Kílian Jornet on What We Can Learn From Pushing Our Bodies to Extremes [Re-Run]

0:00This message is brought to you by AppleCard. AppleCard puts the power of titanium in the palm of your hand. What does that mean? It means the power to earn unlimited daily cash back on your purchases. Every day. It means a materially different credit card accepted anywhere in the world MasterCard is accepted. Ditch the plastic. Upgrade to titanium. Apply in the wallet app on iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. AppleCard is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com Hi, it's Lulu. We don't have a new episode this weekend. Instead, we're sharing an interview I loved from earlier this year, my fascinating conversation with ultra runner and mountaineer Killian Jornette.

0:41Perhaps it will inspire you to get out on the trail this summer or push yourself to take a longer, more difficult hike. Or you can, like me, just relax while listening to this episode if you missed it the first time. Either way, enjoy, and we'll be back next weekend when David talks with bluegrass phenom, Billy Strings.

1:02From the New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. Imagine yourself on an isolated mountain pass. The wind is whipping, the air is thin, there's nothing around you except the sky and the sound of your feet hitting the craggy ground. Many of us have experienced the wonder and exertion that comes with being in the world's wild spaces. But for Killian Jornet, it is much more than that. Jornet is a professional ultra-marathoner whose life's work is to literally run up mountains. But even in that world of elite athletes, he is exceptional. He holds the fastest known time for scaling Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, to name just a few.

1:50He's gone up Everest twice in the space of a week, and he did it with no supplementary oxygen and without support. His physical stamina has been studied by researchers and he's pushed the limits of what is considered physically possible. And then just last fall, he completed his most radical adventure, which he called States of Elevation. He climbed 72 of the highest peaks in the western United States over the course of just a month. And for good measure, he also cycled between all of them, a ride totaling over 2 ,400 miles. I mean, I'm exhausted just imagining it. But as I discovered in our conversation, he also is a deep thinker who has important lessons to impart about what our bodies and minds are capable of when we push them to extremes and the joy and danger that effort can bring.

2:48Here's my interview with Spanish ultramarathoner Kilian Tornett.

2:59Kilian, you know, I am not an athlete, certainly not an elite athlete, and I find what you do so incredibly unusual. When you tell people what you do, how do you describe it? I always said that I just love to be in the mountains and like it's where I feel home and it's where I feel like connected with the landscape and the environment and what I do is just like to explore them and I think like running or climbing or like biking or it's just tools to explore those mountains and as humans like we are made to walk and to run and to do that for hours that's what we did like for thousands of years, like just hunting.

3:46And now we don't need to do it. So we find the sport like as the excuse to continue moving our body. But really, for me, just like to be out as long as I can in the mountains. You've written in your book that what made me fall in love with traversing mountains at high speed is the feeling it gives me of being naked and inconsequential, unrestrained. It brings me freedom and connection. What are you connecting with? I think in the most, in the first essence, it's to connect with oneself. We live in a society that we are overconnected with so many things. And we are every day getting, every second we are getting information like in social media, on the news, on everything, on things that they are very far away.

4:45And we don't find often the time to connect with ourselves, with our body, with our mind, and with the people that we love. So often when I go to run in the mountains, it's to find this connection. And it's through this connection with the landscape that we find ourselves. You've been connected to the mountains since you were a child. You grew up in a mountain lodge in the Pyrenees. Your father was a mountain guide. Your mother was a teacher. What did your parents teach you about how to be in nature? What's funny is that both my parents, they were really far away from competition. Like they had a background of classical mountaineering.

5:28And it was never about like competing and winning. But it was always about exploring. I remember when we were kids, often like before going to bed, we were going out to the forest with my mother and we were going out for a few minutes. And then we were closing our lights, our headlamps. And then we were like getting back to the lodge. At the beginning, we were very scared, like me and my sister, like, OK, we don't have any light. How we will find our lodge? And my mother was there saying, no, just listen to, see the nature through other senses, like with the wind, with the sounds. And we get more comfortable there.

6:12So what they probably teach us was to accept the environment, to accept to be there. Like often we see nature like something that is external and we go there to visit and to take pictures and say, wow, that's wonderful. And then we go back to our safe place that it's like cities and urbanizations. And probably what they teach us, it was just to feel calm there, to feel comfortable. Because at the end, it's just like other creatures like us that are living there. Even though your parents didn't instill that competitive drive in you, you seem to have had it innately. You've said that as a teenager, you discovered you had masochistic tendencies.

6:55Yeah, like I was very competitive since a child. Like I loved to suffer. Like I was really like loving, like just to get out and push my body. And it's not many kids that like to do that, especially like as teenagers. I love to go out and cycle for six, seven hours. And my dream was like an uphill that never ended. I just wanted to be climbing on my bike or running in an uphill forever. And so I was going with grown-ups, like all my friends doing that were like in their 30s or 40s because it's what not many kids like to go and do that. And I remember many days I was going to school running and it was like 16 miles one way.

