I've already shown everyone I can do this. I don't want to look like the guy who's—

you're dead in 12 minutes.

I don't want to look like the guy who's like, clearly has like some fucking— something's missing in his life. And he's here killing himself at a Hell on the Hill fucking backyard race.

No one thought that, I can promise you. But like, but really, wasn't your time like— and I'm not even saying it to be funny— like, wasn't it like literally like 45 minutes to do it?

No, no, no, it was at least 2 hours. That was— I mean, that race was so— it is so hard. It is hard.

By the way, I like— I have to tell you, it was really hard. I was shocked. Like, I didn't train for it at all. I thought, oh, this is easy, I run every day, I can easily physically do it. I was mentally exhausted because it's boring. Up and down, up and down. And it's like there's not much space. So it's basically going around a track or up and down a small hill.

It's like 100+ people.

Yeah, it was like I was speaking to this guy. I think I made a friend. You know who I became friends with on that hill and we're still friends is Todd Anderson. I love Todd. He's such a nice guy. He lives near me. He lives near you? Yeah. Because I met him on this hill, and we became friends, and we, like, talked the whole time up and down the stupid hill for, like, hours on this thing, you know? Like, he had an injury, so he couldn't go fast, and I don't know, it was a whole thing. But he was very nice, and, like, oh, he's the best.

Yeah, really nice guy with Dream Recovery. Yeah, they've got awesome products.

He does. Yeah. Okay, so now tell me about your daily ritual. Do you take, like, creatine? Like, what supplements do you take? What do you— tell me what you do.

Wake up in the morning, I take—

what time do you wake up?

I want to know everything between 5 5 and 6 by default. Okay. So if I have my druthers and I'm home and I doing things the way I want to do them, I don't like to get up and feel like I got to get right out the door. Right. And I have 4 kids. So in a perfect world, I'd wake up at like 5:30. I would have— perfect world. Yeah, I would have, I would have, um, I wish I could sleep longer. Like, as I've gotten older, I have a hard time sleeping more than like 6 or 7 hours. I hate it. I want to sleep for 12 hours. I can't. I wake up, my body hurts. I'm just like, it's a pain in the ass.

I can get— I get it. Okay. Tell me more.

I wake up, I take, um, NMN and—

okay, wait, stop right there. Why do you take NMN and you don't take NR?

That's a good question. I haven't really considered it, but I take NMN and NAD+. I don't know why I haven't added NR, because I've been— what I've been doing has worked for me. Like, I couldn't tell you what each supplement has done, like, specifically for me, but I can tell you that when I added all these different I did things to my supplement protocol, my life improved dramatically. Really? Yeah, like my race times got faster, but it corresponded with like training excessively. So I did— I take NMN and I take NAD+ and I take vitamin D and fish oil, which, you know, that vitamin D and fish oil have been scientifically proven that in conjunction with exercise has like a 40%— some absurdly high increase to your longevity. Really? It's— you can just— anyone who's listening, just Google fish oil and vitamin D plus exercise and look at the benefits. It's like sauna. Like, the scientific— supporting scientific data is so incredibly strong, you'd have to be insane not to do these things. Really? It's like sauna. Like, adds like a 40% reduction in all-cause mortality. I hate the sauna. I get in that thing like it's my job.

That's a great point.

So I've never heard that. So you're You're saying the stack to live longer, 40% longer and healthier?

Some absurd number that scientifically— it was in Nature. It was in Nature magazine just in the last year. Vitamin D plus fish oil plus exercise.

That's amazing. How long exercise?

I don't know what it says.

It doesn't give a duration.

I don't know what it says in the data, but I was like, perfect. I do that anyway. So I was happy to read it.

Me too. I do that also.

Vitamin D, fish oil, NMN, NAD+.

You should really try NR, True Niagen. And I'm not just saying that, I mean it. NR, and I'll tell you why, because it's a smaller molecule and it's much easier. It goes through your system. It's how it can— NMN has to— isn't— don't you have to convert NMN? I think that there are some other things that have to happen. And the molecule's too big to get through your cells. It could be.

Connect me with True Niagen. I'd love to experiment with it and see where it works.

I'm going to give you some. How's that? Or I'll send you some. Perfect. And by the way, I'm not I'm just saying that because I actually true, like full-heartedly believe in it. And I've seen so many, so much data on it.

