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

22:03Ken Rideout:This other stuff is like, they're not even moving the needle until you like get 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 six to 12 months. And I'd be like, I'm going to get high just to have a day. I need a day off from life. And it would take like a day or two, three, four days of like being high around the clock to be like, what am I doing? And then my wife would also start to figure it out.

22:34Ken Rideout: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 can look right at someone and be like, dude, that guy's fucking whacked out of his mind so it's my wife will be like why do you know i'm like look at his eyes that's what i understand how did your wife not know well she only knew me on drugs how long were you dating her five years if you only know someone as like a crazy person who's like for five years yeah but were you ever sober in those five 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.

23:14Ken Rideout:Someone will 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? Yes. When I got sober, I was working at Credit Agricole trading fixed income products. So I 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 Katona that was like ideal, like 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 5am running on the river, on the West side highway, training like crazy.

23:58Ken Rideout: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 three 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 the Mark Coochin odd, 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. So like Pimco could trade directly with state street instead instead of trading through the banks and them taking a fee.

24:32Ken Rideout: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, 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 desk and they're all in New York. So I was like, I'm gonna just take a chance. And I have four, my fourth son was brand new. He was like less than six months old. I moved the whole family across country to LA.

25:02Ken Rideout:I rent a house in the Palisades that's like obscenely expensive. I'm burning through money like it's not 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 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 right you're still thriving financially and in your profession it was just more like you 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 a track star no I started running when I was like, right before I like finally got sober, I was like on subutex.

26:02Ken Rideout: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 going to feel terrible. I'm like, I've done this a million times. I know what the F I'm doing. Like, I know, I know what's coming. and like spare me the like lecture. Yeah. I'm pissed. I hate myself and I'm angry. Like I got it. So then I would just go after work and like flog myself running at 10 miles every day.

26:35Ken Rideout: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. F 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, this is your punishment. 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, no, I got to do this. I feel like, let's get up and go have breakfast.

27:07Ken Rideout:I'm like, what time do you want to go? 10? All right, I'm going to get up and run at six or whatever. You know, I would just do it. You reverse engineer everything so you run. And you've been running every day for five years, you said, 10 miles a day? Yeah. When I was doing the Ironman stuff, I would swim, bike, or run, but 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. 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.

27:38Ken Rideout:He had an asset management firm 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 three 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.

28:10Ken Rideout: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 on money. Because were you overspending what you 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 got to figure out a way to make more money or it's going to run out. And I got like dangerously low on cash.

28:40Ken Rideout: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 relationships 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 and 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 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.

29:17Ken Rideout:I wouldn't, cause 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 two to five 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, Oak Tree, like all these like top in class managers.

29:50Ken Rideout:But we manage 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 missing documents in these mortgages. And 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 re-performing and a bank and an insurance company can buy that, but they can't buy distressed non-performing assets.

30:26Ken Rideout:So it's a lot of boring shit, but point is we had a really niche strategy 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 separately managed accounts you're managing in conjunction with the other manager. And the fees are appropriately much smaller for an SMA. But on a private equity style fund, we were getting paid no management fee because we didn't need the management fee to run the business because we had$5 billion in capital. But we took 30 % of all the profits we made.

31:00Ken Rideout:And we tried to hire people to help us raise the money and they laughed us out of the office. And they were like, why do you think you can do this? And I was like, I think I can win the Boston Marathon until someone beats me. Of course, I think I can do it. I didn't think I could, but I was like, I'm going to convince everyone around me that I can. And we did it. And we raised like$35 million and in two years made$10 million. And the clients all doubled their money, minus 30%.

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32:49So do you think you're just, what is it, what would be your, would you say your superpower is what? Is it that?

32:55Ken Rideout:Delusionally 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 could 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 got to stop thinking that it was luck. But it's also like, you must be exceptionally good at sales. People like - If someone who's into sales and sales processes sat me down, they'd be like, well, how did you reframe this?

33:27Ken Rideout:And why did you - 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. 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 needed to raise$5 million for the operating company, which is crazy hard. 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.

34:00Ken Rideout: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 want to do something, my inner dialogue is like, well, never. He's never going to 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. Like, let me sit down and 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.

