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On April 18th, 2022, during the Boston Marathon, a man with the fastest time for his age group approached the finish line, a lifelong goal. With his family and friends waiting for him, he focused on crossing that line. Then, a memory from years ago intrudes: alone in a dingy room, under the influence of opioids, he realized the danger of his situation. This moment of realization preceded a shift in focus as he successfully completed the marathon, finding new joy with loved ones.

Ken Rideout is our guest. He shares his story, touching on his struggles with addiction, his passion for running, and the peace he has discovered along his journey.

Resources Mentioned:

Show Sponsors:

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Time Stamps:

00:06:48 – Off on the Wrong Foot
00:09:58 – The High Side of the Line
00:13:48 – Scared But Gonna Win
00:24:12 – From Injury to Addiction
00:36:58 – Feeling the Shame
00:43:28 – All the Reasons to Get Clean
00:47:32 – The Rideout Clan
00:57:51 – Redirecting a Hot Motor
01:03:14 – Ken’s Nutrition Best Practices
01:05:24 – Penance or Pride? What’s Your Motivator?
01:11:32 – Balancing Pursuit and Presence for Family
01:16:26 – From Addiction to Marathons
01:42:35 – Life Lessons from the Trails

Show Transcript:

[00:06:48] Gabby: It’s April 18th, 2022. A man is about to cross the finishing line of the Boston Marathon with the fastest time in his age group. It’s been a lifetime goal. His family is there. His friends, they’re all watching him. He eyes the line. He’s going to make it. And then a thought slips into his mind, a memory of years earlier.

He’s sitting alone in a shabby room. The opioids that he just took are flowing through his body. They’re blocking the signals that are screaming for him to feel pain, to feel stress, to feel anything. The last thought he has before he gives into the addictive bliss, I’m going to die if I don’t change.

Suddenly the world of the Boston Marathon comes back into focus. His foot crosses the finish line. He picks up his children, hugs his wife, and he’s surrounded by a new bliss. A better one. And this time he feels alive. We’re talking with Ken right out today and we’ll be hearing about his struggles with addiction, his dedication to long distance running, and most importantly, how he’s found peace through his journey.

Welcome to the Gabby Reese show. Let’s go. This is, this is, uh, the second time that we’ve recorded, but it’ll be the first show that airs. We had a technical glitch the first time and, uh,

[00:07:59] Ken Rideout: actually very happy that it glitched. I wasn’t happy with the conversation. No, I was vulnerable.

[00:08:04] Gabby: Huh? You felt vulnerable.

[00:08:05] Ken Rideout:

I just feel vulnerable. I felt like I was not being completely candid and transparent. Like I had a lot of things in my life that was still secrets. And you know what they say in recovery, you’re only as sick as the secrets you keep. And I feel free now.

[00:08:22] Gabby: How did I meet you?

[00:08:23] Ken Rideout: I came over here to work out with, uh, my dear friend, Rob Moore, who’s a such a sweetie peach.

Yeah. He’s my man. That’s my partner in crime.

[00:08:33] Gabby: How long have you So for people listening, Rob Moore, um I would say the, I would say that I would say the brains behind the brains of the Andrew Huberman podcast.

[00:08:46] Ken Rideout: But I’d like to say that I knew him long before that. And he was the producer of the fight with Teddy Atlas before he ever did the Huberman lab podcast.

[00:08:55] Gabby: He’s done an incredible job.

[00:08:56] Ken Rideout: Oh, he’s the best.

[00:08:57] Gabby: So talk about that podcast. I want to I want to sort of You have an a fascinating history. So you’re if people hear you talk long enough, they’ll probably figure out that you’re from boston

[00:09:09] Ken Rideout: Yep,

[00:09:10] Gabby: your name is not right out. It’s ride out, right?

[00:09:13] Ken Rideout: That’s right

[00:09:14] Gabby: And you joked in our last podcast that you were a prison guard.

Um as a job Yeah at a prison that your dad and brother I think

[00:09:22] Ken Rideout: stepdad. Yeah. Yeah

[00:09:23] Gabby: at one point You

[00:09:25] Ken Rideout: My stepdad was there before I worked there, and my brother would be an inmate there after I was there.

[00:09:29] Gabby: Yeah, so you never crossed over with anybody?

[00:09:31] Ken Rideout: No, thank God. But it wouldn’t have been uncommon. When I worked there, I actually was, uh, one of my coworkers was Mickey Ward, who they made the movie The Fighter about with Mark Wahlberg.

Dickie Eklund, his brother, who was played by Christian Bale, was an inmate there while we were both guards. So it was not uncommon at all for guards to have cousins, brothers, parents in the prison. This was not like a, uh, a Norman Rockwell painting of an area where I grew up.

[00:09:58] Gabby: Why do you think, were you always, were you always oriented towards trying to stay on the, you know, the high side of the line. What in you, did you have that mechanism even young?

[00:10:10] Ken Rideout: Yeah, no, that’s a good question. From my youngest age, I remember my family would always say, you think you’re better than us and you’re, you’re arrogant. And I always remember thinking like, yeah, I do.

I genuinely do. I’m not, I don’t want to be. Living in my parents house when I’m, when I have my own children. I don’t want to be on Section 8. I don’t want to send my kids to the grocery store with food stamps. Like this shit was mortifying to me as a child. And I don’t know why. Like I have a brother who’s 11 months younger, who would go on to be basically a career criminal and heroin addict and, uh, same house, same conditions.

Just from, from my youngest age, I just remember thinking like. I gotta get the F out of here. I don’t want this life. This is not for me. And I don’t know, I didn’t have an example of what I wanted my life to be like. I just knew that it wasn’t this and that there was something better. So I just stayed on my own game all the time.

So I was always, I wasn’t a good student, but I mean good enough to get into a lot of colleges and you know, good enough.

[00:11:07] Gabby: And how do you, because I think a lot of people, you know, feel that way or, or just like, I’m going to do this differently. And you don’t maybe have mentors or people helping you, but you, you keep it together enough that you have opportunity, but how do you go out into the world?

Pretty much on your own.

[00:11:25] Ken Rideout: Yeah, that was oh my god. There’s so many funny stories I I mean when I first got a job in pharmaceutical sales in new york city, I moved there. I got a uh, Like this greenish colored suit at fileen’s basement in boston. I thought that this thing was like the flyest suit I was like, I look so cool.

I’d never worn a suit. Was it dark green? It was like a light green like I don’t know maybe like a spring suit or something. I had a pair of um, rockport Walking shoes like wingtip walking shoes. I mean, it’s it only took me a few minutes when I was in New York Like relatively speaking to realize like oh my god.

I look like a fashion misfit. I had like a brown belt black shoes But super quick that and I’ve always done this. I’ve always been very observant and almost like a blessing and a curse like I would say to my wife’s like look at that girl with like pay less shoes and a Hermes Birkin bag and she’s like, how do you know what either of those things are?

I go. I don’t know I just do I just I would remember little details like that. So when I started working myself I was like, what are other people wearing that look like they got their shit together and I just quickly like adapted and just kept Refining as I was going along and kept like faking my way through it until I could figure out How to get along without sticking on like a sore thumb

[00:12:36] Gabby: now was the pharmaceutical job before the wall street Yeah,

[00:12:40] Ken Rideout: that was I only did it for like maybe two months.I moved to New York was selling pharmaceuticals It was the worst.

[00:12:46] Gabby: Wait, what does that look like? You have to go to a doctor? You’re not a pretty girl. You have to go to doctor’s offices? Come on. I was so,

[00:12:51] Ken Rideout: I was so bad at it. I never, ever went to work.

[00:12:54] Gabby: Were you like, I’m going to break your face if you don’t order this?

[00:12:56] Ken Rideout: I was in my own apartment. I had no office to go to and it was my first job ever. I didn’t know how to work. I would just like go maybe two calls a day, go to the gym, work out, just hang out with my friends. It was, I was a mess, but I was playing in a men’s hockey league and I met a kid called Mike Pelletier who has since passed in the 9 11 and we worked together at Kenner Fitzgerald, but he was working on a trading desk and was like, Hey, we need a trading assistant.

