Episode 164: From Couch Potato to Ultra Marathoner?

What does it take to go from being a couch potato to one of the most accomplished ultra-marathoners you'll ever meet while you're going to find out on today's episode of the movement movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first because you know those things are your foundation. And where we break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the flyout lies, you've been told about what it takes to run and walk and hike and play into yoga and crossfit and dance dance revolution and ease in racing and ninja warrior courses and powerlifting, anything you can think of really and do it enjoyably and effectively and efficiently and today. I say enjoy it like trick question. No, I did because if you're not having fun, you're not going to not keep doing it.

So find a way to do something you enjoy and keep going and have a good time. I'm Stephen Sashan, your post for the movement movement podcast from zero shoes.com and we call it the movement movement movement if you don't know because we're creating a movement that involves you, tell you how in a second it's really easy about natural movement and having your body do what it's made to do without getting in the way with things that sound like they may be good but probably aren't so much. So the way you become part of what we're doing is really simple. Go check out www.jointhemovementmovement.com you don't need to do anything to join.

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You know the drill. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. All right, let us jump in. Randy, Kyle, do me a favor.

Tell people who you are and what you're doing here. And first of all, welcome. But then tell people who you are and what you're doing here. It is great to finally get together.

We've had a couple of false starts. I am just a dude who was looking for an affordable hobby. I had been down the cancer back in 04 was overweight. I was a full-time parent to three beautiful young daughters in fall of 04 about a year and a half into post-account executive sales career.

I was a full-time parent at that point. I found out that I had thyroid cancer and had a couple of surgeries, two surgeries I took half of thyroid out one time, found out it was cancer and the other one out. So I found myself going several nights without sleep, very scared. I figured out what how serious it was.

And at one point, I found myself trying to explain cancer to our two-year-old daughter. I had a drip tube that was really a pretty gory thing. And it was just a tough time with a lot of fear. So I dug in to try and figure out everything that I could do to minimize the risk of it ever being in that situation again.

And ultimately it led me to read Born to Run in early 2010. And by late 2010, I decided to kind of go all in on this. But I now think of as my experiments in truth. Sort of just I adopted the Scott Jira cut-of-percent plant-based diet.

I tried to eat like the Tara Umarah, who are mostly plant-based organic whole foods. People who were on the primitive diet, the raref meery diet. And I also in addition to that wanted to really adopt kind of that cooperative mindset to where I'm going to try to dive into this, learn everything I can, share it all for free. And that kind of became sort of like volunteer work.

If I can convince other people to do this, I can have a real impact on at least a few lives. And so similar mission to yours. Certainly you're trying to change the world. And I've been trying to sort of do something similar.

And the results have been phenomenal. It just blows my mind how far it's gone since December 2010. I've now done over, I've done 25 official 100 mile runs, probably close to 100 ultramarathons, although 80 some official. And that's 60.

When I come out of the shower and look in the mirror, I like what I see. And 36, I couldn't say that. So, 60 years old now, we're about the same age. The whole life has become phenomenal.

But what I have come to understand is that everything I do to become a better runner has helped me become a healthier, happier person just in general. And the truth is definitely to play a role in that. So kudos to you and your staff. Keep doing what you're doing.

Pass on my gratitude to your, seems like your staff is kind of your family there. I've been impressed with everyone I've dealt with and your issues. Oh, that's really sweet. Well, so I want to talk about the transition from where you were to running, because this is a, I mean, just making transition and running at all is one thing, transition to running marathons and ultramarathons.

That's a whole other game. But are you, can we dive into the cancer thing for a moment? Absolutely. Yes.

And let me tell you why I want to do it. This is the first time I'm actually talking about this publicly. So this will be really interesting. I, as of last week, as far as I can tell, I'm going to find out for sure this coming Monday.

But as far as I know as of last week, I am now done with what I refer to as the best cancer ever. Oh, okay. And I got diagnosed the end of December. And by the middle of February, I was all done.

I had, I'm not trying to say that I'm special, but I had a rare form of eye cancer. I had cancer in my retina. Really? Discovered it almost accidentally.

And then here's my favorite part. So I go to my retinal specialist, I didn't know they were watching something in my retina a little freckle. And I didn't know they were watching it to see if it was cancerous. I had no idea.

I just thought, Hey, we're just watching this thing. And so then I can't wait in December and the physician assistant is checking me in and he says, So you know, such a pharmacy, is it medication you're taking? Is this your address? And do you have any questions about your tumor?

I said, I'm sorry, my what? He runs out the room. Yeah, well, I mean, that was not the way that he was supposed to break it to me. But the but well, I call the best cancer ever for two reasons.

One is we caught it really early. The treatment was relatively straightforward. I didn't have chemo. I didn't have chemo.

I had the radiation I had. They sowed a radioactive disc to my eyeball for a few days. And then by the way, if you ever feel a little nauseative, you can't kind of get yourself to throwing up, but you feel like that would be helpful. Just do a search online for plaque breaking therapy surgery video.

And if that don't make you puke, nothing will. I wanted them to record my surgery and they said they did it, then somehow something didn't work on a gland because if I was watching that on my own eyeball, oh my, but the other reason I call it best cancer ever is that for whatever reason, and I'm not going to suggest that my experience should be the experience for anybody else. But I'm curious if what I'm about to describe was a part of your experience during the time. And this is this was a very aggressive kind of cancer.

Like if it starts growing, you know, it basically grows slowly, slowly, slowly, and then wam. And once it starts doing that, it will definitely metastasize, go straight to your liver, and there's nothing they can do. And you got about a year. So while I was waiting to find out what, well, basically what type I had and what the likelihood of metastasis was.

