The Road to Sparta: How Dean Karnazes Relived The Ancient Battle & Epic Run That Inspired The...

Yo, it's Ben Greenfield. I got my friend Dean Carnazes on the show today. This dude is nuts. He ran across Greece and followed the old Spartan marathon Trail, and he didn't drop dead at the end. We talk about that and much more. Also, I don't know if you're a public radio fan, but you know how public radio and I think public television used to do this, too. They used to do, like, fundraising drives, turn, raise money. Yeah, I don't do that, but I do have a request for you. No, no, please don't turn it off. Don't fast forward. Can you leave a review on itunes if you haven't yet, Just go to itunes and do a search for the Ben Greenfield show or Ben Greenfield and leave a review. Just jot a note to yourself or whatever to do. It helps the show out a ton. Just go in there and, like, leave five stars or one if you hate me and say something nice. It could even be, like, one word like cool or rad or bomb or the shiznit. But those reviews help the show out a lot. So if you could do that, that would be awesome. And now I actually am going to tell you about some cool stuff before we go talk to Dean. The first thing I want to tell you about is mint. My kids and I go out in the backyard and we harvest wild mint. And I mean, it's really good as a palate cleanser, as an appetize, as a digestif.

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The research you read is that prolonged endurance training actually increases it. Running increases your telomere length versus decreasing it. So that's kind of always what I believed. Don't rely on anything extraneous. Just let your body perform to its best of its ability. And that's kind of the strategy I use. And from a practical standpoint, a lot of times I didn't have much time to do things flatlining as Fast as you can for 26.2 destroys you. That's exactly how I feel. I do a lot of just regular road marathons, and I feel crappy afterwards.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And if you're a history buff, you may know that back in about 490 BCE, there was this masochistic Greek guy named Pheidippides who ran for something like 36 hours straight from Athens to Sparta. He's. He's the guy who you might think of as the very first guy who ran a marathon. And I think the legend is that he dropped dead right afterwards. But the whole idea behind that was he was going after help to help defend Athens from a Persian invasion in. In the battle of fittingly enough, marathon. And in doing so, he saved the development of Western civilization and he inspired the birth of the marathon as we now know it. And of course, even now, you know, like 2,500 years later, that run still kind of stands out as one of the great physical endurance accomplishments in the history of mankind. Anyways, though, the reason I'm telling you all this is that my guest on today's show came up with this crazy idea of honoring this dude, Pheidippides, and actually going off and recreating that entire ancient journey, which, it turns out, was actually quite a bit more involved than just like, running a marathon. And my guest today is named Dean Carnazes. You may have heard about him before as being the guy who has done things like run 50 marathons in 50 days. He's done quite a bit more than that, as a matter of fact, and I'll fill you out in a second, but what I thought was very intriguing was Dean's most recent endeavor, in which he went off and he replicated this whole event that Pheidippides ran. But during this time, he also abstained from things like contemporary endurance nutrition, like sports drinks and energy gels. And he ate a lot of the stuff that Pheidippides would have only had available to Eat, like, figs and cured meats and mastic gum and all sorts of crazy stuff during the actual event. So I want to talk with Dean a little bit about that, about his new book, which I'm holding in my hands right now, and I just finished. It's called the Road to Sparta. Reliving the ancient battle, an epic run that inspired the world's greatest foot race. But before we jump in to the interview with Dean, if you haven't heard of him before, he's done some pretty crazy stuff. I mean, perhaps you have heard that he's run the 50 marathons in 50 days, but he's also run across the Sahara Desert. He's run a marathon to the south pole in minus 40 degrees, which I think is right up there with Wim Hof climbing Mount Everest in his underwear on 10 different occasions. He's run a 200 mile relay race solo. He is a swimmer. I don't know if you knew that, but he's actually swam the San Francisco Bay. He's raced bicycles for 24 hours straight. He's a surfer. He surfs some pretty big waves off the coast of Hawaii and California. And of course, he's also done a ton of running, run the 50 marathons in 50 US states in 50 consecutive days. And we're gonna geek out today with Dean on how he actually hacked some recovery and sleep during that time. He ran 3,000 miles in 2011 from the coast of California to New York City doing 40 to 50 miles a day. And one day he even ran 70 miles. And he's also been all over the place. I mean, the dude's been on the Today show in 60 minutes and the Late show with David Letterman and Late Night with Con and o'. Brien. He's been in Time, he's been in Newsweek, he's been People, gq, Men's Journal, Forbes, the list goes on and on. He's a pretty impressive endurance athlete, and he's also quite a charitable gentleman. He's raised millions of dollars for charity along the way with all these things that he does. So we're quite honored to have him on the show. Dean, you aren't running right now, are you? While we're talking.

I just got back from a run to honor this interview.

Yeah, I figured. All right, cool. Well, try to hold still during the interview and not go break any records if you can. If you can hold yourself back.

I am standing up. I'll let you know that. So I'm bouncing around on my toes as I talk, by the way.

Million dollar question. Because I think the last time we hung out was on that Spartan cruise down in the Bahamas. Did you. I don't remember. Have you actually done a Spartan race, like a Spartan obstacle race?

Oh, yeah, I've done a few of them. What do you think of this? I enjoy them. I really enjoy them a lot. And, you know, I know Joe pretty well, the founder, and I really like the entire movement he created. You know, some of the obstacles are a little more contrived than others, but overall, I think they're great events, and I think they mix it up a lot. I mean, if you're, you know, if you're just a runner, I encourage people to try these out, horse races, because they're a kick. Well, you're.

You're Greek, right? So it should be right up your alley to. To throw the spear and, like, run through gladiators.

Like I'm saying some of them are, you know, like, tossing a tire around. And, you know, some of the other things are a little bit different than ancient Greece. But, you know, I think he does a great job replicating a lot of the hardship that, you know, the Spartans are known for enduring.

Yeah.

And, you know, I got to. I can say, you know, let me digress. Just a moment. Your introduction was terrific. Thank you. And it sounds like you geek out about an ancient history, especially with regard to endurance sports as much as I do, so it's good to be talking with you.

Oh, yeah. I'm known to be quite the history buff. Not.

Not.

Not really. But. But I do. I do know, as you just alluded to, that the ancient Spartans did not actually realistically flip tires. And I don't think they threw spears at hay bales. They actually threw spears at real other people who they were trying to defeat.

But.

But that kind of gets into, like, this whole book that you wrote about, because I. Because I know you are Greek, and I think it's cool that you went back to kind of go replicate one of these fascinating Greek events that actually did happen in history. And so tell me about what exactly it is that you set about to do in writing this book. I mean, did you pretty much go back and do the entire road to Sparta that Theopodes ran?