Do you want to come do this? And I had seen all these rich kids in New York city working in finance. I’m like, yes, I’m doing this. That’s what I mean about faking your way through. I’m like, yeah, I could do that. I didn’t know. Anything about finance. I had a degree in sociology. So I went there and I was like a fish out of water.

I mean, I didn’t know anything. Everyone there was like coming out of internships at Goldman. They were all like, you know, Ivy league education. I was just like, I, it was just like drinking from a fountain from a fire hose.

[00:13:48] Gabby: So what does that, where do you go in your personality when you walk into a place and you go, I don’t know anything about this.

And are you because you have this interesting mix of I’m scared. I’m gonna win. Yeah, you know like

[00:14:03] Ken Rideout: yeah

[00:14:03] Gabby: So are you going in with both of those dual living? Simultaneously.

[00:14:08] Ken Rideout: Yeah. Great question. And I, I call this, I’ve like coined this, like my 51 percent mindset. 49 percent of me is scared shitless. And there’s just what you would imagine, but I just need to get to that extra 1 percent of like alpha mentality where I’m like, fuck this.

I’m going to show these guys what’s up. So there’s those, both of those feelings are like battling with each other all the time. And then. In those kind of jobs, at least back in like the early mid nineties, there was not like this DEI movement and like soft and everyone’s like worried about HR. This was like ruthless.

This was aggressive, like almost hazing. And I’m sure enough, two weeks into the job, I got fired because they were hazing me and like harassing me. And I was like, I’ll kill you . What? Like, and one of the guys threw a dry erase at me and I just slapped him across the face as hard as I could. And the crazy thing is the clients, we, we were inter-dealer broker, so we were brokering trades between the banks and the utilities.

Like Enron was our huge client. Mm-Hmm. . And when those guys at Enron heard that this happened. The most senior trader there happened to be from Martha’s Vineyard, just outside of Austin. And he called me and was like, Hey, this other place is going to give you a job. I want you to be my sales guy. And within a couple of months, I was making like hundreds of thousands of dollars and I was making 40 grand when I got fired.

I swear to God, it was just like that. It was like, I was rewarded. Anytime I felt like, Oh my God, what have I done? This is a catastrophe. I’ve turned it into a strength, like with the addiction that we’ll get into. I’ve turned that into a. A strength and a, uh, a, um, point of accomplishment that I was like, I did this.

I made a mistake, but I fixed it.

[00:15:51] Gabby: What trait did you, do you have that you could go into this new situation from going 40, 000 to a few hundred thousand dollars, which back then is good money. What trait do you have? What is it that allowed, allowed that to happen? Because at some point you have to. It’s like a race you have to finish.

Yeah, it’s on time. You’re not gonna phone that in you’re not gonna tough guy through that

[00:16:15] Ken Rideout: Yeah,

[00:16:16] Gabby: what do you have that then you show up with that? You can do the work or what’s that you do the job?

[00:16:23] Ken Rideout: I always had a sense of confidence In myself, that I could figure it out, even though there was 49 percent of me was like, dude, what are you doing?

We’re gonna get, we’re gonna humiliate ourselves. Like it’s two people, two voices in my head that are constantly having this dialogue of like, what are you doing? And then the other guy like, dude, shut up, we’re doing this.

[00:16:43] Gabby: But do you, will you do the extra? Well, like when you go into this new place, are you asking guys questions?

Are you looking for mentorship? Are you just powering through it? Like, how are you getting the information?

[00:16:56] Ken Rideout: In every job that I’ve had that has been financially rewarding, I’ve developed really good relationships with the people that I was dealing with. I developed a strong sense of trust with the traders that I was working with.

representing on this particular trading desk. So they would call me, give me an order and it’s up to you to then protect their order. Like if Enron says, I’m going to buy a hundred of XYZ and you’re sitting next to me and you have a client that wants to buy five of those. If you know, Enron needs to buy a hundred, it would be very easy for you to try to buy five for your guy real sneakily.

But they knew that if someone tried to do that with me, I would be like, No, I’m not having that. Like that’s, I’m not going to let it happen. It’s, it’s, you know what I mean? It’s almost like, um, they, they, they trusted me as like their, uh, business partner

[00:17:42] Gabby: and that

[00:17:42] Ken Rideout: I wouldn’t let unethical stuff happen to them internally in a nutshell.

It’s a little more, there’s a lot of nuances, but that, that I’ve always had strong, um, personal relationships.

[00:17:54] Gabby: So you go through this and how long were you, were you working on wall street?

[00:18:00] Ken Rideout: 20 plus years. So I went, it, it, it was a, it, the whole thing was a rollercoaster of emotions, and like I said, every time I think something is a catastrophe.

It’s like, give it a little bit of time and let’s see, maybe this is a blessing in disguise. So when I was in, when I was trading commodities, I got hired by Cantor Fitzgerald and I went to London for a business trip. You in London? Yeah. So I was in London when 9 11 happened. So now they’re like, just stay in London.

There’s obviously no office to come back to. So I missed that. So I stayed in London and I worked there and things were going really well. It was like financially everything was going well. And then Enron went bankrupt. It destroyed the whole market that I was trading. So now, so these firms are so cutthroat.

So I was making a lot of money. And then when Enron went down, Cantor Fitzgerald said, Hey, will you go back to New York and take over our credit derivative business that we lost at 9 11 and that Business made a lot of money, but I was like, what do I know about credit derivatives? It was really complex stuff and I barely understood commodities, which is like buying oil by sell, you know, And um, so I went back to New York and they were like, uh, your new salary is now 10 grand a month I’m like, um, I was making like a hundred grand a month and they’re like, yeah Don’t care.

And I was like, these guys are ruthless. That was like my first, um, my first like a rude awakening with wall street in that it’s uh, just what can you, what have you done for me lately? So I came back, took over credit derivative business and within three to six months, I I was making even more money than I was making it went crazy And then the financial crisis happened and I went back to zero and every time you’re making that kind of money I know that people listening are gonna be like wow, it’s a lot of money But you know how it is if you make a lot of money eventually you spend a lot of money And then when you have to take a step back, it’s very very hard to um Kind of titrate down, right?

[00:19:55] Gabby: Well, did you ever see the Chris Rock’s, uh, stand up about women?

[00:19:58] Ken Rideout: No

[00:19:58] Gabby: Oh, yeah that they never go backwards. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right and she’s like sweetie. I got fired. Oh, don’t worry, honey But then you know, you’re out the door because they’re not going from like the Mercedes back down to the Honda.

[00:20:09] Ken Rideout: It’s always um More it was always been more painful and stressful and in my experience to have something and lose it than to never have it When you never have it you’re aspiring to get something when you have it the fear of losing it Is intense whether it’s money or relationship, you know, if you if you’re in love with someone and and You’re in heaven, but they all of a sudden don’t love you.

That’s a terrible feeling right that feeling of loss is like Oh my god, i’ll never replace this person Well, but at the end of the day, we all, no one’s going to die from a broken heart. We’ll all figure it out. And it’s the same thing with these situations. So when the financial crisis happened, I got shithanded again.

Well, I didn’t get fired. I knew it was coming. So I said, I want to voluntarily resign. And I went back to Cantor Fitzgerald. It was a crazy story. I had worked my way up to working at a bank, which was like higher up on the totem pole than where Cantor Fitzgerald is a little bit lower down on the prestige ladder.

[00:21:02] Gabby: Yeah.

[00:21:03] Ken Rideout: So I went back there kind of feeling like I had my tail between my legs. And just being humbled because I was working at a bank. Everything was great. And then when that happened, the financial crisis hit, we were trading structured credit products, all the stuff that got destroyed. And, uh, I basically went to, got a job eventually at Credit Agricole, a French bank, just trading, uh, corporate bonds, which is like, Very vanilla, but like just like a steady Wall Street job.

