by Rich Roll
I still opt for a scoop of plant-based protein powder from time to time—after a particularly brutal workout, if I’m feeling overly fatigued from training, or when I know I haven’t sourced quite enough whole food protein from my meals. I prefer to combine a variety of plant-based proteins for this purpose, such as hemp, pea, and sprouted brown rice, to ensure maximum bioavailability and assimilation of all the essential amino acids our bodies can’t produce themselves. In fact, I recently formulated my own plant-based protein recovery supplement, in cooperation with microbiologist Compton Rom of Ascended Health, called Jai Repair. Infused with a proprietary blend of additional reparative nutrients like Cordyceps mushroom extracts, L-glutamine, vitamin B12, and antioxidants such as resveratrol, Jai Repair is scientifically devised to enhance rapid recovery from exercise-induced stress and is a formula I’ve come to rely on as a key component in my training regime. For more information on this and many other products in my nutritional rotation, please refer to Appendix III, Resources.
The selection of foods I ingest during training has similarly evolved. In the early months of my Ultraman buildup, I ate what almost every endurance athlete I know eats in the midst of a challenging workout: a lot of sugary, electrolyte-laced, artificially colored and flavored drinks and gels. Popular brands like Gatorade, Cytomax, GU, and PowerBar are ubiquitous in the athletic and multisport world. Aside from some varieties, most of these products are technically vegan. They’re hardly whole foods, though, and yet I was quite reluctant to steer away from them. They seemed tried and true—the go-to source of training nutrition for so many athletes. I needed the calories to fuel my efforts, yet there didn’t appear to be adequate natural alternatives. One day, while out training with my friend Vinnie Tortorich, a hard-core endurance athlete and veteran of ultra-cycling races such as the Furnace Creek 508, a 508-mile nonstop bike race through Death Valley, he chastised me as I sucked on a gel. “Rich, you gotta ditch that sugar crap. You can’t go all day on that stuff.”
He pointed out the harm I was inflicting on my system by consuming so much artificial flavoring and coloring, and suggested replacing the simple sugar content of these products with a complex carbohydrate source: a more slowly metabolized energy that maintains and stabilizes blood sugar over a longer period of time. This is critical in ultra-distance training—which routinely involves eight- to ten-hour rides, for example. So I took Vinnie’s advice and ditched the gels and colorful powders in favor of electrolyte sources such as simple table salt, coconut water, SaltStick tablets, and Endurolytes capsules by Hammer Nutrition. For calories, I began to experiment with non-GMO maltodextrin-based concoctions, such as Perpetuem by Hammer Nutrition, and actual food—for example, yams, sandwiches spread with almond butter or avocado and Vegenaise, as well as rice balls and baked potato wedges. Such foods might not produce the immediate burst of energy provided by a gel, but you’ll be hard-pressed to suffer a blood-sugar crash. And my routine of taking in about two hundred calories an hour of such foods is one I’ve stuck to, since it keeps my strength high throughout even my longest training sessions.
At some point in my experimentation with nutrition I noticed that the more nutrient-dense raw vegetables—particularly dark leafy greens—that I incorporated into my regime, the more energetic and steady was my mood and disposition. So a certain leaf called kale became my new best friend, along with spinach, Swiss chard, and mustard greens. Also making their way into my daily green smoothies were chlorophyll, marine phytoplankton, beet greens, and spirulina. And as I began to add healthy fats such as avocados, coconut oil, and hemp oil to my blends, salads, and vegetable stir-fry dishes, I found my energy further increasing and stabilizing without any negative impact on my waistline, which was nonetheless continuing to shrink.
