Show Notes

• Answering the question “Could you have done one more?” before it’s asked
• Origin of the nickname, “Iron Cowboy”
• 30 to 50 to 101
• The best laid plans…
• Defying logic with the 50.50.50
• Why 100? “I didn’t want to do 75. That didn’t scare me.”
• How to eat when you’re burning 10,000 calories a day
• The power of the human mind
• Advice if you’re stuck or having problems achieving your goal
• The importance of a support team
• Impacting other people through partnering with charitable organizations
• The life lessons James hopes his kids have learned

Connect With James Lawrence

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ironcowboyjames

Summary

James Lawrence, the ultra-endurance triathlete also known as the Iron Cowboy, redefined the limits of human potential by completing 101 full-distance triathlons in 101 days! James shares how he pushed his body and mind to its absolute limit, and the lessons we can learn from his amazing accomplishments.

Full Transcript

Brian:

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques, and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

James Lawrence, the ultra endurance triathlete, also known as the Iron Cowboy, has redefined the definition of impossible. Success Magazine named him The Most Enduring Man In The World. Red Bull declares that when it comes to endurance, he is unstoppable, and Sports Illustrated ranked James in the top 50 Fittest Freaks along with superstar athletes like basketball player LeBron James and UFC mixed martial artist, Conor McGregor. In 2015, James completed 50 full distance triathlons in 50 days, in 50 states. That’s 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles on a bike, and a full 26.2 mile marathon every single day for 50 days. That wasn’t enough for James to redefine impossible though. So this year the Iron Cowboy came up with the idea for the Conquer 100—100 Ironman distance triathlons in 100 days. You started out on March 1st, successfully completed 100 triathlons in 100 days on June 8th. And, because he still had a little bit left in the tank, he threw in an extra day to make it the Conquer 101. James has created a new world standard of human performance and endurance both physically and mentally. And I’m honored to have him on the show today. Welcome James, and thanks so much for being on LifeExcellence.

James:

Thanks Brian, man, dude, when you say it all like that, I got tired just listening to it.

Brian:

I got tired just saying it. Oh my goodness, what a story! I can’t wait to jump into it. I have to start out by asking this:  what prompted you to get up on June 9th the morning after you just finished 100 full distance triathlons and then you decide to toss one more in for good measure?

James:

Oh, interesting story on how that developed. So we ran into a lot of trouble, early on with injuries and really, really inclement, bad weather. And early on, like day 25, one of my wing men, Casey, he did all of the runs with me, and he was like, oh man, wouldn’t it be totally cool if it was just me, you, and Erin? Because we’re super positive, like when we accomplish this goal, let’s go do a victory lap. And I was like, screw you, dude, like we got…no chance are we doing that. And it never got brought up again because at that point in the journey, like, I could not conceptualize adding an additional full distance triathlon, an additional 140 miles. But then when we got to like 97, I brought it up again and I said, hey, I really want to put this idea back on the table, because at that point it wasn’t like I’ve got 85 more to go. It was like, what’s one more, right? Because when you’re that deep into the journey, your mindset changes to not, oh, I can’t conceptualize one more. It’s like what’s just one more at that point. And a lot of people assumed we pre-planned this. But the reality is that we didn’t. Day 100 was on a Tuesday and that weekend—that Friday, Saturday, Sunday—is when we said, okay, we’re gonna do this. We’re going to keep it a secret and put this together. And the jersey company overnighted us a kit that said 101 with 100 crossed out.

Part of my career is coaching and I’ve been blessed to speak around the world in 48 different countries. And every time, when we were talking about the 50 and mindset, I would always get asked the question:  but could you have done one more? And I didn’t want to ever get that question again. And our family, the way we raise our kids, Sunny and I, we want to lead from the front, we want to set the example. This is the expectation. You can always do one more. And I never wanted to get up on stage and be the person that’s teaching something that hasn’t been done in my own life. And so I got the deepest impression the weekend before we were going to finish, you have to do one more. And so we quickly put it together and we did that one more. We did that victory lap and it was a pretty special day because there’s so much pressure put on you to accomplish such a big goal that nobody’s ever accomplished before. And then when you accomplish it and you go do one more, that one more is like a massive exhale. Like it literally is a victory lap, like you’ve accomplished what you set out to accomplish. And so that became the inner circle, the friends, it was laughter, it was celebration. And it was just out on our bikes and on the run course, just enjoying and celebrating what we’d accomplished. Trust me, we were broken, we were defeated, we were exhausted. None of us wanted to get up and do one more, but we just felt the importance and the weight of doing it. And if you asked me…the day 101 doesn’t happen without the previous 100, but it is just that one day, to me, was more important and what it stood for and what it meant than the previous 100 combined.

Brian:

Well, I’ve heard of going the extra mile, but this is really redefining that, right? I’ve never heard of going the extra 140 miles, but that’s you—you’re the Iron Cowboy. Let’s back up a little, James. So it’s 2004. I’m going to take you all the way back to that point. And your wife, Sunny, who’s a runner, signs you up for this four mile Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. I know you finished, but you weren’t happy with the performance. Tell us about that fun run and how that started you down the road to eventually redefine the limits of human potential.

James:

Yeah, it’s interesting because I grew up a wrestler. I grew up doing a lot of athletics and then, like a lot of people, you graduate and you no longer have this outlet for athleticism. If it’s in the area, you’ve got a gym to access to, but sometimes you get busy. I got married, I started a business, I had a couple little girls, and so fitness just kind of fell by the wayside. But we were always active. I was more of a gym goer than I was an endurance pursuer. And when Sunny said, hey, let’s go do four miles, I was like, four miles, I can do that. And it was a definite wake up call. Like when your heart literally feels like it’s going to jump out your chest and it’s in your throat, you’re having all of these emotions and you’re looking around and going, why am I the only person not smiling? All of these things are going through your head and…

Brian:

Strollers going past you.

