by Rich Roll
MORE PRAISE FOR FINDING ULTRA
“If you liked Born to Run, you’ll love Finding Ultra … one of the best books about health and fitness that I’ve ever read.”
—NEAL D. BARNARD, M.D., President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
“Finding Ultra is the ultimate story of hope, perseverance, and endurance against life’s biggest challenges.”
—WILLIAM COPE MOYERS, New York Times bestselling author of Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption
“I loved this. A rare book, unusual for its honesty and willingness to bare all, that really does deserve such superlatives as ‘riveting’ and ‘compelling.’ I was moved by watching Roll conquer his demons, and felt privileged to share in his eventual enlightenment. By laying it on the line, Roll absolutely wins us over.”
—RIP ESSELSTYN, New York Times bestselling author of The Engine 2 Diet
“An incredibly inspirational book about achieving greatness at any age through self-belief and a positive attitude. Rich Roll is a true champion of life and sport.”
—LEVI LEIPHEIMER, two-time stage winner of the Tour de France and Olympic time-trial bronze medalist
“Finding Ultra is an inspired first-person account of fast living and even faster swimming, biking, and running that will leave you convinced of the power of your own will.”
—BRENDAN BRAZIER, bestselling author of Thrive
“An inspiring story of a man whose life took a tragic turn but then rebounded spectacularly. Down but not out, Rich Roll rose like a phoenix, taking the commitment to his own health to a new level and achieving a remarkable transformation. I believe everyone will be able to relate to this plant-powered athlete’s riveting story and perhaps garner some inspiration for their own journey. A top read!”
—LUKE McKENZIE, five-time Ironman champion
Copyright © 2012 by Richard David Roll
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN ARCHETYPE with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roll, Rich.
Finding Ultra : rejecting middle age, becoming one of the world’s fittest men, and discovering myself / by Rich Roll.—1st ed.
1. Roll, Rich. 2. Triathletes—United States—Biography. 3. Older athletes—United States—Biography. 4. Ironman triathlons. 5. Ultraman World Championships. I. Title.
GV1060.72.R65A3 2011
796.42′57092—dc53
[B] 2012003094
eISBN: 978-0-307-95221-9
Jacket design by Nupoor Gordon
Jacket photograph © John Segesta
v3.1_r1
TO JULIE
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
CHAPTER ONE
A LINE IN THE SAND
CHAPTER TWO
CHLORINE DREAMS
CHAPTER THREE
COLLEGE CURRENTS: FAST WATER, HIGH TIMES, AND CALIFORNIA COOL
CHAPTER FOUR
FROM UNDERWATER TO UNDER THE INFLUENCE
CHAPTER FIVE
WHITE SANDS AND RED STRIPE: HITTING BOTTOM IN PARADISE
CHAPTER SIX
INTO THE LIGHT
CHAPTER SEVEN
MY SECRET WEAPON: POWER IN PLANTS
CHAPTER EIGHT
TRAINING AS LIFE
CHAPTER NINE
THE ALOHA, KOKUA, AND OHANA OF ULTRAMAN
Photo Insert
CHAPTER TEN
EPIC5: ROOKIE MISTAKES, BURNING SKIES, KAHUNA SPIRITS, AND A DRUNKEN ANGEL IN THE PAIN CAVE OF THE REAL HAWAII
Conclusion
APPENDIX I
The Nuts and Bolts of the PlantPower Diet
APPENDIX II
A PlantPower Day in the Life
APPENDIX III
Resources
Acknowledgments
PREFACE
The crash comes out of nowhere. One second I’m feeling good, cycling as fast as I can at a good clip, even through the pouring rain. Then I feel a slight bump and my left hand slips off the damp handlebar. I’m hurled off the bike seat and through the air. I experience a momentary loss of gravity, then bam! My head slams hard to the ground as my body skids twenty feet across wet pavement, bits of gravel biting into my left knee and burning my shoulder raw as my bike tumbles along on top of me, my right foot still clamped in the pedal.
