The Longest Race On Earth | Sanjay Rawal | Modern Wisdom Podcast 116

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   ... but I made…

   1. SRSanjay Rawal0:00

      ... but I made a movie. I make a lot of movies, but my, my most recent one was called 3100: Run and Become. It's out on Amazon. It's gonna be out o- on Amazon Prime in the UK in a couple of weeks. Um, it's about the world's longest running race. I, I would say that my expertise has just been gleaned by spending a lot of time with people who don't just look at running as performance or r- look at running as fitness, but look at running the way that humanity did thousands of years ago, that running is, in fact, a pathway to self-transformation, to self-realization, and if you believe in something higher, uh, to, to the divine.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:39

      (wind blowing) I am joined by Sanjay Raul. Sanjay, welcome to the show.

   3. SRSanjay Rawal0:45

      Chris, it's great to be on your show. Thanks for having me.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:48

      Absolute pleasure to have you on. Uh, uh, b- before we get started, even for the listeners at home, behind Sanjay, in wherever he's filming-

   5. SRSanjay Rawal0:56

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson0:56

      ... is a series of, like, mannequins, slightly sullen, sad-looking mannequins and a really epic ... Is that a painting of some falconry? Like, where are you? What's, what's that, what's that backdrop?

   7. SRSanjay Rawal1:08

      I'm in my edit studio in New York City, and I have a garden right outside. And, uh, a friend of mine made a series of sculptures, uh, which aren't finished yet. And they were all sitting in my backyard, but the weather has turned here and I had to bring them all inside.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:23

      (knocks on wood)

   9. SRSanjay Rawal1:23

      So, I don't know if people are familiar with the Terracotta Warriors of, uh, Xi'an. Uh, a farmer discovered in his field thousands of clay statues, all pointed in the right direction. Um, I kind of feel like that's where I'm sitting right now. I've got these replica statues of-

   10. CWChris Williamson1:40

       Yeah.

   11. SRSanjay Rawal1:41

       ... of the Indian meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy, meditating. And, uh, it feels like I'm in a temple. (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson1:47

       It's pretty epic. It's a pretty cool-

   13. SRSanjay Rawal1:48

       It's pretty cool.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:49

       ... backd- as backdrops go, man, that's, that's not bad. So, for the listeners who don't know who you are, how would you, how would you describe yourself? And, and give us a bit of background to you.

   15. SRSanjay Rawal1:59

       So number one, if there is a listener who knows who I am, oh my God, I wanna meet them.

   16. CWChris Williamson2:04

       (laughs)

   17. SRSanjay Rawal2:05

       I'm, I'm, I'm nobody. I'm, I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. Uh, but I made a movie. I make a lot of movies, but my, my most recent one was called 3100: Run and Become. It's out on Amazon. It's gonna be out o- on Amazon Prime in the UK in a couple of weeks. Um, it's about the world's longest running race. I, I would say that my expertise has just been gleaned by spending a lot of time with people who don't just look at running as performance or r- look at running as fitness, but look at running the way that humanity did thousands of years ago, that running is, in fact, a pathway to self-transformation, to self-realization, and if you believe in something higher, uh, to, to the divine.

   18. CWChris Williamson2:48

       Why running?

   19. SRSanjay Rawal2:50

       Well, th- this is interesting, because there's a famous book by a good friend of mine, Chris McDougall, um, Born to Run, and he explored the anthropological, uh, connection between human evolution and running. And evolutionary biologists suggest that the advantage, the only advantage that early men and women had on the savanna, uh, amongst massive predators, amongst massive herbivores, was the fact that we could move on two feet. Now, physiologically, that means that when we walk, our breath is not coupled to our gait. If you can imagine a quadruped, you know, when they extend out, their lungs inflate. What al-

   20. CWChris Williamson3:36

       Is that when they breathe? Is that how their breathing cadence works?

   21. SRSanjay Rawal3:39

       Yeah. Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson3:39

       No way.

   23. SRSanjay Rawal3:39

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson3:40

       I never knew that.

   25. SRSanjay Rawal3:41

       When their four legs collapse-

   26. CWChris Williamson3:43

       Mm-hmm.

