Finding Purpose in Endurance Running with Yassine Diboun

0:01Simple:Sometimes you have to really hit this rock bottom place in order to like make these types of changes and that's what happened to me. I started going to 12-step meetings and one of the guys from the meetings used to see me working out at the gym a lot and then he saw me running around town and he said, hey, you should do the YMCA triathlon. I didn't really even know what a triathlon was, but I was curious. So I literally was like six months sober, and I said, I'm going to sign up for this YMCA triathlon.

0:37Yassine Diboun:When Yassine Dabun signed up for his first triathlon in 2004, he had no idea that it would lead him to a career in endurance sports. He took up triathlon as part of his recovery from addiction, working out in order to give himself some structure and stay busy. It turned out that Yasin was an incredibly talented runner. Within a few years of that first triathlon, he was introduced to ultramarathons, where he really found his stride. Since his first ultra in 2007, Yasin has finished in the top 10 at the coveted Western States 100, set ultramarathon course records around the country and joined the USA Trail running team.

1:17Yassine Diboun:Nowadays, Yassin is considered a leader and a legend in the ultra running community. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.

1:36Yassine Diboun:Yassin Dabun, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. Tell me where you are right now.

1:41Simple:Thank you so much for having me. I am sitting here in Portland, Oregon, with my little puppy on my lap.

1:48Yassine Diboun:I love that. It's the town of runners. How do you describe yourself? Are you a professional runner?

1:56Simple:Technically, I am a professional runner for Columbia Sportswear, and I do ultra marathons, which by definition is anything longer than a 26.2 marathon. I do feel a little funny sometimes saying I'm a professional runner because I prefer to say amateur because if you break down the word amateur in Latin, it means something to the effect of for the love. And so I love doing what I do. So regardless if I got paid or not, I would still do this thing.

2:30Yassine Diboun:Thanks for teaching me that. That's really cool. I didn't know that. For the love. I'm an amateur in a lot of things then. So where did you grow up? Like, were you always outdoorsy as a kid? And were you into running?

2:43Simple:I grew up in the city in Pennsylvania, and I was very active as a kid. I played team sports, mostly soccer, basketball, baseball. As I got into middle school, my mother had moved us to rural Pennsylvania, which was a huge culture shock for me going from the city to the country for various different reasons. I still was playing basketball mostly and really loving the basketball. And unfortunately, I started getting into trouble, started acting out a bit in 10th grade, not a bit, a lot. And And my mom, who was raising three kids by herself, couldn't quite handle me anymore. I hit puberty. I was 15.

3:33Simple:I was bigger, stronger, and just acting reckless. And so she had arranged for me to go live with my dad, who had been living in Orlando, Florida. So I had moved to Orlando, Florida from rural Pennsylvania, which was another huge culture shock for me. the land of Disney World and Daytona Beach, spring break. And so in a lot of ways, it was really fun. I had a great time, but it also, you know, kind of fueled the fire in terms of like the party lifestyle. So I played basketball somehow a bit through high school, but my senior year, I think the party lifestyle took over. And that's where I kind of just like went straight into that sort of lifestyle where I wasn't really exercising much.

4:24Simple:I wasn't working out and I was out of school now. I was 19 and I started getting into really some like harder drugs and daily drinking and going to like South Beach and Miami and, you know, like into the rave scene for quite a while, which I always say, I don't regret what I did. I had a lot of fun. It opened me up. It taught me a lot of things, but it was a synthetic sort of high. And eventually things got bad and I had to retreat. So I retreated back up to Pennsylvania to my mom's when I was about 20 and tried to clean myself up a bit, started like working out a bit and training for basketball, which I love so much.

5:19Simple:And I ended up getting into a division three college to play basketball, which I will say that our team was more known for throwing beer drinking parties than our basketball prowess. And so eventually that just took me back to that lifestyle of destruction and like binge drinking. And my brother was living in Colorado at the time and he had sold me on the West.

5:52Yassine Diboun:He said, oh, dude, it is so awesome out here.

5:55Simple:It's so beautiful, like the mountains and people are so cool. And I packed my van and drove from Pennsylvania all the way to Colorado. And when I got out there, I was blown away by the beauty of the mountains in Colorado and just the nature. But this thing just kept following me. It was like, wherever you go, there you are, right? I eventually just started getting back into my old ways of abuse of substances. And it took me about four years in Colorado, mostly snowboarding, to realize that I needed some serious help.

6:45Yassine Diboun:In the late 90s and early 2000s, there was a major party element to the snowboard scene in Colorado. I know, because I worked in Breckenridge around the same time. There were certain ski resorts that gave employees cheaper room and board, meaning the rest of your paycheck could go toward whatever you wanted. For Yasin, that meant he had a lot of spare cash to spend on partying.