James:

Yeah, women pushing their kids in strollers. And I was just like, dude, I used to be a physical specimen, what happened to me? And it put me down this road of getting into marathon running and then finding triathlon. And that led me into this endurance world, this way of life, this lifestyle that we fell in love with, and the community was amazing. And so I fell in love with it. I learned how to swim. I got a bike, I fell in love with cycling. It was a way for me to tap back into my competitive roots from my glory days of being a wrestler. And it was really cool because you got to compete within your age group and there were beginner categories and all these things. So you could actually win and have success at an early stage of this while you’re trying to figure the sport out.

Brian:

Iron Cowboy is such an awesome nickname. I absolutely love that. Where’d that come from?

James:

So when in 2010, we broke the world record for the most half Ironmans done in a single year. And then I was like, well, I don’t want to be the half Ironman world record holder. What’s the world record for full Ironmans? And then during that year, it took me through 11 countries and my kids were still super little and they traveled to the US ones with us. If you’ve ever watched an Ironman or a full distance triathlon, it’s the worst spectator sport on the planet. You send your cyclist out for 112 miles and hope they come back. Maybe they whiz by you at 20 miles an hour. I figured the marathon portion, that is where I can have that energy exchange, that connection with my kids. So I started to wear a cowboy hat, just a simple straw cowboy hat, during the marathon portion so that my kids could see me coming. And then they started to play along with it and they would pick my hat when I was on the road. I’d wear a pink one or a leopard skin one, just for fun. And the public started to call me the Iron Cowboy and it stuck. Actually this is our logo and I usually, I have a full beard, but this is the beard and then the cowboy hat on the top. And then it just turned into a brand.

Brian:

The world record prior to you breaking, it was 22 full distance triathlons in a year, you ran 30. And like you said, you did it in 11 countries. That’s a super impressive feat. I mean, you broke the world record that was 22 by doing 30, but you weren’t even close—as we both know—to resting on your laurels. Whose idea was it to do 50 triathlons, in 50 days in, 50 states? Tell us what that experience was like.

James:

So right near the tail end of doing the 30…it’s interesting when you do something hard and you push through limits, you go through this adaptation phase, and I got stronger throughout the 30. And I was like, man, I’m growing, I’m evolving and I haven’t reached my potential. One of my inspirations at the time was Dean Karnazes and he’s a marathon runner. He is called the Ultramarathon Man. And he did—first of its kind—he did 50 marathons in 50 days, in 50 states. And people were like, oh my gosh, this guy did 50 marathons in 50 days. And I thought to myself, man, wouldn’t it be cool if I could figure out how to do that with an Ironman? Like if they are so excited about a marathon, what would they do if I could pull it off with an Ironman? And so I just started to put it together. I talked to Sunny and it took some…we have five little kids, and it was going to be a motor home and traveling around the country. And it was destined to be chaos. I mean, you’ve seen the documentary, it’s chaos and it was us trying to figure it out, out there. Nobody had done this before and we’d never done it before, obviously. We found out that the United States is big and there’s a lot that can go wrong, trying to get to…all 50…I’m just saying, I’m going to challenge anybody, go vacation for 50 consecutive days and hit every single state with five little kids in a motor home. Just that alone is taxing. And so we decided to throw in a full distance Ironman every single day—the 2.4 swim, the 112 bike, 26.2 mile marathon run. And man, we learned so many lessons because we were faced with such adversity. We were attacked with public criticism. We had bike crashes. We were being chased by a tornado. I mean, you imagine that everything happened. And we had to figure out how to keep moving as a team—getting this young family and its entourage across the country and back all the way safely to our home in Utah. I mean, but what an opportunity to learn and grow. It obviously changed our lives and opened up future potential for what the mind and body is capable of.

Brian:

It’s funny that you mentioned going out and driving to all 50 states or traveling to all 50 states. I actually had that thought as I was watching the documentary, like that is, I mean, that takes some management. I remember seeing your map and sort of mapping everything out. And obviously you had different logistics than just traveling. But that’s a pretty big goal, just to set out and travel to all 50 states, let alone, hey, by the way, every day that I get up, I’m just going to throw in 140 miles of activity. What was the average length of time that it took you to complete a triathlon during that 50-50-50?

James:

I think what people don’t realize is how intense the logistics became and the lack of sleep and the level of exhaustion that we got as a team. Being from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, obviously [I] knew that the US was big, but didn’t realize how big it was. And then when you map it out on a map, you’re like, oh, it’s just a four, five, six hour drive. But when everybody’s exhausted and the team is driving at night, it becomes intense. Google Maps didn’t always take you to the right spot either. So trying to find places and coordinate…I mean, we had to coordinate 50 to 100 different people, because we had people volunteer in all the different states. So I had to manage those. We had to be constantly calling ahead. Managing a team of over a hundred volunteers was labor intensive. You’ve got to stay really super organized. Then you hope that volunteers are doing what they said they were going to do. When we rolled into a state, we hoped that the facility was open and available, and we hoped that the volunteers had put together what we had hoped that they’d put together. We were just rolling on a lot of faith, that people were doing what they said we were going to be doing, and that we would get to the places on time and have enough time to do the event. As you saw on the documentary, the weather was super challenging for us. For a week, we chased a hurricane early in the campaign. It’s so dangerous to be outside in those conditions and it just gets dangerous. And that’s something you don’t necessarily plan for, you’re not, oh, we’re gonna come across a hurricane. Sure.

Brian:

How long did it take you to complete a triathlon? What was the average duration? I mean, you had to do this every day for 50 days when you did the 50-50-50. That’s a lot to pack into a day, right?