It wasn’t like no one there was going to get paid millions of dollars. Right. You weren’t going to go broke, but you weren’t going to get real rich. It’s like the perfect Wall Street trap. This is what I tell all my friends that are in Wall Street that are like, how did you get out of this? How did you start working for yourself?

I say, you’re in the trap right now. You’re like, almost like a slave. What do you mean? I get paid a lot of money. Yeah, but you can’t do whatever you want. Go to Italy for a month and just go do something. Like, no, they, they, you can’t. They own you. You make just enough money, they pay you just enough that you won’t quit, and you’ll accept just, and they’ll, you’ll accept as little as you can to make it work.

So it’s like, everyone’s trying to find that, like, Sweet spot where they don’t have to pay you anymore and it’s just enough to keep you from quitting

[00:22:14] Gabby: And

[00:22:14] Ken Rideout: you’re trapped there and you’re never really getting wealthy and I don’t mean wealthy in Financially, but if you’re spending 10 or 12 hours a day on a trading desk Like what kind of life is that like and at some point I was like i’m not doing this anymore I’d I’d just rather be dead than do this.

So did you So is this 2010, 11? When is this? 2010, I started at, uh, Credit Agricole and worked there for about five years. In 2015, I moved to L. A. and, uh, with a tech, financial technology startup that I knew probably wasn’t going to work.

[00:22:47] Gabby: Mm hmm. But

[00:22:48] Ken Rideout: it was one of those things where, like, I’m just doing this.

I need a change in my life. I just had my fourth child sold our house, packed up everything, moved to a crazy expensive rental in the Palisades. And, uh,

[00:23:01] Gabby: Oh, so you took the risk at the highest risk time.

[00:23:03] Ken Rideout: Yes, and I when I tell you I didn’t sleep for six months Like my wife when I tell this story now and she hears it.

She’s like what i’m like Oh, I was in a full on panic mode I’m, like I have got to figure out what i’m gonna do with my life And I was riding my bike past your house every day every weekend with a guy called jack mcdowell who ran a group uh asset manager here in the palisades called um, The palisades group and he managed whole loan residential mortgage credits for Big institutions like Oak Tree, Soros, and he didn’t have anyone doing business development.

He just had a great business and all the clients came from referrals and through riding my bike with him all through these mountains over the course of a year, I convinced him To hire me, but he was like, I don’t really wanna hire you because we’re friends and if it doesn’t work out, you don’t have any experience raising capital.

So I said, finally, I’ll do it for free, more risk. And now I’m like, I don’t even have a job. I have, I have bills that I’m like, I’m eventually gonna run outta money. Yeah. And uh, he let me do that. And after a month he was like, or after a few weeks, he was like, okay, this is working. Here’s a real salary. Okay.

And I did that for about four years and it changed my life.

[00:24:12] Gabby: Okay, so let’s let’s just back up because a lot happened So In the time that you were working on wall street you did develop. Uh, You had an addiction issue. Was it from an injury?

[00:24:28] Ken Rideout: I was initially introduced to percocet um right before I moved to london after an ankle injury and um once I had experienced the feeling of opioids I was Like I was home free, I was like, Oh my God, this is the, well, this is that, that feeling of 59, 51 percent aggressive and 49 percent scared.

All of a sudden I was a hundred percent confident, happy, and it just happens. I’ve never

[00:24:57] Gabby: really taken, you know, done that. So, and also you, I mean, you are edgy. You’re, you’re intense.

[00:25:04] Ken Rideout: You think?

[00:25:05] Gabby: Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense. People like me are way too hum drum to get, you know, on the, I’d be like, I noticed a difference, but not as much.

[00:25:12] Ken Rideout: I think that you and I are very similar in our aggressiveness. Yours is just different, you’re more soft spoken, you’re more well thought, you’re like, uh, well spoken.

[00:25:20] Gabby: No, but you have a, you have a You have a very hot motor. I know. I live with somebody who’s like that. It’s just like there’s this energy, right?

Yeah. So you get this injury. They say, Hey, if you have pain and discomfort, here you go. Was it instant? Do you take a pill and you go? I took it. I

[00:25:37] Ken Rideout: was like, Holy shit. I feel unbelievable. Have you ever had anesthesia before a surgery or after a surgery? I had a shoulder surgery recently and they were gonna give me a nerve blocker and they gave and I was like, oh I’m having a panic attack about this.

I’m a big I’m a big baby when it comes to surgery stuff So they gave me something they’re like, okay, we’ll give you some Xanax to calm you down So they give me an IV and I and I kind of came to and I was like, I feel awesome Give me the nerve blocker. I’m ready. They’re like we already gave it to you.

I’m like Whoa. And, but then I realized, I’m like, Whoa, what did you give me? I feel unbelievable. They’re like, Oh, that’s fentanyl. I’m like, don’t even do the search. Leave me here for an hour. Don’t even take me. I would just want to hang out here for a little while. And you know, they were laughing. The woman was recording me.

Is it a break from yourself? Yes. It’s just like not an ounce of anxiety. Perfect peace with the world. It’s just, it’s just like a warm light.

[00:26:32] Gabby: So you. How do you get pills after you’re not injured?

[00:26:36] Ken Rideout: Yeah, so For the first month or two the guy would give me seven pills every week and then after two or three times I’d take the Prescription I changed the seven to a two out of zero So then I had 20 and I would initially I would take them after work in the evening like instead of a drink I’d take like two percocet Can you sleep?

Oh, yeah everything. That’s the problem. Everything was good. Okay, like so then You I’d start to wake up feeling hungover and then I was like I wonder if I take one in the morning if it will kind of Take the hangover feeling away and it did and then I felt like a little buzz in the morning like super strong coffee But but a thousand times better and then very quickly within a few months.

I was taking First thing in the morning lunchtime and then after work, but then it would be like 2 in the morning Two, two, two, then it would be like five in the morning, five in the, at lunch and then maybe seven at night.

[00:27:32] Gabby: Seven pills?

[00:27:33] Ken Rideout: Seven, like at the equivalent of like seven extra strength Tylenol three times a day.

So when people are like, don’t take too much acetaminophen, I’m like, I must be insanely tolerant to that stuff because I was taking like 30 to 40 of them a day for a long time. So you’re working, are you training, physically training? I was staying in shape, but not like training like that mean?

[00:27:53] Gabby: Like dating shape?

[00:27:54] Ken Rideout: Yeah.

[00:27:55] Gabby: Kind of?

[00:27:55] Ken Rideout: Yeah. Yeah. I boxed a lot. So I would go to the boxing gym after work every night and like, hit the bag, sometimes spar with people. I boxed with the New York Athletic Club for a while.

[00:28:05] Gabby: Oh. That’s kind of a funny place, that place. Yeah.

[00:28:08] Ken Rideout: Very. It’s not as funny as it was. It used to be really funny before they let women in.

Right. Sorry.

[00:28:14] Gabby: Sorry about

[00:28:15] Ken Rideout: that.

[00:28:16] Gabby: Those rooms. The sacred space. Yep. Um. Yep. Yep. Yep. I always thought it was fine if people wanted to have like, I, I even Sherwood, the golf, you know, they have that one man smoking area and I’d sit outside and I look inside and look at all those old geezers smoking so he’s, and I’m like, I have no interest in being in there.

[00:28:33] Ken Rideout: No

[00:28:34] Gabby: rock on.

[00:28:34] Ken Rideout: Yeah.

[00:28:35] Gabby: Have it.

[00:28:35] Ken Rideout: Exactly. I can’t believe why anyone would be offended. Like go for it. Go for it.

[00:28:41] Gabby: Anyway. So what’s your body? You can, you know, for someone listening, it’s like, okay, of course you have endurance and all these things, but are you, are you in touch with like, Hey, I have a problem or you’re just rolling?