From the moment they said, Hey, this is this cancer. And this, I'll be doing it. We need to treat it till the moment it was, well, actually, through now, I have been 100 times a day overwhelmed with a feeling of preciousness and gratitude and appreciation and enjoyment. And I mean, I feel like I'm like, almost like I'm a bit of an alien, like I'm walking around going, Oh, wow, look at that.

Or I'm not thinking this planet that I've been vacationing on, I'm going to miss that. And while I know people who've had chemo and radiation, et cetera, and have children, which we don't have, have many different experiences, everyone I've talked to that feeling like, Oh, I know I could die, create something that when you're not having the unpleasant part is unbearably delightful. That's what you're on. Did you have anything like that?

Yeah, I guess I ended up becoming one of the stories where the cancer, or you ended up kind of looking at it as a gift. First of all, I thought there was a hard, no, dude, best thing that's ever happened to me. Yeah, yeah, one of them. I don't think I would have ended up discovering all these things that I've learned over the last 13 years or whatever had not been for that scare.

And then taking that and flipping it into the total opposite has just been incredible, quite a ride. I'm curious, just diving in just for the fun, and I'll tell you why, because I got a bit of a mission, an additional mission, even while you were dealing with the treatment, were you having any of those like holy crap, life is really amazing moments? Maybe not, it's okay. I don't care.

I say some, but I was sort of overwhelmed with fear at the time. If I could go back and do it over again at this age, probably would have been different. No. If I, and I know I'm diving in, so feel free to stop at any point.

But can you remember what specifically you were afraid of? Well, that would spread and take my life. But I was mostly afraid of not being there for my kids in the future. And no, my wife taking care of my wife, all of it, just losing everything.

I was the fear. I went when I first told me about this, I had this giant goiter that I hadn't even noticed in the time. And it's not me straight to get it. Well, before the vitals, I made a picture of it.

My breathing tube did one of these. And once I could visually see how bad it affected my breathing tube, my mind just sort of went like a three nights without sleep. I'd never done that before. And just kind of got into a deep fear stage that lasted for quite some time.

So that was kind of why, one of the reasons I started out at the YouTube channel was to hopefully get through it to a lot of younger people that the diet is one of the key things to preventing and healing cancer and unfortunately, any chronic disease. Yeah, and we'll definitely dive into that, FYI. The other thing, again, this is just my thing, is how about this? When people, when I would tell people, and I didn't tell very many people, but I had to tell like one person a day or my head was going to explode because I'm not going to keep secrets.

So I had to do that. But if they said, I'm sorry, it's like, oh, no, no, no, stuff cut that out. Because I'm not. I mean, this, I was really completely fine with any possible outcome.

Now, I'll confess this may be as I'm weird. And it may be because of 1929, I was in China in Beijing and got caught up in the Tiananmen Square massacre and had guys pointing machines at my head trying to figure out who was going to pull the trigger. And the way that affected me, which was basically, I had never been so lucid and calm in my entire life. And my only, my predominant thought was, in Buddhism, and I wasn't, I can't say I was a Buddhist, but in Buddhism, they say, your next rebirth determines your or sorry, your last thought determines your next rebirth.

And if it's true, all I could think of is I want to know that I'm dying because I want to see if I can get a good one. Well, that's just what was popping up in my head for whatever reason. So, you know, I kept having to say to people, I'm not sorry. So, you know, that's not, don't say that.

Or I would say to people, I'm going to tell you something, but whatever your natural responses to me, don't do that. And let's try something different to see what happens if you don't do the knee jerk one. And same thing that we went, sorry for a lesson, when they would say, well, you know, you can beat this, you know, you can fight this like, I'm not at war with anything. I'm not trying to, you know, exactly right.

Yeah. Yeah. And my take on it is you don't focus on the disease at all. And you put all the focus on positive wellness goal, whatever your positive goal is you focus on that.

Forget about the cancer, try to create the right conditions in your body to heal the cancer and get whatever treatments need to be done as well. Yeah. And even with that, when people would say to me things about, you know, think positively, like have a good discussion, I'll go, no, I don't think I understand. I'm really okay, no matter what happens.

Now that said, we don't have kids, as I mentioned, but the only thing that worried me and Elena pointed this out to someone, she goes, you know, I'm like literally going into surgery. And she's scheduling an interview we have with somebody. And she says, just so you know, he's more concerned about this interview and making sure that our new shoes come in okay and on time than he is about dying. I guess I'll end this little chapter with just what was interesting to me was seeing how habitually people respond to this and how some of those responses seem so not helpful.

You know, it was just fascinating. I mean, Elena's nephew had an inoperable brain tumor and died of that. And partly, I guess this is partly from being a standup comic. This is what happens.

Like I said to him early on, you know, the most difficult part is when people going, oh, no, I'm so sorry. And just looking at you with puppy dog eyes. And if you get tired of that, call me because I love you dearly, but we've had 120 billion people on the planet and they've all died so far of something. We're not answering that.

So I said, so let's practice. What do you want for lunch? And he says, dude, I've got a brain tumor. I said, I know you've got a brain tumor.

What do you want for lunch? And he's like, Oh, well, you can eat sushi. Let's go. At one point, the family's being very morose.

And I just said, you know, there's an upside you having a brain tumor. He said, what's that? I said, well, it's not affecting any part of your body you've ever used. And everyone else liked it.

They were a gas until he just burst into his barracks and then everyone, you know, relax and we had a good day. So I am intrigued by the fact that you were a standup comic. And obviously you brought the humor to the business right from the start. I think about somebody like Jerry Seinfeld, I like living in a country in a world where a guy like him could basically be a billionaire.