I indeed did. And I worked with a gentleman who's one of the foremost authorities on ancient Greek culture. His name is Dr. Paul Cartlidge from Cambridge University. And I also worked with another researcher, Dr. P.J. shaw, also from England, to recreate this original footpath that Philippides would have traveled when he was Dispatched from Athens to run to Sparta to recruit the Spartans. And as you said in the introduction, the Persians had invaded at this place that was covered with fennel. Wild fennel grows all over Greece.

Oh really? That's interesting. If I could interrupt real quick. I actually use fennel. I order fennel seeds off Amazon and use them as a digestive almost every day. I sprinkle them on salads and soups and casseroles and things like that. So that's interesting. So he actually ran through fields of fennel?

Well, you know, and I do the same but I actually pick, you know, I'm in Greece, I just pick wild fennel because it grows all over. And the word marathon in Greek literally means field filled with fennel because where the Persians ended it was a bit. It's this big coastal bay just filled with wild fennel. It's a big plain, a flat plain. So they, you know, the Greeks said they landed in fennel which is, you know, marathon. That's the translation.

Interesting.

And the Athenians, yeah, they realized that, you know, there was supposedly about 50,000 troops from Persia and there's about 10,000 Athenian warriors. And they thought we, we're going to get really creamed here. So we need to get the Spartans, we need reinforcements.

Okay, so, so you went back and you basically tried to replicate the entire trail that this guy ran. How did, how did you actually know from a historical standpoint like the route that he actually took when he took off to go gather reinforcements and go get help?

Yeah, so I, I read a lot of ancient history by a gentleman by the name of Herodotus, who's the father of history. That's, you know, and he kept the, the ancient record of kind of milestones Phidipides had reached along his trek. So he recorded certain areas that he passed through and certain sites he saw on his way to Sparta. And by the way, this is 153 mile run that he was dispatched on.

So, so this wasn't, this wasn't a marathon. This was way more than a marathon.

This was, this was an ultra marathon of hellish proportions because southern Greece is very rocky, it's very hot. In fact, Peter Pedes his name the train the horse because he's trained day long runners that were called hemorrhoid Romi. They're professional runners. They could outrun a horse and that's why they use foot messengers rather than horses. So he did something that was remarkable and I wanted to see if it was, you know, how, how it was possible for someone 2500 years ago, you know, running in probably barefoot, if not barefoot, in leather sandals. How is this possible? And I thought, you know, let's. Let's try to recreate it and see if you can do it.

Now, why is it that there is this prevailing thought that. That he ran a marathon? Where did that come from? The 26.2 miles?

That's really lore. And, you know, he ran his job. Herodotus, if you read history and you read about Fidipedes being dispatched to Sparta, he basically just glosses over it as though, hey, this guy's a humor of the Romi. This is what he does for a living. I mean, yeah, it's a tough day at the office. Busy day at the office, but this is what these guys do. It's no big deal that he ran 153 miles and then turned around and ran 153 miles back. He's just doing his job. But the last 26.2 miles, what happened is that he died. And in ancient Greek culture, there was nothing more heroic than dying at the end of fulfilling your mission. It was like the highest climb. It was like the Spartans. I mean, we've all seen 300, you.

Know, which is where I learned, by the way. The Spartans all speak and shout with Scottish accents.

That's so wrong. I know. There's a lot of things wrong with that movie. We'll go with it. Yeah. But, yeah, so that was, you know, he died at the end. And that, you know, that to the ancient Greeks was just, you know, the father of gods.

Okay. So it was like the last 26.2 miles. That was like the nail in his coffin. And that's where we come up with the 26.2.

Well, actually, the trek from marathon to the acropolis is only 24.8. And the original marathons were 24.8 miles. But then in 1906, the Olympics were held, the modern Olympics in the UK in England. And the queen wanted the marathon race to end at the royal viewing box on the track, and that ended up being 26.2 miles. So she issued. Actually, the King of England issued a decree that changed the distance of the marathon from 24.8 miles to 26.2 miles. So that's how. That's how we.2 miles.

So but in. In reality, he ran 153 there and 153 back.

And then. And then the 28. Yeah, the 24.8.

That's exactly then the 24.8. So how long did that take?

Well, Running from Athens to Sparta took 36 hours, less than 36 hours, because Herodotus said he left one morning and he arrived by sunset the next day. And that's pretty much interpreted as 36 hours, which is phenomenal to think about running 153 miles in those conditions in sub 36 hours. And then the trek back, they just said it took a few days. So it was less specific in documenting the run back from Sparta to Athens. And the reason he decided to run back, when he got to Sparta, the Spartans said, yes, we'll come help you battle the Persians, but we can't leave for six days because the moon isn't full. Our religion forbades us for leaving for battle until the moon is full. So Pheidippides thought, oh my gosh, they're coming. But not for six days. I got to tell my fellow, the Spartans are delayed. And that's why he ended up running back.

Okay, gotcha. Interesting. Now, you said that they would outrun the horses in something like this. That makes me think of, I don't know if you read Tim Noakes's book. I don't think it was waterlogged. He had another book that he wrote. It may have been in the lore of running that Tim Noakes talked about this. And I had him on my podcast where he discusses how humans, unlike most of the other animals, are able to walk upright, which allows us to stay cool for longer periods of time. We're able to sweat to get rid of heat, rather than just pants to get rid of heat. And we're able to, basically, due to our large proportion of slow twitch muscle fibers, go for relatively long periods of time on somewhat low amounts of fuel. And he suggests that because of that, we can pretty much, over long periods of time, outrun just about any animal on the face of the planet, including something potentially like a horse. But do you know, is there like a specific distance, like a specific specific number of miles where. Where traveling on foot, A human foot tends to become a better option than going on on horseback. Like, is there a cut off where humans start to beat horses?

That's a fascinating question, and that's a question I've asked for years because I've read Speaking of by Dr. Noakes, and I've also outrun a horse myself in the Vermont Trail 100 mile endurance run. I actually really beat a horse over 100 miles, but the horses start later than the runners. And I just wonder if we'd start at the same time. At what juncture would I pass the horse because clearly in the short, in the short run is going to, you know, outspin a human by a long shot at what point? And it was hot, the conditions were hot. And, you know, as you noted, animals with hair cannot dissipate heat as effectively as humans. So at some point I would have passed the horse if it hadn't started later than me. And I just wonder where that juncture would have been. But I've never heard a clear answer to that, like how far a horse can run at sprint distance before it starts slowing down.