7:40And I think I just loved that feeling of pushing the body. Yeah, I read a story that when you were in school to test your body, you stopped eating for an entire week, only drinking water. And then five days into the experiment, you passed out mid-run. Where does that impulse come from? I think it's our nature to explore. We explore landscapes. It's also about exploring ourselves. And like, probably my curiosity went there, like on trying to explore my body to understand it better, like to understand how this physiology works. And that I did at university. I remember, well, like I was just telling a friend like, okay, you take all my food from my dorm.

8:32And if I don't pass out, don't give me anything, even if I really beg you. And yeah, for five days, I was just training normally. And after that, I passed out. And it was like... Did your roommate tell you you were insane? Well, he know me well. So he was like, okay, whatever. Just like, yeah, do your things. But yeah, I think that curiosity has been always there. Let's talk about your body, because that is the thing that makes all of this possible. I just want to give a few statistics. every year you put in over a thousand hours of training. You climb over a million vertical feet, but you're also starting with some real physical advantages like, you know, your body, it's small, it's very light.

9:21You have this incredibly high VO2 max, which is a key indicator of aerobic endurance. And in fact, yours is one of the highest ever recorded. How do you know how far you can push yourself. I mean, how calibrated are you to what your limits are? I think physically with experience, you get to know your body pretty well. And that's very connected with the mind too. And that is where it gets tricky. Like I was two years ago in expedition in Everest in Himalaya. I was climbing a, not the normal route, a different route. I was alone and at 8 ,200 meters, I got hit by an avalanche and I broke like some ribs.

10:09I had a long way down. Like I had like more than 15 hours to get down from that point. It was not good weather. I had not been eating for, I don't know, 15 hours and I was completely alone. And like, if you look to the physiologist, like, okay, like normally, like you need carbohydrates to be able to sprint or to get the energy at that level. But somehow, like, you find resources in different ways. That's like how like a parent can like live so much heavier weight than he or she would thought, like if their child is in danger. how in life-threatening situations we are able to develop strength or endurance in a way that we are not thinking of being capable.

11:03The limit is something we don't want to reach because it's probably death after that. And it's a very fine line. Kilian, can I just note that you have told me a terrifying story? Were you scared?

11:21I wasn't scared. I was alert, I would say. And I think it's important to be afraid many times. Then I say, okay, the conditions, they don't look right, or I don't feel ready for that, and I turn around. I think it's very important to listen to the fear. but when these situations come like I try to be as calm and just like accepting it of course like it's a lot of adrenaline and it's a lot of tension going on but to leave all the all the panic because that's only like making me take bad decisions and the same comes from euphoria another time I was going up to a summit and and I was climbing and I was feeling like super strong and super good.

12:13And I was like doing things that technically were at my limit and I was surpassing all the dangers. And I came to the summit and I felt like superhuman. I felt like, wow, that I feel incredible. I feel that I can do anything. And the euphoria was there. And the euphoria is as dangerous as the fear, I would say, because then you are kind of blind and it's important to, like, it's very anticlimactic, I think, like mountaineering, because you are doing something that it's very extreme on the emotional side, because you are sometimes very close to death. You climb a summit and you just want to be there, super excited, and your reason is saying just breathe and be calm and not think that you are strong, just be reasonable.

12:58So it's probably one of the most exciting sports that exists because you're able to live and to view so many exciting things. At the same time, it's very anticlimactic because you are not able to enjoy it at that point. You enjoy back home when it's already passed. Hmm. That's fascinating. Are you religious, if you don't mind my asking? Yeah. No, I'm not religious. Because it sounds very Buddhist in a way. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like meditation, where you're taught to watch your emotions, watch the pain in your body, but look at it at a distance and not let it overtake you. Yeah, exactly. And I think, like, I'm not a religious person, but I would say the climbing mountains, it's a sort of meditation on that aspect that you are often very present on the moment, like on thinking, okay, you cannot think.

13:55It's really like you are focusing on the present and it's moments where like the past and the future don't exist because you need to focus so much on the movement that you are executing that nothing else exists. And that sort of meditation. And yeah, I always joke that I'm not a smart person. I cannot do meditation like normally. I need to climb mountains and expose myself to find the same peace that you can do probably just sitting and meditating. Have you been to Tibet ever? Yeah, I have been to Tibet. Because I spent a long time in Tibet and, you know, their religious practice is actually movement.