I look up his network on Google and it seems like he always keeps it just below a billion. He wouldn't want to be considered a billionaire. And you might have a billion dollars worth of the Porsche. I don't know.

But and then you look at a guy like Zelensky in Ukraine, I guess, it's to do comedy. And now what these two things are going to the ability to kill in a room full of people with your own on the fly remarks with critical thinking and creative energy and just that to be able to succeed as a comic just be able to get up there one time and do it. I think it's amazing. Somehow you did that as a career for a while.

Yeah, that was my day job for 10, 11 years. The thing about doing comedy is you basically learn to be able or willing to face anything that comes at you and you tend to do best under pressure. And that shows up in different ways. Although I will say watching Zelensky, it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

And he does comics a good name like no one ever has. So yeah, it is a weird perspective. I mean, the thing about comedy is there's nothing that's off limits. There's no there's nothing you can't make a joke about.

Granted, a lot of those things only happen among other comics where no one else can hear us. You know, when you have that sort of mindset that there's something funny everywhere comes in handy sometimes. So yeah, so back to back to this whole transition firm for you for the win. So you got a deal with this thyroid cancer and got this idea of, okay, so when start running out, have you been doing any running prior to this?

I know I did zero sports in high school kind of considered myself. I've got two younger brothers who are fantastic popular and got it as in high school with great athletes, state records and so forth. And I didn't do any of that. So I kind of thought I didn't get the athletic gene.

I was kind of a black shoot, but I just didn't realize it was there and running was my superpower. I just didn't know it. So after college, I started doing a little bit of running. And I got to the point where I had done like I was doing international distance triathlons the shorter mini triathlons.

And I ran maybe a half marathon. So I experimented with some athleticism in my early to late 20s. And then I got into my job and my hobby on the side was kind of building and remodeling houses, selling them renting out rooms. I kind of did real estate as a hobby and get back super busy with my job.

Basically I ended up kind of getting married, having kids, got overweight, stressed out and all that. I let my health go. And then so having appendix go bad, sky high cholesterol, I had all these warnings on it. So I wasn't listening to them.

But my value was trying to tell me for years I needed to make serious changes. I didn't really listen until I really felt like I had to go into my head with this follicular thyroid cancer. It wasn't aggressive. Yeah.

Cancer. And I had just had a full physical just a few months before it was discovered. And when I went to see my doctor, my grandfather had just passed away. He was almost 96.

And I was the oldest grandchild. So I got a set a few words public speaking was not my thing. And I got a struggle with it. It wasn't just the nerves.

Something else was going on. So I get back from Wisconsin to Ohio. And I see my doctor thinking I've got a science infection and which were common for me back then. And she says, you've got this big lump right here.

You haven't noticed that? I'm like, well, you just checked me out. I was naked. Well, she was distracted because you were naked.

She did. She checked everything. And she noticed it. And, you know, so it was a fast growing goiter.

And so that really finally got my intent. I felt like I've always felt like I was just a lucky person. I think we're going my way overall most of the time. And all of a sudden, it was like, it just hit pretty hard.

So I started just diving in and trying to research what was what? And well, how did you stumble on born or run? Everything was kind of leaning that way. I started learning right after I had the cancer.

First of all, the doctors, surgeon said something. I mean, absolutely no sense. I generally as women who get thyroid cancer. And it's usually older people who are older and female.

And so I asked him, you know, how does this where does this come from? I'm a relatively young healthy guy. And he just said, you know, for all we know, it falls out of sky. And I just thought, come on, that's a total bullshit answer.

I want the truth, you know, I started to see you become a truth seeker. And I started learning things like things that weren't quite making sense. Like when you go towards the equator, where there's way more sunlight on people's skin and cancer rates are lower. You get up in Canada, where there's less sunlight higher cancer rates.

So I started putting together, well, one medicine I have to take to stay alive is the synthroid to replace with thyroid. So I see a doctor for that every six months to monitor that. And one of the risks of taking synthroid long term is osteoporosis. So I was interested in how do I minimize cancer risk and how do I minimize osteoporosis risk?

And when I started learning about osteoporosis, I found out that animal sourced foods mess with our body chemistry in such a way that it's now illegal for the dairy industry to say that milk builds strong bones. It's a complete lie. And more as we take in more and more animal source foods, it essentially leeches calcium minerals from the bones that we consume. So it's completely opposite, but they use to advertise milk destroys the bones if you take a lot of it.

And I don't know if that matters if it's meat dairy or eggs, but a consumption of certain foods messes with your, oh, I can't think of the term it was right now, your blood chemistry has to remain at a certain level. If your diet pushes too high, you're either going to die or your body leeches nutrients from the bones. So essentially, what I was learning with is that if your diet's not great, you're essentially kind of pissing your skeleton into the toilet over time, literally. So I started learning these things and all this time, I'm starting to think my diet maybe doesn't make any sense.

Maybe everything I've learned was mostly wrong. And so I was already sort of leaning towards, you know, I'd given up dairy. I was thinking more about vegetarian vegan diet. And I had done a 10 day master cleanse fast as I knew that my weight was an issue.

I finally got down into my healthy BMI range by doing a 10 day water fast. And you mentioned clearing your stomach, saltwater flush will do that really, really. Saltwater flush was part of my 10 day master cleanse fast. So anyways, I started doing these different experiments and losing weight.

So I'm doing some running back and forth on the lane up to the mailbox. It was two times a mile each way. So I'm home with three kids, and I would run around the house on the yard and not the lane and slowly building up to become a runner again. And I know that I ran my first marathon, US Air Force marathon here locally, and barely crossed the finish line hobbling on one leg.