A second later I’m lying faceup with the rain beating down and the taste of blood on my lips. I struggle to release my right foot and pull myself up using the shoulder that doesn’t seem to be bleeding. Somehow, I find a sitting position. I make a fist with my left hand and pain shoots up to the shoulder—the skin has been sheared clean off, and blood mixes with rainwater in little rivers. My left knee has a similar look. I try to bend it—bad idea. My eyes close, and behind them there’s a pulsating purple-and-red color, a pounding in my ears. I take a deep breath, let it out. I think of the thousand-plus hours of training I’ve done to get this far. I have to do this, I have to get up. It’s a race. I have to get back in it. Then I see it. My left pedal shattered, carbon pieces strewn about the pavement. One hundred and thirty-five miles still to go today—hard enough with two working pedals. But with only one? Impossible.
It’s barely daybreak on the Big Island of Hawaii, and I’m on a pristine stretch of terrain known as the Red Road, which owes its name to its red cinder surface, bits of which are now deeply lodged in my skin. Just moments before, I was the overall race leader at about 35 miles into the 170-mile, Day Two stage of the 2009 Ultraman World Championships, a three-day, 320-mile, double-ironman distance triathlon. Circumnavigating the entire Big Island, Ultraman is an invitation-only endurance-fest, limited to thirty-five competitors fit enough and crazy enough to attempt it. Day One entails a 6.2-mile ocean swim, followed by a 90-mile bike ride. Day Two is 170 miles on the bike. And the event’s culmination on Day Three is a 52.4-mile run on the searing hot lava fields of the Kona Coast.
This is my second try at Ultraman—the first occurred just one year before—and I have high hopes. Last year, I stunned the endurance sports community by coming out of nowhere at the ripe age of forty-two to place a respectable eleventh overall after only six months of serious training, and that was after decades of reckless drug and alcohol abuse that nearly killed me and others, plus no physical exertion more strenuous than lugging groceries into the house and maybe repotting a plant. Before that first race, people said that, for a guy like me, attempting something like Ultraman was harebrained, even stupid. After all, they knew me as a sedentary, middle-aged lawyer, a guy with a wife, children, and a career to think about, now off chasing a fool’s errand. Not to mention the fact that I was training—and intended to compete—on an entirely plant-based diet. Impossible, they told me. Vegans are spindly weaklings, incapable of anything more athletic than kicking a Hacky Sack. No proteins in plants, you’ll never make it. I heard it all. But deep down, I knew I could do it.
And I did—proving them wrong and defying not just “middle age,” but the seemingly immutable stereotypes about the physical capabilities of a person who eats nothing but plants. And now here I was again, back at it a second time.
Just one day before, I’d begun the race in great form. I completed the Day One 6.2-mile swim at Keauhou Bay in first place, a full ten minutes ahead of the next competitor. Clocking the sixth-fastest swim split in Ultraman’s twenty-five-year history, I was off to an amazing start. In the late 1980s, I’d com
peted as a swimmer at Stanford, so this wasn’t a huge surprise. But cycling? Different story altogether. Three years ago I didn’t even own a bike, let alone know how to race one. And on that first day of the race, after I’d blasted out two and a half hours in strong ocean currents, deep fatigue had set in. With salt water–singed lungs and my throat raw from vomiting up my breakfast half a dozen times in Kailua Bay, I faced ninety miles in blistering humidity and gale-force headwinds en route to Volcanoes National Park. I did the math. It was only a matter of time before the cycling specialists would quickly make up lost time and I’d get passed on the final twenty miles of the day, a backbreaking four-thousand-foot climb up to the volcano. I kept looking back, fully expecting to see the Brazilian three-time Ultraman champ, Alexandre Ribiero, fast on my heels, tracking me like prey. But he was nowhere to be seen. In fact, I never saw a single other competitor all day. I could hardly believe it as I rounded the final turn through the finish-line chute, my wife Julie and stepson Tyler screaming from our crew van as I won the Day One stage! Leaping from the van, Julie and Tyler ran into my arms; I buried myself in their embrace, tears pouring down my face. And even more shocking was just how long I waited for the next competitor to arrive—a full ten minutes! I was winning Ultraman by ten minutes! It wasn’t just a dream come true; I’d made an indelible mark on the endurance sports landscape, one for the record books. And for a guy like me—a plant-eating, middle-aged dad—well, with everything I’d faced and overcome, it was nothing short of remarkable.