14:38You know, they do circumambulations of holy sites, Mount Kailash, others. And it is that exact practice of movement and focus to actually reach a state of enlightenment, if you will. Yeah, exactly. Like sport, in terms of sport, it's kind of the same. And I mean, it's some things that you can't explain, like rationally. rationally. And I remember when I was crossing in the Pyrenees and in the Alps in the last years, I had a lot of episodes of déjà vus and déjà vus that they lasted for a very long time. And I remember one time climbing in Himalayas, also I was completely without any nutrition. I had not been drinking or eating anything for more than 30 hours.

15:31And I was at 1 ,200 meters. I was in the middle of a storm. And I was hallucinating. I had a vision of a second person that was following me. And I couldn't see what was this person. And I knew that it was an hallucination. but I somehow needed to save this person. I felt very responsible of this person. I'm happy that I had this hallucination because somehow having the responsibility to save this person, I didn't give up and I survived that day that if not, probably I would be dead in the mountain. So sometimes it feels that it's our unconsciousness, that it's finding tools to keep us moving, to keep us alive.

16:19Some people would say it was a miracle. Yeah, you could say it's a miracle. You could say that it's just that when your rationale is not working anymore, that your unconsciousness is taking over and acting for you. So you can call it like whatever, but then it's some ways that we have to keep going and that normally in our daily life we are not able to activate. it. What are you thinking about when you're putting one foot in front of the other and you're in these wild spaces? What is on your mind? I mean, if it's a very, very demanding or very technical route, then it's really like you are just thinking about the next movement.

17:07And it's just like, if I go this direction or this direction, if I do this move that way, if I, and what's the danger in the next two steps? So it's not really any deep thoughts. But then it's like, I would say most of the time, it's just like enjoying it. And I was doing like the past September, a long project here in the US, like from Colorado to Washington. States of elevation. Yeah, exactly. like I was biking and running and mostly on all these national parks like it's so wild in nature and it wasn't technically demanding so I could like really enjoy the the landscapes and just like arriving to a summit and seeing the nice sunrise and the shape of the mountains and having an encounter with an elk or any wildlife like goats in the in the summits and it's just It's like having those encounters and being amazed.

18:09I mean, every day, like I go up and I look around and it's like, that's beautiful. It's funny that you said it's not technically demanding. Let me just describe what you just did. This fall, in just over a month, you ran up 72 of the tallest peaks in the lower 48. If that wasn't enough, you biked between them. Basically, as one newspaper described it, you ran a marathon and rode a stage of the Tour de France every single day for a month. That wasn't demanding? Yeah, it was very physically demanding. Like, I mean, like, it was very demanding for the body. But technically, like, it was not dangerous and it was not technical climbing with the skills that I believe I have.

18:53But physically, it was very challenging, mostly because it was so big. And sometimes in this journey, I was for more than almost 60 hours without passing any village. So then you need to carry a lot of things. And that's very physical demanding. Like the first week, I was feeling horrible. Like it was the altitude plus the dry air plus the physical effort that I was doing for more than 20 hours every day. Like I just, I was on my edge. and then suddenly I really felt that my body stopped to fight those things and started to adapt and I don't know how to describe it but I really had this feeling of like my body opening up and and accepting what I was putting on it and at the end of the trip like I could like continue for another month like my body was like feeling that's the new normality of of this guy so it find the ways like to change the physiology to adapt to this effort.

19:54How are you sleeping? Well, like I have three kids. They are very young. So actually we're joking with my wife, like you are taking a vacation there. I think I average like sleeping four to five hours per night, which is the same I do home now with the kids. Probably that's something that I'm lucky that I don't need much sleep to recover. Like normally my average over the year is around six hours of a sleep per night, six, 6.20. So I'm not a great sleeper. We often think that we need to treat the body well, but sometimes like if we try to protect our body at every cost, if we are never thirsty, if we are never hungry, if we are never tired, if we are never stressed about something, the body will not develop the capabilities to fight those things.

20:45And I think it's because I have been exposed very often to these things since I was a kid that I have been developing the capacities to adapt. Before I go on, I want to note that I read that you drink olive oil while you're in the mountains so you don't lose weight burning so many calories. I mean, that sounds pretty gross. I'm not going to lie. I merged it with water. It was not like pure olive oil, like drinking that. It was just a bit of olive oil on the water. Do you think of it as a sacrifice when you have to ingest that kind of stuff just to keep your physical self going? Well, like, I don't know if it's a sacrifice.

21:32Like, you're very hungry also. Like, I mean, like, after 20 hours running, like, you can eat everything. Like, it doesn't matter. I mean, like, at some point, like, your body feels that it needs calories. And I was, like, using around, like, 9 ,000 calories per day. So that's a lot of calories that I need to eat, like, to not lose capabilities, like, day after day. So, of course, like, you want a very nice meal, but at some point, like, you don't care at all. Like, it's just like, okay, I just want to eat. One of the things that happened during the States of Elevation is that different athletes joined you along the way.