Yeah, neither have I. While I was out hunting once in the high mountains of Colorado, I beat a horse over 16 miles when on the last day of hunting, I decided I wanted to run back to camp. And so I had the guy I was hunting with take the horses back to camp. But they were like, they were trotting along with a whole bunch of water and a guide. And they weren't exactly in race pace mode, I don't think. So it wasn't quite as hard for me. But I can brag that I have beaten a horse over at least 16 miles or the horse was not, in my opinion, that highly motivated. But, yeah, it is a fascinating idea. And by the way, for those of you listening in, I'll put a link to that interview that I did with Tim Noakes, and I'll also put a link to Dean's book and everything else that Dean and I talk about. If you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com RoadToSparta that's BenGreenFulfitness.com RoadToSparta now, another thing that you mentioned, Dean, was that Fidipides ran this thing probably barefoot or in leather sandals. And so I'm curious, did you wind up doing it barefoot or in some kind of like a. Like a Tara Mahara style leather sandal?

You know, I ran the. I ran a marathon barefoot. I wanted to test it out. And so I ran the Silicon Valley marathon barefoot. And after 26.2 miles of barefoot running. And I've got to say that half of half of that 26.2 was on kind of graded fire road. So like a footpath. The other half was on the actual pavement on asphalt. And I thought there's just no way I could run beyond that distance barefoot. So I didn't actually, I experimented with it, but I know I got to be honest, my feet would. It would take a while for my feet to toughen to the point that I could actually run barefoot beyond a marathon.

Yeah, it doesn't seem necessarily that intelligent. I interviewed at one point. I don't know if you're familiar with a guy who used to be big in the barefoot running community. Telman, Knudsen and Telman tried to run across the US barefoot and he made it from the east coast halfway into Vermont before his physician made him stop running due to internal heel bruising. And so I know that you definitely get to a certain point where running great distances barefoot can get kind of foolhardy and not that smart. But did you wind up using like Hokas or are you like a minimalist running shoe guy or what's kind of your take on this whole running shoe debate about, you know, going minimalist versus using like the built up cushion, soft or cushion shoe wear, if that's even a word, I may have just made that up.

Footwear, shoe wear, it's all the same. It's all good. Yeah, but you know, I recommend the, the right shoe is the right shoe for you because we all are built differently and our biomechanics are different. You know, the thing with me is I can run in anything. I can run barefoot, I can run in, you know, hokas and I can run in racing flats. I just have pretty good biomechanics. But, you know, a lot of people love the hoka. It's changed a lot of lives. You know, I interact with a lot of runners and they say that, you know, the shoes revolutionized the way I run. So, you know, this particular race I ran in a pair of North Face trail shoes. I'm sponsored by a company called the North Face. So I'm someone obligated to wear their shoes. And they're, they're good shoes. But I, you know, I would, I would say, you know, wear the, wear the shoe for you listeners. Wear the shoe. That works best for you. Experiment A lot gets kind of expensive because you got to, you know, try different shoes. But a lot of running stores will let you wear test shoes to see how they feel before you actually purchase them.

Yeah, the, the only sandal that I've run longer distance in it, distances in is this one called the Earth Runners. I don't know if you've seen this one, but it's kind of like a, you know, it's like a Tara Mahara sandal slash Jesus sandal style shoe, but it's got like carbon plugs in it to allow you to be, it's a little bit woo woo. But it allows you to be like, like earthed or grounded, like get more negative ions from the earth While you're running. Have you seen these?

I've heard of them. You know, I still advocate if you're going to run.

Sandals, to run bare, to run barefoot. But you see, I can run on the beach, I'm close to the coastline, so I can go to the soft sand and run barefoot. But I would say go to the infield of a track and run on the grass barefoot because I think we are engineered to barefoot, but just not on man made surfaces. I think, you know, trying to run across America barefoot is crazy because, you know, you're not on natural surfaces, you're on road.

Right, right, exactly. One more question about shoes before we get back to this run that you did. Have you had a chance to try out the, the shoes that Nike has developed to allow folks to potentially beat the, the two hour marathon mark? These, these shoes with the, the carbon inserts, I think, I think they're called the vapor flies.

Vapor flies? Yeah. No, I haven't tried them. You know, I've tried the Adidas version, the Boost and the Ultra Boost. They're really nice. I mean, I think that it's going to be interesting to see over the next couple years, you know, what regulate these regulating bodies do with these shoes. Because some of them, it almost feels like you're getting greater energy return with every football.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's something like a 13% increase in energy back to the athlete based on the foam that they use. I guess most shoes use like a ethylene vinyl acetate and these new vapor flies use like some kind of a different foam and then they put some kind of a plate in there. Who knows, it might get banned by the World Anti Doping association as an actual doping shoe. Could be the first shoe to get banned as a doping shoe. But anyways, I find it fascinating. Okay, so you did this entire run. Did you go the 153 there and the 153 back?

Well, what ended up happening is in trying to recreate the actual path, I found it impossible.

If you've been to Greece, southern Greece, it's amazing how much has changed. But more amazing and how much has not changed. You know, when you get outside of Athens and you start running in the countryside, in the hills, it hasn't changed in 2500 years. I mean, there are still ancient Roman and Greek footpaths. There's, there's. But the problem is it's just a dizzying array of trail networks to potentially follow, most of them being goat trails. So I did my best create this, this actual race and found it entirely impossible. There was just no way to chart a course through that backcountry. And a lot of it was very overgrown. I mean, in ancient Greece there would have been footpaths that these hemodrome would have followed. And now those are, it's just thickets. So what I end up doing is actually registering for an ultramarathon called the Spartathlon. And that race is a race that actually exists and it doesn't follow the ancient path. It's primarily on the road, but it's a close proximity to the trail to Sparta from Athens.

Okay, how long did that wind up being?

Well, it's 153 miles. It's got a 36 hour cutoff time. So it's a really aggressive cutoff time. And the year I did it, there was 350 starters and it's very difficult to get in. I mean this is the most elite of the elite across the world, like 45 countries represented. And only a third of the people actually finished the race, which is insane. I mean, when you think about it, when someone asks you, have you done the Spartathlon? They don't ask did you win? They just say, did you finish? Did you make it? Because only a third of the people actually made it. I finished in about a little bit over and you have a 36 hour cutoff. So I had a lot of problems along the way just because of the foods I was eating, but somehow grunted through to the end and made it.

What does that come out to for, for, for a minute per mile pace?