7:10Simple:I just made great tips every night. So I was literally just partying every night, snowboarding every day. So that was great if you have habits like I did. But I saw the writing on the wall with, like, there was this bartender that I knew in Winter Park, and he was like 60. He's like, oh yeah, I came here in 1983 and I never left. And I just was like, I don't think I want that to be me. I don't.

7:42Yassine Diboun:Even though Yassin knew that he didn't want to keep partying forever, it was hard to give up his lifestyle. He reached a point where he was getting blackout drunk on a regular basis, and his life started to crumble. As much as Yusin tried to hide it, his family and friends were definitely aware of what was going on.

8:01Simple:I actually had an intervention by my family. And so my mom just kind of started it off. We didn't have an interventionist, but she must have talked to some people or something. But she basically just said, we're so glad that you're here. The real reason we all wanted to get us together today is to really to talk about your drinking and using. Even though you're thousands of miles away from us, we're worried about you. And we just want to go around the room and just tell you about how your actions have affected us. And so each person took their turn to tell me how my drinking and using affected them.

8:53Simple:And that's the selfishness and self-centeredness of addiction. It's like, I had no idea that I was affecting them. I'm like, this is my life. Like, I'm all the way out in Colorado. Like, how am I affecting you? You know? And I just was so, I just had the blinders on. I just didn't realize how much I was affecting them until they told me. And it was hard to hear. And I didn't deny it. I knew I had a problem, but it affected me a different way when I heard my loved ones tell me these things. So I was like, yeah, I'll get help. I'll move back here, but I can't right now. You know what I mean? That's what a lot of people do.

9:39Simple:I used to watch the show Intervention where they have to go right now. And I was like, well, all my stuff's in Colorado. So I went back to Colorado, ended up partying for a few more months extra, extra hard because I could probably subconsciously tell that my time was coming to an end. And then I moved from Colorado back to New York State in April of 2004. And that was something that really profound happened for me at that time. I didn't realize that once I made the decision to stop, that I actually couldn't. That I can't. I can't stop. I'm addicted. did. And so from April 2004 to July of 2004, it was what I call white knuckling it.

10:40Simple:And it was just horrible. It was such a struggle. And it was just episode after episode where I would relapse. And it was so disheartening for my family. And it wore on their patience with me. and it finally, you know, I went to a wedding reception in July of 2004 and I told myself and others that I was going to try some controlled drinking and it ended horribly in a blackout and I did some really horrible things in that blackout that I don't remember still to this day but that's when my brother dropped me off at my mom's and was just like, I can't, I'm not helping him anymore. And that's when my mom gave me that ultimatum that I can't help you anymore either unless you get professional help.

11:31Simple:And so that's when I checked myself into that 28-day rehab, and that's where my journey began.

11:40Simple:So that was the start of me fundamentally changing my life. And we're not just talking about like a geographical change and setting up. It was it was fundamentally changing the people I hung out with the places that I put myself as well as the way I think and talk and everything had to change like so I sometimes you have to really hit this rock bottom place in order to like make these types of changes and that's what happened to me. And it wasn't just the outside stuff. It was an inside job. It was like I was 25, almost 26 years old. I realized I'd been struggling with this for many years now.

12:31Simple:In a way, I was grateful that the drugs and alcohol took me down pretty quickly because I know a lot of people that drag that out into their 30s and 40s or longer. So I was grateful that I kind of hit rock bottom at 25. And that is when I started going to 12-step meetings. I was in Ithaca, New York. And one of the guys from the meetings used to see me working out at the gym a lot. And then he saw me running around town. And I was trying to quit smoking. So I knew I had to, I knew I had enough of an athletic background that I knew I needed to substitute something cardio based. So I started running.

13:15Simple:Instead of going to lift weights and then smoking a cigarette after the gym, I decided, I was like, I'm going to go for a run. And so he saw me running around town and he said, hey, you should do the YMCA triathlon. I didn't really even know what a triathlon was, but I was curious. So he said, it's swimming, biking, running. So I literally was like six months sober. I quit smoking cigarettes and I said, I'm going to sign up for this YMCA triathlon.

13:45Yassine Diboun:Yasin did a quick Google search and he found a training plan to improve his swimming, biking, and running. He thrived on the structure and discipline it gave him. As Yasin's strength and endurance developed, his drive to improve as an athlete took on a new dimension.

14:03Simple:I started changing. I was going to meetings. I started changing the way I think, the way I look, like, and things started flowing into my life. And I loved it. I did that first triathlon. It kind of wrecked me. And I remember, I remember just having a headache all day the day after the finish of the triathlon, probably dehydrated. And I just was like, man, my head hurts so bad. I want to do that again. You know, that's the weird thing about our sport. It's like sometimes in the moment, you're just like, I'm never doing this again. Why did I do this? And then afterwards, you're like, that was awesome.