And so super excited and I finished, but I was in a lot of pain. And then red born to run. And in the meantime there, I had fractured my ankle broke, the tibia just messing around in the yard. I think that was 2007 or it was 2008.

And I never had a broken bone. So I'm thinking there were all these different things. And I was realizing that my feet and ankles were really weak. Because when I run with my overbuilt shoes with the inserts, I was off and twisting my ankles and messing around out in the yard.

I snapped my ankle and pretty much crawled back to the house and go get, you know, get it, a cast put on it. So one day, I would have been early 2010, I was going out to buy one of those Bosu ball, not a Bosu ball. You have like a half ball. Flat when they stand on, yes, and then I went out to this called Zenyushu and leather that sells, you can go there to have your horse settle rebuilt or have your Birkenstocks resold.

But they also sold nice leather shoes and boot work boots and stuff like it was a leather shop. And the guy there was an expert on orthotics. But all of a sudden, on this particular day, when I just happened to be looking for ways to strengthen my ankles, he's got a copy of Born To Run. And he's got the toe shoes, the Vibram Five Fingers.

Yeah. And so I pick up the book and I'm reading this thing. And luckily, the orthotics expert, the under the store was busy that day. So I got three chapters in and I was completely intrigued.

I went straight to the bookstore to buy my copy after that. But anyways, he sold me a pair of Vibram Five Fingers and it's pretty much my accident. I had the book in hand and it was a life changer. All of these things I've been learning for years, Christopher Maboule put it all together.

He just had acted all the opposite and so much to me in such a way that I ultimately contacted one of the people he featured, who was Dr. Ruth Heydrick, who was a stage four cancer survivor who used a plant based diet to heal herself decades ago. She's still going strong. She's went and likes runs.

He's written five or six books. And anyway, I picked her brain and she finally got me 100% of minutes to give up the meat and the eggs. I already given up the dairy and so boom, it was 100% game changer within three months. I was finally off the cholesterol meds and then it was just a couple months after that, the first 50k trail race.

Well, I want to get to that 50k, but I got to stop and highlight something that you said that I love. The number of times I've been in some, like a doctor's office or physical therapist office where they have a copy of Born To Run and everyone is wearing some big thick stiff padded motion roll shoe and recommending orthotics. And it's like, which part of this did you not read? Because you seem to be missing the point.

And of course, in my light, look, I'm going to piss people off, but again, it's a joke. So if you get offended about what I say, not you, Randy, but other people listening, if you're offended by what I say, just know that it's a joke. I think orthotics expert is sort of like saying astrology expert. Yeah, well, what's fascinating to me was that this guy was a certified orthotics guy.

He sold the stuff right there. But yet he was selling now the complete opposite of how I run. I figured it all out his shot. No, it's priceless.

But I mean, like I had a guy, I when I got back in the spring, I saw someone who said, Oh, well, you need to be wearing like this three quarter orthotic to deal with the issues that you're having. I said, I'm a sprinter. I'm always like on the ball of my foot. I would never actually use the orthotic.

It never would come in contact with the ground. And he was like, yeah, but what? It's just again, it was just like, I guess our theme is going to be knee jerk reactions. It's just this knee jerk response.

Like people come in and if all you have is an orthotic for your hammer, everything is a nail that needs the orthotic. So essentially, so anyway, that's just a bit of a side of tier 50k. So you had this unbelievably unpleasant experience running a marathon. What in God's name made you think let's run more?

Bored around just as put inspired me all the different stories. I thought, whenever they're drank, and I want to taste of that. And so I don't even know if I seriously considered doing 100 mile a time when I just knew that I wanted to get up to the ultra distance and see what happened. And now ironically, I over train.

I was doing one day. I did a four day workout. I ran eight miles four different times in one day. And so about what had been five days before the 50k, I went out with my wife's run group, five, six miles.

And on the way back to the house, out of the blue, it felt like somebody hit me in the ankle with baseball bat. And I thought, oh, well, I guess I better stay off it and just rest until the race. So I get out there, I'm running. It's a little bit, but it's not too bad, but it's getting worse and worse and worse.

And I ran pretty well, but I got real slow at the end because the ankle was hurting and it was thrown my stride off. And after the race was over, I could barely walk back to my car. Along story short, it was a stress fracture in the tibia. I write science as the same ankle that I broke the tibia in three years prior.

So that ended up becoming another serendipitous thing. And because I learned so much during the healing process of getting that bone fixed, I figured out that writing 120 miles on my bike or swimming a couple miles were great exercise. I could do that with the stress fracture, but it didn't replace what I got from all to running, the feeling I got from it. It wasn't the same.

So that kind of got me even more focused on the running long term. So anyways, healed up from that stress fracture and just kept going hardcore, no injury since then. So basically over 80 official ultra marathon probably more like at least 100 ultra distance runs. But Randy, that can't be possible running is hard on your joints and it's bad for you.

And you know, 50% of runners and 80% of marathoners get injured every year. So that's not in there's no way you're not injured for all that time. He says, right. And then and typically what I've read in the ultra running magazine is that the average amount of time ultra runners are into is about three and a half years.

And so now I'm going on whatever 12 nonstop just, you know, I haven't spent any money on medical stuff related to my hobby. So I can just keep running more and more and more races. It's kind of crazy. I just never would have dreamt as an 18 year old that I'd be running 100 mile races.

I need 60. No, it's it's brilliant. And we one of our first employees was 65 at the time. And he was just running in our first and our do yourself kit, just, you know, a four millimeter piece of rubber under his feet.