34:30Ken Rideout:Like he's reframing. You can see him reframing with his hands. And then he points to get his neck. I don't, that shit's foreign to me. I'm just like, hi, I just want to do a deal. Here's the deal. I want, 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'm not desperate for money. I'm not desperate to do a trade.

35:01Ken Rideout:And 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 skill is likability. Because if someone likes you, they'll give you their money. They'll want to hang out with you. They'll want to be in business with you. That's 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?

35:35That's exactly right. And so my question is to you, is like, can you even teach someone that, those skills? No. Right? Like, isn't that kind of like either you have it or you don't?

35:45Ken Rideout: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.

36:16Ken Rideout:And I don't know how to 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 going to pay these things now or later. And it's up to you. And they keep getting more expensive as if you go later. Meaning if you don't do your work now, that work is going to get exponentially harder next year. But the people that are smart will pay their dues now so that later in life, if you handle your work now, go to the right schools, whatever your profession is, get the right degrees, do the hard work early.

36:59Ken Rideout:It's like bankers. Five years of your life are gone. They're going to own you. They're going to torture you. But if you do those five years, you're going to be rich for the rest of your life. And so you could pay me now or pay me later, but everyone's paying. Everyone's paying. Yeah, exactly. And if you don't pay now, you're going to pay a little over time and your life's going to be miserable because you're going to 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 want to do what you're doing. I'm like, I don't even know how to describe to you what I do.

37:25Ken Rideout:Like I, how'd you make the move from finance? I said, if you're waiting for the stars to align, they're never going to align. I basically almost went broke back 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. And I think that people gravitate to people who are very authentic. Right. Like 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.

38:07How 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?

38:32Ken Rideout:Yes. Cause 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. So finish that sentence. Here's how I did it blank. How did you 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.

39:03Ken Rideout:And I'm like, so after the game, and 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 it's inevitable that they pick up on them. 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 we'll get into it more. 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.

39:34Ken Rideout: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 cover of my book is from the Gobi desert, a race I did in Mongolia. 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 155 mile stage race over six days across the Gobi desert in Mongolia. Sounded like a cool challenge until I'm boarding the plane and thinking like, what the F am I doing? I'm so scared. But when I I walked down the jetway, it was a very distinctive moment, like very memorable moment.

40:07Ken Rideout:Cause 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, I'm, 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 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.

40:41Ken Rideout:I mean, you're going for three hours running up and down a hill at 18 % grade. It's like you're breaking, breaking, then like using all muscle to get up the hill. I don't wanna 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 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 things, guess what? If it was easy, every asshole would have already done it.

41:16Ken Rideout: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 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.

41:59Ken Rideout: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.

42:28Like, to me.

42:29Ken Rideout:But that's available to anyone. Well, right. But you said something that was really important, which was everything in life is a decision, right? You can decide to be a superstar. 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 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 have so much confidence that maybe if you don't even know how to do it, that race, the ultra marathon is so insane.

43:08Even if you've never done it before, you know you can actually finish it because you've done a hundred other races.

43:13Ken Rideout: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. 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.

43:41Exactly true.

43:42Ken Rideout:But then when you turn at them and like get aggressive with them, they'll like be like, oh no, that guy's crazy. They'll die away. 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, they'll 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.

44:11Ken Rideout:That's right. I want it over with. You want it over with and done. So I'm like, I'm not going to bother. I'm not going to, I'm going to leave them alone. But okay. So the thing is though, that we like, you haven't said it yet. I haven't said it yet. This, like you are like the fat, like this guy is like the fastest guy, like in your, like over 50. And you started when you were in your 40s. I mean, that is insane. Number one, that even shows, and I think you even talk about it, that where you started from has nothing to do with where you're going to end up. Again, this is literally sheer grit and mindset that people could reframe for themselves.

44:46They don't have to be stuck where they are. That doesn't have to be their reality. They can always shift and move if they want to.

44:52Ken Rideout:Think about all the entrepreneurs that are out in the world that have like stories of like a hundred different failures. I was reading about this kid. I don't know a lot about him, but the Alex Hermozzi. Yeah. Oh my God. I had like three or four businesses that failed miserably. And now he's 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 would. But he like had gyms that failed. Then he had other gyms that failed.

45:22Ken Rideout: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? It's 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 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'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, this is an entire business as how you're doing it.