Those are the best partnerships that you can say things like that. That's like a good brand that as, as someone who negotiates a lot of those deals, I'd say to the brand, like you want to work with people that genuinely are like missionaries for you. They believe wholeheartedly in everything that you're doing as a brand.

100%. Because there's so many brands, you know this better than anybody with what you do with your new company, with the agency, there's so many brands doing so many things and there's so much noise. You have to be so discerning with who you're working with. Like, I think it's really important because so much of this business is junk. Like, you don't know what you're taking. That's right. People have no idea what they're taking.

Well, you see, they just published all these findings about creatine gummies in so many of the brands. Like, some of the brands had no creatine in them. Think about that.

Isn't that crazy? Well, this is all the time. I bet you if you were to take most of your supplements and take them into, like, a lab, you would be mortified. I agree. Of what's actually— how much of the percentage of things are in those things.

Well, I would say this. I only take— 90% of the supplements I take are from Momentous.

Momentous. Me too. Shout out to Momentous. They have— they're third-party tested and NSF certified, whatever. Safe for sport. Yeah. Certified safe for sport. I take their creatine.

Yeah. So I have the new chewable creatines I take, and that's the other thing I take in the morning. I'll take, like, 5 of those in the morning.

What else you take by Momentus?

So then when I finish my run, I'll take— I've taken Recovery, the, the— it's called Recovery. Uh, it's like got a right mix of protein and carbohydrates. As soon as I run, I've taken that, no shit, every single day for like 7 years. Really? As soon as I finish my run, I take 2 scoops of that, 1 scoop of creatine, mix that in a shaker bottle, like nothing fancy, with water and just drink it. And then I'll I'll take, and then I'll take another fish oil, and that's really it for supplements after the workout. I'll take another fish oil in the recovery and creatine. And then before bed, I take glycine, which is magnesium glycinate as a form of that.

The Momentous one? Yeah.

Then I take the Momentous sleep pack, which has magnesium, threonate, apigenin, and something else. I'm spacing. It's like 5 capsules. So I take the glycine, which isn't from Momentous. I buy it on Amazon. Uh, Dr. James D. Nicotinio turned me onto it. But then I take the sleep pack from Momentous, and sometimes I'll take Elite Sleep, which has a little bit of melatonin. Because for a long time I didn't take melatonin, but then I was reading that as you get older, you produce less melatonin. So I've been supplementing with that. But you know, it's hard to know, like, unless you're like going through like very stringent blood tests where where you're testing your blood, taking the supplement, testing your blood, checking versus performance. It's like, it's, it's not realistic. Like, it's really hard. And I'm not a— I'm not like a professional athlete to the extent where I'm like running blood tests. As soon as I start getting into too much data analysis about the— about blood work and about metrics, it becomes a job. And then it's not— it's no longer fun for me. And even when I was racing my bike a lot, there's a lot of things that you can analyze, like power output and heart rate.

And I was in there like, what's What's your, uh, what's your functional threshold power? I'm like, dude, at that point I'm not looking for like homework assignment. Yeah, I do everything on perceived effort.

Can I tell you something? I find— I did this, uh, with Lance Armstrong. We talked about this a lot, and I found it very interesting that the people who are truly like the best at what they do or excel at such a high level, they are not— they're not testing these little things anymore. Like, they're not doing it as much because Lance was the elite.

He had people doing it, but And he's— of all the elite athletes I know, no one was more in touch with like what was going on than him in terms of knowing his numbers. That guy is like—

when he was actually racing. Yes. But I'm saying like someone like— but I'm saying like what I've noticed that people like after a while, you know your numbers. Yes. And then you can kind of go on like kind of like you can kind of like perceived effort because the anxiety of like tracking your sleep, tracking this, everyone's wearing 97 wearables, you know what I mean? They're having like their Oura Rings and their Whoops. And their glucose monitor. I'm like, who are you?

Like, I would say that the glucose monitor in a lot of those things are good to have, like, a baseline metric. It's fine to understand it. But when you start getting like Bryan Johnson, where you're measuring your erections and you're like looking at the red light, and I'm like, dude, live a little, brother. Like, you know, you're not— you know that we're not getting out of here alive. Like, we're all like— imagine we're all in a box. No one's going to leave here alive. And you're worried about like, I'm getting too much blue light exposure.

Like, that's crazy. But what's the point then? You're like, no, you're going to die because, you know, you have no socialization. No community, no friends. You're not able to go for dinner because you can't eat the calories and the carbs.

You definitely can't eat after 7:00 at night. 7?