You know, I, I don't know, I haven't had calculation. One of the reasons that I, you know, any ultra marathoner will tell you when you do a race like this, the pace just varies wildly because of the amount of climbing. So there's a lot of really steep climbs in this race where you're probably, I know at one point it took me something like three hours to go 15 miles.

So steep I was barely crawling. So you know, at other points when it's flat, you know you're running sub 8 minute miles, maybe even sub 7 minute miles. So it just fluctuates so radically over the course of, you know, 100, 153 miles.

Yeah, it looks like it comes out to, based on my calculations, about 3, about 3.75 miles per hour. So that's, it's, it's, it's, it's booking along for a hundred and for 100 and some odd miles. That's, that's, that's pretty good. Now, when it comes to what you would consider to be the hardest part of this event, would it be those steep parts? I mean, was there one part during the event that was just like the most epic crucible for you as far as. As the most memorable part when it comes to just like the hardest part of doing this entire thing?

Yeah. There's a peak you gotta climb that's called Mount Parthenon. And it's in the middle of the night, and it's about a 30, I think about a 3,300 foot climb. But if you look at the elevation profile map of the course, it is straight up. I mean, you're crawling at times on all fours. And there are cables, old cables, metal cables from World War I and World War II that you actually hold on to as you're climbing up this thing in the middle of the night. And it is really sketchy. I mean, you get up, you know, halfway up the face of this mountain, and you look down and you see lights that are almost directly below you, and you just think, if, you know, if I was to let go of this cable, I would die. I would literally die. There's just no way you would ever survive a tumble down that mountain. And you know, at that point, you've got 90 miles on your legs. You know, you're beat up, you're sleep deprived, it's two in the morning and there's no mouse around, so you're just out there by yourself. And that was one thing that was really shocking to me is one how much of this race I actually ran solo where I didn't see another runner, I didn't see anyone else for long periods of time. And being on that mountain in the middle of the night in those conditions, not only was it, you know, steep and black and hairy, it was really, really windy. So the wind is whipping around and pebbles are blown in your face and your eyes. It was challenging. It was really challenging.

Well, and you ate for this race.

And I guess we may rabbit hole a little bit on this, but it looks like you ate a lot differently than, of course, runners traditionally eat, but even more different than you'd eaten in previous efforts. Can you go into your nutritional approach for this event?

Yeah, well, the approach was trying to do it as authentically as I could, as, you know, trying to live in these footsteps as best I could. And so I ate only the ancient foods. I did a lot of research on what foods these hemorrhoid Romi would eat, and they ate basically figs, olives cured meat, almost like a beef jerky and something called pastille, which is a ground sesame paste with. Mixed with honey. So those were the foods they ate. Of course, I only drank water. I didn't use any sort of electrolyte replenishment. I mean, there was no Gatorade 2500 years ago.

And to be honest, I trained with these foods. So it's not like it was the first time I'd done it. But you know, what I learned is running a six or eight hour training run. Eating only figs is fine. When you eat figs for 24 hours, Ben, there are issues.

Yeah. I would imagine that you needed some kind of an ancient Spartan diaper with that type of nutritional approach. Long term.

Yeah.

It was fine. On the way in, on the way out, it got a little. Yeah. Not pretty. And so I basically. I stopped eating at about halfway into the race. I just shut. My gut shut down and I couldn't eat any food.

Oh, really? Now with the sesame seeds and honey, how were you consuming those? Was it like some kind of like a ball or is it a. Like a stick or a bar?

It's like, it's like a bar. The food form is like a bar.

Okay, gotcha.

When it gets hot. Imagine honey when it gets hot. You know, it. This bar.

Oh, yeah.

It melts in its wrapper. So it's almost like just, you know, finger food that you're just stuffing in your mouth.

Yeah. I would imagine the sesame seeds probably kind of stick in your teeth after a while too.

Yeah.

There are multiple issues going on. Yeah.

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One thing that fascinated me in the book was you talked about this stuff called mastic gum. I actually tried to look for it after I read the book because it, because it seemed kind of interesting. Can you go into mastic gum and why someone would have chewed, Chewed, Chewed mastic gum?

Yeah. Well, this gum has medicinal properties. I don't know. Did you. Were you able to find much information about that?

No, I couldn't find it. And by the way, if you're listening into this show notes and you've got a good source for mastic gum, I mean, like, there's a few nutrition companies online that sell it and I guess it's used as a little bit of an antibacterial, but I wasn't able to find a decent source of it. So if you're listening, go to bengreeklefitness.com roadtosparta and fill me in on your favorite source for mastic gum. But what'd you think of it, Dean?

Well, I've been eating it since I was a kid. I mean, you know, when I was in Greek school, when I was a young boy, the priest used to chew on it. And the mastic tree only grows on one island of Greece. It's quite amazing. So it's the gum from this tree. And you know, you said you like fennel. Fennel seeds for like a digestive. Oh, this mastic gum is 10 times more effective than fennel seeds. It's amazing stuff. I really think you should source some. You might have to get it from Greece, but it's got a very distinctive taste. It's almost like pine SAP, but it's got even a more exotic flavor to it. It's very powerful.

Interesting. Okay, cool. So did you chew this over multiple days during the event while you were running?

No, I didn't even think to bring it. And I stopped on the roadside at about mile one, I don't know, 1:30. And there was this Greek guy there and he said, you know, he said, you're nauseous, right? And I said, yeah, I can't get anything in my mouth. My guts are a mess. And he pulled out some mastic gum. He said, here, chew on this. And as soon as I stuck it in my mouth, I just thought back to, you know, Los Angeles, the Greek Orthodox church where I went to Greek school. Chewing on this mastic gum and it really woke up my mouth and it kind of soothed my stomach quite a bit.

Interesting. Well, if I, if I, if I source any good mastic gum, I'll certainly put a link to it in the show notes for you guys so you can, you can check it out. Um, so. So you really did not do any Gatorade or gels or energy bars or anything like that?

No, I, I could have used some though, I'll tell you that.

And, and you went for how long during this race without eating anything at all?

I went for over 70 miles with just, just on water.

Wow. Now previous to that, because we have a lot of people listening who experiment with things like fasting and ketosis. For example, had you done much of the fasted runs, experimentation with the use of ketones or using a ketosis based approach to running, or did you just accidentally shift into ketosis for 70 miles?