James:

We were about 12 to 15 hours a day, depending on conditions, depending on when we started, depending on how many support people came to help us navigate the day, depending on how my body was feeling, depending on weather. We got to a complete exhaustion state. We averaged less than four hours of sleep a night, because…think simple math, okay. If you do it in 14 hours a day, you’ve got another 10 hours to rest and recover and travel. Well, you’ve got to eat and you’ve got to do therapy and you want to have a little bit of family time if you can, and then travel. And I don’t know if any of you have tried to take a nap in the back of a car driving down the freeway across the US…I mean, it’s not the highest quality of sleep someone would dream up or ask for. And so, on paper—nobody had done this—when I’m writing it, I’m like, oh, we’ll have 10 hours. I’m going to get like seven, eight hours of sleep at night. And it never worked out that way because there was always something we were dealing with or media or whatever we were doing. There was never unwind, [it was] problems or issues. We were always dealing with a problem. And so on paper, it looked very, very manageable and that chaos would not be part of what we were doing. But that was the exact opposite of what actually happened.

Brian:

And so, again, you complete this almost unbelievable accomplishment, like you had done before with the 30, and you did that in 2015 with the 50-50-50. But six years later, you decide to do something that even a guy like David Goggins might call crazy. Where did the idea for Conquer 100 come from and why 100?

James:

Great question. The original goal of the 50 was, okay, let’s find out how many consecutive full distance trials I could do mentally, physically and spiritually—where’s my breaking point? And what was interesting, as I’m looking back on my journey, is every time I was in the middle of one of those challenges, whether it was the half Ironman, the full Ironman, the consecutive 50, it was the hardest thing I could do because I was currently pushing the boundaries. But then once you have success at doing those, your mind opens up and more becomes possible because you’ve evolved as an athlete. You’ve evolved as a person. You’ve learned lessons in things that you can now apply to future projects. And because of the chaos that we just talked about, because of the logistics that we just alluded to, I didn’t get to find out how many consecutive that I could do. Because of weather and whatnot, we were pushed inside on some of those days. We took a lot of criticism for some of the decisions that we made—we made those decisions out of safety. Some of the public wouldn’t accept those actions or choices that we made. It’s very hard for us to reconcile their opinion because they’ve never done what we’re doing. How do I value what they’re thinking based on their knowledge or their experience? So on the 50, we made a decision to push forward and to continue on with the best of our ability at the time. So part of me, in the back of the mind, every time I got on stage, some keyboard warrior would get on and make a slight comment, or those guys that put an asterisk on what we did, I never let it bother me, but I wanted to turn it into fuel. And so when the pandemic hit—my world was coaching, my world was speaking, my world was racing. And literally [in] 48 hours, like a lot of industries, [it] got wiped off the table. I was staring down the barrel of a completely clear calendar. The thought kept coming to my mind, you can reset your history. You can leave no doubt. You can defy logic. You can go and do something just for yourself, you can prove that you are who you said you were. And I started to conceptualize the Conquer 100 and I thought, okay, if I remove the chaos and the confusion, if I put systems and team in place, if we do it in a remote location and eliminate the logistics and potentially the chaos, could we double what people perceived as impossible? Could we defy logic? And that’s where we came up with the tag name hashtag DefyLogic. We wanted to find out how many consecutives we could do. Initially we were going to do it much later in the year but I kept getting impression, do it March 1st, do it March 1st ,do it March 1st. That didn’t give me a lot of time to train. But I went with my gut. I said March 1^st is when we’re starting. I had a four month training block to get to get ready. The history of everything that we’ve done, it’s all been pretty sequential, meaning consecutive years I’m building blocks upon building blocks. This is the first time where there’s been a six year gap between the two, because I’ve been on the road and I’ve been focused on business and our mental coaching and training. I put on some weight, I’ve gotten a little bit out of shape. I’m not as young as I once was, I would be turning 45 in this. When I did the 50, I was 39. And so there were a lot of things that factored into the difficulty level of this. But we decided nonetheless, we’re going to go. We’re going to base this off of our experience. We’re going to base this off of the knowledge that a lot of this is going to be your mind pulling your body through this. At some point in time during the campaign, you’re going to adapt, you’re going to evolve, you’re going get stronger. And so we said, we’re doing it, we got nothing else on the calendar, we got some sponsors on board that are willing to support us, we’re gonna reset history. Which by the way, was an insane career gamble on my part, because if I don’t make it to 50, we validate everybody that said we didn’t make it 50 [the first time]. And so at the bare minimum, I had to at least make it to that. I didn’t want to do 75. That really didn’t scare me. We finally settled on 100, which again, was a huge, huge career gamble for me because if I fail on this attempt and don’t get at least what I did before, then everything gets taken off the table from beforehand. So this was a huge gamble for me, both of my career, and how I provide for my family.

Brian:

Well hopefully the 100, or it ended up being 101, hopefully that silenced the critics. But James, you mentioned training and that was something that I am really curious about. So I’ve run a lot of half marathons. I ran one full marathon. And in my experience with the full was probably similar to your first full marathon back in Salt Lake City. I trained for 16 weeks. I did the Hal Higdon training program for the 26.2 mile run. How do you train for 100, or even 50, consecutive full distance triathlons?

James:

Yeah, that became an insane challenge because nobody’s done it before, and you have to treat part of the campaign as the training. For me personally, I know my body—the most amount of damage comes from running. The way that we set up training was okay, we’re going to limit, we’re going to do the minimum amount of running we can, with the highest bike volume. Then we know the swim is going to be just a formality. So with limited running and minimal swimming, our emphasis became strength training, and it became power on the bike. We knew that if we could get through the 112 mile bike ride with minimal damage, then we just had to adapt and evolve with that run portion. We thought, okay, if we can become super strong on the bike, we can put forth a 60% effort and have a lot left. It proved to be a great strategy, but we just didn’t have quite enough time because I didn’t have enough volume in the run. And that became problematic for us because, we got injured early, early on the run. And then now we had to manage that injury for three months while doing a full distance triathlon, which became very, very challenging.