[00:28:55] Ken Rideout: No. Well, after about a year, I was like, now at that point, you’re not really familiar with the withdrawal process. I’m in kind of denial because I had grown up around degenerates and losers who were doing heroin and which is basically the same thing. And, um, so in my mind, I was like in denial for a long time and I was like, oh, this is not the number.

I’m going to eventually stop. It’s like someone who starts smoking and has never tried to quit. You’re like, of course I can stop anytime. And then when I was in London, I went there, ran out of pills and I was like, no big deal. I’m out. I’m out. And then immediately I was like, When I say sick, I mean sick, like incapacitated and um, it’s crazy.

It’s, it’s like, uh, again, like a blessing and a curse. I found a shady doctor, which was a blessing in that I was no longer sick, but it was a curse in that now I had this doctor who I knew had a drinking problem. So anytime he’d come, I’d pay him cash and he’d write me a prescription for anything. So he would write me a prescription for like Oxycontin, like, you know, a hundred pills every couple of weeks.

So I was like off to the races.

[00:29:58] Gabby: But where do you get those? You just go to the store? They just will fill it.

[00:30:02] Ken Rideout: Yeah, he would just write a prescription. It’s in hindsight. It sounds crazy. I know, but he would just write the prescription like, oh, this guy has chronic pain. And you know, the pharmacist is just, it was a little bit of a different system in the UK and there wasn’t the opioid epidemic.

So that was such a global issue at the time. So no one was really hip to this. So it was like, I was just kind of off on my own. And this was all secret. No one knew about this.

[00:30:26] Gabby: I was going to say, did you have any, what year, like around what year is this?

[00:30:29] Ken Rideout: This was, um, around 2001 when it first started.

[00:30:32] Gabby: And so you didn’t have a, a buddy or somebody or girlfriend that you were like, Hey, I, you know,

[00:30:39] Ken Rideout: Along the way I would bump into people that had the same problems.

But again, I was like. Ashamed for, you know, so it wouldn’t be something that I would be like, Hey, let’s get f-ed up. Whereas they would be, oh, let’s get, let’s party tonight. I’m like, I’ve been high for like two straight weeks. Whatcha talking about like, this is, this is every day. And, uh, you know, it’s, it’s mortifying.

In hindsight, I wasted so much of my life and the productive years of my life, but I can’t do anything about that now, which is why I talk about it to kind of. Give people some information because when I see people now that are high it’s Can you recognize it in a heartbeat in a heartbeat?

[00:31:17] Gabby: I’m really naive about this stuff. Like sometimes we’ll be somewhere and learn it’s like, I don’t know What’s up with that guy and I don’t catch it because I don’t see it You know, I don’t know it.

[00:31:25] Ken Rideout: Yeah,

[00:31:25] Gabby: so I can’t recognize it. What how does it can you see it instantly?

[00:31:28] Ken Rideout: You can see a little bit in the eyes there. Uh pupils get a little bit dilated and they’re just kind of like Vacant a little bit you can just tell something’s off or they’re too Enthusiastic or too their emotional swings are too extreme so you can imagine with me it was Aggressive on a trading desk.

I was super super aggressive with people In hindsight, but it was an aggressive place. So it served me. Yes. Yes. It served me there.

[00:31:56] Gabby: But so what was the impetus to say, okay, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta stop this.

[00:32:01] Ken Rideout: Yeah. So I knew I had to stop once I realized what I was doing, but it would be the kind of thing that you, you, Would be so sick from the withdrawals that it would be I would be like I can’t really afford to be sick for two weeks And then I’m like I’m doing it on vacation.

I’m just gonna get these I’m gonna go through these withdrawals I’m gonna go to Bali or I’m gonna go to some beach and then I’d get there and be like Why would I want to ruin my whole vacation? I’ll do it while I’m at work Yeah, and it just and then a few times I did it. I I just got through it I went to AANA and just like white knuckled it multiple times like the amount of times that I did this I’m like It’s so embarrassing, but the toughness that it took, I can’t, I mean, people, I’m sure everyone listening knows someone who’s been an addict and until an addict wants to get themselves right, you cannot tell them what to do.

Their first love is their drug of choice. It’s hard for someone who’s not an addict to understand this and appreciate this. Drugs come first. They will abandon first communions. They’ll skip their cousin’s wedding. If they need to get drugs, they’ll do what they have to do because The alternative is being sick to the point where you can’t really function I can’t I can’t go to that wedding until I get some pills because if I show up there sweating through my suit All I’m gonna be doing is looking at the clock and trying to get out of there

[00:33:16] Gabby: Yeah, and

[00:33:16] Ken Rideout: I’ve been in those situations a million times, but really when I met my wife in the mid 2000 like 2005 but around 2007 I started to like really try and that’s when I was like, oh no I’m, like just i’m taking these things no longer to get high just to avoid getting sick and just trying to constantly kind of like Uh taper myself down and then eventually I found a drug called subutex suboxone, which is um To people listening and understand addiction will understand this but to me that drug is like As much of a crisis as the pills because that shit is so addictive and that made me very Like emotionally unstable, but it cut down on the cravings So you would get off of the I could get off of the opioids and the opiates, but i’m still on this suboxone But I mean this addiction is worse than that like meaning the withdrawals if I just stopped taking this little tiny pill.

[00:34:15] Gabby: Yeah

[00:34:15] Ken Rideout: was Excruciating. So eventually after I got married and my wife and so, okay, so

[00:34:22] Gabby: hold on. So do you had to tell your wife? Yeah,

[00:34:24] Ken Rideout: so that’s what I was gonna tell you. So when I met my wife, people would always be like, how did your wife not know? And I’m like, she only knew me high like I was, right.

[00:34:32] Gabby: She didn’t have a reference.

[00:34:33] Ken Rideout: None. Another baseline. This was you. So she would get glimpses when I would like. Go to withdrawals in my apartment by myself and then I’d emerge and I’d be like very docile and like just just imagine if you Artificially spike serotonin in your brain whenever you want

[00:34:49] Gabby: Yeah,

[00:34:49] Ken Rideout: now the natural things that spike your serotonin like walk outside look at the ocean.

You’re like, oh, this is great That doesn’t exist anymore, like for someone in addiction and it takes a long time to get back there. So even after a month of being sober, you’re still like, my system is so unregulated that I don’t get the natural high that other people get. And then people start to chase things like sex and replace addictions.

And to a certain extent, and we can talk about this in a minute about my running became a replacement addiction, a hundred percent. So we’ll come back to that. But, um, so. When I married my wife, the whole time I’m in

[00:35:25] Gabby: But how do you date? Like, I, from everything, the way you talk about your wife, this is a together person.

[00:35:31] Ken Rideout: Very. She represented everything I wanted in my life. Her family was what I wanted. I was basically marrying the person that could give me the life that I wanted, in addition to being my wife. She’d be the best mom. She would represent everything missing for me. In, in, at times, an unhealthy way. But that’s, Everything to do with me and nothing to do with her.

She’s awesome. She’s a good person. She’s never done drugs in her life Nothing, not even smoked weed. Nothing, but that’s part of why she didn’t recognize it. Exactly, right? Just like very conservative and How long did you date before you got her to marry you? Oh, it was a nightmare because we would break up and stuff because she was like this guy is like emotionally unstable He’s like all over the place happy angry.

[00:36:15] Gabby: Yeah,

[00:36:15] Ken Rideout: so it was hard for her and then But I held it together. I got on the subutex, which greatly regulated the ups and downs relative to straight. Percocet and Oxycontin and Fentanyl addiction. So she would get enough of a glimpse to be like, okay, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

[00:36:36] Gabby: And then you talked briefly.

I’ve heard you in many things. Um, forgive me if I’m getting it wrong. Vivitrol.

[00:36:43] Ken Rideout: Yeah, that’s what I’m going to get to that now.

[00:36:45] Gabby: Okay. So did, were you still on pills when you got married?

[00:36:49] Ken Rideout: Yes. Yes, very briefly. And, and then I was, well, I was on the subutex for most of the time. This was also a several year process.