And he was doing about 120 to 140 mile like that. He was doing 120 to 140 miles out 40 miles a week. So he'd run from his house with a bus station in Denver, take the bus to get off and boulder like a couple stops early and run to our office, then repeat, you know, reverse that on the way home, then go out for five or 10 miles with his dog. And then on the weekends, he'd do 20 or 30 miles a day.

And people say, well, that's not possible. He's like, well, I've been doing it for years. So I'm saying, same thing. I mean, on the other end of the spectrum, as a sprinter, I haven't really had anything other than like a minor tweak that put me out for one workout in 13 years.

That's awesome. Did you see I'm remodeling here? You might love what I've done with this. Yes, for people who can't see, Randy is showing off his collection of zero shoes and many other things.

Well, but the wall, I paid the wall. Oh my gosh, I love it. That is great. That's fun.

I love it. That's what you're doing with your fun. That's what I do with my ultra distance. So for people who haven't done an ultra, what would you say to someone who either is considering it or someone who thinks there's just no way?

I would say that running for me running is really just an expression of what we are in our core. I like to say running 100 miles, some of my runs have been really tough mountain runs with all kinds of string crossings and rock gardens and just crazy stuff. We go through lots of elevation change. So some of the runs have taken over 37 hours, but I just only have to, I say, hey, it's like a 37 hour full body massage.

I mean, I just, to me, a lot of ultra runners really like to kind of sensationalize the pain and the bad ass or the other. I'm kind of like, exactly. I'm like, no, it's like a really long yoga session. The world's going to spend all the way around.

I'm going to see sunrise sunset, maybe a lot more than one of those of each. And it's kind of almost kind of a spiritual thing sort of transformative. It's sort of a formative and maybe a little bit of exaggeration. But I can tell you that maybe one out of 300 mile races, I really am strongest the last 10, 20 miles.

Wow. So the first 60 to 80 miles is just setting the table. So then you've run all the way through the night, you've had to conquer the being sleepy and master of the nutrition and the hydration and caffeine management and all these different things, all the gear, everything. There's a lot to think about.

It's a big puzzle too. It's like a, it's mostly got strategy and conditioning, but it's a big puzzle to solve. You're going to learn a lot about yourself. One of the odd things was when I was getting prepared for that first 100-mileer, I went no pace or no career to a race.

I didn't know anybody. It was over 300 miles away, you know, and I had my golfers put some music on a little device. It was like a knockoff of an apple or whatever. I put all my favorite songs on there and I had the batter.

I had all the gear and I got out there and I never used it. And I never used it. I've never used music for any of these altars. I love it when it's there, but I've never played it.

And so I learned that just to be tuned into the sound of your footsteps, the breath, the heartbeat, all the cheat running focuses on the energy teachers, just to hand me to the other runners, the environment, the animals, all the volunteers, everything that's going on. Just staying aware of that is a treat. And I would mess it up with Jim and stuff in my ears and be distracted from all the basics. So you did that first one without a crew?

When you're doing 100-mileer now, what do you do to prepare and navigate and manage that? Basically, same thing. After that first one, I did a video called Ten Tips for an Easy Hundred Mileer. And it was all just kind of timeless stuff and it's still the same stuff I do.

I used some of Eric Horton's ideas. I don't know. You've got to know him well. He's a more competitive-minded, I'd say, than Danny Dryer is more of a Zen-minded injury-free focus runner, but they both are phenomenal teachers.

And Eric would say a couple things from his book, The Cool and Possible. Have you read that? Yeah. Okay.

He talks about athleticism being all about awareness, which is 100% true. He also says that most runners have absolutely no idea of what they're doing, which is kind of true too. So I don't know where I'm going with all that. But It was inspired by my question.

What's the sort of change and how you manage a race from that first hundred mileer to the way you do it now? Yeah. It's just focusing on all the basics. I tried to- one of the magic things that happened at the first race was the first hundred mileer.

I got dehydrated. I had to recover from that. But once I got to 50 miles in and everything was still working, and I'm actually trying to help some other people. It really bad like blisters and things.

And I'm showing them my socks and my sandals and my thin socks and I glide for the feet and all these different tips. Like I've never done one. I'm trying to help other people. And anyways, effort for getting through all that.

The sun started to come down, cool down, got food and liquid in me, and then some caffeine. Coffee came out and I had some caffeine. And I found myself just singing in the woods, running and just this blissful, joyful runner's-high hit. It went on for hours and hours and hours.

2am, whatever time it was. I come into an eight-station just hooting and hollering. And I thought I was like on something. I was so into a purely 100% natural runner's-high.

I was just giddy. I felt guilty because some people were just crashing and burning. I told the volunteers at the eight-station. I still am in contact with some of these people.

I've gone back and done that same race seven times. And I said, if I could bottle up this feeling and sell it to people, I would be a billionaire. So anyways, the first hundred mile race, I felt like I just caught this wave and I've just wanted to keep riding it ever since. And I think I'm still chasing.

I firstly always get a runner's-high at 100 mile. But I've never had the intensity and the lengths repeat again quite the same way as it did at the first time. I'm not a drug taker, but it's, but there are various other things where I've had similar experiences. I think it's just a neurological phenomenon.

The first time it happens, you're laid down some massive neural pathway. Your neurotransmitter should be something they've never done before. Once you have that pathway, everything smooths out a little bit. So I mean, I'll say it even now back into the beginning of our conversation.

I can think of a better word that I currently use of than the preciousness that I feel on a daily basis. It was intense for the first month. Now it's just, you know, it's still delightful, but it's just smoother. I think when I think back on the cancer, I tell people when I'm doing 100 mile race or anything, anytime I run, I think of every breath, every footstep, it was a form of gratitude.