I've been doing intermittent fasting for about the past, you know, 20 years. So you know, in ancient Greek it was called an apostles fast. So I've been doing intermittent fasting for quite a while and I've done some fat adapted running, but I hadn't really trained fat adapted. But I know that when I've been analyzed like my, my substrate's been analyzed on a treadmill, I utilize a lot of fat during my running. The problem is that I drop in training for, for the spark, you know, those ancient foods. I dropped about 10 pounds primarily of muscle mass, but also body fat. So my body fat was really low, like about 4%. So I think I was basically going into gluconeogenesis, whereas I was catabolizing muscle tissue, which is not, which is not good, Ben, as you know.

But absolutely. I mean, if your essential body fat stores drop low enough, you know, I've had to run into this as well, pun intended, because I'm about 3 to 4% body fat. And for me, you know, going out on the long runs with nothing at all. And this is why I'll a lot of times like, like take a ziploc bag full of like essential amino acids tablets to, to allow myself to keep going without catabolizing muscle, it's tough. You don't quite have as much fat stores to rely upon as folks who are perhaps have a little bit more grass girth to be able to go for really long periods of time without eating like that. And you alluded to the fact that you burn a lot of fat as a fuel which a lot of trained endurance Athletes do, but the skinny trained endurance athletes still kind of have an uphill battle when it comes to the amount of fat that is available for fuel during exercise for long periods of time. Now for your other events, like the 50 marathons and 50 days, did you have like a specific nutritional approach that you used for, for those events, did you have like a, a go to nutrition source that you found to work pretty well?

Yeah, I was relying a lot on nut butters. So cashew nut butter, hazelnut butter, you know, they're very concentrated sources of calories. They're good calories. I was also into coconut oil way back then. Oh yeah? Yeah.

So is that, that works really well. Now. Now did you find with the nut? Because I, I found this. I started using nut butters a couple years ago for spartan races. My only problem was, was like the dry, sticky mouth that they give you. Did you find you had to drink a lot of water whenever you'd use these nut butters?

You know, some of the ones I like are cut with honey and they seem to be a little more tolerable, but you're right, the like just straight cashew nut butter is pretty pasty in your mouth.

Mm. Yeah. Now, now, did you have like specific brands that you use that you found to work pretty well or did you just kind of go with whatever you could, you could pick up at the grocery store?

Well, you know, originally I just went with Justin's nut butters because that was all that existed when I started using them back then. But there's actually a lot of brands that as you know, that cater specifically to endurance athletes and endurance sports. And there's some really great products out there now that are in a much more better delivery system than just those tear packs.

Right, right. Yeah. I had one article that I wrote a while back on fat based energy gels and I think I talked about Justin's, I talked about some that have like, like chia seed based gels in them. I know Hammer is doing like a dextrose with a bunch of fatty acids in their peanut butter based gel. But I think the one that I was using the most was this one called Pocket Fuel, which was like dry roasted almonds, but then they added things like banana chips and dried blueberries and sea salt and stuff like that to it. I don't know if that company is still around, if they're still making it. I'll link to that article though, for those of you listening in. What were you saying, Dean?

Yeah, no, and you know, that's why, I mean Again, I did the, you know, I did the 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days about 10 years ago. And these, these things didn't exist back then. That's why I was mixing the nut butters. I was just getting nut butters from whole foods and mixing them with coconut oil just to get some moisture there. And that really, that helped with digestive. You know, it helped not just gum up in your mouth, as you're saying, kind of get stuck in your throat.

Yeah. By the way, not, not to turn this into like a one big supplement ad, but did you have also, like, like, specific nutrition supplements that you relied upon? Like, were you using like, you know, larginine or nitric oxide or beet powder or any of these type of things that you see a lot of runners using these days?

I. No, I wasn't. I was relying specifically on diet. And I was driving through crazy because I was. I was demanding that I had, you know, wild salmon every. Almost every night. I thought the Omega 3s and the quality of the protein was so good that I could rely on this food alone. So I was relying on just food. You know, there are a couple hacks I was following. I mean, one thing I do which I would recommend trying is I put rosemary, fresh rosemary in my coffee in the morning. So I drink coffee, but I actually brew rosemary with it. And, you know, the antioxidant, you know, the auric value of rosemary of any plant on the planet. So I thought that was really helping. And I also eat a lot of chocolate, dark chocolate, in fact, 100% cocoa chocolate. So it's not sweet, it's kind of gnarly, but it's amazing how it makes you feel. So it's a. There's no sugar added whatsoever. It's just cocoa. Yeah.

I mean, you get a lot of the similar effects as you do from like the. I forget if it was the Aztecs or there was another population, they would, like, chew on coca leaves and you get some of the similar physiological effects in terms of nitric oxide release, dopamine, serotonin, and endurance and blood flow when you do something like a very, very dark chocolate, like 100% dark chocolate. But that's interesting on the rosemary, because I know there was one study where they looked at rosemary extract in rodent models, and they actually found a significant increase in time to exhaustion in rats that were supplementing with a rosemary extract. That's when you don't hear people talking about much is the use of, of rosemary for endurance exercise.

Yeah, no, it's funny. My mother's from an island called Ikaria, which is in Greece, and it's one of the blue zones. I don't know if you know of the blue zones.

Oh, yeah.

So it's. Yeah, the people there are amazing. I mean, there's more centenarians on this Greek island than anywhere on the planet. You know, there are people I spoke with that are active, like walking five or six miles every day. And they're 105, 106. And this old lady said she added rosemary to my coffee in the morning. She just picked some rosemary from the garden quite a bit and just threw it in there and we brewed it up. And I thought it really one. It really mellows out the coffee. Like the acidity of the coffee seems to disappear. And I just felt phenomenal afterward. And it's just black coffee. There was nothing else added. It was just black coffee with rosemary. And. Yeah, so I think there's something there. But I mean, I just stumbled upon it thanks to this old lady in Greece.

I'm actually. I take notes when I interview people. I'm lucky. I get to interview folks who are chock full of information like you. I'm taking a note right now to actually try adding some rosemary to my coffee tomorrow just to see what it tastes like. And I remember we actually did a story on a podcast a few months ago about.

That very area in. It was in Italy that you talk about where they used a lot of rosemary. And what leaps out in my memory from that story was that there were two things that a lot of the old, old men did. And these guys, you know, they were like 40 year old men, except they were above 100, you know, in terms of their chronological age. And it was rosemary and they had a very, very active sex life. So it looks like rosemary and sex may be at least two of the secrets that one could throw into their diet. You also mentioned astaxanthin, which I think is really interesting. I'm actually going on a salmon fishing trip next week. So this is near and dear to my heart. But astaxanthin is one of the things that they say is the natural antioxidants that you find in salmon flesh that allows them to be able to achieve these great feats of endurance that they achieve when swimming for extremely long periods of time. And so it could be that your wild salmon consumption, the astaxanthin you were getting helped you out quite a bit during that. During that 50 marathon in 50 days event.