I’d assumed that with all this training, my appetite would be enormous, just as it had been throughout my swimming career. In fact, I expected to be at war with my cravings, given that I’d ditched the meat and dairy. But I was astonished to discover that as my body continued to adapt to the training load, and the nutritional density of my foods continued to increase, I became less hungry. My appetite actually went down. I no longer craved the “empty calorie” foods I’d relied on early in my transition to plant-based eating, foods that were technically vegan and admittedly tasty yet devoid of significant nutrients and, in my case, quite addictive. “Vegan junk food,” as I like to call it. White bread, processed snacks (such as potato chips and french fries), and “fake” meats such as Tofurky faded from my program. And the less gluten I consumed, the better I felt, slept, and performed athletically. For the many recipes I have relied on over the last four years, see Appendix III, Resources, Jai Seed Vegan eCookbook.
With each successive week, I watched my body change. I became stronger, leaner; my face even changed—until I was almost unrecognizable, in the best way.
In August 2008, I returned to the sports training medical center in Santa Monica, Phase IV, for another lactate test and was proud to discover that I’d made a significant leap in aerobic capacity. My numbers were hardly elite. But my improvement was significant. By eating plants, I was getting stronger. And by going slow and resting, I was getting faster. The irony wasn’t lost on me. “Speed,” I was learning, is an elusive concept in endurance sports, particularly when it comes to ultra-endurance, a discipline in which maximum velocity and effort are values of little importance. Instead, the critical charge is to improve the ratio of exertion to relative speed; something that in my case was improving rapidly and quite dramatically. Efficiency—that was the prize I was questing after. Or as Chris liked to call it—true endurance.
MANAGING LIFE
As the training volume increased, it inevitably encroached on every other area of my life. I was forced to make some serious adjustments in the way I managed my daily routine in order to meet my professional responsibilities, devote the appropriate amount of time to family, and maintain some level of life equilibrium—a sense of normalcy. To be certain, the challenge of completing Ultraman had become very important to me—a mission. But I’m not a professional athlete. Time training meant time not earning. And it also meant, of course, precious hours away from my family. In other words, this mission—even if completed successfully—would be a failure if it came at the cost of my livelihood or intimacy with my wife and kids. No, I wasn’t going to become an absentee husband or father. I’d heard too many stories of amateur endurance athletes who became obsessed with their training, only to end up divorced or disconnected from their children. And after all the pain I’d suffered to build the life I was so grateful to have, there was no way I was going to let that happen.
It was time to honestly evaluate how I spent every minute of every day. I scanned for wasted time, inefficient hours, and activities that failed to meet the litmus test of mission critical. Utilizing many of the tools set forth in Timothy Ferriss’s The Four-Hour Workweek, I made some drastic cuts, eventually creating a lifestyle template that forms the underpinnings of how I live and manage time today. On the professional front, I did away with all nonessential networking and business-development lunches, events, and meetings, a favorite Hollywood pastime that always sucked up precious hours and rarely led to new business. Unless it was crucial, I politely declined meeting with clients in person, forcing conversations to the phone. And anything that could be done via e-mail replaced lengthy conference calls. High-maintenance clients who represented low revenue were let go. Hours spent on the freeway commuting were traded whenever possible for the home office or the local Starbucks. I went digital on all fronts, untethering my business from location and always having handy my laptop or iPhone.
And because I was self-employed—admittedly, a crucial component in my success equation—I could make creative decisions about when and where I worked, giving me the flexibility to train into the late morning and sometimes mid-afternoon without suffering professional consequences. It was a bargain I generally repaid by drafting deals late into the evening
, sometimes pulling all-nighters. And come “rest day” Monday, I typically used the extra time to cram three days of work into one.
Because we live in a very remote and rural area far from the locus of my profession, my base was—and to this day remains—my truck. In the run-up to my first Ultraman, my old orange Land Rover Discovery doubled as a mobile office, traveling multisport training unit, and wandering vegan commissary. With a precision that bordered on compulsiveness, each day I packed the vehicle’s rear with all of my work and fitness equipment—my bike attire; a plastic cabinet stocked with cycling parts; a tool kit for repairs; a few pairs of running shoes and my swimming gear; a duffel of clothes to meet any professional, social, or training occasion; a cooler stocked with all the food I needed to fuel my training; plus large jugs of water and sanitary wipes for an impromptu shower after a trail run. Some days it appeared as if I were headed out of town for a week. And I can’t tell you how many grungy gas station bathrooms I used for a quick post-workout wash, changing clothes like a fugitive in preparation for a work meeting.