Where they run for their ancestors on the sacred ground. I try to bring it out all those ideas into my running and day to day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day or day. I just try to, I'd say one of my favorite mantras is, energy flows where tension goes wherever I focus on energy. I get, wherever I focus on my tens or that's where the energy is coming from.

So, you know, one of my youngest brother was kind of a wild man still is back in high school college. He had this thing where back when he was driving a dump truck for an ex-givator, he'd be out in the morning all the time driving country roads and he learned that when he found a fresh skump peel in the road, he would just take a deep breath and he would just learn to love the smell of skump. I like it a lot. When I ever saw something that's going badly, I flip it and I quickly learned that when I found skump, I was like, ah, I love the smell of a perfume.

I changed that narrow pathway to a pleasure thing. So, that same thing comes into a play and say you're 40 miles into an ultra marathon. It's colder than expected. It's raining for hours and hours and hours and instead of whining about it, you just say over and over until you finally believe it.

I love the rain. I love all of this. Bring it on. Bring it more.

And then after a while, you start laughing about it and then you believe it. And it's like just a question. After, after 10 of us were to bring it to the store, I ended up in Thailand and I got there just as the monsoons were kicking in and there was just no way to escape the rain. And so, when there's no escape, you just go with it.

I mean, you can argue if you want. But my experience was, I was like, oh, and I previously did not like being on the rain and getting wet. But when there was just no escape, for whatever reason, I started really enjoying it. And now when it's raining, I get a total kick out of it.

I love to go out and run in the rain or the snow, some of the best. The negative ions from the rain, you're probably aware of that. Yep. Okay.

I guess that's a real thing. I I don't know. I mean, apparently, well, certainly, I don't have much of it as the rain versus what happens when there's a thunderstorm, which actually does ionize the air in different ways. There's a lot of things that, while something may be happening, it may not be what people think.

But to your point, if you know how you frame it is going to experience it. I like things like that. Believing in them, or think I think there's probably something to it. I don't know how solid science is.

I'll jump in on that one, right? So the idea being that there's these magic free electrons, actually, the simple idea being that because we're not electrically connected to the ground on a regular basis, like our ancestors seemingly were that's leading a bunch of health problems, I won't get diving into the story too much other than if you know anything about physics, chemistry, biology, it all falls apart. But and people may argue with me, that's okay. But let's just go for the simpler story.

So I like to say we sugar doesn't taste sweet sugar doesn't taste good. What I mean by that is that we evolved to like the taste of sugar because it gave us something that we needed then which was hard to find called calories. And so we co-evolved and then once we started figuring out how to cultivate things, we made things sugar-rear because we need calories. So in similar vein, we know that just being out in nature, actually stress relieving and relieving stress is a valuable thing.

It's a neurological, neurophysiological thing. So being barefoot and for most people, when they're quote electrically connected to the ground, they're barefoot in somewhere that's natural. And so and because we have all these nerve endings in our feet, that's to let us know what we're stepping on or stepping in. So there's no question that we evolved to learn that certain sensations are a good sign.

There's something nearby that we want food, water, shelter, or someone to sleep with something. And so walking around, we don't need any of the magical physics chemistry biology story. You just go, we evolved to like that feeling. If nothing else, if you haven't been stimulating your feet by letting them feel these very varied and variegated surfaces, your brain is wired to feel that.

And when you let your brain feel that, that feels good. And feeling good is not just an emotional experience. It's a neurophysiological phenomenon that is stress-rear So in my mind, that's the Occam's razor answer, the simple story. We have to like that.

You don't need anything on top of that. That is improperly verified by seeming science. And just for us, I'll stop ranting about this one thing. People like to demonstrate this by showing, Hey, here I put an ometer on my skin and I chose that I've got a positive charge on my skin.

And that's got to be bad. It's like, no, no, no, that's protecting you. And the simple proof on that for that is a 99.5% of people get struck by lightning, survive without a problem. 100% of trees that get struck by lightning explode and burst into flames because your skin is highly resistant to being to electrical current.

So the current goes around your body through your skin, around you, into the ground. Similarly, if it was just about being grounded, being hyper protective, then people in the third world in all of our pets should be totally healthy. But that's not the way that works either. So, you know, anyway, that's my counterfactual, simple answer.

But but that said, look, if it gets you out and you're having fun, I'm not going to argue with you. I don't think there's any downside to practicing it. It feels good with the brain out of the ground and having skin on the ground. Absolutely.

I spend an inordinate amount of time barefoot. I'm all for it. The challenge becomes when people are selling additional products to dilute this and the evidence that they have for the benefit is again, at best, very dubious. And that's at best.

I mean, the ninth thing is your issue is part of what animates me is that I find it morally reprehensible when people make a living by lying to other people. And that's what the foot we're in to she's been doing for 50 years. So when people were selling products based on bad scientific ideas that are easily disproven, yeah, that just gets under my skin. Well, that's kind of summarizes most of the food industry.

And it's very similar what the food industry is doing to people as the shoe industry does to people. Well, the slight difference there is food is a really interesting one. Because like I was at one of the first paleo conferences, and I noticed a few things that no one else seemed to point out that there's 10 people on the stage who are the paleo experts at the time arguing about what paleo was. And so they didn't have it.

They didn't agree on what paleo was. The whole idea that paleo people didn't need any grains and didn't need any whatever else they were saying has been proven to be not true over and over and over. And five of the people that were on that stage were mortally obese. And what I found out later was that almost everyone on the stage had high C-reactive protein levels.

So there's just a lot of and I said to one of the doctors, I said this idea that there's one diet for everyone, that seems a little silly because like I'm a genetic freak. And I said, what are you talking about? I said, no, for men over at then I was 45 or 47 or I don't know somewhere 13 years ago, so I was 47. I said for men over the age of 45, I'm one of the fastest Jews in the world.