22:13And one of them described you as, quote, full of peace. And we sort of talked about the meditative parts of what you do. What is it like doing that alongside other people? I think especially in this project, it was incredible to share with people that they are from these places. I had like a thing on the project, like half of the summits I did alone and half with people. And they are very different experiences, but doing it with people from there, you get a much deeper connection with those places and those landscapes. And the funny thing, it was like I was doing the first summit Longspeak in Colorado with Kyle.

22:57He's from Boulder. He has the fastest known time to climb Longspeak. he's been spending like years and years on that mountain and climbing with him like he was like just telling me everything about the mountain everything about the possibilities saying this is the most beautiful mountain on earth like because you can do that and that and that and see the rock everybody had this deep connection with those landscapes and if you ask me like the most beautiful mountains on earth are the ones i see from my house because because i develop a relation with them. And I feel connected with them because I can play much more on them because I have a more deeper knowledge.

23:37So to be able to share those mountains with people that have the same connection, you really feel the love. They carry it inside of themselves, that knowledge of place. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Another endurance athlete who has been in the mountains with you wrote that it's frankly not a great idea to rely on his, meaning your judgment, if you want to have a safe and fun time in the mountains. And I think he was talking about risk tolerance. How do you think about the risks you're willing to take in the context of knowing your limits, understanding your body, understanding your own mental strength and training, and the risks that you're not willing to take?

24:26Yeah, I think it's… that's one that I'm still trying to figure out, because I know that my risk tolerance is high, it's something that I'm aware of, and it's something that I try to be very analytical when I'm in the mountain to try to analyze well the situation and to know not what I'm good at, but what I'm not good at, to see if I'm capable of doing something or not and to turn around. But sometimes it has been happening that I have been just continuing in situations where I knew that I was rationally not comfortable with it, but somehow I felt okay with it. And it's something that I don't want to experience much more because I know that in mountains, a big part of surviving is luck, but you cannot be relying on that all the time.

25:23I can hear you grappling with this. And, I mean, people have died doing what you do, and people close to you have died doing it. In fact, your friend Stefan Brossa died right in front of you in 2012. Can you recount what happened there? We were in Mont Blanc area in the Alps, And Stefan was first an idol. Like when I started ski mountaineering, he was winning all the races. It was something that I look up to. And then he became a friend. Like we were living nearby. So we started to do some projects together. And we had this project of crossing the Mont Blanc range, like in one push in the skis.

26:09And we were like in the before last summit. So we were almost finishing. And it was like, we were happy. We were just in the summit enjoying and it was some birds that they were flying around and we were just like, I remember we were smiling and laughing about where we were and how fun it was. And we were walking on that ridge and we didn't notice that we were walking on a cornish. So it's this snow that with the wind, it forms in the ridges. and because the wind is strong, like the snow is compact, but it's not holding into the rock. So we were walking there and the snow break in between our feet.

26:53So he fell like 600 meters and I was in the other side and I stayed on the snow. And for me, it was kind of, yeah, the first time like I grew up in a family of multidimers so I knew about the risk, I knew about what death is but not until that point that it really happened close to me. I really understand that yeah that's something that is real and that it's happening and it's happening here and at that point I was like 20 years old, he was 40 years old with a family and I felt like it would be so much easier if I died instead of him because like, yeah, my parents would be sad, but I didn't have that many connections.

27:47I mean, like, so I, yeah, it took me a time to accept that. And probably the years after I was taking too much risks in the mountain just to try to see if it was a mistake that he was dying instead of me. What do you mean? Can we just stop here? because it's interesting to me that you didn't deal with that death by taking a step back. You actually pushed yourself harder. Why? I don't know. I think it's like, probably for me, it was more like to try to see if it was a mistake. That I mean, like if it was me that was mean to die in the mountain that day, and he was just in the wrong side of the ridge.

28:30And somehow, like, mountains is the place where I felt connected, where he felt connected to, So it's not a place that I would abandon because it's dangerous. It's just, I think I was just dealing like the grief when I was young. And at the same period, I was racing. And after every race, I was going to the party of the race and drinking a lot of alcohol. And I don't like alcohol. I don't like the flavor. I have never drank. And for a couple of years, I was just getting drunk a few times a year after the races. And it was just ways to try to escape and to deal with the grieving.

29:15We've talked about controlling fear, but I do wonder, after that experience, are you afraid to die?

29:26hmm i i think i'm more afraid to die now with kids uh if something happens like and i remember last year i was doing this crossing in the alps and one day it was just uh yeah the mountain was like falling apart like it was with the melting of permafrost um the mountains are just collapsing a lot in the Alps. So it's big blocks of rocks, like size of a car that they collapse at some time. And just because the ice is melting inside the rocks. And I was doing this crossing. And for many hours, I was exposed to those things. Some rocks were falling very close to me. And I ended up that day and I was feeling, why am I so stupid?