46:00You've actually keep on 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 marketing 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 going to shift and I'm going to try this thing. And then if that doesn't work, most people don't have 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 further?

46:45Ken Rideout: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. Was that your idea? Yeah. I mean, me and John Bear was instrumental in saying like, you should do this. Jesse Itzler was like pushing me to do this for years. He's like, you should manage fighters.

47:15Ken Rideout:so initially my thought was i'm gonna because i had a i had a podcast for a long time called the fight with teddy alice 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 eight, my son with his in Boston with a Celtics jersey with his own name on the back.

47:50Ken Rideout:Cause 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 eight. He must've heard me say that. Cause I would always say that I'm like, I'm not going to 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, they're my own And he had a leprechaun hat on and Dana loved him. Dana comes over before the main event of this huge pay-per-view fight in Boston and goes, Cameron, give me a phone.

48:19Ken Rideout: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 point and a camera like he just won a fight. Then Dana comes around. He goes, Cameron, get in the 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 balal muhammad i've done work with dana dain um dustin poria although i'm not his manager, but we've done like, we've brought them deals.

49:10Ken Rideout:And then very quickly though, we started working with a couple of doctors and scientists and thought leaders in the health and wellness space, like Jeremy London, Brian Hofflinger. 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 have friends with. And I started showing them deals. And again, not in a transactional way. I was like, Hey, not 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 of years, another example of a failure, that business didn't work.

49:47Ken Rideout:We sold it for next to nothing, but I learned a lot. And through that, everything you're doing, you're gathering intel, you're learning information. I learned how about CPG brands and how difficult it is managing their cashflow and building out 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.

50:21Ken Rideout:They only had like three 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. And it just morphed into a career and a job.

50:50Ken Rideout: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. People are going to know me. Like I frigging 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 it'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 climbs and he'd be like man you're getting after it i'm like well you're right here too.

51:29Ken Rideout: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 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 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.

52:01Ken Rideout:I'm going to throw it out the window. Of course, it's all alpha guys. They're like, F you. I'm like, you turn that phone down. 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 going to go do something else. Do something else.

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53:42Okay, so let's get to the running because this is like the big thing. So you're like, explain this. So then you start running. You didn't set out to be like the fastest, the best. You're just doing this as like kind of like a way to kind of get out all your rage and all the, you have to shift something. 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? Isn't like 540 now? Or like, it was like some crazy time, right?

54:12Ken Rideout:540, 539 per mile is the pace that I ran. My best marathon was 228, but I've run 229, sub 230 after 50, like five or six 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 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, he has the first place finisher.

54:58Ken Rideout: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, 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, 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. And she's crying.

55:25She's like, you did it. We're on the phone. And she's like, you don't seem that happy.

55:28Ken Rideout: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 230, 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.

55:56Ken Rideout: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, not 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.

56:23Never. No, right.

56:24Ken Rideout: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 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 whole thing about balance is completely nonsense. I mean, if you want to be extraordinary, you need to be obsessed and so like just insanely focused to be a psychopath. You have to be. The fact is like, you're right. I've never met one really good athlete or really good person, 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 in it to an extent that most people can't comprehend but it becomes your normal when you're doing i say everything becomes everything becomes you can acclimate to anything and that becomes all relative, right?

57:31That's right. Everything is relative.

57:33Ken Rideout: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, I'll be clear. I didn't win the whole marathon. I won that 50 and over. In your category. Okay. So in 2021, I just turned 50 and I think I did rich roll and he was like, what's your goal this year?

58:06Ken Rideout: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 two a year. So it would take you at least three years to get all six marathons, unless you ran like one week and then another week. So I just kind of blurred out like, Oh, I'm going to try to win my age group and 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 230 just on.

58:36Ken Rideout:And again, I crossed the finish line. Oh, 230 in 20 seconds. I couldn't find 20 seconds, but I won my age group by a lot. By how much? By how much? Like five minutes. And then - By five 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 230 and like 50 seconds. And I crossed the finish line and they made us, you had distinct, three distinct separate start areas. And at three miles, they all merged together, but you can't see the different start areas because there's so many people.

59:11Ken Rideout: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 plus 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 crossed the finish line. No one passed me. And when it merged in three at the three 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.