Yeah, well, I also Consume the skin. I mean, I drive my kids crazy. Like, dad, you're gonna eat that salmon skin. I eat the skin as well. So I think that. I think there's even a higher concentration in the skin.

Yeah, you're a man after my heart. Like, my kids and my wife never finish off the skin. And I like the skin almost as much as I do the flesh, really. So that's great. Wild salmon and rosemary to the coffee. If you pick up just two things during this interview, there you go. Now, what about recovery? I mean, obviously there was a great deal of recovery necessary for this spartan event, and also the 50 marathons in 50 days. I mean, other than food, do you have specific things that you do to help you recover more quickly, Dean? Like do you use special space age recovery boots or massage devices or compression socks or. What's your key to recovering so quickly?

Yeah, you know, when I did the 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, people are like, did you have a masseuse on board? You know, what were you doing? Were you ice? You know, I did a couple ice baths during, after some of the hot marathons, but that was, that was the extent of it. I didn't stretch and I didn't have one massage. How. You know, I just thought, let your body be your body. Don't rely on anything extraneous. Just let your body perform to its best of its ability to. And that's kind of the strategy I used. And from a practical standpoint, a lot of times I didn't have much time to do things, especially in the western states, because I'd finish a marathon and we'd have to get in a bus, you know, and drive eight or ten hours to the next state. And I didn't want to sit around and get a massage or do anything like that. I just wanted to get on the road. So the conditions were not ideal. I mean, the last thing you really want to do after running a marathon is sit on your butt in a bus for eight hours. But that was the reality of that event. You know, the one thing I did do going into it is I really bulked up. So I, you know, I increased my muscle mass. You know, right now I'm about. I'm about 148, 149. I got up to almost 160, about 159, but the same. My body fat didn't change. So it's just all bulk. And I think that helped a lot. It's just having strong legs, having the musculature to support running. So I wasn't breaking every day.

How did you do that? Were you, were you lifting heavy weights or did you go with more of like the high rep, low weight approach or what did you do to bulk up?

Yeah, I was going with high weight, low rep. Yeah. So I was really, I was pushing a lot of weight and I don't do that now. Now I just use body, you know, body resistance training. But I was, I was pushing around a lot of weight in, in preparation for the 50 marathons.

How often do you do body weight training? Like what's your, what's your program for that in combination with running?

I have a HIIT training program I do here at my home office. So I've got a pull up bar in my office, I've got a sit up mat and I cycle through about five or six cycles a day. And this is push ups, pull ups, sit ups, dips and burpees. So it's high intensity. I mean, it pegs your heart rate pretty high for about 12 to 14 minutes. And I'll cycle through like I said, five or six of those a day. And that's pretty.

So you mean you break that up into like multiple small 12 to 14 minute workouts during the day?

Exactly. I did two this morning. That's a cool approach. Yeah. After this interview, I'll do one. I'm gonna go for a little bit of a run this afternoon. You know, that's the other thing I do is I, you know, people say, well, do you prefer running in the morning or in the afternoon? You know, how do you do this? And I mix up when I run. Sometimes I run early in the morning, sometimes I run at noon, sometimes I run in the evening, sometimes I run at night. Because when you're doing these events that I do that last for 24 or 48 hours. You know, you're running continuously at different times of the day and I don't think it makes just to get up in the morning and run every day, just in the morning. So I change up when I run, but I still keep up regardless of when I run. I still, you know, cycle through the, you know, the five or six sets of that HIIT training throughout the day.

And I have a question about that HIIT training that you're doing. Is that a certain number of repetitions for each of these different bodyweight exercises that you're doing, a certain rest period? Like, what's the actual protocol?

Yeah, I should video this one day, but it's a routine that a buddy of mine showed me. He was an officer. He was a Navy seal. He was an officer. And it's basically, it's designed to work every muscle and micro muscle in your body. So the push up routine is like 20 military push ups, followed immediately by 20, you know, 20 closed hand push ups, then 20 spread eagle push ups and 10 standing push ups. So it's, you know, it's basically working the load from your, you know, your all the way up to your shoulders basically. And then it goes. And then I go right into 15 pull ups. Just 15 full, you know, rightly done pull ups, full extension, then I go right into the dips. So it's just pretty much back to back right through this whole thing. There's, you know, there's seven different things I do and it's, I jump from one to the other, so there's a lot of muscle confusion going on. And again, your heart rate is, you know, you're pretty much anaerobic most of the time.

And what about leg exercises? Are you doing any leg exercises as part of that? Like squats or lunges?

You know, sometimes I. No, I have something called an elliptigo, which I freaking.

I have one of those. You do?

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

So that's actually, I have it set up indoors right now on an indoor trainer because it's. The snow has just finally melted, so I should probably take it off the indoor trainer and get it outdoors. But yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. There's actually some really good research behind how elliptical training and using something like this elliptigo actually has a direct crossover to running, almost a very direct crossover with none of the actual impact.

Yeah, I'm a believer. I mean this.

I've.

I've done some long distance tracks. Like I rode one time from San Francisco to LA, you know, which is like 350 miles. I've done a couple century and double centuries with the elliptigo. And the thing is fantastic. I mean, you get such a great muscle workout, but you don't get the, you know, the, the impact.

Right? Yeah. Although the one thing is it, it kind of falls into the same category as like the rollerbladers that you see out on the running trail with the ski poles or the guys with like the recumbent bicycles with the giant flags on them and the windshields. Like those are the people you get the knowing nods from as you ride by in your elliptical trainer. And then all the people on the traditional bikes or the runners kind of give you these strange glances as though you're a freak of Nature when you're riding around in that thing.

That's the same way I felt when I started snowboarding. So I was one of the original snowboarders. I never learned to ski, but I was a surfer. So as soon as I came out with a snowboard, I got into snowboarding. I just remember, you know, you were just like an outcast, like a pariah on the ski slope. And you're right. I mean, I know some of. Some of the cyclists kind of embrace it, like, wow, what's this thing all about? And others are just, oh, my God, you know, this guy's so freak. Get out of here.

You know what? I enjoy it quite a bit because you're not sitting, you're not compressing your spine, you don't have to worry about chafing, and you're using your core, you use your arms. I'm a big fan of it. Frankly, I love it. Not to turn this into a giant commercial for the Elliptigo, but I'm glad to hear that you use that. Now, what about sleep? You talk about running at night. Obviously when you run marathons over multiple days, you're not sleeping much. How do you manage with so little sleep? What's your strategy for that?