So the morning of Day Two, all eyes were on me as I waited with the other athletes at the start line in Volcanoes National Park, tensed and spring-coiled in the early-morning dark, cold rain falling. When the gun sounded, all the top guys leapt like jaguars, trying to establish a quick lead and form an organized front peloton. It’s an understatement to say that I wasn’t prepared to begin the 170-mile ride with a flat-out, gut-busting sprint; I hadn’t warmed up before and was caught completely off guard by just how fast the pace would be. Accelerating downhill at a speed close to fifty miles per hour, I dug deep to hold pace and maintain a position within the lead group, but my legs quickly bloated with lactate and I drifted off the back of the pack.
For this initial twenty-mile rapid descent down the volcano, the situation is what’s called “draft legal,” meaning you can ride behind other riders and safely ensconce yourself in a “wind pocket.” Once enveloped in the group, you’re able to ride pace at a fraction of the energy output. The last thing you want to do is get “dropped,” leaving you to fend for yourself, a lone wolf struggling against the wind on nothing but your own energy. But that’s exactly what I’d become. I was behind the lead pack, yet far ahead of the next “chase” group. Only I felt less like a wolf than a skinny rat. A wet, cold skinny rat, irritated and mad at myself for my bad start, already winded and staring at eight hard hours of riding ahead. The rain made everything worse, plus the fact that I’d forgotten covers for my shoes, so my feet were soaked and frozen numb. Not a lot bothers me, including pain, but wet, cold feet make me crazy. I considered slowing down to let the chase group catch up, but they were too far back. My only option was to soldier on, solo.
When I reached the bottom of the descent, I made the turn down to the southeastern tip of the island just as the sun was rising. I was finally beginning to feel warmed up by the time I made the turn onto the Red Road. This section is the one part of the entire race that’s off-limits to crew support—no support cars allowed. For fifteen miles, you’re on your own. I saw no other riders as I flew through this rolling and lush but diabolical terrain, the pavement marked by potholes and sharp, difficult turns, gravel flying up constantly. Utterly alone, I concentrated on the whir and push of my bike, the silence of tropical dawn broken only by my own thoughts of how wet I was. I was also irritated that my wife Julie and the rest of my crew had blown the hydration hand-off before the “no car” zone, leaving me bone-dry for this lonely stretch. And just like that, I hit that bump. A Red Road face-plant.
I unsnap my helmet. It’s broken, a long crack threading through the center. I touch the top of my head, and under my matted, sweaty hair the skin feels tender. I squeeze my eyes shut, open them, and wiggle my fingers in front of my face. They’re all there, all five. I cover one eye, then the other. I can see just fine. Wincing, I straighten out my knee and look around. Aside from a bird that I should probably be able to identify—it’s long-necked with a sweeping black tail and a yellow chest—pecking at the ground by the bike, there’s not a soul around. I listen hard, straining to hear the rising approach of the next group of riders. But there’s nothing but the peaceful caw of a bird, a rustling in a tree close by, the slam of a screen door echoing through the trees, and over and over, the small crash of nearby ocean waves on sand.
Nausea moves through me. I hold my hand over my stomach and concentrate for a minute on the rise and fall of the skin beneath my hand, the in and out of my breath. I count to ten, then twenty. Anything to distract me from the pain now entering my shoulder like an army at full gallop—anything to keep me from focusing on the pulpy skin on my knee. The nausea subsides.
My shoulder is freezing up and I try to move it. It’s no good. I feel like the Tin Man, calling out for the oilcan. I flap my feet back and forth, my damn wet feet. I stand up gingerly and put weight on the bad knee. Grunting, I lift the bike up and straddle it, flipping at the one remaining pedal with my foot. No matter what, I have to somehow make it another mile to the end of the Red Road, where the crews are waiting, where Julie will take care of me and clean me up. We’ll put the bike in the van and shuttle back to the hotel.