59:40Ken Rideout: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 crossed the finish line. No one passes me. You know, like one or two people pass me throughout the race. When you're Running that fast is like not a lot of movement. You know, 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.

1:00:09Ken Rideout:I get all my bags. I'm like, later. I'm on my way to the airport trying to catch the next flight out. I was literally on a flight in like three hours after I finished. And I call 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. It's impossible. There's no way that got anyone past me. Long story short, the guy started in a different area intentionally. And the shitty thing is the only two people in the world that care, me and him.

1:00:39Ken Rideout:But I know what he did because he ran the first three miles in like five 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 with 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, what am I going to do?

1:01:07Ken Rideout:I wasn't going to like make a big stink because only me and him care. No one cares about some old guy complaining about getting cheated in the race. But 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 it 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 you're letting this guy start.

1:01:35Ken Rideout: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 that's what he said? yeah he was basically like yeah I see what happened sorry about that nothing we can do now though we'll fix it next year I'm like what's his name and how old is he? no I don't want to say I've already like fucking slanted him enough people should know that you are the real winner all you have to do is look and see who won in 21 in London the Marathon okay 2021 how old was he exactly? he might have been a year older than me so he was just turned 52 obviously he was a really good runner and where is he from?

1:02:11Ken Rideout:UK he bamboozled me He knows what he did. A hundred percent. See, I would be competitive nature. You're still pissed about it. I'm still angry. So then like a month after that, I ran New York. And that was 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 were all like, so she's just running and I'm coming up to finish you in New York. And I look back and the crowd starts going crazy. I'm like, whoa, what the hell? They're not cheering for me.

1:02:44Ken Rideout: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 going to let her run past me in the finishing line. And I sprint to the finish. And as it turns out, I won the master's 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 four previous winners were like Meb Kofleski, who won Boston, New York, silver at the Olympics. He ran like 215 and Abdi Abdi Rahman, who's a five-time U.S. Olympic runner. Then my friends, after the race, they texted me like, welcome to the club.

1:03:19Ken Rideout:You're the master's champion. And I was like, I mean, I only ran 233, but I won by three seconds. Really? And if Shalane wasn't closing on me, I would never would have sprinted. I was on, I was in hell. I was in so dying. So how does it go? It goes over 50, over 40. There's age groups every five 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. 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.

1:03:56What's the time that they would have?

1:03:58Ken Rideout:2.15, 2.12, like under five minute miles. Okay. Or around five minute miles. Okay, so just for me and for anyone who cares and listens, like give me an example. So if you're getting at 230 and you're winning at 50 and over, let's just say 229, what would be like the best, the greatest time for someone who's 35 years old? They would be around, they probably have been guys who have won at 35 years old. Now you're like low two hours, under 205 wins marathons. Like 205, okay. That's like nothing. Under five 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 228, the winner probably ran 208.

1:04:44Ken Rideout: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 330, like I'm beating like average runners by like hour to two 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. Even like five minutes is huge at that. When you get to the higher levels and you start running competitively like under 230, finding five to 10 minutes is really hard. So when you do your, because you run every day for 10 miles, non-negotiable, minimum.

1:05:18How long does it take you to run 10 miles?

1:05:19Ken Rideout:On average, an hour and 15 minutes, around 7.30 per mile. So 7.30 is like your everyday kind of situation. 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 745. Okay. So A, how often do you change your shoes? About every, I always have like several pairs because I had to deal with Reebok. I'd have like four or five pairs of shoes that are rotating through. 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 wearing, you chuck them. So probably like training shoes.

1:05:52Ken Rideout:There's a difference between training and racing. Racing shoes are very like 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 Alpha Fly or Vaporfly, the racing shoes. Those shoes will only last about 300 miles. So like when I'm training for a marathon, three weeks, gone. Reebok made a pair of shoes for$500. 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.

1:06:25Ken Rideout: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 very soft, though, but they're bulky. Yeah, I think that there's a school of thought that says that extra cushioning is good for you. There's other people like Gabby Reese would be like a big barefoot person and be like, no, that's too much. It gives you a false sense of security. 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?

1:06:56Ken Rideout:I need some for my Camry. I'm like, 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. Do you have huge boobs? You might want more support. it. If you have no boobs, you might not even want to sports. I don't know. You know, it's like that. It's like, I have good, relatively good run form.

