257. Kori Sampson: On Sobriety, Ultra Endurance, and Reality TV

0:00You hear it all the time with links to trauma to ultramarathons. You have to be able to take a punishment in a bit of a beating. So I think when you've had a certain amount of stress, you've built up this resilience.

0:09Gary Brecka:There's also a lot of science around doing hard things, how the brain actually grows and creates new neuronal pathways. And stress can be good or bad. Exercise is an extreme stress, but you strengthen and respond. The harder the stuff that I do and the more I prove to myself like I can do these things to feel like I deserve credit for what I do. People put off exercise to focus everything on their business. They don't realise that their superpower is still locked inside them. Physical feats can actually unlock that. You've got all this money and everything and you're not doing what you need to do.

0:39That impact that I can have means a lot more than getting a medal in a race.

0:43Gary Brecka:So how do you maintain like an ultra distance athlete training schedule and then still keep a physique? I've lost my legs a little bit with the running, but yeah, I tried to.

1:04Gary Brecka:hey guys welcome back to the ultimate human podcast i'm your host human biologist gary brecca where we go down the road of everything anti-aging biohacking longevity and everything in between today's guest is someone very very special so appropriate with the journey that my son is on but he's ultra marathoner has an amazing story i can't wait for him to share it with us welcome to the podcast cory samson thanks for having me thanks for coming on um we ran an awesome little workout in london when i was there yeah um and then it was crazy was this morning 6 30 in the morning i'm over uh working out with my son and his and his gym is under his house so it's outside running down there and you just randomly ran by and you're like cory and i was No way.

1:47Yeah, my son spotted you. We were just trying to find a good spot for some like filming, lighting, and we were trying to find the water. And we were like, oh, there's a little island that like will run that way. And yeah, we just passed you.

1:57Gary Brecka:It was so, because I didn't know who he was yelling at. And he started screaming, Corey. And then all of a sudden I saw you stop and I'm like, dude, we're running a podcast in two hours. Yeah, no. So at least we know we practice what we preach, right? Exactly, yeah. And I was meeting one person in Miami and I bumped into you, which is quite crazy. So, I mean, this is one little house. I mean, and if you know anything about Miami, it's pretty, pretty dense. One little house with one little gym under it. And you just came cruising by right when we were working out. And we only met like a couple of weeks back.

2:25Right. But I wanted to, when you was like, oh, if you're ever in Miami, like, let's make it work. I was like, I'm very much like, things don't get done unless you do them. Right. So I was like, oh, I'm in LA next week. I'll just fly in on the way home.

2:36Gary Brecka:Yeah. So yeah. Well, I'm glad you came by. You know, I talk about this all the time on my podcast. and there's a sort of a theme that runs through a lot of my guests and i find that some of the most impactful passionate purpose-driven people have solved some kind of problem and you know whether it's a mother that has a child that had autism or somebody with crippling lyme disease or um you know and they just couldn't find help in the normal medical system or maybe it was somebody that overcame drug or alcohol addiction like like jelly roll you know kind of mine you think about the number of people that he's inspired not just through his music but through his personal journey right and and he talked about how this sort of pain to purpose journey that he went on you know where he where he you know he was he had uh it's for public information he had alcohol addiction and drug addiction had a um marijuana addiction um and a music addiction thankfully and um addiction in general addiction in general yeah and and i just i just wonder if you know for you because I don't think anybody wakes up one day and says, I want to be an ultra marathoner or I want to be an ultra endurance athlete.

3:47Gary Brecka:Yeah. And you just won the Amazon games and got a quarter million dollar IFIT contract. Yeah. Congratulations. So maybe I should charge you to be on the podcast because you're all freaking loaded now. It doesn't go very far out here. It doesn't go far out here. And I'm sure the UK takes their bite out of those taxes too. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't prize money. So because it was a contract, it's still taxable, right? If you win some TV shows, if you win prize, you get all the money. It's untouchable. Because it's a contract, I got taxed on it. Oh, man. And my agency that I work with takes their cut.

4:19Dirty scoundrels.