   27. SRSanjay Rawal3:43

       ... their entire torso collapses and the air is expelled. And so, they are not good aerobic runners, because they have to, to ... They can't regulate their breathing. Um, we can breathe a lot more. We can breathe two or three or four times per step if we need to. They can't. So even if they're going slow, they can't breathe a couple times. So they're not good slow runners. So, we were great slow runners. And in 3100: Run and Become, we actually went to the Kalahari Desert to live and hunt with the San Bushmen, who have been around for 125,000 years. And you and I don't look like San Bushmen, but ... And not to say that they're the root tribe of everyone, but they were perhaps the most eager tribe, because every single human being has markers in their DNA distinguished only by the connection to San Bushmen. Like, we all have a piece of their DNA in us. So, they've been around for a long time. And people have gone and studied them, and Chris McDougall looked at, looked at them in Born to Run and said, "Well, we were born to run because our evolutionary advantage on the savanna was our ability to chase animals down for 24, 48 hours, totally exhaust them. With rudimentary weapons and no weaponry at all, we could approach dehydrated animals, kill them, take them home." But the reality was far more interesting. You know, when we kind of presented these outside Western theories to the Bushmen, they kind of looked at us with, with just ... And they, they were incredulous. They say that humanity evolves because of consciousness, not because of form. They said that their ability to track and catch large game was not due to the fact that they were endurance maniacs. It was due to the fact that human beings can pray. They can pray a lot more deeply than lesser-evolved primates. They said that they understood prayer, they understood how they could gather energy from the Earth, and that is what carried them to catch animals.... and so they say the cosmology developed before the actual practice developed. They got the energy, they realized what they could do with it. And so from the very, very beginning, running and human spirituality went hand-in-hand. So in that sense, running was, was the first religion of humanity.

   28. CWChris Williamson6:20

       That's a lovely, um, a very transcendent, uh, very, for s- for something that for a lot of people I suppose running would be a function of your lactate threshold times by your VO2 max, plus your running efficiency, et cetera, et cetera. To hear something that's a lot more, uh, spiritually guided is quite interesting and quite meaningful.

   29. SRSanjay Rawal6:45

       You know, people can get what they want to out of physical activity, right? If you want to look really good, physical fitness will get you there. If you want to become really healthy, physical fitness, running or anything, will get you there. It's all a matter of intention. You know, with running, if you want to transform your life, and if you go into running with that intention, it will get you there. I mean, you can see with Eliud Kipchoge's run last weekend, over and over and over in all of his interviews, he touches on the idea of faith. He touches on the idea that humanity has no limits. That's not just philosophy for him, it's an idea that he's seen, he lived, he's got faith in it. It's like his faith in the, the transcendent capacity of human beings gave him the vision, and one would argue gave him the capacity or helped in his capacity to reach that two-hour run. If that's not the combination of running and spirituality, I don't know what is.

   30. CWChris Williamson7:44

       (laughs)
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   It's really epic. Hearing…

   1. SRSanjay Rawal15:00

      has a set daily mileage. Now they're on a mountain, so it's like the first couple of year, first couple of cycles, they have to do about 11.6 miles per day, which involves going up and down a 1,000-meter mountain once. Um, they're not running, but their pace going up that mountain is faster than most people could run it. But by the time they get to the seventh and eighth cycle, they're at 35 miles per day. The ninth and tenth cycle, they're at 56 miles per day. Now they go into it with the idea that this is going to be an experience of bliss, an experience of prayer, an experience of meditation. That's what they train for. That's what their minds and their hearts are prepared for. But here's the kicker. If they don't finish any single day's mileage, they have to take their lives. Like no one's had to take their life in about 150 years, but that's the ultimate price. That's- that's the sacrifice of this hardship. And one would say, like, with that kind of consequence hanging over your head, how could you not but move in fear? But it's the opposite. It's like you know there is that consequence, but that keeps your intent pure. That makes you realize that this is a sacred opportunity. I can only do this if I remain in the mind and heart of meditation. So in- in the movie, it's like we- we explore these root cultures, the Navajo, um, and other South- Southwestern Native American tribes in the United States, the San Bushmen, these monks in Japan, to really show how and why extreme physical fitness or extreme achievement through the body is not only possible, it's one of the most natural things that human beings can do.

   2. CWChris Williamson16:47

      It's really epic. Hearing about it, it- it's, you know, conjuring up these images of these monks going up and down this mountain in service of, you know, their higher, their higher sense of self, searching for self-transcendence and using it as this meditative practice. It- it does, um, it makes things like the Olympics feel quite impure, weirdly, actually feels quite glitzy and sort of glam- glamorous in a way that this doesn't.