1:07:27Ken Rideout:So I don't need all this extra support. My I'm not landing on my heel. I'm not like pronating. I'm a 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. Cause 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 tell?

1:08:03What kind of pointers did he give you?

1:08:04Ken Rideout: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. And then I'd run one long run every week With Mario, I would do like two 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. Because when I had the podcast with Teddy Alice 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 is a famous trainer.

1:08:37Ken Rideout:He trained multiple world champions. And he asked me to be the assistant trainer. And we lived in Philly for eight weeks in a training camp like rocky shit. Like we were locked. We were just in this condo. We had three 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 Scully Kill 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 630 pace.

1:09:14Ken Rideout:So run 10 miles in six and a half minutes per mile. Then the workout went like this. One mile at 545 pace, one mile at 535, one mile at 525, and then go through that three times. So then the recovery mile is 545 pace, which is close to as fast as I can run a marathon. So you're talking nine 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 recovering. I couldn't stand up. And then I got up and ran back to the house.

1:09:49Are you serious?

1:09:50Ken Rideout: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 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 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.

1:10:35Ken Rideout: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 didn't 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 know. I don't you don't have to be a rocket scientist to look at someone and be like, oh, that person is special, right?

1:11:04Ken Rideout:I mean, I talked to you for like five minutes. I'm like, oh, she's crazy. 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 are like marathons, to ultra marathons? And now this is 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 Daru, 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 going to run this race. And he was asking some advice about running or something.

1:11:35Ken Rideout:I was like, but 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 four weeks or five 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, I'll help you like fund that trip.

1:12:02Ken Rideout: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 going to 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 five star hotel. That was the nicest hotel in the city. And so I just bought some backpacks and started training in the Nashville heat.

1:12:35Ken Rideout: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. But 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.

1:13:03Ken Rideout: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. 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 three or four 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.

1:13:30Ken Rideout:And then I go there and make a fool of myself. Did you win? And I got trounced the first day. Yeah, I won by 90 minutes. There's a whole chapter in there about the boat. 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 because 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 good residual fitness because I had been training a lot and I had been running races.

1:14:04Ken Rideout:I was like right in the middle of my best year ever. And so I get there in the first day. I get smashed. I get a fourth place on the day. And every day it's like the Tour of France. You get a cumulative time. Tell people how it works because I think just - So it's like 25 to 30 miles a day for three days. then there's a 50 mile stage, then there's two more, then there's 26 miles, a marathon. And then the last day is like five 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.

1:14:42Ken Rideout:There's certain, even on the last day, you still had at least 10 pounds in that backpack with all the backpack and this, I mean, the sleeping bag and all this stuff. Yeah, all the things. Yeah. So the second day I was like, oh my God, I got to 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, F it. We're in this now. The 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.

1:15:10Ken Rideout:So then I start to pour it on. I'm like, oh my God, it's only like five 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 with a few miles to go, I fell down because I was like losing concentration because I was like delusional from like glycogen depletion. And I fell down.

1:15:41Ken Rideout: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.

1:16:12Ken Rideout: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 was down by 12 minutes after the first day. I made up eight minutes. I'm down four minutes going into day three. I lose another six minutes. So I'm down 10 minutes after three 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 because it's so hard. And we're 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.

1:16:50Ken Rideout: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 the fourth 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 got to 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 little bit because I'm hurting too. And you would get water every five to 10 miles. So he's running out of water. So I'm taking my water, which I'm trying to use sparingly, and I'm putting it on his head.

1:17:25Ken Rideout: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 of you. I'm trying to help him survive. Like, this guy may die. Like, we're in the frigging desert. And 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.

1:17:53Ken Rideout:So then I get there at like five o 'clock that night. We start at eight, 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 against Friday morning. I'm like, oh, I gotta hang around at this camp for like 36 hours. It was like hell on earth. Cause I'm like, I'm hungry. I'm cranky. I don't want to be around anyone. I'm in a tent with three women sleeping on the ground. No shower. I'm washing my clothes with the water. Oh, my gosh. It was like a survival experience. But I was like, okay, now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

1:18:30Ken Rideout:And to the Swiss guy's credit, I mean, he was destroyed. He barely finished. On Friday morning, he got up and came out like a bat out of hell. We frigging sprinted for 26 miles together. And at the end, he ran away from me on a downhill. He was really good going 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 going to 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 Raptor truck.