4:20Gary Brecka:They should have given you this prize money. I know, I know, I know. Yeah, no, yeah. So to be fair, like everything I've kind of done, kind of built up to me being ready to be the best I could on that, which is quite nice. But yeah, I think there's like, you hear it all the time with like links to trauma, to like ultramarathons. And I think what the, what the thing is like, you have to be able to take a punishment and a bit of a beating. So I think when you've had like a certain amount of like stress, you've built up this resilience. But I read something really interesting about this the other day.

4:52It was on How Bad Do You Want It? It's a sports psychology book. Really good. And one of the chapters talks about this, but there was a guy that's like a top of his game in Tour de France, but he kept on losing near the end of each race. He ended up winning in the end, like 30 odd years. Like he was, he lost the most amount of times. Lost the most amount of times. He lost the most, he like, he didn't win, but he'd come like second, like twice and he didn't win so many. He was the longest standing person to win after losing so many. But basically like his thing was, he had like the perfect childhood, the perfect like entry into sport, like really young on the bike, got scholarships, did all this stuff.

5:31He didn't have any like hardship to help build his resilience. So he suffered on the clock. the climbs, the like, the pressure, that was his thing. And I think there's apparently there's, so in the book, it says there's like, there's two sides of it. If you have too much trauma, it's like scar tissue. And it's like, sometimes it just completely wipes you out. But I think there's like a bit of a middle ground where I was like, I didn't have like a bad childhood, but I think like with, same as Jelly Roll with drinking drugs, probably not at the extent he was. And I kind of checked myself quite early, but I had a very addictive personality and I went through all these different things and i think that resilience i built up getting over that and what i went through with it is helped me in sport because i mean i think a lot of it is you know the

6:17Gary Brecka:circle that you're in right i mean at that time you were a male model right and and in fact you were on the show what was the show called the sexiest too hot to handle yeah so i did a bit yeah reality yeah yeah so i mean uh you're a handsome man so thanks um yeah so i mean you have you know you're young you're handsome you're on this reality tv show you probably experienced some level of stardom and celebrity and and you know then it's like well what's next and and drugs and alcohol are there they're very yeah pressure and pressure very available you get like you know you've got events monday to friday with after parties and free tables in clubs and all that stuff so where I already was fighting something a little bit it was almost like a bit of a downhill spiral if you if you let it be and yeah I think that's what it was but I was quite before I went on the show I was still quite bad like back home with with drinking drugs and mainly drugs I think I moved to London when I was like 18 did a couple years like did a year at uni didn't really get on with it but started raving and partying then and then went back home kind of took them bad habits with me nothing else to do was a bit bored like didn't really enjoy what i was doing with my work wasn't satisfied was a bit like i always thought i like in my head i've always had this belief that i was a bit like destined for something greater than what i was doing do i mean and i think that was the catalyst for what i wanted to do i used to look at the youtube bodybuilders or when i was bodybuilding and like i was looking at them people like how can i get a lifestyle like that it's like the freedom financial freedom the whatever it was respect or attention or money whatever it is and i think i was really unhappy with my situation so i was taking it out of myself trying to escape it on the weekend and then it was every friday saturday then it was thursday to sunday and do you know i mean and it got progressively worse and then yeah the same thing went on tv thought it would change things now i had money but it was more like more opportunity to yeah to do these things right which made it worse so i was kind of like treading a bit of a line um and i just kind of got sick of kind of being guilty and the shame that i like attached to it because i knew i was like i could be doing something better with myself even when i got to that point where at one point i was like that's like the greatest thing ever like my pinnacle whatever it is like to be in that position and then i was like actually i'm not happy still yeah what what's wrong what's not adding up yeah you know it's interesting i saw a documentary on um it's the two-time olympian uh snowboarder sean sean white and he talks about he won his first olympic gold medal he was happy or he was he was depressed afterwards he won his second olympic gold medal and he was unhappy afterwards then he lost in his third olympic games it was the happiest he'd ever been and and you know he talked about just the uh the pressure and that it was okay for somebody else to kind of move into that position and and um and i think i think so many people because you get into a lifestyle like you had and a lot of it is also who you choose to surround yourself with so getting out it's not that easy right because you're you're you're leaving friends behind you're leaving your you're leaving your sphere you know behind i mean i have a good friend of mine used to say he's a billionaire and he used to say you show me the five people that you hang around with the most i will tell you exactly where you'll be in three years well the five people i was hanging around with at the time are still doing the same thing yeah now five years later yeah um each to their own like they're happy doing that but like yeah i had to change my environment i even like i lived with friends and it was like easy to get caught out in going out and there's always an event or something happening especially if there's three or four of you that have different opportunities then you drag each other into it right so i was like right first thing i was when i was going sober was i need to move out get my own place like you had to change didn't really see people for like six months maybe now i can kind of like go out and see them and i'm like i don't have to drink i don't have to feel pressured to do anything and you just have to reshape your whole relationship with it before you can do that but you made the choice to like really pull the plug change your change your environment change your friend circle change where you lived just to put yourself in the best position to succeed and how did that translate into because i still don't think anybody wakes up one day and says i I want to be an ultra endurance athlete.