   3. SRSanjay Rawal17:14

      Well, so the- the- the experience that I had, I- I used to be a semi-competitive runner, but never really put one and one together until I started spending time with these cultures that have run and looked at spirit- the spirituality of sports for thousands of years. We all experience these things, you know, in a workout or maybe in a race. The beauty of connecting with these cultures, and what we tried to show in 3100: Run and Become, is we- we try to give people the language to understand their own experiences, to deepen their own experiences, and to understand that physical fitness can actually be a spiritual path. I mean, if you look at the Spartans, if you look at, like, the roots of the Olympics, the idea of- of faster, higher, stronger, that's self-transcendence. You know, we met a- a Hopi elder in- in Arizona who said, um, on- on a morning run that we were doing, he said, um...... and the translation was, "Find joy through exertion." A man named Rex Taliamtewa: "Find joy through exertion." That means, like, in your most, quote unquote, "painful moments," when we are thinking that all we're experiencing is suffering, you know, he, he, he exhorted us to flip that experience, to deny the, the strength of that suffering and to realize that there's a deep joy in that idea of exertion. We have to go beyond the concept of pain defining exertion and let joy be the overflowing emotion that we feel in exertion. You can't achieve that in a race. You can't hope that once you get to the, like, the performance level in a crossfit competition or in a running race, that you're magically going to be able to experience that. It's something that needs to be done, not just in training, but it needs to be your mindset. And you can see that if your goal is self-transcendence and you focus your entire training around that, it can't but be a spiritual path.

   4. CWChris Williamson19:19

      It's a very beautiful way of putting it. I wonder, I wonder how many people that are listening understand what we mean when we say about the pain-into-joy sensation. I think if you're not massively familiar with a meditative practice or doing things similar to that, it might sound a little bit alien. But there's (clears throat) a quote from Sam Harris that I always remember when we talk about long seated, um, meditation postures. So, I did a meditation retreat with my friend, uh, in between Christmas and New Year at a Tibetan, uh, a temple not far from here. Um, and as a part of that, we did a, a seated meditation for 90 minutes, which isn't that long. It was part of a much longer, uh, meditation for the whole day. But being sat cross-legged on the floor for 90 minutes, I got, like, the, the tightest hips in the world. It was ruthless. And there's this quote from Sam Harris where he talks about when he was doing it, and he said after a while, he couldn't work out whether the pain in his hip was absolute agony or complete ecstasy. And when you spend sufficient time around a sensation, and you begin to imagine it and break it apart into its component pieces, you actually realize that the difference between a lot of pain and a lot of ecstasy, it, the line becomes incredibly blurred, doesn't it?

   5. SRSanjay Rawal20:33

      I, I, I agree. And I, I, I think that we experience things as pain when fear is involved. When fear is not involved, it's an entirely different sensation. And that's the difference between the mind and the heart. When you're in the mind, when you're thinking, you're rationalizing, you're measuring, you're contemplating. Like, how many of us in our routines are in the moment? Like, I'm looking at my GPS watch when I'm running. I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do afterwards, I'm thinking about what I'm gonna eat, what the rest of my day is like, the splits I'm trying to achieve, the time I'm trying to achieve in the run. I'm not focusing on my breath. My mind is in the way. The question for listeners is how do you get the mind out of the way? Like, you have to enter into the heart, into the, into the spiritual heart, into the area that we point to as, you know, when we say, like, "I'm Chris," or, "I'm Sanjay." Um, and that's done through practice, through seated meditation, or really through understanding simple breathing techniques, understanding how to breathe in peace, how to release anxiety, how to imagine that the breath isn't just coming in through our nose or through our mouth, but it's actually coming into our hearts. When you start feeling the breathing sensation happening here and the energy flow happening here, it becomes easier to practice that while you're competing, while you're training. And so it's like we have to get out of the minds. Once we get out of the minds and into the heart, fear isn't there. What's in the heart? Love is in the heart, joy is in the heart, peace is in the heart. And I'm not to, not to say that the mind is not gonna come back every second or every minute to be, to remind us that it's there. But the more we can get into our heart, the more we can slow down our breathing, the more we can relax, the less actual physical pain enters into us. But when it comes, we learn to breathe it out. We learn to collect that anxiety to breathe it out, that nervous tension which causes pain to breathe it out. That comes from practice, and that comes from looking at the intention behind it. It's like if we want to be in the heart, then we have to practice being in the heart.