1:19:02Ken Rideout: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 white waters. It was so aggressive. So I'm holding on. I take my backpack off, dunk myself under the freezing cold water. Cause now I'm like, oh, now I don't have to wash my clothes. Everything's clean in the river. And I get across and the guy who designed the course is Stan. They're really nice Spanish guy. And he's 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.

1:19:31Ken Rideout:And the last day was six miles. And there was a really cool Irish guy who lived in South Africa, Killian Ryan. His family owned Ryanair. Really nice guy. Recovering alcoholic. Just really like gregarious and just there to have fun. so the last day he's like yo it's only six miles like it's on rnf you've won like you you can just take it easy are you gonna let someone else win and i was looked 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 in one 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 day they didn't beat you so on those days I showed up, I did what I had to do, I won.

1:20:46Ken Rideout:But Muscle and 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. 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.

1:21:18And like, that was like the most demoralizing experience of your life.

1:21:21Ken Rideout:Oh, I could like literally cry thinking about it. 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. 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 it was like a goal for like two or three years. And I finally did it. 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. So basically it's like, I found all these loopholes and figured a way to get into the race and I did it.

1:21:54Ken Rideout: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. It's on NBC Sports. 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 start running a marathon after running 112 miles, swimming two and a half miles in the ocean and then in Hawaii at one o 'clock in the afternoon. It would be hard to do that like if you were trained for it in 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.

1:22:28Ken Rideout: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 gotta go back, 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. Instead, I took the easiest way out.

1:22:58Ken Rideout:And it was like, it was just a reminder of like, yo, every time I've looked for an easy way out or a crutch using drugs to deal with my emotional bullshit 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 always 10 times harder. You think you're taking a shortcut, but all you've done is sabotage 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 a nine hours and 30 minutes in that context.

1:23:32Ken Rideout:I mean, to qualify that year, I finished like sixth overall at the Ironman in Wisconsin and won my age group, which was something I would have never dreamed of doing until I had that experience. And I was like, oh, no one's ever going to see me quit again. I'm bringing the heat every time I show up now. And I crushed them. And I literally could have 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 high rocks? Yes, I did one. I won the New York City Masters the first year I did it in June. Yeah.

1:24:05Of course you did.

1:24:05Ken Rideout:Wow. Funny, I did it the same year Lance did it. Really? Yeah. I know that was like, yeah. But I was teasing him because 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, right? So what's the open category? 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.

1:24:41Ken Rideout:The 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 was so close to breaking the world record for the 50 and over, and I just completely melted down on the wall balls. I ended up doing an hour and 10 minutes, but it took me like 10 minutes on wall balls where it typically takes somewhere about four minutes, and I missed the record by like four or five minutes.

1:25:17Wow.

1:25:17Ken Rideout:But I didn't know anything. I only trained for that one for four weeks. but then I came back in Boston last year obsessed training and it 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 mean 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, there's some pictures that I posted online where I look huge doing that.

1:25:54Ken Rideout:Cause I'm telling you, when I was training for High 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 I came out of the basement one day after lifting weights cause I had been running for so long. And my kids and my wife were like, Jesus, what are you doing? I'm like, what do you mean? my oldest son was like, dad, you have huge muscles. And I got, I mean, I got strong, crazy strong. But your body will adjust. Like nothing got me in shape like that.

1:26:25Ken Rideout:Cause 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 mean, I was big. Really? Bigger than this. Oh, it's like 20 pounds heavier of muscle. So have you tried DECA? No, but similar. It's similar, right? I want to try the high rocks I really wanted to do this year. And then like I got busy and life happened. But will you do it like the next six to eight months? I have. I've qualified for the world championships in June in Stockholm.

1:27:04Ken Rideout:I'm signed up for it. I got to get my head out of my ass. I do the open one? Not in Stockholm. Yeah, you can do the open one and qualify for the world championships up until like end of May. I won't be able to do the world championships. I could do the open. Yes. No, 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.

1:27:35Ken Rideout: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, it's 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.

1:28:05Ken Rideout: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 fought the July race. And it was like. Like we got it. We know you're really, really fast. It's like, yeah. Don't come to the local race and like bully people. Or just like you blast through everybody. Like it's not even a fair, it's not even fair anymore. It's like going to hell on the hill and emptying the tank again. And I'm like, I've already shown everyone I can do this.