10:46Do you know what? It took me a year to go sober. A year of trying to go sober.

10:51Gary Brecka:So maybe like a month on. Yeah, like a couple of months. I'd be like, so I actually did a charity boxing match, like a bit of an influencer kind of thing. So that was the start of that year. I did two, three months of just training and stuck to it. Did the fight, then went out for the weekend and went missing for two days. And then it was like the same thing. I'd do two months and then I had a holiday planned and then the holiday would be like three, four days. And then it kept on being like that. But I signed up to do London Marathon. So I started running in - Is that your first marathon? Yeah.

11:21So I was running in lockdown. When I was a kid, I actually ran a half when I was 16 in an hour and 36 minutes. And I trained for it, worked hard, did it. And then I just stopped running. And I was really gutted I did because I'd be so much better now with like another 10 years under my belt. But yeah, so I did. I started running in lockdown because the gyms were shut. Wanted something for my head. got quite addicted to it pretty fast. I was like, this is actually quite good. Like I'm enjoying it. I'm pretty good at it. Did like, everyone was trying to run a 20 minute 5K and I did it like 22 minutes the first 5K I ran.

11:54And I was like, okay, maybe I should try to get in. And it was like chasing that progress. So I had two years of that and obviously still living the party lifestyle I was doing. Then I was like, right, I want to run London. So I signed up for that. That was three years ago. And two weeks before, I'd done this 16 week training block. And I was so like regimented with it. Had a 30th birthday party in Ibiza, which is what? Ibiza. Yeah.

12:19Gary Brecka:Ibiza's a dangerous place to go if you're trying to piece over. And I was like, right, I'm not going to drink or do any drugs. And it was like five days of like carnage. And then two weeks later, I ran the marathon. And I was like, and I did it quite a good time. I got like 318, my first marathon. And like, I like enjoyed doing it. I pushed really hard. Like in training, I ran 30K easy, like pace. like didn't run anything near what i should have been doing and i still did quite well and i was like instead of being like oh i can get away with still doing this i was like what happens if i go all in and don't and then it led to like one thing led to the other and then kind of ended up where i am now but yeah but i mean and and and then that marathon sort of set the hook to like ultra distance because you've done hundreds you've done even further distance yeah you know my son talks about um this sort of pain cave that he goes into and i think at some point if you're running 100 miles or if you're running more than 100 miles even in even in a marathon you you reach that wall where like every fabric of your being wants to stop you know your body's telling you to stop your brain's telling you to stop um i've heard a lot of ultra i've never run 100 miles but i've run a marathon but i i've heard ultra marathoners moab 240 guys yeah we talk about how your brain like starts playing tricks on you yeah yeah 100 you could just stop and sit down over here even your body will like lie in a sense that it's really hurting like too hurting that's what a lot of like pain reception like if you get inflammation in your knee it's like your body is just going oh something's wrong like stop so yeah and if you push through it the pain goes away and it shifts somewhere else anyway you start running a bit different and then especially with the really long stuff but yeah i think i think the nice thing about running 100 milers and stuff is you can actually stop yeah you can have a minute yeah but then you've got so much like opportunity to kind of push through that i think so the first long thing i did was five days i did 220k in africa 220 yeah so it was just after i did london marathon i went and ran a trail race a marathon in in france i did a fast another fast one and then i was like a year later i ran 220 and um every day was the longest i'd ran from day three so i did 50k 60k 50k and i'd only ran 40 something k before that and wow i blew up on the second day like my knee went and i was like really struggling and i pushed through like this pain for like five days like eight nine hours a day and the third fourth day i woke up it was my birthday 2 a.m in a tent in africa hadn't slept well was like in so much pain getting my blisters wrapped and all that stuff and yeah i've got going and i was like this i was like crying while i was running i was on my own in the dark i was going really slow like people were overtaking me i hadn't seen because i was so injured and i was just like start crying i was like i don't think i can do this i think i need to pull out like and then i was making all these excuses like oh it's fine because i can go back and do the last day and i still finish but i don't get competitive time or whatever it is like i've done enough like this is the purpose I've ran.