   6. CWChris Williamson22:44

      Another Sam Harris-ism. I feel like I'm quoting him directly today. I'm beaming Sam Harris straight into my brain at the moment. Um, (clears throat) another thing that he says to the listeners who might be thinking, "Well, it's all well and good, but I've been in some real, real amounts of discomfort and pain. You can't tell me that that's not just pure pain in itself." Perfect example that he uses is the way that you feel when you're in the middle of a workout. You don't feel pain in the middle of a workout because you know why it's happening and because the, uh, direction that you are moving in is something that's satisfying. However, if you were just laid in bed and woke up in the middle of the night sweating with your heart racing at the same pace as it would, imagine that you took that physiological state that you had in training and moved it into your body when you were asleep, you'd think, "What is going on?" Like, "Am I having a heart attack? Uh, is this an, an, uh, anxiety attack? Am I having a breakdown? Is this a stroke? Like, what's going on?" And, uh, you're totally right. The difference between how we interpret the sensations that we have going on in our body determines a lot about how or what we can do with those sensations. So one, one of the things that you mentioned there was, um, taking our focus outside of the brain, outside of the mind into the heart and into the task that's in hand. Do you think that the short route, which will inevitably become com- very repetitive, if it's a half mile, you're gonna be doing it 6,200 laps or so during this particular race. Is that helping? Is that contributing to it, the fact that there is, it's, there's no novelty or intensity that's going past with regards to the surrounding, you're just focused on the task at hand?

   7. SRSanjay Rawal24:20

      ... uh, that's a great question. So, you know, a- a lot of scientists and a lot of people that have been on your show have talked about the idea of flow. Like, flow isn't static, right? Like, flow is an experience of momentum. And when you're focused on the task at hand, it seems like the first step is concentration, and it is, but the second step is generating this dynamic flow of energy from your heart. And when you get into that state, everything is new around you. Like, each moment is new. It's not like one step, two step, three step, four step, 'cause people have to take more than a million steps across the 3,100 miles and that would drive you mad. So it's the idea of generating a certain type of energy from the heart that makes you spontaneously and naturally happy. Like, you know in anything in life, when you're naturally happy, like the minutes, the measurement, the hours, the miles, they fly by. When you're in a calm, relaxed state of mind, you can have intensity in the heart and you can be pushing and you can be flowing and it's great. It's an incredible sensation and you want to push harder to get more of it. That- that's- that's- that's w- what I'm talking about and- and what I'm suggesting. You know, when we spent time with one of our characters, Sean Martin, who is a Navajo ultramarathoner, Sean was the first person who totally flipped the switch in my mind. We went out for a morning run. I was waiting for my GPS watch to connect in between-

   8. CWChris Williamson25:51

      (laughs)

   9. SRSanjay Rawal25:51

      ... these canyon walls. Um, we're in this epic canyon that's completely new to me. He runs it every day and so keep that in mind. But once we set out for the morning run, I realized he was enjoying it more than me and he was getting more out of it than I ever could. He was relaxed, he was calm, he was open. And when I asked him afterwards why he looked like he was enjoying it more than me, he said, "Look, number one, for the Navajo and for a lot of indigenous tribes, running is a celebration of life. It's like you feel the energy of nature, whether you're running on a sidewalk or in a canyon, if your feet are on the ground, you're running on Mother Earth. You're surrounded by sky. Even if you're in a gym, it's like air is sky. You're surrounded by those same energies. Running is a celebration of those energies. Number two, running is a teacher. It's like, you don't go to your teacher and say like, 'These are all my problems, I'm gonna talk to you for two hours.' You have to listen to your teacher. So, running allows you to listen. It really, uh, gives you the perspective on your own problems, on your own joys, on your own sufferings." But, and this is what got me, number three, he said, "Running is a prayer. When your feet are running on Mother Earth, they're praying. When you're breathing, you're breathing in Father Sky. So when you run, your feet are praying to Mother Earth, you're breathing in Father Sky, you're showing... You're praying to them for their blessings and you're showing them, through the act of running, that you're willing to work for those blessings. You're asking and you're receiving compassion from all the divinity that surrounds you." And he said, "Take it or leave it. That's the reality."

   10. CWChris Williamson27:41

       Mm-hmm.