1:28:37Ken Rideout: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, was it your time? Like, and I've been saying it to be funny. Like, wasn't it like literally like 45 minutes to do it? No, no, no. It was at least two hours. 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.

1:29:06Like, I didn't train for it at all. I thought, oh, this is easy. I run every day. I can easily do it. I was like, I was mentally exhausted. It was 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 like up and down a small hill.

1:29:22Ken Rideout:With like a hundred plus people. Yeah. It was like, I was speaking to this guy. I think I like 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 nips you. Yeah. Because like 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 a very nice and like. Oh, he's the best. Yeah. A really nice guy with Dream Recovery.

1:29:52Ken Rideout: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? So when I wake up in the morning, I take. What time do you wake up? I want to know everything. between five and six just by default. Okay. So if I have my druthers and I'm home and I'm 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 four kids. So in a perfect world, I'd wake up at like 5.30. That's a perfect world? Yeah. I would have, I wish I could sleep longer.

1:30:23Ken Rideout:Like as I've gotten older, I have a hard time sleeping more than like six or seven 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 get it. Okay, tell me more. So I wake up, I take 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 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 things to my supplement protocol, my life improved dramatically.

1:31:05Really?

1:31:05Ken Rideout:Yeah, like my race times got faster, but it corresponded with like training excessively. So I take NMN and I take NAD plus 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? 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 supporting scientific data is so incredibly strong, you'd have to be insane not to do these things. Really? It's like sauna.

1:31:44Ken Rideout:Like it's like a 40 % reduction in all-cause mortality. I hate the sauna. Am I getting that thing like it's my job? That's a great point. So I've never heard that. So you're saying the stack to like live longer, 40 % longer or healthier. Some absurd number that scientifically, it was in like, it was in like Nature. It was in Nature magazine just in the last year. Vitamin D plus fish oil plus exercise. That's amazing. How long exercise? It doesn't, I don't know what it says. Did it 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.

1:32:21Ken Rideout:Me too, I do that also. So vitamin D, fish oil, NMN, NAD plus. You should really try NR, true niagen. And I'm not just saying that. I mean it. 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. Don't you have to convert NMN? I think that there are some other things that have to help. And the molecule is too big to get through your cells. It could be. Connect me with true niogen. I'd love to experiment with it. I'm going to give you some. How's that? Or I'll send you some. Perfect. And by the way, I'm not just saying that because I actually true, like, wholeheartedly believe in it.

1:32:58I've seen so much data on it.

1:33:01Ken Rideout:Those are the best partnerships that you can say things like that. That's like a good brand that 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 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, like, I think it's, I think it's really important because so much, so much of this business is junk.

1:33:35Like you don't know what you're taking. That's right. People have no idea what they're taking. Well, you see,

1:33:38Ken Rideout: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. Can you, is 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 Momentus. Momentus, me too. Shout out to Momentus. They have their third party tested and NSF certified, whatever. Safer Sport.

1:34:11Yeah.

1:34:12Ken Rideout:Certified Safer 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 five of those in the morning. What else do you take by Momentus? So then when I finish my run, I'll take, I've taken recovery. It's called recovery. 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 seven years. Really? As soon as I finish my run, I take two scoops of that. One scoop of creatine, mix that in a shaker bottle, like nothing fancy with water and just drink it.

1:34:46Ken Rideout:And then 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 and 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, aponogen, and something else, space. And it's like five capsules. But so I take the glycine, which isn't from Momentous. I buy it on Amazon. Dr. James D. Nicotonio turned me on to it. But then I take the sleep pack from Momentus. And sometimes I'll take Elite Sleep, which has a little bit of melatonin.

1:35:27Ken Rideout: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 you're testing your blood, taking the supplement, testing your blood, checking for us performance. It's like, it's not realistic. Like, and I'm not like a professional athlete to the extent where I'm like, as soon as I start getting into too much data analysis about blood work and about metrics, it becomes a job. And then it's no longer fun for me.

1:36:00Ken Rideout: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 they're like, what's your heart rate? What's your functional threshold power? I'm like, dude, at that point, I'm not looking for a homework assignment. I do everything It's an unperceived effort. Can I tell you something? I did this 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 testing these little things anymore. Like, they're not doing it as much.