[00:36:58] Gabby: Also, I want to say something. You keep saying, you’ve said three times, um, ashamed, embarrassed. These are perfectly engineered for your neuroreceptors in your brain. Yes. If you, if people have this switch, they have no chance. Yeah. And I believe if you are a sensitive person. Because, because they’re, you know, all the data on pills is like, it’s, it’s, they’re, whichever, you know, swath, it could be male, female, young, old, rich, poor, it doesn’t really matter.

That’s right. And so I, I want to sort of say, as somebody who didn’t, has not experienced this, I don’t think. Um, there should be any shame around it. Because sometimes I feel like people who got on these, they have no chance against it. That’s how I see it. And this is somebody who, I never struggled with that.

[00:37:51] Ken Rideout: Yeah, I agree with what you’re saying, but I cannot help that those are the emotions I experience. And, I mean, we’ll get into more of this too, but I constantly live in a, In different periods of like shame storms where I where I feel We’ll we’ll get into this. It’s a long story but it’s all part of like my emotional makeup is that I can get i’m very As much as I can be aggressive and hard charging I can very quickly be like completely mortified and ashamed and like this addiction Really, like, effed up my whole psychological makeup prior to this.

Like I said, when I was in high school and even through college, I was like the kid relative to everyone around me that was squared away. That I was like the, I was friends with the principal. Like, they liked me. I was, I was a nice kid. I was friendly with everyone, for the most part. And when this happened, it kind of, it kind of destroyed that part of innocence in me where I was like, Fuck i’m gonna have to carry this forever.

So that’s something that I have been working on and i’ve done a bunch of um, Therapy around in my own individual intensive like I went to a place called on site workshops. Um recently for um Five or six days that was like I was saying earlier. It was harder than running across the gobi desert It was harder than anything because that’s like There’s nowhere to hide for me there in running.

I’m just like I’ll just suffer more than you or and I’ll win or I’ll die You know like with the therapy I’m like, I’m alone with my thoughts and all the things that make me uncomfortable.

[00:39:25] Gabby: Is there something connected to? Because I’m and this is more of like just a I think about this sometimes where sometimes we come from a place and Even though we’re we sort of say hey, I’m gonna do it different and we do do it different We can’t help but think we’re still from that place

[00:39:41] Ken Rideout: hundred percent You That’s exactly right.

There’s a part of me that’s still there like thinks of myself as like this dirty snot nosed kid from the streets And it pisses me off It actually makes me angry because then i’m like why the fuck why am I carrying that around? Like i’m i’m not that person. I can’t control where I was born and who I lived with but it’s still hard to get rid of That shame storm.

It’s just like something that I carry but I try to like remind myself when I have conscious thoughts of that I’m doing it. I’m like, okay, that’s you know, I mean i’m I’ve been in a lot of therapy. I know that that’s not a reflection of me.

[00:40:15] Gabby: Yeah, but it is it’s hard to shake sometimes where we come from Um, because even though we make the departure and do actions that are different It’s like we still think like oh, yeah, but my family’s like that and we have the same last name And we look alike.

That’s right. And I probably have those tendencies. Yeah um I think I think a lot a lot of us go through that You Um. Very

[00:40:43] Ken Rideout: much. Yeah. You described it perfectly.

[00:40:45] Gabby: Yeah.

[00:40:46] Ken Rideout: I just don’t really consciously think about it in those terms very often, but yeah, like when I reflect, that’s exactly right.

[00:40:54] Gabby: I think that’s the key word though.

I think it’s even like feeling anger or other things that we feel. It’s like, instead of going down the hole with it, being like, Oh, I’m feeling that, but observing it, understanding exactly why. And then just allowing it to, to move on. I, I think, um, you know, it’s, I think everybody experiences it differently.

[00:41:20] Ken Rideout: Yeah, but I think you have to be in, have to have some exposure or some experience with therapy to be able to make sense of that, to have someone explain it the way you just did. Because without. The work that I’ve done, I wouldn’t know, I’d just be like, every time I think about that, I get mad. And then I’m like, well, why?

You know, and like taking a minute to really reflect, but that stuff to me is hard.

[00:41:41] Gabby: The physical stuff is just, well, listen, I interviewed Susan Casey. She’s an author and she wrote a book about the deep sea and she’s like, you know, it’s always the hardest to go in. We know more about space than we do the ocean.

Yeah. And it’s the same with ourselves. Right. Yep. Yep. So, so, okay. So you get married.

[00:41:58] Ken Rideout: Yeah.

[00:41:59] Gabby: You eventually, in a long process.

[00:42:02] Ken Rideout: Yep. Adopt a daughter.

[00:42:04] Gabby: Well, you kick it. Now, this is, this is my favorite part. Well, no, we

[00:42:07] Ken Rideout: get, we get, we start. Wait, you hadn’t kicked

[00:42:08] Gabby: it? And you still? We start,

[00:42:09] Ken Rideout: no, we start the adoption process.

So we’re married. We’re trying to have kids. We went through like seven rounds of in vitro, uh, three miscarriages, but we were always going to adopt. So we started regardless. Yeah. No, definitely. We tried to adopt more. I’ll tell you about that in a sec. So we start the adoption process and it could take years.

So we’re trying to have kids. We’re trying to adopt. And eventually in like November of, um, 2010, we get a call. Hey, when we were approved for twins and we’re like, they were like, Hey, we’ve got a brand new baby came into the orphanage. She’s three or four weeks old, severely malnourished. Do you want it? We were just like both like, we’ll do it.

Let’s go. Yeah. Where in Ethiopia? Yeah. So at that exact point, I was like, I remember sitting in my apartment and thinking like as, as, as dramatic as this sounds, I was just like, I’m either going to get sober or kill myself. I’m not living like this anymore. I cannot do this to anyone else. I’m, I’m, I’m putting other people through this.

Um, I, I was just exasperated. I was serious. So I went to an outpatient clinic that helps with um, physical withdrawal symptoms for you get off everything including subutex for one week And as soon as you have seven or eight days clean and test clean They’ll give you a shot of Vivitrol.

[00:43:28] Gabby: So you have to be clean for how long before they give you this shot?

[00:43:32] Ken Rideout: Yeah, so you Oh, and how

[00:43:33] Gabby: do you, what does that mean? Like for real clean?

[00:43:35] Ken Rideout: For real clean, nothing, like no Xanax. So, so what happens is they’ll give you like Ritalin to stay awake during the day. Cause I mean, you’re a mess. Oh, so they’ll let you have, okay. Yeah. Blood pressure medication. Um. Xanax to go to sleep.

I mean you’re in bad shape. You’re really really sick and you check in every morning there So i’m going there in the morning checking out. I haven’t told my wife yet.

[00:43:54] Gabby: Is this New York?

[00:43:55] Ken Rideout: Yeah, okay So I’m in New York City and after like four days, I think I’m like I’m almost there I’m running every day I’m torturing myself because to me the running became like a form of penance like no no you’re fucking running Yeah, you want to do this to yourself?

One thing we’re not going to sacrifice is our fitness so I um On like the 4th or 5th night, I woke up one night again, I’m on Xanax, blood pressure medication, some crazy antidepressant, just all kinds of drugs to kind of regulate, and I woke up to go to the bathroom, and I just woke up, I was standing up, and then I woke up on the floor, and my wife’s like rousing me, like, what are you doing, what’s going on, and I’m like, oh my god, oh my god, I must have passed out.

And in a moment of weakness, like the movie Flight with Denzel Washington, where he’s just gotta make it one more day to testify that he’s not drinking and he drinks everything in the, in the hotel bar, for people who’ve seen the movie will understand, I just came clean with everything. And I was just like, she had known that I had done, done drugs before, cause I had told her like, Oh, I did these and you know, cause she found them and I come up with some stupid excuse and I just came clean with everything and was like, it was like the weight of the world off my shoulders.

And then three days later I got the shot so then I was like sober basically for the next three months.