   11. SRSanjay Rawal27:42

       "It's like if somebody tells... If I take aspar- as- aspartame my whole life and someone says sugar is better, I'm gonna say, 'I've never tried sugar, there's no way it could be better.'" Right? But it's like once you've tasted sugar, you know it's the reality.

   12. CWChris Williamson27:58

       (laughs)

   13. SRSanjay Rawal27:58

       And so he's like, "Take it or leave it," but this is the reality, it's not a matter of belief. And the more we went back into traditional cultures, the more we realized that was the root of the human experience. It's like when you dance on the Earth, when you move on the Earth, when you walk, when you run, when you lift, it's like you can channel those energies just by the humility of recognizing that your feet are on this gigantic being, that you're breathing in this entity, and you become larger than life. You hit that- that realm of where you understand that you're not as limited as you think you are. And so going back to Kipchoge, it's like what he says about breaking the two-hour barrier, that no human is unlimited, that- that's echoed in traditional cultures all over the world.

   14. CWChris Williamson28:45

       You can certainly see people who are living in synchronicity with their surroundings, with their higher purpose. You know, Kipchoge, to me, you s- you see him and he's just a man that is living in alignment with everything that he needs to do. It's like when he walks, when you see him at the start of the race, perfect example, if anyone wants to go and have a look at the start of the INEOS, uh, 159 Challenge, and you see him and he's sort of... He's behind the guys and he walks through, um, the parting and the barriers behind and he takes this little step through, and it feels... Like, watching it, it feels like the universe just parts around him and he- he just moves through it. Like a fish through water, he moves through the universe and the universe moves around him. He's just... I love watching him. I find him- I find him a fascinating human to watch. Um, so getting onto the actual 3100 race, take us through. So you've said it's in- it's in New York, around a- around a block. Where, when, and why? Let's- let's- let's hit it.

   15. SRSanjay Rawal29:46

       So, it's in Queens, New York City. It happens during the most brutal time of the year. It happens in- in June, July, and part of August. It's a 52-day race, so nearly eight-week period. New York City is a big city,

3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. SRSanjay Rawal30:00

      lot of people, you have to get permits to do things like this.

   2. CWChris Williamson30:03

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SRSanjay Rawal30:03

      Can't get a permit in a park for 52 days, so this happens to- to take place around a high school on a relatively flat loop. Although when you're doing that many miles, all the- the ups and downs add up. People have to be at the course at 6:00 AM for the start. The course is-

   4. CWChris Williamson30:20

      Every- every day?

   5. SRSanjay Rawal30:21

      Every day.

   6. CWChris Williamson30:22

      Yep.

   7. SRSanjay Rawal30:22

      ... the course is open for 18 hours a day. They can stay till midnight or they can leave. Um, there are RVs set up on the course for people to take breaks. Most people will take about 30 to 45 minutes of, of breaks across those 18 hours. Um, there's an aid station set up at the, at the, the, the start and finish of the, of the half-mile loop, um, that is just filled with stuff. Like, there's b-... There's meals cooked all day long, because each runner needs to take between 10 and 14,000 calories per day. Now, 10,000 calories is the equivalent of about 180 eggs. Like-

   8. CWChris Williamson31:02

      (laughs)

   9. SRSanjay Rawal31:02

      ... it's a lot, uh, it's a lot of food.

   10. CWChris Williamson31:05

       How do they do that if they're only taking 30 minutes to 45 minutes of a break within an 18-hour period? Do they eat en route?

   11. SRSanjay Rawal31:11

       Oh, they, they're eating constantly, yeah. It's, uh, so it's like... The, the, the thing about ultra-distance running is that pace at any one moment is determined by the course. It's like if you're going downhill on a mountain, you're flying. If you're going uphill, you know, up a big mountain, you're, you're walking. So this course is a rectangle, and if people can imagine that there's a slight downhill going one way, a slight uphill going the other way. Um, w-... They can s-... They switch directions every day. That's the only variation. So people tend to, to run the downhills probably at eight- to 10-minute-per-mile pace. They'll walk all the corners, they'll walk the uphills. Um, so it might take someone anywhere between seven and, or b-... Anywhere between six and eight minutes to do a full lap. Um, and along the way, they, they might be eating, they might be drinking. People have to take about 20 liters of water, five gallons or so of water a day. Um, across the day, they're trying to do about 60 miles, and that puts you just on the edge. People are generally trying to do 62, 65. Some are doing 70, 75.