15:20And then I remember getting to the first aid station, sat down and I was like, yeah, I'm, I'm checked out. I'm, I'm not doing this. I'm, and then I think like, just sat there and I was like, do you know what? Let's try to get to the next one. And I was like, like, fuck it. Like it is what it is. I'll walk for a bit and see what happens and took a painkiller, started running. And then all of a sudden the sun come up, started feeling a bit bad. I was like, why was I, I like beat myself. Do you know what I mean? And now whenever things get tough, I always go back to that one moment where it was like, I quit.

15:48but I didn't actually quit. And now I'm like, if I can push through that, same thing's gonna happen again, and I'll just push through that. Do you know what I mean?

15:57Gary Brecka:If your energy is low during the day, the problem usually started the night before. Sleep affects focus, mood, metabolism, literally everything. And most people never learn how to properly support it. Our free sleep challenge is April 29th and 30th, and it's designed to teach the basics of better sleep in a way that's realistic and easy to apply. If learning how to sleep better feels like the right place to start, we'd love to have you join our challenge on April 29th. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. Yeah, I mean, he talks about this primal state where all you literally care about at that moment is rest, food, water, and maybe shelter, right?

16:39Gary Brecka:Like where the things that truly matter, like your scope narrows. like you're not thinking about cars and watches or you know who's who's following your instagram post like none of those things that like trouble us and stress us during normal daily life and he's like you know i guess he only experiences it during that you know that pain cave what he calls it and and being able to like build a mind that's strong enough to go through something like that um is applicable to so many other areas of life it makes everything else seem so easy but i don't really get stressed out about much and things don't really bother me that much i'm quite like generally at like a nice level yeah and i even my partner like certain things she'll get really like upset about something called like react like really fast to something i'm like it's not the end of the world yeah and i like there was um shaquille o 'neal had a did a um like a talk before like on a podcast maybe and i remember seeing it and his dad he said he was having a bad game and he was like throwing his toys out the pram they'd lost to some someone and his dad was like come see us like fly back home and then he flew back home and he's like right we're going out at 6 a.m and he said he went out and they were dead silent in the car and he drove and he was driving and um they parked up there was like a tent under a bridge and homeless people and then this guy got out like they waited like a couple hours son come up guy come out and then his wife holding a baby and he said he said turn around to him he was like you think you're under pressure like that's pressure like that's hard like you athletes uh like you've got all this like money and everything and you're like you're not doing what you need to do like it's not that hard and that's what i always think now i'm like i could be way worse in a way worse position than i'm in especially with like social media and like if anyone's like oh do you like struggle with the negative comments or I'm like come on man like what do you mean like I'm like so grateful to be in a position I'm in which I lead with when I do all this stuff and I had a friend that broke his back a couple years back and he's in a wheelchair now and he's been in and out of hospital with yeah he had sepsis at one point and he's like best friend from school we grew up together his job was cutting trees so he fell out he was a tree surgeon he fell out a tree broke his back and you know he's got like a bit of an insurance thing and he's like can live comfortably he doesn't have to like whatever but he'd give anything to to do what i can do with my body and even says it to me sometimes like i love you but like sometimes i see some of your stuff and it like actually upsets me a little bit i can't do that anymore right so i always think now i'm like i get to do this like when things get hard i'm climbing a mountain and my back's hurting i'm like yeah it's not that fucking bad yeah yeah yeah it's gonna be over in a day um it's it's there's so much evidence too for i i used to think that this was really granola like tree hugger way out there in the cosmos shit but like you know when people talk about journaling and practicing gratitude and reconnecting with your faith and and for me um that's one of the biggest parts of my day is is i always will find like six eight ten minutes i get outside i do a little breath work i let some sunlight hit my skin i look you know i just do some horizon gazing but it was always really hard for me for years and years and years to sit in silence and just be alone with my own thoughts.