1:36:36Ken Rideout:Well, when Lance was elite, he had people doing it. But he and he's 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 what he was actually racing. Yes. But 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 their aura rings and their whoops and their glucose monitor.

1:37:13I'm like, who are you?

1:37:14Ken Rideout:I would say that the glucose monitor in a lot of those things are good to have a baseline metric. It's good to understand it. But when you start getting like Brian Johnson where you're measuring your erections and you're looking at the red light and I'm like, dude, live a little, brother. You know that we're not getting out of here alive. 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. you're like that's crazy but what's the point then you're like not you're gonna die because you know you have no socialization no community no friends you're like you're not like able to have go for dinner because like you can't eat the calories and the carbs definitely can't eat after seven o 'clock at night seven try five what do you mean seven listen i do think when i'm living 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 don't have, if I'm not digesting.

1:38:08Ken Rideout:But I also like, I, it's important that you enjoy your life too. And like do these things and get outside and like live. 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, well, I mean, 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 gonna be doing anything else well the reason why i'm asking you about this but i do think that they make a lot of sense and i think they're 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 the supplemental.

1:39:00If you're not doing the basics, it doesn't matter. You can take every supplement in the world. You can go in a cold plunge until your little heart's content. It makes no difference. If you're not eating properly, exercising consistently, it doesn't matter. And also, to your point, 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?

1:39:34Like it's like so much protein. So now I'm taking these, 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.

1:39:47Ken Rideout:I agree. I think you're right. It's just like, my brain only has enough capacity 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 teased about beating him at high. But I'm telling you, I've trained with him extensively and done some races with him, bike racing 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's a freak when it comes to endurance.

1:40:17Ken Rideout:And 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 going to kill you. Like he's a savage. A savage, a savage. But that's what it takes to show up and do something seven years 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 seven 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 of 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 like that the basics you know my first book i ever wrote was called no gym required right yeah it's like many truth right it's the truth and nobody cared and nobody Like no one cared about this book because I spoke the truth.

1:41:25I'm like, listen, shop the perimeter of the supermarket, right? Like the meats, the eggs, the vegetables and the fruit. Do your pushups, your squats, your, you know, whatever. It's all free. All free. And by the way, we'll get you in better shape than any piece of equipment than you'll ever get. If you could do a pull-up, you're like, you're 99 % there.

1:41:44Ken Rideout: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 frigging 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 your influence. You can fake your affirmations all day in the mirror, telling yourself how great and wonderful and beautiful and strong you are.

1:42:22But 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 hacks that you talk about. And when you do a pull-up, that is strength right there. 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 you know whatever is that magic pill that's being promoted you know like if it's gonna like glp1 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

1:43:01Ken Rideout:habits well i think that the glp1 though i think you're gonna see that just as quickly as it came in go out because i think the glp2 glp3 is like reddit true titan shit oh 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. And when someone says to me, I'm like, yes, 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.

1:43:37Ken Rideout: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.

1:44:07And that you'll trust me because if I like I've had that shows discipline number one and that if you take take if I can take care of myself and I can keep my shit in 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 can I excuse me 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.

1:44:41Ken Rideout: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? I go, no, no, no, no, no. Both. I was, I'm always like, just put on your laundry 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're so comfortable. I love them. And by the way, 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 regular heels.

1:45:11But now they can have like they have a hybrid.

1:45:14Ken Rideout:And if someone tried to mug you, you could actually do like karate and shit. And you can 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. OK, so probably I'm like hours late for the guest to see. Oh, yes, I am. Okay, I'm going to 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 Heart. He is an incredible—you've 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.

1:45:51And I cannot believe I finally had you on the podcast. I'm so thrilled to have met you in person without me just, you know, 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

1:46:05Ken Rideout:active on instagram can ride out and the book comes out march 10th from simon and 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 pre-order everywhere you buy books including audible and i'd be super grateful if anyone would buy the book i'm gonna do some live events in new york la Miami, Nashville, and I want to 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.

1:46:39Ken Rideout: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. I know you say you don't have room for any, but you're going to have to push one aside. Oh, no. We're constantly having cuts. Good. Okay. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye. Thanks.