On the mental and spiritual front, implementing a consistent meditation practice became paramount. Whether early in the morning, during a free half hour during the day, or even while out on a run or ride, I strived to set aside a few daily moments—not a lot, often a half hour but sometimes just ten minutes—to go inside. Putting into practice tools I’d gleaned from yoga, as well as Julie’s experience in such matters, I became increasingly adept at gaining the upper hand when it came to persistent negative internal chatter. Meditation became a powerful tool that calmed my nerves, relieved my anxiety, and diminished the fear and pangs of self-doubt threatening to capsize my fragile ship (for information on recommended meditation programs, please refer to Appendix III, Resources, Jai Release Meditation Programs).
Yet the challenge of governing my schedule nonetheless remained Herculean. Many days I felt like I was spinning plates while tenuously walking a tightrope. My phone could be counted on to ring repeatedly with urgent business matters while I was out on the bike or trail, forcing me to pull up and sit in the dirt for sometimes upward of an hour to hash out deal points with talent agents and lawyers on a client’s movie deal. Sweat drenching the phone, I often thought to myself, What would these people in their suits in Beverly Hills think if they could see me right now? My clients had no idea what I was up to—and for quite some time, I encouraged their ignorance out of fear of losing precious business.
I soon came to realize, though, that as long as the work got done, properly and on time, nobody cared where I was or what I was doing. And as my meditation program continued to develop, I eventually mustered the courage to let go of the fear. Coming clean, I learned to speak honestly with colleagues regarding the reality of my shifting and ever-evolving focus.
With respect to family, on weekends it was typical for Julie to immediately hand me a crying baby or two just as I haggardly returned from a very long ride or run. “Your turn,” she’d say, smiling as she headed to a yoga class or elsewhere. Fair enough. Several hours later it wasn’t unusual to find me juggling children, awash in mayhem, my legs cramping and my still-unshowered body clothed in a sweaty cycling bib—not advisable if you’re prone to saddle sores like I am.
When something had to give, it was usually sleep. And the rest of the time, more often than not, it was a workout cut short. In turn, Julie supported me by managing the lion’s share of household responsibilities.
But let’s be honest. Juggling twenty-five-hour training weeks while trying to work full-time as a lawyer meant more hours away from my family than I care to admit. Most Saturdays, hours into an absurdly long ride and often so delirious I’d actually lose mental track of which canyon I happened to be climbing, I’d think to myself, You could be at the park right now with the kids like a normal dad. On cold rainy nights when I ran drenched and corpse-like through the dimly lit neighborhood streets, that questioning voice would return: Why are you doing this to yourself?
I wish I could say I had the answer. Compensation for my awkward youth perhaps? An effort to manifest swimming dreams unrealized? I’d like to think I was taking middle age to the mat and pinning it into submission. Maybe it was all these reasons. Or perhaps none. The only thing I knew with clarity was that a voice deep in my heart continued to chant, Keep going. You’re on the right track.
SPIRITUAL RECALIBRATION
Come autumn of 2008, four months into my training for Ultraman, I was amazed at just how quickly I was improving. Every Saturday now involved a ride of no fewer than one hundred very hilly miles, followed the next day by at least a marathon distance of running. Then came the first of four progressive race-simulation weekends in which I approximated the Ultraman distances Friday through Sunday, growing longer each weekend. In the first week of October, I completed approximately 80 percent of the Ultraman overall distance, culminating in a forty-mile run along the Pacific Coast Highway from Venice Beach all the way to Point Dume in Malibu. And back. A forty-mile run! It was, without a doubt, up to that point the greatest physical achievement of my life.