20:05Gary Brecka:And now I just do a little exercise of like, you know, what are two or three things that happened to me yesterday that I'm just grateful for? And now like my body, like it's weird. It almost craves them. Like, let's get out on the balcony and think about what we're grateful for. And I think that mindset matters. You know, I mean, you, you have the discipline to just cold turkey, eventually stop the drinking change your friends you know your your your friend group yeah get into a new place start training get into this addiction of training i'm going to just call it that yeah for that's what i yeah that's what i it's another drug like yeah feeling good is yeah yeah feeling good is a drug right like we talked about it when you got here it's like i was actually a little late to me because i was in a cold lunch and uh and i'm like that's my drug of choice like nothing that makes me feel better for longer so i do it every time before i come on a podcast um but for you like that shift in mindset so now you know you're an ultra endurance athlete quite a good one i might add and i think that you're setting an example for the younger generation i love to see this like you know the nelk boys ran the yeah uh 100k with my son or the hundred boys are like game were game streamers yeah game streamers doing pranks and they still do pranks but like heavy into like the alcohol the party scene and um and as they got older they they you know their mindset has matured but one of the things Kyle talks about Kyle Forgard um who ran the 100 with my son yeah is the number of touch points in his life that have been positively affected um by this just doing this 100 mile race and I'm wondering if you might shed some light on that like what what are some of the touch points in your life what else has improved since do you know what's funny started the sport um when i ran so i ran 800k across england 800k yeah so i did i did land's end which is the most south so a lot of people would do joggle which is the whole country upwards but because i grew up in devon which is down the south and i live in london i I wanted to run through both.

22:15So I ran from south to southwest to the most east.

22:20Gary Brecka:Okay. So two marathons a day, 80K a day, 10 days. Two marathons a day? Yeah, I did 80 kilometers a day. Every day for 10 days? Yeah, 50 miles for 10 days, so 500 miles. Wow. And it was hell. Like two days in, it was the hardest thing I'd ever done onwards. And it was the longest. I think after that 220 was the furthest I'd gone. So two or three days in, I think I got to the furthest I'd ran. And everything after that was just like a battle. Yeah. Every step is a PR. It got, and it got, it got easier as it went on. I think five, six days in, I kind of went over the hardest bit. Also, there was loads of elevation, but the, the one thing, so I did it for a men's mental health charity and that was great.

23:00Like raising the money. And there was a couple of things I didn't realize that was happening, which kind of added to this, but I didn't find like the fulfillment I was kind of looking for doing it. I've, I built it up to be this huge thing. like achievement would like solve all my problems would feel amazing did it and it was just like like kind of flat i was just like i was done now what's like not what's next but like i don't know there was something a bit missing out of it all yeah um and after like really reflecting on it and chatting to a couple people like different like a sports therapist and other people like that and kind of just like unpacking it a little bit more i actually went on holiday like three weeks later and it was the first time I've been on holiday and I've actually just like not thought about work not thought about social media not like put pressure on myself to do content or to what's the next race or like I had no like expectation set about what I was going to do next I cancelled something I was going to do later in the year because I was like I had a bit of um I actually couldn't really bend both of my ankles fully so like the tendon in them got so bad that like my big toe was kind of like stuck here because of the tendon um and it took a while to get that back and i was kind of just i found peace that was the the point i found a little bit of

24:17Gary Brecka:peace in myself like you said about sitting still and like i'm adhd and all these things with the addictive personality and i struggle with that and it was first time ever i've been like i actually feel quite good yeah um who'd you go on holiday with uh with my missus yeah we went to like Mykonos and not party. We were in bed, like they were doing the turndown service and we would already be in bed and they'd come into like, and everyone else is out like partying. A little bit of a different life. Yeah. Like we'd finish dinner. Normally you're just getting in the shower to go out. It's great. You get a booking everywhere.