Try 5. What do you mean, 7?

Listen, I do think when I'm living a good, healthy lifestyle, I do like to fast for a few hours before I go to bed. It's not really realistic all the time, but I do think that I sleep a little better if I'm not digesting. But I But also, like, I— it's important that you enjoy your life too, and like do these things and get outside and like live. Live.

I mean, how about just the fact that just to live? How about aminos? Have you taken aminos before?

I have here and there, but at some point with all the shit I just told you I take, it becomes like just overbearing. I'm like, what? I mean, you know, if you take all the supplements that every brand has, I'm like, all I'm going to be doing is taking supplements. I'm not going to be doing anything else.

Well, the That's the reason why I'm asking you about this.

But I do think that they make a lot of sense, and I think they play a vital role. But if you're eating a healthy, whole food diet, I think that all of this shit is trumped by eating a whole food diet. Meat, fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables. If you can do that, you're winning.

By the way, again, why we get along, because I totally agree with you. All this other stuff is supplemental. If you're not doing the basics, it doesn't matter. You could take every supplement in the world. Any— you can go in a cold plunge until your, like, little heart's content. It makes no difference if you're not eating properly, exercising consistently. It doesn't matter. And also, like, to your point, if you start taking— you don't even know what's moving the needle if you're taking 97 supplements. But the only reason why I'm asking you about the aminos is because I started taking them because protein kick, right? Like, it's as you get older to, like, keep lean muscle mass, build lean muscle mass. How much protein can a person eat, right? Like, it's like so much protein. So now I'm taking these, like, like, I like to put it in my water. And I, and like, you know, everyone talks about creatine, but then how about these, how about these aminos? I feel like it's kind of like one of these underrated things. I agree.

I think you're right. It's just like, my brain only has enough capacity to do these, to do so many things.

I know, you can only do so much.

Okay, so I interrupted you. The one thing I was going to tell you though about Lance real quick is I tease about beating him at High Rocks, but I'm telling you, I've trained with him extensively and done some racing races with him, bike races and stuff. And I'll tell you, I've never met anyone who gets in shape like this guy. Like, I've trained with him for a week once in Arizona, and from the first day to the last day, I was like, this is crazy. Is this the same person? He gets— he's a freak when it comes to endurance. And when he's in, when he's dialed— and I said this too in a video, I was like, listen, if Lance shows up and he doesn't care, he's just another guy. But if Lance is dialed in and focused and wants to win, he's gonna kill you. Like, he's a savage. Savage.

A savage.

But that's what it takes to show up and do something 7 years in a row. In a row, not get sick. And like, forget about all the doping stuff. Like, I promise you, everyone's doing the same thing. It's still— he shows up 7 years in a row in a 20-day event, doesn't get sick, doesn't crash, doesn't have a flat tire at the wrong time. And again, about all these supplements, when you were saying like people are worrying about all the different supplements and if they're not doing little things, again, it's like worrying about what kind of tires you have on your— in your car is a piece shit. Like, what is the difference what cars, what tires you have on that car? It's not going to get from A to B.

Well, it's like also majoring in the minors, right? Like, these things do not matter if you're not doing the big things, right? The basics. My first book I ever wrote was called No Gym Required, right? It's the truth, right? It's the truth. And nobody cared. Nobody, like, no one cared about this book because I spoke the truth. I'm like, Listen, shop the perimeter of the supermarket, right? Like the meats, the eggs, the vegetables, and the fruit. Do your push-ups, your squats, your, you know, whatever. All free. All free. And by the way, will get you in better shape than any piece of equipment that you'll ever get. If you could do a pull-up, you're like, you're 99% there.

I do sets of 20 pull-ups every single day if I'm home and I'm in my gym. And I can do a max of 30 straight pull-ups, like any which way you want, overhand underhand. I take great pride in that because I call chin-ups like the great truth teller. There's nowhere to hide. Get up there and do the pull-ups, and you can wiggle worm and shake. You can friggin' do whatever you want.