14:46Simple:I can't wait to do that again. I think I can do better. So that's what lit the pilot light for me was that first triathlon. And, you know, part of it was like me getting out to these spots, like riding the bike in the Finger Lakes region of New York, where, you know, you could see, you know, the lakes off in the distance. And, you know, you're connecting with nature, getting fresh air, going for runs. And I started getting better on the bike. I started getting I was feeling more confident, more comfortable. And I said, I'm going to go back to that same YMCA triathlon. And I think I can win this thing.

15:32Simple:I want to win. I don't want to just finish. I want to win it. So as I'm out on my final bike ride a week before the race, I literally can still remember it. It was May of, believe, 2005. and I just remember looking off at the distance and seeing one of the beautiful Finger Lakes and just thinking like, oh wow, like the leaves aren't on the trees yet so I can see the lake. And next thing you know, boom, hit by a minivan.

16:07Completely out.

16:09Simple:I tried like standing up and I felt like the most immense pain shoot through my body and I fell back down to the ground. And the lady got out of the car and she started crying and said, I'm going to call 911. And next thing you know, I'm getting stuffed into a helicopter and airlifted to a trauma center. I didn't know what was going on, but I ended up having a helmet on, thankfully, but the helmet cracked and styrofoam was coming out of it. so I had a concussion and swelling on the brain. They thought I had neck and back injuries. I had a broken scapula, lots of road rash that needed skin grafting, and I got banged up pretty good, but all things considered, I was alive and I was okay other than my shoulders.

17:07Simple:so that was like a big turning point for me as well because I was you know I was sober now I had a spiritual awakening and in sobriety but now I I almost just realized that like life is so fragile and so short and it can change so quickly I'm not I wasted so much time in my early 20s I I was like, I am not wasting any more time at all. And I literally got out of that trauma center. I was like, I'm doing a marathon because my legs are fine. I still remember I was running up this dirt road with a sling on, right? Because I had to immobilize my scapula fracture. But my legs were fine. So I was running up this hill because I needed to get some exercise.

18:00Simple:And my sister-in-law pulled up next to me and rolled down her window. And she's like, what are you doing? you need to rest and I'm like I can't like I need to get out I need to get moving and so that's where I started uncovering I guess this this love and talent for longer distance running and I started running marathons and I went back to Miami and you know I was literally running the Miami Marathon and the top 20 of the race, running past the clubs that I used to stumble out of and just goosebumps over my whole body and finishing with like a huge smile on my face and fist in the air. And that's like, that was like my new drug.

18:55Yassine Diboun:I just want to take a moment to pause here and acknowledge how impressive it is that you've seen kept running after that accident. Many of us have been motivated to start a new lifestyle when something unexpected happens and sets us back. It's hard not to get discouraged in those moments and throw in the towel. And for people who struggle with addiction, big injuries can be especially challenging because they don't want to go on any pain medications. But Yasin refused to let his injuries get in the way of his new life. And thank goodness, because the best was yet to come.

19:34Yassine Diboun:The sunshine is back, and I'm planning to spend the next few months outside, catching waves, camping, and hiking the trails all around San Diego. If your summer plans also involve spending as much time outside as possible, the REI Co-Op MasterCard offers rewards and benefits that support your love of the outdoors. It's just for REI Co-Op members and earns card rewards on every purchase at REI and everywhere else MasterCard is accepted. What I love is that rewards are available in one to two days, so all of those stops on the way to the adventure, from fuel for the drive to last minute gear runs, it all adds up.

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20:35Yassine Diboun:my morning routine these days looks like this a cup or two of coffee with my aeropress then out to the ocean to catch some waves before an interview and as much as i love being in the ocean what i genuinely look forward to is using my aeropress again the next day it's that good if you've never tried aeropress coffee you're in for a treat it's a french press a pour over and espresso machine all in one. It uses a completely unique brew method, which means you get a cup of coffee that's rich, smooth, and genuinely different from anything else. And it's fast. It only takes about two minutes to brew your coffee and clean up.

21:15Lately,

21:15Yassine Diboun:I've been using the AeroPress Go Plus. It's a complete travel coffee system I can take to the beach or out on the trail. Everything packs into a double-wall insulated stainless steel tumbler for storage and travel. It's compact, durable, easy to use, easy to clean, and it makes great coffee no matter where you are. I just unpack it, brew, and pack it back up. To ensure you never have bad coffee wherever you are, visit your local REI or head to REI.com to grab your AeroPress. That's A-E-R-O-P-R-E-S-S. It's time to ditch the drive-thru, toss the French press, and say yes to better mornings fueled by better coffee.

22:13Yassine Diboun:In 2005, shortly after he became sober, Yassine Dabun took up endurance sports. He discovered that he was an especially fast runner and eventually he was entering races all over the country. As he dove further into the sport, Yassin was introduced to ultramarathon running, and that's where he found his sweet spot.