[00:45:11] Gabby: Does the Vivitrol work? Like what does it do? Do you throw up or something if you take pills? Like what does it do?

[00:45:16] Ken Rideout: It just blocks the receptors because the first month I had them I did try after a few weeks.

I took some, they do nothing. It’s, you’re literally like, dude, did someone give me fake pills? I’m not getting anything from this. But the problem is if you take too many trying to chase that high you can overdose easily. So once I realized that I was, that this was like, Almost like a security blanket for me and then you just have to get it every 30 days to keep it It’s a it’s a extended release long acting injection that they give you in an intramuscular shot And it was a lot of fluid like when the woman took it out.

It was like, okay, pull your pants down I’m gonna give you this shot. I was like There’s no way all that fluid is going to go into my muscle. It was like a huge vial. And I was like, but at the same time, I’m like, Oh, I don’t care. I deserve it. You can hit me over the head with a hammer. I deserve everything I’m getting as part of this process.

And, um, and there really, that was it. And then I was pretty much clean and have a couple, like, I say relapsing that I got high a couple of times over the course of the next, like. Several years like I haven’t been

[00:46:14] Gabby: Was it stressed? Did you have someone?

[00:46:18] Ken Rideout: Yeah, triggering events where just anxiety like just so much shit going on where I’m like I have to escape these feelings for a few minutes and Luckily, none of that ever came back to bite me in the ass.

I just feel like being honest about it and being transparent with it is much more helpful to anyone who’s hearing this because It would be a better story if I’m like, and that was the last day, but I can’t, I can’t lie about this shit. It’s like not helping me or anyone else to not be honest. And um, there would be events that, you know, stressful shit that would happen and I would like, I was an extremely, uh, resourceful drug addict.

I had, I could get these drugs anywhere. Doctors, street people, unfortunately, and um, Yeah, and but now I’ve been like Around when I came to LA really I was like turned it around and since like I guess 2015 or 16 I’ve been like really good.

[00:47:12] Gabby: That’s amazing.

[00:47:14] Ken Rideout: Don’t really drink just Training.

[00:47:18] Gabby: That’s what the Your new drug of choice the

[00:47:19] Ken Rideout: rewards that I’ve received from this new fitness addiction has been Transformative to my life.

It’s given me a source of pride. It’s given me a focus. It’s You I’m incredibly grateful.

[00:47:32] Gabby: So, for fun, though. You guys hightail it to Ethiopia.

[00:47:37] Ken Rideout: Yep.

[00:47:38] Gabby: Here’s this little girl.

[00:47:40] Ken Rideout: Oh, it was awesome.

[00:47:41] Gabby: And you, but there’s a sort of a acclimation period. So your wife stayed, right? And you had to bop back.

[00:47:47] Ken Rideout: That’s right.

And so we, she, it, it, They say it’s going to take eight weeks to get her processed. So you go over there, we adopt her in the court. She’s now ours. I was working at Credit Agricole, so I couldn’t just take two months off. Again, they own me. So I went over for a week. We, we spent a week in Addis Ababa, the capital.

And on the next to the last day, we went to To see her in the orphanage adopted her in the court and my wife took custody of her in ethiopia You had the option of leaving her at an at a different orphanage that the that the charity ran And come back to the u. s And then in eight weeks you go back and get her but to me it was like if we had a brand new baby and someone Said oh we’re gonna take your baby for eight weeks to ethiopia I’d be like no i’d quit my job if I had to but luckily my wife was able to live there So she lived in a guest house in addis ababa with custody of my daughter You And, after a few weeks, my wife’s like, I really don’t feel that good.

I, I think Because you went back to visit her, right? I was there for one week, and then I came home, and then I was going back to visit her. But the first week we were there, she must have got pregnant that week. Now she had been pregnant a few times, and we just had three miscarriages. It just wasn’t working.

So the doctors were like telling her, oh, we’re going to give you this medicine. And we were just like, you know what? We’ve tried everything. We’re just going to go au natural and see what happens here. And so my wife came home. Uh, on December 18th, one week before Christmas with my daughter who is now five months old and up and she’s pregnant with our first son who’s due on her first birthday coincidental coincidentally, which if your

[00:49:19] Gabby: Irishness is really coming through, I mean, you do have a brother.

What’d you say? 11 months. 11 months.

[00:49:24] Ken Rideout: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:25] Gabby: So good job.

[00:49:26] Ken Rideout: Yep.

[00:49:26] Gabby: So you have your first son and then you have your second son, your third child, and then you have your. Third son your fourth child.

[00:49:34] Ken Rideout: That’s right. And all the boys are exactly two years apart. All their birthdays are within five weeks

[00:49:40] Gabby: What’s that like you’re done with your racing season and you come home and it’s love time?

It must be like a fertility window.

[00:49:44] Ken Rideout: She had because believe me for a long time. We were trying every month That was just a month. It worked I don’t know. I don’t know. I wish I had an answer. I’d like write a book about it

[00:49:56] Gabby: And you hear that a lot though when the almost the stress of okay, we have a child You Cuz if people want that.

[00:50:02] Ken Rideout: But when you’re going through it, and someone’s like, Listen, just relax, it’ll happen, you’re like, Stop with the hocus pocus shit. It’s, it, it, it, I know it’s gonna happen, but my wife was really stressed, and I was like, It’ll happen, it’ll happen, and It is kind of crazy that as soon as she took custody of that baby like within days she was pregnant

[00:50:20] Gabby: And

[00:50:20] Ken Rideout: um,

[00:50:21] Gabby: isn’t that amazing?

[00:50:22] Ken Rideout: It’s crazy. Yeah, I wouldn’t believe it If you if someone else told me this and it wasn’t my story i’d be like he’s full of shit She was probably pregnant before they went like it just seems too It just seems too like, uh spiritual

[00:50:35] Gabby: So speaking of your daughter because it’s your only daughter that you have you’ve got your three boys What’s that like for you?

um because In all confession before we were going to talk today I think there’s a lot of very obvious things about you that are easy to talk about you know, and we’ll get into your racing and your ability to deal with discomfort, but I I called rob more You And I said, Hey, listen, I’m, I’m going to talk to Ken and what’s not obvious.

That’s unique and special. And he, and he said that he sees something so different in you when you talk about your daughter and just you learning to navigate being the father of a teenage female. How’s that going?

[00:51:26] Ken Rideout: Yeah, it’s hard. I’m about to cry. I just, it’s hard. I just. You know, when you have children, you’re only as happy as your saddest child, and that is, um, while on the surface people like to, um, romanticize that, but I got news for you.

It ain’t easy when they’re going through difficulties, and you’re living and dying with their happiness, and especially when it’s a 13 year old girl dealing with bickering other little girls in school. You’re like, I want to kill everyone. I want to go protect her, but at the same time, I’m like, This is where parenting comes in.

You’ve got to raise your children to be able to understand that not everyone’s going to be nice And if someone’s not nice, then maybe they don’t deserve your friendship as hard as it may seem But you know a 50 year old man telling a 13 year old girl. Don’t listen to those dingbats You’re all you’re much cooler than them.

[00:52:16] Gabby: Do you call them dingbats? What do you really call them? Come on, Ken That’s what I would say to them.

[00:52:18] Ken Rideout: Oh to my daughter. I’d be like don’t listen to those dingbats. Those girls don’t know anything Um, it’s that you’re that pg Okay That’s pretty good. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah. No I have a terrible habit of cursing too much in front of the kids, but usually the boys get the brunt of my aggressiveness

[00:52:38] Gabby: But what where do you go?

I can relate. I mean, I have three girls But the advantage I have is I was a girl a teenage girl. I do remember vaguely Um, does she have a phone? How do you guys navigate all that?

[00:52:51] Ken Rideout: That’s a great question. She doesn’t have a phone

[00:52:54] Gabby: Come on, how’d you get away with that? That’s amazing

[00:52:56] Ken Rideout: I have like a zero tolerance for certain things and

[00:53:00] Gabby: She has no phone.