Like, get over the bar. You know what I say? I always say you can't fake strong. No, you can fake a lot of shit in life, right? You can fake, you know, your influence. You can fake your afro. You could do your affirmations all day in the mirror telling yourself how great and wonderful and beautiful and strong you are, but one thing you can't fake is fit and being strong. So those things will give you more confidence and more self-belief than all these other things that you— all these other hacks that you talk about. And when you do a pull-up, that's like, that is strength right there. You cannot— like, that's body, that's upper body strength that either you have it or you don't. And so, yeah, so when I wrote this book, it's ridiculous. Like, nobody wants to hear the truth. They all will buy the the, the, you know, whatever is that magic pill that's being promoted, you know, like if it's gonna— like GLP-1, like, oh, that's like the lifesaver for a lot of people now. It's, it's the— it is, it is the— it's the life of— like nobody's learning, uh, lifestyle habits.

Well, I think that the GLP-1 though, I think you're gonna see that just as quickly as it came in go out, because I think the GLP-2, GLP-3s, like Retruti and shit, like, yeah, those things are like helping you maintain muscle mass, burn fat. It's crazy. But, but I think that the ultimate flex and the ultimate status symbol that's available to anyone is walking into anywhere and having people be like, holy shit, you're in good shape. When someone says to me, I'm like, yes, 100%. They would never be like, what a great watch, but they will say like, holy shit, that guy's in shape. Even when you say like, I saw you at that race and you were doing this and doing that, I'm like, that's the nicest thing anyone said to me all day. That's what I'm trying to convey is like a serious person. I want to be taken seriously. I want people to know I— this is how I handle business. You work with me, this is what you're getting. And you might not like it because it's fucking— I want to win. And if you don't want to win, I'm going to drag you with me.

Listen, you just— you're preaching to the converted. Like, I've always said, I'm going to walk in, you're never going to say, oh, that girl has the nicest dress on or the best jacket. But you know what you're going to say? Damn, that girl's fit. Yes. And that— you'll trust me because if I like— I've had— that shows discipline. Number one. And that if you take— if I can take care of myself and I can keep my shit in order, I can probably do the same for you. 100%, right? So, and you care enough to wear, uh, sneaks.

Oh yes.

Oh my God, these shoes, by the way, because I'll tell you something, I laughed and mocked at this whole thing because I thought, my God, they're so like, how can you wear a heel with sneakers? How like, how ridiculous. Meanwhile, I cannot wear high heels because they're so uncomfortable. I tried on this shoe, it is so comfortable.

I love them. My wife has like multiple pairs and I think they're the sexiest thing ever. She's like, you really think they're sexy or practical? Like, I go, no, no, no, no. Both. I was— I'm always like, just put on your lingerie and come out with your sneaks on. She's like, you think they're that sexy? I go, there's something sporty about it that is attractive to me.

Really? I love that. I'm telling you, I'm going to wear these all the time. They are so comfortable. I love them. And by the way, you're right. Like, that's why I like them. I think they are sexy. Because like, it's— they're, they're cute enough for people who are athletic and fit who can't wear like regular heels, but now they can have like— they have a hybrid.

And if someone tried to mug you, you could actually do like karate and shit in those heels. 100%. Or you can run away.

And by the way, I can also walk to my car because in the other high heels I can't even walk. I got to crawl or kind of like hold on to things. Okay, so probably I'm like hours late for the guest. Oh yes, I am. Okay, I'm gonna have to wrap this, but Oh my God, this has been a pleasure having you on.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Seriously, it's been so nice having you on this. Ken's book is called Everything You Want Is on the Other Side of Hard. He is incredible. You got to read the book and get all his stories and his shenanigans because he is so, like I said, he is the real deal. And I cannot believe I finally had you on the podcast. I'm so thrilled to have met you in person without me just basically walking by you on the Hill. And where else can people find you, learn about you, whatever, whatever, all the things?

I'm super active on Instagram, Ken Rideout. And the book comes out March 10th from Simon Schuster. It's available everywhere you buy books. And I read the audiobook myself. I recorded it. So that also comes out March 10th, and it's all available for preorder everywhere you buy books, including Audible. And I'd be super grateful if anyone would buy the book. I'm going to do some live events in New York LA, Miami, Nashville, and I wanna like meet as many people as I can and I'm happy to sign books and do everything. I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to even have this and connect with all of my fellow endurance nerds. And, uh, you know, I consider myself the leader of the nerds. So I say that as a term of endearment, but honestly, I'm like super grateful for you for allowing me to share this with your audience. And, um, I'm happy to know you. It's, uh, you have great energy.

Oh, thank you. So do you. Well, we're going to be friends now. Yeah, I know you say you don't have room for any, but you're going to have to, like, push one aside.

Oh no, we're having constantly having cuts.

Good. Okay, I'll talk to you guys later. Bye. Thanks.