It's funny. Do you monitor your sleep?

I do now. I use this ring called an aura, and it allows me to look at things like my body temperature while I sleep and my sleep latency when I get my deep sleep versus my REM sleep versus my non REM sleep. So, yeah, in the past year, I've started to track it a little bit.

More intensively and I have as well. And it's counterintuitive because I'm a shitty sleeper. But then again, I've talked endurance athletes that have said the same thing. So I was curious if you. If you're, you know, I don't get as much. Good. You know, my REM cycles are very broken up and it's consistent regardless if I'm in recovery or, you know, just finish an event. So I don't, you know, I'm curious, what do you think? I don't know if it's inherent to all endurance athletes don't sleep that well. The quality is not that good according to what we consider quality sleep. But I'm not a very good sleeper.

Well, how many hours of sleep do you get per night?

You know, if you.

I'm five and six.

Okay. And a lot of that's interesting.

Yeah, A lot of it's fairly restless as well.

It's pretty rare to run into like really solid athletes who can function on like less than seven hours of sleep per night. There are genes, there's one gene called the clock gene and another one called the BMAL gene that have kind of been pegged for their roles in the body circadian rhythm. And some people that have specific mutations on some of those sleep genes are actually able to truly need less sleep. Like they're called short sleepers and they go through their sleep cycles more quickly. Whereas one person might take 90 minutes to get through a typical sleep cycle from stage stage two to stage four sleep. These people will go through it in like 45 to 60 minutes. But it's also characterized by slightly more restless sleep. You know, whether due to the increased amount of REM and less non REM or perhaps a little bit more period of time spent in light sleep, they kind of have a little bit more restless sleep, but are able to get by in shorter sleep cycles. So I'm wondering if that might be you, because I personally have pretty decent sleep cycles, but I also have to sleep like 8 to 9 hours for every 24 hour period of time. If I'm actually training, right? Like, if I'm actually doing the, you know, I don't quite go as long as you do, but I, I do, I do quite a bit of masochistic style endurance training. And you know, for me, I got to sleep for longer, so. So you might be one of these people who actually has that gene that allows them to get by in less sleep.

It's interesting you say that because my dad is the same way. My dad doesn't sleep at all. And he's in his 80s and he's fit as you can. I mean, if you saw this man, you'd say, my God, this guy looks like he's 50. But he doesn't sleep. The man does not sleep. Like when we travel together, we're both up at, you know, five in the morning, we're both up at midnight still a lot of times. So maybe, maybe there's something genetic. I've never, you know, in fact, until you said, I heard about this supposed gene, but I'd never heard anyone with credibility explain it to me. So now I know. Expl. Probably does exist.

Have you ever gotten like a 23andMe or like a DNA ancestry test or a DNA fit test or anything like that? Like a DNA test?

I have, I have, and I'm 100% Greek.

Okay, well, yeah, but in addition to the genetic data, like the ancestry data, the other thing you can do Is you can look at SNPs associated with things like that sleep gene. So it'd be interesting to take a look at, you know, completely separate from this call. If you send me your raw data, I could probably go through it and check and see if you actually have that gene responsible for allowing you to get by on less sleep. Because you can actually search through your raw data, find that SNP and see if you actually have it. It'd be interesting to check out.

I don't know if I want to know the answer, Ben.

With my damn horrible sleep, I hear.

Yeah. Now, speaking of not wanting to know the answer, this is something that kind of concerns me because I've done telomere testing and I've actually found that my biological age, right, like the length of my telomeres is actually slightly shorter than it should be. And whereas I'm 35 years old, my biology, my telomeres say that I'm like, like 36, 37 years old. And I suspect a big part of that is due to the high amount of like chronic cardio beating up my body. Some of the association between like chronic cardio being bad for testosterone levels or causing large amounts of inflammation, et cetera. Do you, do you have any concerns about that ever with, with the large amounts of endurance exercise that you do? Like, you know, this talk about it potentially causing the arteries to become harder over time or, you know, you see, like Ryan hall, for example, had to drop out of marathoning due to, due to andropause or low testosterone. What's your take on kind of the toss up between this chronic cardio and actual health and longevity implications?

Well, it's interesting about your telomeres because I've never had mine tested specifically, but the research you read is that prolonged endurance training actually increases that, you know, running increases your telomere length versus decreasing it. So that's kind of always what I believed regarding, you know, testosterone levels and hormones and you know, the hardening of especially, you know, your heart and your arteries. You know, I don't pay attention to it and maybe I should more, but I do a lot of cross training, so I don't just run. So I worry less. I mean, you know, Ryan hall looks great right now, by the, by the way. I mean, he's obviously much slower than he was, but he looks healthier. I mean, just everything about him looks better. His skin looks better, you know, he just looks healthier and he's bulked up a lot. And you know, when people look at me say, man, you're pretty bulky for a runner. And I think that's, you know, that's just something I do by design. Sure, muscle slows you down, but it's not something I'm going to compromise on.

Yeah, yeah, I, I think what, what you're referring to with telomere length because there have been a couple of studies done on this. It depends on the intensity. Like, like, I know they have found a lot of like aerobic ultra endurance athletes who are not necessarily like, like delving into higher amounts of intensity, but who are instead doing. I, I guess you would consider it to be like more of like a, like a Phil Maffetone or a Mark Allen type of like, you know, know, aerobic, conversational, nasal breathing kind of approach to running. They actually have found longer, what are called leukocytes, telomeres or white blood cell telomeres, which is actually, you know, any organization at this point in science that tests your telomere length. They're testing white blood cell telomere length or leukocyte telomere length. And they found that in like ultra endurance runners, it does tend to be a little bit longer. Like there does tend to be like what appears to be a little bit of a longevity effect. Whereas with folks who are doing like higher intensity endurance, right, Like a combination of both volume and intensity, it tends to be shorter. So it looks like if you're going to go long, you also have to make sure that you're going relatively aerobic if you want to have like longer endurance exercise, not for example, turn out to be deleterious for your health. So it's kind of like, like, you know, if, if you're content with say like running a marathon, but running a marathon at an aerobic pace, you know, aerobic conversational pace, that appears to be okay. But then once you start going after like that, huffing, puffing for three hours of pounding the pavement, that's where it looks like it causes some, some longevity decreasing type of effects.