So you're going to suggest that I should be eating the same thing as someone who can't run fast and lifts just as totally different activities. It doesn't make sense. So and the last thing I'll say about that I think there's a writer named Denise Minger who wrote a book called Death by Food Pyramid that you would actually love because it's really about how the food industry has been misrepresenting things. But later, and Denise was the bell of the paleo ball because she was a die hard raw food vegan in high school and then her teeth started loosening and almost falling out and she went, oh, let me do something about that and then started eating a lot of animal protein which helped.

And she still predominately eats a lot of vegetarian-dean things, but that's about it. But later she did something about the paleo world that most people wouldn't do is she started looking for counter factuals. Let's see if there are people doing the opposite of what you're saying who are just as healthy if not healthier than what you're claiming to be and found innumerable examples of that. And lately, this is the last thought.

She did a great article about high-fat versus low-fat diets and what they might be doing. But then she said, I'm not going to be writing any more about diet. And I don't know why, but my suspicion because she's a very smart researcher is that she couldn't find any correlation that applied across the board to that correlated diet and longevity. And I think she's landed on the different strokes for different folks bandwagon.

And so, you know, this is well as I. If you want to sort of fight, you either talk about politics or talk about whatever diet you happen to be on. Religion, food, politics. I look at it as all about the rules we're all going to live by.

Politics, economics, religion, and food kind of falls into that too. It's a just a tough conversation to have. But there is a lot of evidence to show that a more plant-based diet leads to a lot of other things. I mean, that's, you know.

Yeah, the difference is having a higher plant-based diet seems to be very, very clear because that's basically what a Mediterranean diet is, just adding some seafood mostly. But what's interesting is when people who have discovered something that seems to work for them, at least for now, just getting really militant about it and assuming that what works for them works for everybody else, that's what we think is to be problematic. Exactly. I looked up something.

I've been watching a few of your podcasts. Do you know the name Walter Leisner? No. You don't.

It was 95, 94 years and 268 days old when he did a backflip. Oldest known human. Oh, okay. All right.

I heard you talk about it on your former podcast. I'm decided to look it up. I thought I wondered. Oh boy, you have just set the bar for me.

I think I've already beaten my coach, my former coach. But now, okay, so first I've got to live to 96 and then I got to throw a standing back. Wait, hold on, standing backflip like on a trampoline. I didn't look that up.

I assumed it was a standing backflip. I could have to send me his info. I'm going to look at it. Google it.

Is that all this human? Ever go backflip? I'm going to look. I'm definitely going to look that one up.

There's a woman. I don't remember her name who's in her 90s who does gymnastics as well. And the whole thing about the master track and field circuit is that everyone's goal is just to outlive their competitors. So I thought that was interesting.

If you can live the 94, I'll do a backflip. That would be again. I'm definitely going to look up. So I'm going to wrap this up with this.

If you were other than just look at the unbelievably inspiring way that you talk about running ultras and running, you know, ultra running has become one of the faster running sports. We were doing actually pickle balls now number one, but ultra running really, really grew dramatically. If you were going to give someone some advice for doing their first ultra because I can't imagine they're not anxious as hell. And what would that be?

And I'll tell you a quick funny one just as a pearly to that. I was in an event that Tony Cripicchio was doing and former very well known from Arithonor from that last week of the days. And someone said to him, you know, I've run a 50 mile race, but I want to run 100. What do I need to do to train for that?

And Tony's answer was nothing. You've already done everything you need to know. I just want to be inspired to do my first 100, too. Oh, really?

He'd have his YouTube videos. I watch them back in 2010, 2011. He'd be in the park running barefoot where he'd take off the shoes and have a knife and cut the bottom off and make a flat. And basically, him and others were saying the same thing.

If you could run a marathon, you can run 50. If you can run 100. Now a lot of people I know are running 200 miles. I don't have an interest in that person because I found that to run a 200 mile or it might cost two, three, four, five times as much as a 100 mile or $1.

So for a dollar, my traveling dollar, my racing dollar, I can see more places, meet more runners, experience more things. I'm doing 100 mile races than 200 miles races. So someone says, I'm gearing up for that first ultra. I've pointed to my wall right here.

Keep it fun. Keep it fun. If you're keeping it fun, that's just I know you preach the same thing. If you keep it fun, you're going to do it.

And I've always kept my ultra is mostly fun. I still get nervous even before 50k. I've never DNFed 50k. And so I don't want to start a new turn there.

So I'm going to do a new day. It occurs to me for keep it fun. There's a this is going to be a weird analogy. And so I'm a 17 or 18 time member of the polar bear club.

So on January 1st, they break out the ice. If there's any ice diving into 32 degree water, I've never done it. I can imagine it. Oh, it's a blast.

But here's the thing. But here's the thing. If you going into a race, if you think it's going to be difficult, if you think it's going to be painful, if you don't have that open minded kind of curiosity where you can see how can I keep it fun, then that's going to be problematic. It's the same thing with jumping in ice water.

If you're just curious, if you're willing to kind of feel it without your expectation of what it's supposed to feel like, it will undeniably be way different than what you thought. And in very interesting ways. And so I never thought of it as being analogous to running a 50k or a 50 mile or 100 mile. But I'm going to ask you, it's like, if you go in with that, like, I'm just curious, because it may not be like what I imagine or what anyone told me or what anyone else who's done this has said.

Let's see what happens and see if I can find a way to be fun. Yeah, I'm kind of amazed. I haven't gotten bored with it at all. I don't see any end to do it.