24:46Cause no one goes out at like five, six o 'clock when the restaurant's open. Yeah. So nice. Um, so yeah, we was, we were just having this like really chilled out holiday. And I was just like, it's funny. Cause I've actually reshaped my thinking about what I want to do next now as well. I was like, I don't want to run that far ever again like that's way too far it was miserable i hated it and now almost already thinking like actually maybe i should do this next year or like do you mean um and i think it was what i was really looking for all along was that kind of piece and i think that's what i've noticed from the harder the stuff that i do and the more i prove to myself like i can do these things winning the show like i had a bit of an emotional moment on there like crying after as well i was almost like everything I do, I kind of don't feel like it's like I've done enough.

25:35Like I feel like I have to really put myself through hell to feel like I've deserved credit for what I do.

25:40Gary Brecka:Yeah. And I think that's what I've kind of found doing it is actually like, I don't need to do it. Yeah. And it's, you want to do it. Yeah. And now, now I'm leading with more like, I actually enjoy training and I enjoy pushing myself. I like, I'm actually quite happy when And I have a goal to work towards. Like even now where I've got this Achilles thing I was telling you about where I'm like, I had a couple of weeks of running less. We're going to fix that right up. Yeah. Before you leave this week. Yeah. Even that, I'm like, I feel a bit lost. Like the last two weeks, I'm like, I want to be pushing towards something, but I don't feel like I have to.

26:10I'm almost like, it is what it is. Like it's going to work itself out and whatever happens happens for a reason and we can work through things. But like, yeah, I found a bit of peace in life from doing this stuff, which is weird

26:22Gary Brecka:because you'd think the most chaotic thing you could do is like the stress you put on your body and your mind and stuff to do these things well you know there's also a lot of science about around doing hard things how the brain actually grows and creates new neuronal pathways and and stress you know can be good or bad like hormetic stress like a cold plunge or uh sauna is a stress on the body um exercise is an extreme stress but you strengthen in response yeah and i think we don't talk enough about what exercise exercise does for the mental state you know um and i think that people put off exercise to focus everything on their business especially young entrepreneurs yeah and they don't realize that their superpower is still locked inside of them and maybe some of these you know physical feats can actually unlock that so because there was something about um whether like mental health is led with the mind or your body and i really think like the strongest foundation for your mind is to have a fit able body and then you can build from there and i think someone said it like chris williams said something like um you can't you can't out sniff a cocaine addiction you can't out think mental health problems but if you if you're struggling with your mind and what you're thinking about and you sit in the house on your own lights off or something can you sit and just think about it make it worse right yeah yeah but you go out and like you go for a run and you release some endorphins you feel great and that's what i really think like it helped me with going sober 100 like i had half marathon to run on a sunday morning i couldn't go out so and i went out and i felt amazing and then i started making friends that also wanted to run half marathon on sunday morning and then we'd go for breakfast and you get coffee and then i started a run club and then people would come and join just to run 10k yeah you have a london run club yeah yeah so how's Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle.

28:21Gary Brecka:If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this. You're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world-renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation.

28:54Gary Brecka:This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than$100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP and step into your ultimate potential.