Well, you know, intuitively I couldn't agree with that more. I think the worst thing to do is the worst thing that comes beats me up and leaves me feeling aged is running a hard marathon. Right? You know, running a hard 5k or even a hard 10k leaves you feeling great. Running 100 miles at, you know, LSD at a conversational pace leaves you feeling great. You know, flatlining as fast as you can for 26.2 destroys you. That, that's just how I feel. That's exactly how I feel. I do a lot of just Regular road marathons and I feel crappy afterward.

Yeah, that's. And that's what they found a lot of the research, like once, once you get above about 60 minutes of like that combination of volume and intensity, you see a law of diminishing returns for mortality. So if you're gonna go out and do stuff like, like, you know, if you're listening in and you want to be like Dean and go do the Sparta, you know, it looks like if you're gonna do it, the best way to do it, or that, or a marathon or any other ultra endurance event, if you're concerned about your, your mortality would be like, stay aerobic basically. You know, follow that. You know, I've interviewed film. Do you know Phil Maffetone? Dean.

Oh, sure. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. So you know, that's, that's Phil Maffadone's whole approach. Right. Like anything you train for, you, you can go fast, but you need to breathe through your nose, go aerobically. And like back when he was training Mark Allen for Iron Man, I think Mark was saying he used to like walk up the hills to ensure that his heart rate stayed low enough until he got to the point where he could do all of his running in an efficient and economical enough way to where he just kind of stayed aerobic the whole time.

Yeah, I buy into that completely. And you know, there's, there's so much research and, you know, you can pretty much back any position you take with some research of some sort. But just intuitively, that's the way my body feels. Is exactly what you said.

Yeah.

Short and fast is fine. Long and slow is fine. You know, fast and long is brutal and wrong.

Yeah. And that, that's even, you know, there's this whole concept behind the polarized training approach. Right. Like if you look at the training that most of the world's top endurance athletes use, from cross country runners to cross country skiers to rowers, et cetera, you generally see an 80, 20 split, meaning that 80% of their training is completely aerobic and slow and, and conversational. And 20% is extremely hard but short. Right. Like totally anaerobic, high intensity interval training. And there's almost no training in like this black hole, kind of like kind of sort of hard, kind of sort of easy for longer periods of time type of training. So it seems to agree with what most of the of the world's top athletes are doing anyways when it comes to achieving not just, you know, longevity in the sport, but also performance. This whole like 80, 20, polarized type of approach.

Yeah. And I, I agree. And I also agree, you know, think that what, you know, Mark Allen's parts, if he actually did walk the hills for the very stated purpose of keeping his heart rate down. It really requires a lot of discipline because I know when I go, I mean your, your inclination is just to run as frigging hard as you can for as long as you can and to hold yourself back and say I'm going to go slower but I'm going to go further. You know, requires some discipline and requires some introspection. Just, you know, just in your program and stay in your training.

Yeah. I've even started to do things like long walks where I'm just breathing through my nose and focusing on breath control and for about every fifth distance that I walk. Right. Like for every four blocks I'll sprint one block. Right. So all I'm doing is slow training and fast training and not much in between. And I feel great after those runs, you know, walk slash runs compared to if I just say like jogged and I hour. So I think there's definitely something to be said for kind of like embracing a non traditional approach to running or at least an approach that goes outside the bounds of just strapping on your shoes and pounding the pavement with a scowl on your face for an hour. So now what about. Oh, go ahead.

Well, I always say, you know, reverse engineer it, you know, what, what are your goal? Like a lot of the listeners here are not going to try to, you know, qualify for the Olympics. I mean they're. A lot of the listeners I'm sure might not even be targeting an event in the future. They just might want to be healthy. And I think these are prudent steps just to be healthy. You know, certainly if you're training specific, you know, if you've got a training specific program or goals specific training, you're going to. But a lot of people just run. I think applying what you just said is really prudent, right?

Yeah. Now what about biohacks, right? Like you see all these runners using like hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers or you know, training masks or you know, different types of like electro stimulation biops. Are you one of those guys who ever uses, you know, aside from the elliptigo of course, Any, any crazy pieces of technology? Are there, are there any like fringe things that, that you've tried? Whether it's like self quantification devices or any, any other number of things you see runners using more and more these days as, as techn technology of running Progresses.

You know, I've experimented a lot, I gotta be honest. And I've. And I've come back to don't do anything beyond what the body naturally could do. I mean, you know, a lot of these devices are contrived and you're, you know, they're not natural. So I've kind of gone back to more, just a more natural approach. That said, you know, I still do ice baths or cold water showers. I still think I still believe in that. You know, I do my rosemary and my 100% chocolate. But as far as microdosing LSD or anything like that, or even.

Pot, I mean, marijuana right now is a big topic in endured sports.

Oh yeah? Yeah. Especially with ultra runners.

Yeah. And I gotta be honest, I'm not a fan. If I'm gonna get high, I want it to come for my body. I mean, we produce cannabinoids naturally. I prefer the high from running versus weed. But to eat your zone, I mean, I'm not going to criticize people.

Yeah, there are some Runner's world articles, I believe, that talk about some of the ultra endurance athletes now getting into sativa rich marijuana strains kind of like shut down pain and increase cannabinoid.

Availability during exercise. But yeah, I mean, we're talking about chocolate. Chocolate is a natural cannabinoid precursor. And man, rosemary in your coffee, a little bit of dark chocolate, some mastic gum and cold showers. Man, I like your approach. I think it's great.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's go cover some distance.

Yeah. Cool. Well, the book for those of you listening in, it's called Road to Sparta. We kind of only scratched the surface of that actual adventure. I know we don't delved into some of Dean's other practices quite a bit, but it's a fascinating book. I think you should give it a read. It actually made me want to go to Greece and I don't know if I'd quite do it as quickly as you did, Dean, but it really made me want to maybe go hike the road to Sparta or at least go over there and eat some of these fantastic foods that you talk about. I'm a big fan of figs and sesame and honey. All three. I don't know how much I'd consume while running copious amounts of miles like you did. But ultimately, fascinating book, Road to Sparta. You guys can check it out if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Road to Sparta fittingly enough, Dean, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us. Man. It's fascinating.

You're a great host. So thanks for having me on. It's my pleasure, Ben. It's been really great.

Yeah, absolutely. And folks, if you have comments or questions or your own little, little tips to add or a good source for mastic gum or anything else that Dean and I talked about, again, just go to BenGreenFitness.com RoadToSparta Leave your thoughts. Grab the book. And Dean's got another great book called Ultramarathon man, by the way, you can also check out when you get that book. And Dean, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Thanks for having me on.

All right, folks. Well, it's Ben Greenfield along with Dean Carnazes signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

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