[00:53:01] Ken Rideout: I desperately want her to have a phone so that I can reach her so that she can have it when She’s at lacrosse practice so we can get in touch with her But every single time she’s had that phone We catch her setting up a tiktok account setting up instagram and and I scroll through tiktok with them Sometimes and they some of the stuff that comes up on tiktok like and I don’t look at Offensive stuff.

I just, I like the same shit everyone likes. I like uh, dance TikToks, I like TikToks about watches, like goofy stuff. But some of the stuff that comes up, and the cursing, and the like, language, I’m like, wha? So, I’m just paranoid about them having this, and then I see What about a flip phone? That’s a good idea.

[00:53:38] Gabby: No, because there is an interesting book that’s just come out about, uh, the anxiety of this next generation. And I’ve blown this miserably. My youngest daughter’s a junior, but they said that if you can have a phone free, I wish I could remember. It’s like hate. It, it, it’s a somebody who was about four interviews ago.

He wrote the coddling of, of, um, the, uh, coddling of the American mind, uh, hate didn’t hate. H A I D T. What is it? Yes, Jonathan Haidt’s new book and what he says is if you can push off a smartphone till high school, if you can push off social media, which I don’t know how you do it cause they know how to ninja everything.

That’s right. Um, till 16, give them a flip phone when they’re younger and, and phone free schools and playing. Right? If you can sort of do this, that there is a lot of data suggesting it supports their emotional and mental health on a real level.

[00:54:34] Ken Rideout: Well, they’re getting that because my kids are not allowed to have a phone and they’re not allowed to have social media.

And my, you know, my wife and I debate this and we’re like, do we want them to be the dorks that don’t have any like social media and like be the kind of nerds that their parents are super strict. But I’ve, like you just said, I’m like, I don’t care. Yeah. I can be the bad guy. I’m, I just don’t want it. I don’t like the things that I see.

I don’t like the things that I see their friends post. It, it makes me nervous. They’re so desensitized to everything. I mean, even the access to like online porn, like when I was a kid, you have to go find a VCR VCR tape. And then like, you know, watch it in a frigging closet. Now it’s just like, let me see what’s cool.

And it’s, and I’ve, I’ve. She’s 13 now, right? So when she comes, she’s coming

[00:55:18] Gabby: at you for my wife.

[00:55:19] Ken Rideout: My wife usually talks to her about, um, sexual topics, but yo, she comes to me for the, for the phone. I’m saying, what does she do when she comes? I’ve caught her lying so many times where I’m like someone else. She had a Tik TOK and one of my wife’s daughter’s friends, one of my wife’s friends, her daughter said, Oh, 10 days on a Tik TOK.

And the girl was like, you know, 10 days on Tik TOK. We’re like, So then we call her down 10 say, do you have a Tik TOK? No. And then I go, stop, I’m going to tell you something right now. Lying is 10, 000 times worse than the initial crime. I’m going to give you one more chance. She’s like, yeah. I said, why didn’t you tell me?

And then we talk about it. And I’m like, I cannot give you a phone until I trust that you’re telling the truth. It’s not even about what you’re doing. It’s just lying right to my face when you, and you know, you’re caught. You come down here. Hey, do you have a tick tock? No, well, didn’t you ever

[00:56:08] Gabby: do that as a kid though?

[00:56:09] Ken Rideout: Yes.

[00:56:10] Gabby: Oh,

[00:56:10] Ken Rideout: yeah, that’s why I try to Drill it into them right away. It’s like stop. I don’t I don’t want you to do this to yourself Yeah, do not lie and for the most part they’ve been getting pretty good, but it’s it’s incredibly difficult, but I also have She hates when I talk to her about anything emotional about race or sex or anything, but I deal with this stuff.

If it comes up in my mind, it’s something that, yeah, I just tell her, I’m like, yo, don’t be that person who’s being pressured into doing things because you think it’s cool. And I just get so worried about the desensitization that They’re gonna think that what they see online in not necessarily porn, but porn, that that’s the norm.

And I’m like, that is not what norm, that’s not a normal interaction. Yeah. That’s, it’s, I don’t know. I, I, I think being a parent is incredibly hard. It’s, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

[00:57:01] Gabby: Yeah, I think it’s, uh, well it’s our lesson. You know, Laird always jokes. It’s the thing that’s gonna make us grow up.

Yeah. He’s like, they call it parenting. They don’t call it kidding.

[00:57:09] Ken Rideout: A hundred percent. It’s like a massive maturity process. I mean, from where I started when we first had kids, even though I was older, when we had the kids, my, I was 40 when we had our first one. It’s still like. The difference between now and then I’m just like little things like we would be at my in laws in Shelter Island and we had they had this little like shopping wagon thing like a Fisher Price thing and I put my son when he was like maybe one and a half and I sent him flying down a hill and my wife’s like, I don’t push him down there.

It’s a little too steep. I go, he’s all right. The thing went like 10 yards, rolled forward and he’s like face planted and like. Scorpioned all the way down the hill. He’s covered in burns and cuts. But I do things like that to them all the time where I’m like, Oh, why didn’t

[00:57:51] Gabby: you tell me that was dangerous?

So, okay, so you, you now have your four kids. You, you started biking a little bit in New York, in the park. Yeah. Is this right?

[00:58:01] Ken Rideout: When I, when I got sober, that’s when I really started to, um, ride and bike.

[00:58:05] Gabby: Did somebody suggest that to you? Like, hey, you might want to redirect this into something else. No. It just was a natural inclination and then somehow you got into running.

[00:58:16] Ken Rideout: When I got, when I got sober, I was running and riding my bike and I was really getting into the bike. I mean, and I mean, I’ve done training camps with Lance Armstrong. I got really good, fast at training. What made you good? Ability to suffer because I really feel like, and, and even I felt, and I feel like this during races is like, there’s nothing you can do to me physically that.

Even compares to the emotional shit that I’ve dealt with. So when I’m feeling physically uncomfortable, I’m like this is gonna be temporary This is gonna be over and if I can take if I can just stay in this place for a few more minutes I can have the glory of being the winner.

[00:58:52] Gabby: Mm hmm,

[00:58:53] Ken Rideout: and I mean listen I I didn’t I won my first marathon at 49 the day before I turned 50 years old and and I only did that for by being able to suffer.

Like I, you know this, it’s like race day is like a beauty pageant. It’s like, let’s come out and parade around. Show me what you got. Oh wow, look how fit I am. I’ve already done everything to win this race in the dark and in the cold, in solitude, by myself. No one sees it.

[00:59:22] Gabby: That’s like the time to show off if somebody’s listening to this and they’re let’s say they’re they haven’t they’ve been working, right?

They just haven’t had that opportunity to really have a physical practice You know I mean I have the luxury of coming from coming from sports and having that momentum push me into my adulthood and middle age You started a little later and they’re like, hey, I’m busy. I’m overwhelmed. I have family What’s, what’s a starting point?

What’s one thing that you would say to them if they were curious about either picking up something new, um, or hard or challenging?

[00:59:55] Ken Rideout: No, that’s a great question. I would say that the, by far the most important metric in any physical practice is consistency. And I would also say, and I’ve been like preaching this for a long time, is that you’re, we are all born with one responsibility and that’s to take care of ourselves.

Absolutely. Absolutely. When you wake up, no one’s coming to say like, Gabby, did you take your vitamins? Did you do this? Did you take a shower? Like you take care of yourself. For me, exercise is physical and, but even more so it’s for my mental health. So my responsibility is to take care of myself. So we just came back from skiing in, uh, Utah and Alta on the, you know, Alta is like up in the frigging, there is no place cool to run there.

It’s up and down. And I just got up every single day and ran 10 miles through parking lots around the little neighborhood there every single day. My kids have come to expect it and my wife but I don’t inconvenience them with my shit I get up early do it But I would say to anyone who’s starting a new practice and it doesn’t have to be running.