Brian:

Let’s dig into the actual process of pushing your body to extremes with something like the Conquer 100. What role…I mean, I can’t imagine, but I know it’s incredibly grueling physically and mentally, and we’re going to get into that. I have some questions around that, but what role does diet and nutrition play in helping you to endure a feat like that?

James:

It plays a big role. One, in terms of volume that you have to eat in order to fuel for that kind of calorie burn, it’s an immense amount of food. We were eating 10,000 plus calories a day. Then you want to try to eat as good of quality as you can, because, in normal racing, you can fuel with some good, fast burning sugars that your body quickly converts over to energy—but with this type of thing, you have to be fueling yourself with not only quick energy, but also things that are going to help you fuel and recover for the days to come, the weeks to come. Everybody’s heard the old adage of we are what we eat. This becomes very true because what we’re eating manifests in our body a few days later in terms of performance and recovery. So we had to be careful about how much sugar we were eating, because it would lead to inflammation. Inflammation is the worst possible scenario for your muscles, trying to process everything that’s going on to minimize the amount of injuries. There’s a fine balance of what you eat, when you eat, but we had to consume an insane amount of food. That becomes a challenge in itself, like with GI issues and processing that amount of food, but you need that amount. I mean, I was doing 14,000 total miles, and I got down to 6% body fat while consuming over 10,000 calories a day. So you can see how important calorie consumption is when you’re burning. We were moving 14 to 16 hours a day doing physical activity. That’s just an insane calorie burn.

Brian:

So help us to understand what that looks like. What was a typical day? When did you eat, what did you eat? Because that’s…I mean, you have to eat on the move, right? You don’t have the luxury of sitting down for an hour to have lunch, I’m guessing.

James:

Yeah, no—no chance. So real quick take through the day, I would wake up, and we were trying to maximize my sleep so they would wake me up at the very last minute. On the way to the pool, I would drink a smoothie, maybe have a muffin or some bread. I’d jump in the swim, while I was swimming I’d have another protein drink. When I got out of the water and I was showering and getting ready for the bike ride, I would eat a plate full of pancakes. I would have two or three equivalents of like an egg McMuffin and then I’d get on the bike. I would always have two more breakfast burritos in my jersey and a bunch of different bars and snacks that I could be eating that would get me through the first half of the ride. We’d take a five minute break where we’d reload. I’d grab a sandwich, another drink and some additional calories, sometimes a cookie, sometimes a Costco muffin—those things were a lifesaver. Then once I came in and finished the bike, there’d be a meal waiting for me. That could be anything from pastas to breakfast cereals, to salads, to chicken, I mean, anything, right? Wraps, things like that. I’d go to the marathon, I’d eat throughout the marathon, meaning fruits, things that are a little bit lighter. I remember there was one time in the marathon, this guy with a moving pizza truck came up, he had one of those brick oven stoves in the back. He made me a pizza and we did an outback. I took the whole pizza, ate it. And then on the way back, I was like, hey, can I have another one of those? And then I’d get home and I’d crushed another meal as soon as I got home. I’d consume before I passed out on the therapy table. So that was the flow of the day. It was a continual putting food in your body. And we would weigh me every single morning in the hopes that I was maintaining weight. If we were maintaining my weight, then we didn’t really care what, or how I was eating. We would just really start to pay attention to it if I started to drop weight. I did such a great job of like crushing calories that we never really had to adjust. The only thing we really had to adjust was the amount of sugars I was eating because I had severe blisters on my lips from the wind, from the cold, and then from the sun. It became very painful. I’d also developed thrush in my mouth so it became very painful to eat. So I resorted to a lot of comfort foods, like muffins and cookies and things that were soft that I could peel off. That became slightly problematic with the amount of sugars I was consuming. It attributed to the thrush in my mouth and then it added inflammation in my body, which we didn’t want or need.

Brian:

Sounds like a full-time job. Just the eating part, along with everything else.

James:

Yeah, it was more than a full-time job.

Brian:

That’s amazing. After reading some of the details of the 50-50-50 and the Conquer 100, watching the documentary, I’ve read your book, Redefine Impossible, and I’m not sure which is harder, the physical demands or the mental part of pushing through all kinds of adversity. James, help us to understand the full extent of those demands and explain how you’re able to push your body and mind to its absolute limits—literally, like the title of your book, redefine impossible, I think.

James:

It’s interesting, it’s the number one question I get, is how do I become more mentally tough? The only way to do that is not through listening to you and I talk about it, not through reading a book like Redefine Impossible, not through watching the number one Ted talks out there, not by listening to a motivational speaker—which is what I do for a living. It’s only through action. Only through action and intentionally doing something that makes you uncomfortable will you learn and adapt and grow. If you notice, my journey started with trying to break the world record for the half Ironman. I couldn’t even conceptualize 100. You can’t go from zero to 100 in conception. You have to learn and grow. And so earlier I said, when you’re in the middle of something it’s the hardest it’s ever been until you’ve succeeded at it, then more becomes possible. So over the course of a decade or more, I slowly strengthened that mental muscle in order to get to the point where the 100, I knew it was possible. I knew we could do it. All I had to do was implement the learning from the previous times, recognize that, okay, I know the next step is not going to kill me. I know the level of pain I can manage and it’s how long can I manage it? So based on previous experiences, I now have the knowledge that I can endure something. The mind is super powerful.

Here’s a quick example, on day 97 I remember I was sitting on a therapy table and the documentary crew, they were doing their breakdown of the day. They’re asking some questions and gathering footage for the documentary. They asked me, hey, do you think you could do 200 of these? And, without hesitation, I was like, absolutely, one hundred percent I could do another 100. And then, obviously, we shut things down. day 102, 103, 104 were recovery, rest. Then your body realizes, oh, he’s done. I am now mentally going to let him feel everything that he’s not been feeling over these past whiles. And it’s so incredible because I couldn’t function on days one, two, three, four or five, [afterwards] because now my mind is letting my body know everything that it was masking—the power of that—now gets let go. There’s no way, when I was post and had accomplished it, could I go back and say—I would’ve never said—I’ve got a hundred more in me. I couldn’t function. I was walking around the house, like confused. I remember driving down the freeway. My wife was with me. She says, hey—freeway speed is about 75 here—you’re going 40 miles an hour, you either let me drive or go faster. But it just showed how out of it I really was. And for a week or so Sunny really had to take care of me. I still have brain cognitive issues. I went and did some brain MRIs and failed those terribly and am going the middle of November, going through an entire brain reset, re-patterning, which is fascinating to me that that’s even a possibility and I’m super excited about it.