My head throbs as I make a wobbly push-off and begin riding with one leg, the other dangling free, blood dripping from the knee. Beside me the sky is clearing into full morning over the ocean, a gray-white slate above muting the tropical sea to a dark-hued green, spotted with rain. I think of the thousands and thousands of hours I’ve trained for this, how far I’ve come from the overweight, cheeseburger-addicted, out-of-shape guy I was just two years ago. I think of how I completely overhauled not just my diet, and my body—but my entire lifestyle—inside and out. Another look at my broken pedal, and then I think about the 135 miles still ahead in the race: impossible. That’s it, I think, equal parts shame and relief flooding through me. For me, this race is over.
Somehow I press through that last mile or so of the Red Road, and soon I can make out the crews waiting ahead, vehicles parked, supplies and gear spread out in anticipation of tending to the approaching competitors. My heart begins to beat faster and I force myself to keep going toward them. I’ll have to face my wife and stepson Tyler, tell them what happened, tell them how I’ve failed not just me, but them—my family that has sacrificed so much in support of this dream. You don’t have to, a voice inside me whispers. Why don’t you just turn around—or, better yet, slink into the foliage before anyone sees you coming?
I see Julie pushing past the other people to greet me. It takes a moment before she realizes what has happened. Then it hits her, and I see shock and worry cross her face. I feel the tears well up in my eyes and tell myself to keep it together.
In the spirit of ohana, the Hawaiian word for “family” that is the soul of this race, I’m suddenly surrounded by half a dozen crew members—from other competitors’ crews—all rushing to my aid. Before Julie can even speak, Vito Biala, crewing today as part of a three-person relay team known as the “Night Train,” materializes with a first-aid kit and begins taking care of my wounds. “Let’s get you back on the road,” he states calmly. Vito is somewhat of an Ultraman legend and elder statesman, so I try to muster up the strength to return his wry smile. But the truth is, I can’t.
“Not gonna happen,” I tell him sheepishly. “Broken pedal. It’s over for me.” I gesture at the place on the bike where the left pedal used to be.
And I feel, somehow, a bit better. Just saying those words—actually telling Vito that I’ve decided to quit—lifts somet
hing dark off my shoulders. I’m relieved at what I’ve blundered into: an easy, graceful exit out of this mess, and very soon a warm hotel bed. I can already feel the soft sheets, imagine my head on the pillow. And tomorrow, instead of running a double marathon, I’ll take the family to the beach.
Next to Vito is competitor Kathy Winkler’s crew captain, Peter McIntosh. He looks at me and squints. “What kind of pedal?” he asks.
“A Look Kēo,” I stammer, wondering why he wants to know.
Peter vanishes as a pit crew of mechanics seize my bike and swing into action. As if trying to get an Indy 500 car back on the speedway, they begin running diagnostics—checking the frame for cracks, testing the brakes and derailleurs, eyeing the true of my wheels, Allen wrenches flying in all directions. I frown. What are they doing? Can’t they see I’m done!
Seconds later, Peter reappears—holding a brand-new pedal, identical to mine.
“But I—” My mind works furiously to understand how this situation has changed so dramatically from what I’d planned. They’re fixing me up, it’s dawning on me. They expect me to stay in the race! I wince as someone swabs my shoulder. This isn’t how it was going to be! I’d made up my mind: I’m hurt, the bike is broken; it’s over, isn’t it?
Julie, kneeling and bandaging my knee, glances up. She smiles. “I think it’s going to be okay,” she says.
Peter McIntosh rises from where he’s been adjusting the pedal into place. Staring directly into my eyes and sounding like a five-star general, he says, “This is not over. Now, get back on your bike and get it done.”
I am speechless. I swallow hard and look at the ground. Around me I can sense that the crews are all looking at me now, awaiting my response. They expect me to listen to Peter, to jump back on the bike, get going. Get back in it.