   12. CWChris Williamson32:19

       Mm-hmm.

   13. SRSanjay Rawal32:19

       So it's not like they're, they're pushing it all day long. In this type of a race, you can't push it all day long. You have to, to be at a state where you can do 70 miles and then, believe it or not, recover overnight on four or five hours of sleep, and then get up the next morning and do 70 more miles for 45 days or so.

   14. CWChris Williamson32:41

       So that's about, about f-... Is that four miles an hour, ish?

   15. SRSanjay Rawal32:45

       Ish. It's like four miles an hour with your breaks will get you 60 miles a day.

   16. CWChris Williamson32:51

       Mm-hmm.

   17. SRSanjay Rawal32:51

       But, you know, four miles an hour is a fast walk.

   18. CWChris Williamson32:54

       Yeah.

   19. SRSanjay Rawal32:54

       So do a fast walk for an hour. You go, "Okay, that was a fast walk." Try doing it for 15 or 16 hours. Um, so most people will jog and then shuffle and then jog and then shuffle. Um, they're not breaking any speed barriers. But the best qu-... The best people in, in the, in... The best people who have run the best times have all achieved pretty fast marathons, uh, pretty fast 50 and 100-mile races, um, apart from the 3100.

   20. CWChris Williamson33:25

       So they're competent across a, a range of distances, then?

   21. SRSanjay Rawal33:29

       Yeah. Th- But they, they tend to get better as the distance gets longer.

   22. CWChris Williamson33:32

       Mm-hmm. It was interesting, I was watching, uh, an analysis of Kipchoge's performance last week, and, um, they were talking about the fact that... I think he, he was at the Olympics. Is he... Was he in the 5,000 meters that he was in?

   23. SRSanjay Rawal33:47

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson33:48

       Yeah. Uh, but he performed, like, okay, but they didn't even get selected for Kenya at 2012 and then 2016. He wasn't even in the Olympic squad, and he found... Or something like that, and he found that his longer distances were really where he came into his own, and then when he transitioned to road running.

   25. SRSanjay Rawal34:04

       Well, he, he was an in- in- incredible 3,000, 5,000, 10,000-meter runner. Like he... He wasn't at the... He wasn't the all-time best like Kenenisa Bekele, um, but he moved pretty effortlessly to the marathon. There are some people that have... That have been great 10K runners that haven't moved that effortlessly.

   26. CWChris Williamson34:24

       Yeah. I get it. So getting onto the race itself, it starts with a one-minute meditation.

   27. SRSanjay Rawal34:30

       Yeah. E- Every morning at 6:00 AM, there's a short meditation. Um, and I can't say how focused people are, 'cause if you, if you, if you watch the movie and you see how they look at 6:00 AM, they... It looks like, it looks like a war zone. Um, it generally takes about an hour for people to warm up. Everyone, for the most part, will pound like Starbucks double shot cans of coffee to just get everything going.

   28. CWChris Williamson34:54

       (laughs)

   29. SRSanjay Rawal34:55

       Between 6:00 AM and 11:00 AM, the temperature is pretty tolerable. In Fahrenheit, it'll be between 60 and 68 Fahrenheit. I'm guessing like 13 Celsius or so. But between 11:00 and 6:00 PM, it can climb to 32 C, 34 C, 36 C. So you're talking 96, 98, 100 degrees.

   30. CWChris Williamson35:20

       That's brutal.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. CWChris Williamson45:00

      uh, approach to it. One of them is the Formula 1 car approach, which it would appear that Nike used with Breaking2 and then the INEOS 1:59 Challenge used as well, which is, um, very, very specific amounts of hydration that are tailored to the particular athlete. A shoe which is incredibly honed and everything just fine, fine-tuned down to its, its most component parts. Like they were taking... Giving Kipchoge water, letting him take as much as he wanted, then taking it back and measuring how much he'd drank and then working out how much more he needed to compensate. So that's one side, the Formula 1 side. Then the other side is what I would call the David Goggins approach-

   2. SRSanjay Rawal45:39

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson45:39

      ... um, which is kind of just the ramen noodles, spit and sawdust, like tape my knees back together and get after it approach. Um, your mailman from Helsinki, what's... Where does he fall on that spectrum?