Here’s another great example, on day 59, if you followed the 100, you know that on day 59, we’d broken the record on day 50, we’d broken it nine more days in a row—it was so fun to wake up every single day and say, hey, do you want to go break a world record? But on day 59, we had a catastrophic bike crash, it was just devastating. But our mind is such an unbelievable tool. I found out two weeks ago—now this is months after we concluded the 100—that I broke my L-5 vertebrae in my back from that crash. My brain did such an amazing job of protecting me. I went on to do 41 consecutive Ironman with the broken L-5 vertebrae. That just goes to show, when I make up my mind, I go all in and then my mind says, okay, I’m going to help you achieve this goal. I’m the most powerful thing on the planet. I’m now going to protect you and not allow you to really understand what you’re doing to your body. I’m going to pull you through this.

Those are just some simple examples of one, how powerful the mind is and [two] how out of it I truly was at certain points. When you’re in chaos and trauma, the brain is so powerful, it goes, I’m going to protect you, I’m going to create a scenario to where you don’t really know what’s going on. The film crew and my family and others have said some things about some experiences that we had where I was like, no, that didn’t happen. Here’s a great example, a buddy of mine from Vegas—we had a golf trip this weekend and it was with him—he said, oh man, what an unbelievable experience we got to have with you during the Conquer 100. And I’m like, don’t even, you didn’t come to the Conquer 100. Now that we’re done, don’t try to pretend like you were the supporting [inaudible]. He was like, no, me and my nephew, we came down and we spent three hours with you on the run, we talked and we had a good time, we laughed. And I was like, dude, you didn’t come. Then he showed me a picture of him, me and his nephew on the run course of the 100. I would have bet my house that he didn’t show up on it. It goes to show that when you’re trying to accomplish something, you get into that pure flow state, some details get confusing and missed and whatnot. Also the 100, it’s a quarter of a year. It all starts to blend together. But I would have sworn up and down that he didn’t show up, and had he not shown me that picture, I would have been like, no, dude, you were not there.

Brian:

It’s amazing what happens in the mind and in the body. I mean, your ability to just dig deep, and maybe consciously, you don’t even know what’s happening, but your body, like you said, just sort of takes over and you have that, I guess, muscle memory or some variation of that.

James:

You’ve heard of being unconsciously conscience. We got so good—our team and I—at doing consecutive Ironman, it became normal. I got to the point where I was unconsciously conscious, meaning, I was doing it, but I was absentminded. We did the same course every single day. I knew where every pothole was. I knew where every turn was. I knew. I could point it out for the new riders before we even got there. I knew every corner. I could be half asleep, literally, while I’m doing this course. It’s like, sometimes you drive home, you’re like, oh, I don’t remember really getting here when all of a sudden you’re at home. That started to happen with me during the 100. I was like, oh, I just finished a 112 mile bike ride. I didn’t even realize I was on my bike.

Brian:

To me, it seems a little different than driving home, not being concious, but I’ll take your word for it. I want to ask you about recovery. You talked a little bit about recovery after the 101 triathlons, but I want to ask you about day-to-day recovery. I have friends who are triathletes and I have other friends who are ultramarathoners, and I see them compete. I know the recovery for them after competing in just one event takes days and sometimes longer. When you’re doing consecutive triathlons every day for 50 days, or for 100 days, you obviously don’t have the luxury of that recovery time. How do you manage that short time every day as you’re recovering from one triathlon? On the other hand, you’re mentally and physically preparing for what you know you need to do the next day.

James:

It was interesting for us. I think it would have been harder for me if I did like 25 of them, took two or three days break, did 25 more, a two-three days break. I think once you start something it’s easier to power through it than to stop and start again. I remember days after I’ve done a single event and race, and I’m trashed the next day. Again, it’s a mindset. I know I have to get up again the next day. So you start healing and going down that recovery process, maybe a little earlier than you would, but your mind does amazing things. For us, one, I put on a lot of muscle mass, I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of me. I don’t look like a traditional really, really skinny, emaciated type of endurance athlete. I carry a lot of mass and it’s because we did a ton of strength training going into this, knowing we have to be durable. A durable athlete will last longer and be able to sustain that type of volume longer. So that’s always a huge piece of recovery. For us it’s preventative, avoiding injury. Leading up to it, what I like to say is the secret to success is doing a lot of little things consistently over a long period of time. It’s not like one thing that I do that allows me to sustain the high level and avoid injuries as best as possible. I do a lot of chiropractic work. I do a lot of deep tissue muscle manipulation. Muscle manipulation is probably the thing that my body and muscles react best to. I hired a full-time therapist that worked on me every single night for 100 days for three, four hours a night. I’d come home, I’d finished the day, my food would be on the table, I would have a shower and get right on the table and I’d be eating as he would start to work on me. They’d remove the plate and I’d get a pillow and I pass out and he’d work on me. Then two or three hours later, he’d wake me up and say, it’s time to move into your bed. I’d move into bed, sleep three or four more hours and then get up and do it again.