I just want to keep keeping shape to be able to keep doing this. Hopefully 100 miles is I'd like to be back down here when I'm 70 still doing 100 miles. We'll see. We'll see.

I'm going 50 ks when I'm 70 or any. It's my same thing. I just, you know, I know I'm not going to be the fastest guy in the world. I know I'm not going to make it into finals in the world championships.

I might make it into a quarter or a semi if it's a really good day. There's not a lot of people there. But my only goal is to keep hitting all American times in my races as I get over. And if I'm really feeling good to an all American time for the age group behind mine, one behind mine.

If I can do that, I'm totally happy. And if I can't do that, but I'm still having a good time out there, then that's okay too. You know, I was fortunate to be at the Barkley Marathon's last year. And second time I saw a Courtney DeWaltter, who was just a joyous runner.

She was just always smiling and happy just like you see her on the internet. And then I've been to the Big Dog backyard ultra at Lazarus Lake Gary Cantrell's house the last two years as a volunteer, of course. I'm not there to compete. But in this past October, when the US team was competing with all the teams around the world in the backyard format, one of the guys came in and he was just completely spent.

He was in a lot of pain, but he went as far as he could. He was just going to go any further. And the guy was this competitor was telling the lass, you know, this is I'm never coming back. You know, it was just not fun.

And Lazarus said, you don't have to have fun to have fun. And some don't alter running, you know, you just have to flip it. You persist through there's a, I like to think of it. Well, Seinfeld have this great definition of pain.

It's a lot of information coming at you really fast. It's a perfect definition of pain. But when it comes to pain, when you're doing an ultra race, you're trying to do your best performance, you can do your best pace, whatever. You're dancing on a line between productive discomfort, which is a form of pain versus a real injury, but it's a set of pain.

You have to kind of dance on that line, whether it's a 50k or whatever, you have to be following Eric Gordon's awareness concept. You have to be aware enough to dance on that line without pushing too far into injurious pain versus productive, productive discomfort. And I imagine if we think about Tim Nokes and his central governor theory, which basically is that your brain, one of its major functions to keep you safe and will pull you back from exerting yourself in various ways or being having certain experiences because it thinks it's unsafe, but it's often a little hyper-conservative. And I imagine over time, that line that you're dancing between useful discomfort and actual problematic pain moves somewhat.

Not to make you, not to put you in a situation where you're injury is more likely, but just because you're discovering that, oh, no, no, that line was actually in the wrong place and it can move. Your condition changes so you can handle tougher lines. One of the things he likes to coach is relaxing into the competitive run and getting yourself out of the way, which is kind of the same thing. You've got to relax the mind and the body and just go with the flow.

And then you get into a different zone where you can, the mind and the body relax into it, it can perform better. I'm compelled to throw out this story. So when I was living in New York, I was doing Tai Chi and Aikido. And after an Aikido class, a bunch of us left, including the teacher.

And it's a blisteringly cold, like February day in New York, it's snowed, it was still a little drizzlier flurries. And everyone's complaining about how cold it was. And I said, as we're walking this up way, I said, I try to just pay attention to the sensations and just feel those without adding a story to it. Because when I do that, then everything changes and it doesn't feel quite so cold.

And then the teacher says, yeah, I did that Zen shit for 40 years. It's freaking freezing out here. But I said, there are people who do the diving into the cold water and all that. If you're supposedly if you do slow breaths or heat into your mitochondria or whatever, it sounds more heat into the body to keep your armor or something happens.

Yeah, no, there's, I mean, I taught that story not to suggest that, hey, we're wrong. And no, you know, when it hurts, it hurts. But there are different ways of experiencing these things. I really want to play with it.

And playing with it is the critical thing. I've got a cold plunge. We have a hot time. I've got a cold plunge next to it.

Yesterday, I had to chip away eight inches of ice to get into it. And I did not stay in as long. But once you're in, it's just again, it's just not what you think. And if you're willing to play with the experience, it can be very interesting.

I might have to try sometime. I like hot tub. Hey, I love hot tub. But I also just find it, and it's not like it's pleasant pleasant, but it's just really, it's just really compelling.

I really, I really, I get out of anyway, we'll do that sometime. You come out here, we'll jump on the cold plunge. So Randy, first of all, thank you, separate everything. First of all, thank you for doing this.

Thank you for all the support you've given us. If people want to find out more about what you're up to and follow you or maybe even get in touch with you for whatever reason they might want to do that. I don't know if you're doing anything coaching is or whatever, how might they get in touch with you? Yeah, most of what I do is still just volunteer stuff.

I'm trying to get our house fixed up and sold and downsized and hopefully then we'll have more time to do other things. But I'm on YouTube. So just everything's under my name. So a Google search will take me to you take them to YouTube.

So well, then spell your name for people. R-A-N-D-Y-K-R-E-I-L-L. So Randy, and on YouTube, you can get a link to the blog. I'm on Facebook quite a bit.

So I'm using to find there or on YouTube and a little bit on Instagram too. So I'm easy to find and always glad to help people who are willing to listen. So yeah, perfect. Well, once again, Randy, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everyone else. And thank you all for being here as well.

Again, a reminder, when you get a chance head over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com, you'll find all the previous episodes, ways you can engage with us on social media. You'll find us wherever podcasts are findable and wherever you can, give us a thumbs up and a five-star review and hit the like button and hit the bell icon on YouTube. And like I said, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe, spread the word. And if you have any recommendations or requests or you want to argue with me about something, if you think I've got a case of cranial reorientation syndrome, I'm open to that conversation.

Just drop me an email, about anything. Move, M-O-V-E, at JoinTheMovementMovement.com. And until then, just go out, have fun, and live life-y first.