   4. SRSanjay Rawal45:56

      So I... It's a great question. You know, e- even with Kipchoge, it's like we see them in the performance being highly regulated because they're trying to achieve a very specific, potentially unreachable goal. But as you'd referenced, in his training camp in Kenya, it's a spartan lifestyle. They're not measuring calories. They're eating a lot. You know, they're actually getting a lot of joy from their food. They're eating a lot of traditional foods, unprocessed foods, but they drink a ton of very sugary milk tea and they eat a ton of bread and toast. So it's not a highly regulated-

   5. CWChris Williamson46:31

      Yeah.

   6. SRSanjay Rawal46:32

      ... you know, raw, vegan-

   7. CWChris Williamson46:34

      Yeah.

   8. SRSanjay Rawal46:34

      ... you know-

   9. CWChris Williamson46:35

      Plant-based, yeah, yeah, yeah.

   10. SRSanjay Rawal46:36

       Plant-based. They're, they're, they're getting joy from their food and they're using their food as fuel. Ashby Hanal lives in a little shack in the woods in Finland and I swear to God he doesn't drink water. He says, "Water is boring." Like, "Why drink water when you can drink soda?"

   11. CWChris Williamson46:52

       (laughs)

   12. SRSanjay Rawal46:52

       He probably drinks about two to three liters of soda a day. He always has, like, bars of chocolate everywhere. He eats ramen two or three times a day. He just loves it. He eats wha- he just loves food, he loves eating what he likes to eat, and so he gets this tremendous amount of joy from what he does. I mean, it's the, it's the example of looking at guys like the comedian George Burns. Guys who live to like 100 drinking three or four glasses of whiskey a day, three or four cigars, lots of steak, but living with this joyful exuberance.

   13. CWChris Williamson47:26

       Mm.

   14. SRSanjay Rawal47:26

       Living with this, like, childlike quality. Um, in the case of Kipchoge and Ashby Hanal, it's far more spartan, it's far more simple. Their needs are extraordinary, extraordinarily minimal, um, but they get joy out of what they get joy out of. The... It's just not the same type of, uh, comfort that, that I might seek.

   15. CWChris Williamson47:47

       So do the guys who are doing this particular event, the 3100 race, are they using a recovery protocol? Have they got the foam roller out in between? Are they eating... I, I mean, is, is our mailman still just living on ramen and chocolate and, and, and Coke while he's doing this event?

   16. SRSanjay Rawal48:05

       Well, wha- when he set the, the, the course record in 2015 where he averaged almost 77 miles a day for 40 days, people said that he did so well because his handler refused to give him Coke as much as he wanted.

   17. CWChris Williamson48:21

       Okay.

   18. SRSanjay Rawal48:21

       So like, th- they kept him off the sweets, you know, but-

   19. CWChris Williamson48:23

       Okay. Yeah, cool. They've wean- they've weaned him off, right? Yeah.

   20. SRSanjay Rawal48:25

       Yeah, but it's like, if it was up to him, he'd, he'd eat pizza and cheesecake all day long. But in terms of recovery protocol, you know, it... You know, people do take it very, very seriously. He's an exception where he just takes a multivitamin-

   21. CWChris Williamson48:39

       (clears throat)

   22. SRSanjay Rawal48:39

       ... and he eats and drinks as he, as he sees fit.

   23. CWChris Williamson48:42

       Mm.

   24. SRSanjay Rawal48:43

       A lot of other people eat a very particular vegetarian diet during the race.... they're very careful about their sugar intake, their inflammatory response. They're taking lots of herbs, lots of vitamins. There's lots and lots and lots of massage at night. Some people have masseuses or masseurs massage them for the first hour of their sleep, like between 12:00 AM and 1:00 AM.

   25. CWChris Williamson49:07

       (laughs)

   26. SRSanjay Rawal49:08

       Um, like there's a, there's a significant side on, on the crew and, and, and handling side as well.

   27. CWChris Williamson49:13

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   28. SRSanjay Rawal49:14

       But not for everybody.

   29. CWChris Williamson49:15

       How many people enter the race typically per year?

   30. SRSanjay Rawal49:18

       W- They get between 10 and 15 a year. The overall completion rate, uh, for the last 24 years now has been, uh, about 62%. That said, you know, if there- if in any year there's 10 runners, there'll be seven men, um, three women, more or less, in terms of the split. Pretty much all the women complete the race. I would say maybe 75 to 80% of the women complete the race who enter. Um, probably 50% of the men complete the race. So fewer women enter the race, but there's a higher percentage of finishers there.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:04:36

   Yeah. …

   1. CWChris Williamson1:00:00

      we've got, um, the Barkley Marathon, uh, guys-

   2. SRSanjay Rawal1:00:03

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:00:03

      ... have just recently released that thing where you have to do a number of miles per hour.