I have a hyperbaric chamber to maximize the amount of oxygen intake. If life is oxygen and your body needs oxygenated blood delivered to your muscles in order to heal them, we wanted to fill me with as much pure oxygen as we could so that we could get my blood oxygenated to deliver it to the muscles. We do a lot of red light therapy. I have a red light therapy bed here in my office that we use during for recovery. Then we have a PEMF pad that connects me to the earth and recharges my cells. There’s a lot of things that we would do. If you listen to the podcast, The Ed Mylett Show, he brings in an expert of this and he calls it earth, wind, and fire. Earth is the connection that PEMF pad we slept on which recharged our cells, wind is the oxygen—the hyperbaric chamber thing—and then fire is the red light therapy that we do. Then we would do a lot of scraping and acupuncture, IV therapy and hydration, and then obviously, nutrition. But recovery, you want to be sleeping as much as you can. You want to hit that deep sleep. We had all of our sleep metrics and everything tracked by Biostrap. That’s a wearable that we would wear at night. Then every night they would be analyzing our data as we would sleep. Hopefully our variable heart rate would improve. They were completely shocked because things…once we made it past 8:25 or so, then we kind of hit rhythm and things started to really improve—what they were analyzing. But as far as recovery is concerned, we did a lot of stuff with things like Theragun, things with deep tissue, with the red light, with the oxygen chamber. I used a vibrating plate machine to coat all of my cells and try to increase my immune system because that much activity trashes that. So, like I said, we did everything we could possibly think of to do, to keep us healthy and to give us a chance that at that recovery.

Everybody always asks me what’s next, so I’ll do it right now, because now that I’m post 100 and I’m recovering, I’m now going down this pathway of bio-hacking the body. The benefits of the red light, I’ve got a blue light coming that has a green light, and all these different things. The energy that…all this cool, amazing stuff that we now have access to. I mean, it’s 2021 there’s a lot of really cool things. So now my goal is to live a high quality of life, well beyond 100. That’s what my next challenge is, is to really bio-hack. I’m fascinated with the mind-body connection. I was totally intrigued by the brain MRIs they did and the therapy that’s coming to make my brain stronger. I mean, I’m just super excited for all that kind of stuff.

Brian:

Well and I’m equally fascinated by that longevity. I have a pretty lofty goal myself for living so we’ll definitely talk more about that. I want to take what you’ve done, James, and connect that to our listeners and viewers, because we want to redefine impossible too, and it doesn’t mean we’re going to go out and do 100 triathlons in 100 days, but we all have goals that we’re shooting for in life. What advice do you have for our listeners and viewers when they feel like they’re being pushed to extremes, whether that’s physically in a race or another sporting event, or just in the demands of other areas of life?

James:

First, I would say to those individuals who are stuck or having problems getting started with their big goal, my challenge to you is just start today. Like start right now. You’ll never be the expert when you first get going and you have to learn. A lot of the people on your journey aren’t even in your journey yet, and you can’t come across them unless you start your journey. A lot of people that got me to where I am today, I didn’t know when I started. I’ve got a hilarious picture of my very first triathlon, where I’m gripping to this edge of the pool, gasping for air, and nobody would have said that guy right there, he’s going to go on to break sports history. So really my first bit of advice is, look, if you’re on a journey, you’ve got big goals, that’s amazing. You’re never going to be the expert [at the start] so you just have to start somewhere down that path. Then you get down that path and you get to that point where you’re like pushing your boundaries, pushing your limits, and maybe things become massively overwhelming, and you’re riddled with anxiety, possible depression, you’ve got all those negative influencers from outside telling you it’s not possible. So step number two is having an unbelievable self-belief and conviction in what you’re doing, because nobody’s going to believe in you unless you believe in yourself first. You’ve got to have, absolutely this is possible, I can do this, I don’t look for ways to get out of this. I look for ways to solve the problems and continue forward. At some point on your journey, you have to have a rock solid ethos written out as far as what you stand for. For me, at the end of the day, my ethos was, I said I was going to do 100 consecutive Ironmans. So when I crashed on day 59, although it was a new world record and the public would have said, oh man, you crashed, you got knocked unconscious, we come to find out you broke your back, that the public would have gone, oh man, yeah, of course you stopped. But I go back to my ethos that says, look, I said I was going to do 100 consecutive Ironmans. Am I physically able to get back on my bike right now? The answer was, yes. So that was a black and white question of, if I get back on my bike, am I going to die? No. Will that get me closer to my ethos, which is finishing a hundred consecutive Ironmans, right? So when you’re going into a journey, put a lot of thought into what your ethos is, black and white, what you stand for, what your integrity is. Because at the end of the day, I also made a commitment, out loud. I did a virtual handshake that said I’m doing 100 of these. Any time that something would present itself as a problem or an issue, I would say, okay, there’s a solution, we’re going to find it. Then if it was on the bike or the run, will the next step, will the next piece of progress kill me? No. Can I physically do this? Yes. So I never had a good enough reason not to do it because I had such a strong ethos in place. So before your journey starts—and I know I just said, start your journey—but the one thing you have to do before you start it is write out what the goal is—make it big, make it scare the crap out of you—but to figure out what your ethos is, what you stand for to the core. So that when you get into a situation where you’re like, okay, can I continue? Should I continue? Is this worth it? How do I solve this problem? What’s the answer to this question? You can always revert back to your ethos and say, nope, this is black and white. This is what I said I was going to do, solve the problem.

Brian:

How do you make sure that you’re doing that? I know for a lot of people—and we’ll keep it, use the running metaphor a lot—whether they’re competing in a 5k or a marathon or even other goals in life, at some point, sometimes…and for you at the 59 day mark, and like you said, society would have said, that was great, he did 59. You had to, I’m guessing, had the thought of wanting to give up or like I can’t physically do this. When negative thoughts like that enter into your head, how do you…I mean, it’s great to have that monitor, that affirmation, that ethos, but how do you dig back into the well to muster up enough energy to keep going?

James:

Previous experience. That’s where I say, you can’t go from zero to a hundred. You have to gradually gain the experience and knowledge and do the right stepping stones to get you to the point where one, 100 is even possible, and two, because of everything I did prior to that, I have the knowledge and experience that when I get backed into a corner, I’ve faced this before. I know what this feels like. I know what this looks like.