However, accomplishing these athletic benchmarks came at great cost. My butt ached terribly from saddle sores, undercarriage infections that became so painful I could no longer sit on my bike saddle. After Sunday runs, it took minutes to climb the stairs to my bedroom. And plenty of days I could barely drag my creaky bones out of bed.
But the biggest obstacle was only starting to come into focus. Despite my intense efforts to keep all parts of my life working in harmony, our finances began to suffer. Too much focus on Ultraman. Not enough emphasis on generating new business. For the first time in my marriage, the bills began to pile up. Mentally, I began to flog myself. You’re dropping the ball, Rich.
The crisis crystallized during my final race-simulation weekend, in early November, just weeks prior to Ultraman. Setting out at 4 A.M. on Saturday for a 130-mile ride, I froze for four hours, until the sun came up, because I couldn’t afford to buy the proper cold-weather gear. And miscalculating my caloric intake, I became delirious just outside Ojai, with no food left when I pulled over at a rickety hamburger stand on a country road in the middle of nowhere. Not only did I not have any cash on hand, my bank account happened to be overdrawn at the time, rendering my ATM card useless. Idiot! Sixty-five miles from home, starving and worse than penniless, I was forced to improvise, my shaking arms dumpster-diving in the garbage bins behind the restaurant for something, anything—to resuscitate my failing body. Rummaging, I inhaled a mélange of old french fries, half-eaten onion rings, and discarded cheeseburgers. A very rare stray from my vegan regime. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
In retrospect I should have just asked for some free food, but I was more than embarrassed. Mortified, in fact. The journey home was a meek crawl, requiring every synapse just to remain upright as cold darkness fell and the shakes resumed. But the intense fatigue was nothing compared to my sense of shame. I was in deep despair over how I could have let things go so awry.
I’m done with this ridiculous fool’s errand, my brain shrieked as I inched my way home, depleted. I couldn’t bear the thought of my family suffering so I could complete a silly race. We had real-world problems, and as the man of the house, it was up to me to solve them.
Then the oddest thing occurred. Pedaling in the dark just miles from home, I began to lose the feeling of the road beneath me. Suddenly my wheels spun freely, and as if Newton’s law of gravity had been revoked, I felt my body effortlessly angle skyward until I was enveloped by nothing but an expansive darkness. At that moment I had a sense of unexplainable oneness with the universe and, also, a sense of joy and gratitude. More than that, actually: a sense of love. I was in a deep meditative state in which my mind became absolutely still, liberated from thought, at peace. It’s what the yogis call samadhi.
Later, my gray matter convinced me the experience was nothing more than an exhaustion-fueled hallucination, a delusion precipitated by low blood
sugar. It happens. I’ve since been regaled with similar stories from many an ultra athlete. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d experienced something more. Something profound, even. But what did it mean? Julie didn’t hesitate with her perspective.
“Can’t you see? You’re being called to step into who you really are,” she whispered, holding my weary head in her warm hands that night. “Money comes and money goes. That’s not the issue. We’ll get through this. But you have to let go of old ways of thinking. Surrender your ego. Because the solution to our problems is in faith. Nothing else matters. Stay strong. And just keep doing what you’re doing.”
With those words, Julie gave me a rare and beautiful gift, a potent reminder that when purpose aligns with faith, there can be no failure and all needs will be met—because the universe is infinitely abundant.
The next morning I woke up and ran. Forty-five miles.
And the following week, more than enough money arrived to pay our bills and finance my excursion to Hawaii for the big race.
I’m ready for Ultraman.
CHAPTER NINE
THE ALOHA, KOKUA, AND OHANA OF ULTRAMAN
Just finish.
In 2008, this was my only goal for Ultraman. I’d pushed my body as far as it could go in the six months of prep time. And I’d trained my mind to overcome fear and welcome the suffering I’d soon face. But I was also a realist. Remember, two years ago you struggled to make it up the staircase. Don’t do anything stupid. Be conservative. This is just a celebration of your life-changing journey. Enjoy the ride.