29:29Gary Brecka:Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. So we've kind of, I don't know, we went, it was doing really well, and we did a couple years, and it's kind of got to the point where I can't commit enough time to be there all the time and I've got plans to leave and it's kind of come to a bit of a natural um end um but I I feel like I have such a more impact online and it's hard like my audience is very spread out and it's hard to get everyone in one place and I'd get messages all the time like mate I'm in London when's the Run Club and I'll be like oh it's the end of the month on Saturday so if you're not here on that Saturday you can miss it anyway um so now I'm like trying to think like how can I have that like communal aspects without it being in person so everyone can get a bit of a uh a taste of it and i think if it's gonna we've got like a run club we're doing virtually where people can start joining every week and we're filming that at the moment and so that's like kind of the next step and then when i am in certain places like boston marathon we're going to do an in-person one hopefully people can be there and the same with london and so i'm going to do a little bit more like one-off kind of yeah i love seeing all these like a lot of uh like djs and rap artists and yeah diplo is yeah who's the rapper that has the run club gonna yeah yeah it's got a run club and um you know diplo and and jelly roll has one now called like the losers run club yeah it's just it's just so awesome because it's like now if you you know if if those are some of your idols or you you know, some of the, you know, the celebrities that you look up to, you know, now you can get this communal sense with them by, you know, around physicality, around something other than drugs and alcohol.

31:09Gary Brecka:I think it's amazing. In fact, I read a statistic, I think in Miami, you know, alcohol consumption is down like 34 % in the younger generation. And there's all these cool things creeping up like coffee and chill, which, you know, if you walked into one of these events, you would think it was any other like south beach rager you know yeah all the chicks are bikinis all the guys are in board shorts but there's no drugs no alcohol it's just cold punches coffee and yeah instead of your calling card being like the ferrari you pulled up in or the it's your physique yeah and you can't fake that you know so you know i just i love seeing that that that sort of shift especially in the younger generation even a lot of the data around longevity anti-aging and wellness um a lot of the stats are driven by gen z and that's like surprising to me i would think it would be my my generation i'm in my mid-50s yeah um but it's like it's starting in younger and younger yeah you see a lot of like guys doing like older guys as well doing high rocks and getting involved i think like there's some sports like triathlon you end up being better even ultra running i think you get better as you as you age because your body just accumulates more like compound and effect like of tolerance to yeah especially with running i think but yeah no it's amazing to see and that's one of the reasons why as well like for me with sobriety so like one of my values is integrity and like when i say something if i'm gonna do it like i've gotta do it like that's it's gonna get done at some point i might not be able to do it when i say i will but it will happen yeah and um one of the things like people always ask me now like are you're going to be sober forever?

32:42And I'm like, to be honest, like the way I am as a person, I probably should, but I've also reshaped my whole relationship with alcohol. Definitely. So like, if I was out for dinner, I could probably have a drink. I could have a beer. I have a zero beer now. Like that's what I'll drink like zero alcohol, but I could probably have a drink and it wouldn't be, where's the party? Like after party and no sleep and all of this stuff. But what kind of example would I be setting to all the young guys, especially because obviously relate to me the most that have made these changes i've gone sober themselves like i get messages all the time like i'm running my first marathon because i saw you do this and i'm so inspired and everything's changing my mental health that's the best i love the the messages but like imagine if i then went yeah guys i've done three years and now i'm like actually i'm i'm a bit bored of it i'm gonna go back to doing what i was doing and everyone else would just go like yeah and there's actually quite a lot like not in a bad way but there is a few running influencers for views and you can you can have a drink and like they'll drink a beer when they're doing a run and yeah and it's like like it's going a bit viral in like fair enough but like i don't want to be a bad example so like i wouldn't even work with say like a gambling company right because i've never had a problem with gambling never gambled but i've got an addictive personality and i've got a problem with addiction and i know people do have that issue so i don't want to be a catalyst in someone else's problem now i feel like i have a bit of responsibility yeah um so i i think it's great that people are making these changes and i think so too yeah so how do you maintain

34:10Gary Brecka:like uh an ultra distance athlete sort of training schedule and then still keep a physique like someone who's yeah trying to yeah trying to yeah i mean you're lean but you look good you know so i i think you know when i was when i was doing triathlons heavy yeah um i would say the vast majority of guys that i raced with we were all skinny fat yeah yeah yeah so there's like because it's a little bit to do with stress, I think, on the body. So like when I first did the marathon, I felt like I looked a little bit out of shape because my body was just so stressed out. I know, it was crazy. Like my fraternity brothers would come see me and they'd be like, bro, you okay, man?