The purpose of a journey is to gain knowledge. It’s to create a column of wins and successes. Momentum is a beautiful thing. Success breeds success and confidence breeds confidence, right? And so if you try to go from zero to one hundred, you’re going to fail. You don’t have the knowledge. You don’t have the experience. When you do get backed into a corner…I don’t care what your ethos is, you’re going to fail. Set yourself up for failure if this goal is too big, let’s shelve it. Let’s reverse engineer this thing to the point where we can start to get small wins. If you’ve got to go so big and you go out and you fail it, look, you’ve got to dial that back again. That’s not a realistic goal in a time frame associated with it. So let’s scale back and let’s put ourselves up with benchmarks along the way. This might be a ten year goal. Maybe you do have the mindset and the belief that you can do it, but that doesn’t mean you have the skill set and ability to do it, and that you should go after it. Now reverse engineer that. The whole purpose in life is to have wins, but that’s how you build momentum. That’s how you gain the confidence to be able to do it.

I had so much confidence going into the 100. I had naive confidence going into the 50 but I had concrete confidence going into the 100 based on what I’d experienced. I did the 30, and that gave me confidence to have the tenacity, to have the goal, to do the 50. But then it took some blind belief, belief and conviction and guts to keep learning and growing and pushing, to learn the lessons I needed to. Then the 100, I had absolute confidence that we were going to do it because I had so much experience going into that. I knew I could take all of that knowledge, all of that experience, because I knew that it was going to have dark and tragic moments, right? So combined with knowledge, combined with experience, combined with successes, combined with momentum, combined with a rock solid ethos, you can’t fail. Now, people have to realize that when they see the headline, Conquer 100, they see that we did it. Again, I didn’t go from zero to one hundred. There’s a decade worth of stepping stones, growth, failures, and all that along the way. People are seeing the culmination of somebody who’s been physical, who has applied their mind, for almost 15 years, of doing this very specific thing. So I think we need to be mindful of that too. That’s why I say, man, don’t go from zero to one hundred. You can, but realize one hundred might be a decade long ago. People today are so anxious to accomplish and separate themselves from anybody, they’re missing out on the learning stages. It’s the fastest route to failure you can ever imagine. Those people that are like a little bit more patient and give the right amount of time and respect the goal that they’re doing, they’re the ones that ultimately sustain the growth that they’re having and they can apply it to the future challenges that maybe they weren’t ready for at the time. But you grow into those. Does that make sense?

Brian:

It makes total sense. I know too, that you had a support team and that the support team was instrumental in your success, but I wonder, were they breathing life into you? Did you have like a mental performance coach or did you have somebody that was maybe like literally getting down on the ground and in your face and saying you are going to do this? Or you just internally, having that ethos that you talked about, having the goal that you set, knowing what it is that you wanted to accomplish?

James:

Well, I think it’s a great question. I think it’s important to also realize that our team is made up of myself and my wife, our five kids, and the two wing men who have been with us for many, many years and through multiple challenges. We know each other on another level. My wife and I are celebrating 21 years of marriage this year. So when we go in, we go all in and we go all in as a team and none of us waiver. Yes, each one of us will have an individual moment where it’s like, okay, this is happening. I’m overwhelmed. I’m not quitting. I don’t need to talk. I need to process how I’m feeling. I’m going to cry but I’m going to be back on the team in the next ten minutes. That happens a lot and we respect them, but we know and we have a standard of excellence on our team that like, look, there is no quitting, we solve problems and we keep going, and yes, you’re allowed to have moments, but you have to have a quick turn-around and you’ve got to get back. All four of us have never had a mental crisis or breakdown all the same time. When it’s warranted or needed, the other three people come to help.

Here’s a good example. It was day 15. I was dealing with some injuries really early on. My ankle had swollen. It ran up my shin and then it developed into a stress fracture. The pain got so bad I was waiting for the moment for my leg to break. During deep into the marathon on these days, I would black out, Casey would catch me and I’d come back to, and we’d keep pushing on. I remember finishing that day. It was day 15. I just looked at Sunny. I had gotten out of the shower and I looked at Sunny and I said, I don’t think I can manage that level of pain for another 85 more days. And she said, you don’t have to. And I was like, what do you mean I don’t have to? You don’t understand the level of pain. She said, no, you’re done today, the work is done. Allow your team to help you recover. We don’t know what tomorrow holds and tomorrow we’re going to wake up, we’re going to do an assessment and we’re going to see how you feel. We’re going to start the day. And once we start, you’re going to get into a rhythm and you’re going to go and then you’re going to fight when it gets gnarly. Then you’re going to finish that day. Then when that day ends, you’re going to come back and you’re going to let the team take care of you. You’re going to go on repeat until things turn and we get better. Wo she was like, you don’t have to manage this for 85 more days, youve got to manage this one moment at a time. We’re going to continually evaluate and assess what the current situation is. You’re always going to ask your question, is the next step going to kill me? No. Am I dead? No. Can I continue? Yes. What’s my ethos? Got it. We can keep moving. It got to the point where we learned how to manage that pain. We figured out how to navigate those injuries and then we turned corners. Obviously I didn’t have to manage that level, at that intensity for that long because your body adapts and evolves, but most people quit at that peak when they don’t believe they can take it anymore. That’s exactly the reason why we did 100, because we wanted to prove that yes, you can do it. Not only can you take it, you can push the limit, you can accomplish the ultimate goal. Then after you’re broken, defeated, and you’ve celebrated, you can go out and do one more.

Brian:

Well, a lot of times what happens is people stop right before that breakthrough, right? I think there’s a cartoon of a guy digging and he’s getting ready to stop. Little does he know that he’s gone this far and he just needs to go that much further. And then the…

James:

The pot of gold is right there, man!