   4. SRSanjay Rawal1:00:09

      Yeah. It call- actually it's called The Big Backyards and Courtney Dauwalter won it m- pretty recently. You- it's- it's- I think it's a 4.1-mile loop in The Backyard of Lazarus, the- the founder of the Barkley Marathon, and you have that- it's- it's in one-hour cycles. You have an hour to complete the 4.1 and you have to show up to do your next lap precisely on the hour. So if you finish it super fast, that's your rest time.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00:37

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SRSanjay Rawal1:00:38

      If you don't quite make it, you don't get to start the next lap. So, it's really a race of attrition. So what happened a couple years ago was Courtney Dauwalter was neck and neck with the male leader and a number of people dropped out and they pushed it to ... God, I- people will have to look it up themselves but-... a couple hundred miles. Um, it was ... They were over 60 hours, no sleep or whatever sleep you can get in between your return and the start of the next hour. Now, here's the kicker. Let's say you and I are doing it and it's 11:00 PM and you finish at 11:55, I don't get there, you don't win the race. You have to start at 12 and finish that last lap solo. If you don't make it before 1:00, no one wins the race.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:01:31

      No way.

   8. SRSanjay Rawal1:01:32

      Yeah. So-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:01:32

      I didn't know that rule. That's brutal.

   10. SRSanjay Rawal1:01:34

       Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's beautiful that way. And these types of, like, unsanctioned, unregulated races really are much more similar to the types of things that we used to do in running. Like, the, uh, Native Americans and the Bushmen would look at running as a game. It wasn't just point to point, like, one against the world. There was one type of race that was done in the, in the indigenous Northeast of the United States where there would be teams of three or four, and there would be maybe 10 teams and there's one corn bushel. And we'd all start at the same place and the team that carries the corn bushel across the finish line, maybe 10 miles away, wins. They, they'll, they'll draw straws to see who has to carry the corn bushel from beginning, but you have to capture the corn bushel from the other runners. So it's a matter of like, I'm not gonna try to take it from you at the beginning, but I'm not gonna let you cross at the end. So there's a lot of intricate strategy and there's a lot of wrestling. It's like you literally have to, to wrest the bushel away from the other team. So it's these things which are not measured, you can't say they had the fastest time or they had the slowest time, but it's much more about running and play and strategy than what most of us have been used to in, like, schoolyard running.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:02:53

       I wonder how many more people would enjoy running if that was the ethos that was brought to it.

   12. SRSanjay Rawal1:02:59

       Well, that, that, that, you know, that, that's, that's become rugby, right? It's like ... (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson1:03:03

       (laughs) Yeah, you're right, you're right to, uh, uh-

   14. SRSanjay Rawal1:03:05

       You know, so you're right. So it's like, you know, the more we can broaden running, the more we can look at obstacle course racing, the more we can kind of broaden out this exploration of the world on our feet and the more we can bring spirituality into our feet and into our breath, I think the more we'll get out of the multifarious world of endurance running.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:03:25

       Couldn't agree more. So, Sanjay, where can people watch the 3100 race? We'll have 50/50 UK:US listening, so where should they head?

   16. SRSanjay Rawal1:03:34

       So to, to, to watch 3100: Run and Become, uh, in, in both parts of the world, you can download it on Amazon, you can download it on iTunes. It's available right now, uh, mid-October to stream on Amazon Prime in the US, and it will be streamable on Amazon Prime in the UK by mid-November.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:03:52

       Amazing. Well, I will leave the links. If I manage to find them, I will leave the links, uh, to where you can go and check that out in the show notes below. Uh, if anyone wants to follow you online, Sanjay, where should they head?

   18. SRSanjay Rawal1:04:04

       @MrSanjayR or @3100film.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:04:09

       Amazing. Thank you so much. It's been, it's been absolutely awesome. I'm gonna ... Uh, I'm looking forward to when the, the documentary comes out and good luck with the rest of the promo for it.

   20. SRSanjay Rawal1:04:18

       Thanks a million, Chris. It was great to be on your show.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:04:23

       Outfits. Ah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Outfits.

Episode duration: 1:04:36