Brian:

That’s great that you have the support of your team. I know your kids are instrumental as a support structure. James, one of the things I learned about you in preparing for our show is that throughout your career, you’ve always had fundraising attached to your events. You’ve raised money to provide water in Africa. You’ve created awareness around childhood obesity, and you’ve also fought in human trafficking, particularly of children. Tell us about that and why those causes have been so important to you and why you’ve always attached a fundraiser to these huge accomplishments.

James:

First I want to say that people quit and they miss that moment to where your mind and your body come into unison with each other to where you can see the ultimate growth. I just want to say that.

I love attaching it to charitable organizations. I realized that, taking a look around the world there’s a lot of people that are less fortunate than I am. If we have a platform that we can help raise money and impact other people, then we want to do that. Back in 2010, my father was the head of this charity in Africa. We saw a need there to provide fresh water and irrigation so they could support themselves. Then in 2015, I had five little kids in the school system, and it was like, man, this [obesity] is a problem. I remember when I went to school, there were two obese people in the entire school, and now you’ve got more than 50% ratio in your class. That’s tragic. I always say that kids are a product of their environment so this is an education piece that we need to do for the parents, because the kids are just part of the system. So we did a 5k every single day inside of our marathon that was part of the Ironman to raise money and the public would come out and participate with us. Super cool, we raised over a hundred thousand dollars for the Jamie Oliver Foundation. Then fast forward six years, we’ve got four teenage girls in the house . A local charity here is one of the biggest in the world as far as trying to eradicate sex slavery and human slavery. It’s crazy that in 2021, those words are even on the table, that that’s even happening. But it’s a very real thing. My wife is very passionate about it. She was like, we’re doing this for this cause. Man, we were so fortunate, we raised over half a million dollars, which will save hundreds of young men and young girls lives that are being trafficked right now in our country. These guys go and do an unbelievable job in sting operations to take down these bad guys. I wish we could do more. Half a million was such a blessing to do and it will impact and save people’s lives, which we’re so incredibly proud of. It’s probably a better feeling than any of the other accomplishments we have is to be able to turn that money over and watch it do good.

Brian:

Well, I really commend you for that. Our church has an organization called Love Runs, and a lot of the runners…we probably have 150 people a year. In fact, the Detroit Marathon is this Sunday, we have about 150 people a year. A lot of those folks are couch to 5k or couch to half marathon, even couch to marathon and all of the money that’s raised—it’s a fundraiser, the reason why for those runners is to fight against human trafficking. So you’re right. It’s rampant and there’s so much of that going on around the country and around the world. Anything that we can do to save a life is commendable. I appreciate that. You mentioned your four girls. You have five children—four girls, and one boy, I think they range from 18 to 11. Is that correct?

James:

My oldest is actually turning 19 this month and then my youngest son is 12 already. So yeah, it’s fun. We’ve got, like I said, four teenage girls and then that 12 year old boy who is just as vivacious as the other girls and just it’s so fun. I mean, people are like, oh man, you got five kids and four teenagers, man, that must be crazy and crappy. And I’m like, no, it’s unbelievable. If, as a parent, you love them and encourage them and their part of their world, and have a sense of humor, it can be an unbelievable time. We have a blast. We’re leaving in two days as a family, all seven of us, and we’re going to Missouri and we’re going to do some church history tour sites and see some really cool stuff. We like hanging out as a family because we’ve done these adventures our entire lives. My four daughters are super close, they’re amazing friends. I get to pal around with my little guy and it’s just a lot of fun being a dad to five very different people and trying to help them navigate this world and come into this world. It’s a lot of fun.

Brian:

I know your kids have obviously had a front row seat into all of your accomplishments. I mean, they literally traveled with you through at least the 48 contiguous states in the 50-50-50. Let me ask you what two or three lessons do you hope that your kids learned from everything that you’ve accomplished?

James:

It’s been so fun to have them be a part of it. Really the biggest things that my wife and I want them to learn is one, when you start something, you finish it. You treat other people around you with love and respect and you try to just be the best human you can be. You lead by example, you lead from the front, and you expect that from others. I think my kids have seen my wife and I try to do that through all of our campaigns. We try to have as much integrity as possible, try to continue to show up, try to push our boundaries. It’s been amazing. My kids have shown up in their own lives. I’ve got an 11th grader who has a thriving nail business out of our home and graduated a year early and is going to beauty school. And Lucy, my oldest, graduated high school with her two year associates degree and immersed herself into college two years ahead of most of her classmates. We didn’t tell them to do any of that, they just said, oh, this is what’s expected, this is how we continue to push and show up in our own lives. This is how we get ahead and this is what we do. We show up and work hard and we have a lot of fun while we do it.

Brian:

Well, you’ve obviously modeled success and I know Sunny is a great mom too, and you’re very committed to raising your kids, so I commend you for that. James, I don’t even know what word I can use to describe you. You’re absolutely astounding. And you’ve certainly redefined impossible, not only for yourself, but also today for our listeners and viewers. I’m so grateful for your time today. And I really appreciate you being on the show.

James:

Absolutely. Brian, I hope I’ve been able to create some type of value for the listeners. We love doing this, this is what we love to do. We actually…it’s crazy that this sounds this way, but my gift is the gift of suffering and I get to go out and suffer, and by doing so, our story provides hope to those that aren’t intentionally suffering. So we hope to continue to be on stages and help people have hope on their journey and to believe in themselves, like we talked about, to get out of their own way, to dream big, and to have that belief and conviction in themselves. So thank you for the opportunity to talk to your listeners. I hope every single one of you has an amazing day and amazing week, amazing rest of your year. Just keep showing up on your journey and you cannot fail.

Brian:

Thanks, James, it’s been great getting to know you.

James:

Absolutely, have a great day.

Brian:

Thanks for tuning into Life Excellence. Please support the show by subscribing, telling all your friends, posting about this show today with the Iron Cowboy on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.