It could be Musical lessons swimming like take a pick But the point is you have to show up every day And you have to prioritize Yourself if I don’t take care of myself mentally and physically eventually someone else is going to have to do that for me And I want to prolong that as long as possible And I also want to take pride in the fact that this is my responsibility And first thing in the morning i’ve handled my business like i’m ready to go I’m like, there’s a lot of things that I can improve on in my life but for me I’m the best version of myself when i’m doing something that makes me feel proud and gives me that outlet and allows me to kind of Vent.

I get out there and I think, and I have like, you know, 80 to 90 minutes or 60 to 90 minutes, depending on how fast I’m running every single morning by myself. I listen to podcasts sometimes. Sometimes I don’t listen to anything. I just think if I’ve got to like work on stuff. But I always tell people, no one ever came back from a run or a workout and said, man, I really regret doing that.

I shouldn’t have done that, barring an injury. But you never have a good workout and go like, ah, I should have just sat on the couch. Yeah. Because sitting on the couch after you have a good workout is heaven on earth to me.

[01:02:07] Gabby: So a couple weeks ago, Laird had a birthday, and um, there were no waves weren’t showing up. Nowhere. He kept looking, right? So as the day got closer, I knew he was agitated that he wasn’t going to be doing something he really wanted to be doing. And it was a, it’s a, it was a significant birthday, right? So he goes, well, it looks like I’m going to do a 60-mile ride. It’s supposed to rain on my birthday.

And, um, and then he had a couple of guys showed up and he goes, well, I guess my ride has become our ride, but it rained. There was no mishaps, one flat tire. They get back here. And, uh, he’s like, because then. It’s all perfectly okay. And I think that, uh, it’s so true of us as human biological beings, but especially if you have that hot motor, because it, you know, it’s like going, you were a prison guard.

Many of those people could be CEOs that are in jail. The only thing that separated them was an environment they were born into and an opportunity,

[01:03:14] Ken Rideout: right?

[01:03:14] Gabby: Like these hot motors, man, they can do, you know, triathlons and marathons and ride giant waves. Or they would be dead or in jail or other. And so I think it’s, it’s people using that as a tool.

So on the nutrition side, do you have best practices? Do you, do you eat differently when you’re getting closer to a race? Is it sort of pretty much the same? Like, how does that work?

[01:03:39] Ken Rideout: If there’s an area of my life I would like to improve, it would be my diet. Just in that, if you don’t, you know, they say if you, uh, work your plan and plan your work.

If I don’t plan what I’m going to do, I can get lazy. Then I’ll put, oh shit, there’s nothing healthy to eat. I put it off, put it off. And then the next thing you know, I’m like, I don’t care. Give me a pizza.

[01:03:59] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:03:59] Ken Rideout: And, uh.

[01:04:00] Gabby: Well, you burn so many calories too. You can always get away with it.

[01:04:03] Ken Rideout: Yeah. But it’s still like, I want to be putting really like clean, food in my body, not any, not necessarily any one diet, but I, um, I could do better on the diet.

But typically I just get up in the morning and I have, um, coffee. If I have Laird Superfood, I’ll mix that in. I really like that. So I, I do everything fasted. So I wake up in the morning, have my coffee, um, and then I’ll run. And then I usually, Eat lunch around 11 11 30 and if I have my druthers and everything’s planned out my wife will chop up a big Ziploc full of salad with just like vegetables and lettuce in it and I dump it in a bag with like some Nut mixed nuts and sometimes i’ll put some hard boiled eggs if we have them That’s like the perfect day and then for dinner I get a little bit lazy and i’ll eat try to eat what the kids have and so my wife is like My wife could have been like in the 50s It’s like she could have been like at the Cleaver family, like steak, potatoes, asparagus.

The next night is like chicken, you know, she’s make a meatloaf. So, um, we eat. That kind of diet like a protein vegetable starch typically every night But the weakness is like after dinner if I haven’t had enough calories yeah, of course my body doesn’t like my body’s like Oh, we’ve done so good eating all day a little bit of a little treat isn’t gonna hurt anyone So it becomes every single night I’m having like, you know A scoop of ice cream or a piece of cake or and the kids always have junk food around

[01:05:24] Gabby: Yeah, well, I think you know, listen every house has a little Uh, cause then you don’t make it taboo, but what about your body, like your knees, your back?

How, how do you feel?

[01:05:33] Ken Rideout: Oh no, everything feels good in my body. No problems. I had a, um, I had a major shoulder surgery two years ago. Did you have a fall? Yeah. I had initially heard it playing college football and then I was running in the snow in Nashville and so embarrassing right in front of like this, like a little.

Guardhouse near, near our house and I came and I waved to the guy, my foot slipped off on me, I fell and when I fell my shoulder kind of wrenched behind me and I was like, you know, of course they’re looking so I’m like right up, I’m like, I’m good, I’m good and I’m running and I’m like, I’m practically crying like my effing shoulder.

So I got home and for a couple weeks I was like, man, my shoulder is killing me. It’s killing me. And it’s funny. I was just telling her the other day, cause my other shoulders bother me. I’m like, there’s a big difference between when you know that something can be fixed. You’re like, my Achilles is tweaked.

I know it can be fixed. I just got to get with a physio. But this was like, this ain’t getting better. Like, so I went and had an MRI and they were like, yeah, a rotator and labrum. But my God, the pain, the pain, the pain was just, I’m such a baby. But four days later, I put a belt around my neck, held onto the belt and started running.

And just kept running right through it.

[01:06:40] Gabby: So I think about this a lot. People ask me sometimes they go, Hey, like, why do you think if you’re successful or people, you know, and I really have come to the point in believing that a lot of success, most success comes from kind of a fucked up place. Like this high, high achieving.

And it’s like, yeah, because they’re fucked up, you know? So. You’re a dad now, I’m always curious, you know, my job, my hope is to raise, you know, unmessed up kids. Yeah. And then I’m like, but maybe they won’t, maybe in the external world, are they going to be like performing in these bizarre, you know, I’m going to prove it to you.

You know, I’ve got something I’m going to show you. I’m deathly scared. I’m going to run for my life. Do you think it’s possible, so now you’ve, you’ve been going to therapy and I want to really talk about your races because especially one of your last races is incredible. Have you come to a place where it’s not coming from, I’m paying my penance because I’m, you know, I did, I had 10 years of bad, you know, in my mind, bad behavior.

I come from a place that I’m not proud of. Um, Um, have you switched the motivation? Have you switched what’s making you get up every day and run those 10 miles?

[01:08:08] Ken Rideout: I would say that over the last couple of years, it’s become so automatic that it’s not even a thought process. It’s just like what I do. It would be like, you know, how do you get up and go to the pool every week?

How do you have a crew that comes to the house? They show up every day. What if you’re like, get the fuck out? I don’t want to work out. You just like, I wouldn’t even cross my mind. I’m just like, this is what I do. It’s. The like I said earlier the rewards that I’ve received for simply showing up for myself in my own life to benefit no one Except myself that’s become like an admirable trait But I will also say that i’ve recognized that for a lot of people It’s become a source of inspiration and it feels I feel a little bit embarrassed saying that because I don’t find myself to be inspiring But the messages that I get on instagram in particular about People saying that I inspire like a lot of guys that are like, I started running cause I was watching what you were doing.

And if you were doing this, I could at least show up and do three miles or whatever the case was. And I did, uh, in January, like on, in the end of December, just randomly on Instagram, I held up my phone and I was like, Hey, I’m going to do a challenge in January. Let’s show up every day, pick a distance. I’m going to run 10 miles minimum every day for a month.

Who, what do you mean? Minimum, minimum of 10 miles. So maybe I’ll run 20, but I’m going to run at least 10. So I said, why would you

[01:09:23] Gabby: set yourself up like that?

[01:09:25] Ken Rideout: I ran over 11 miles a day for the last like five years.

[01:09:29] Gabby: Well how about that one, that one in your one race? Well we have 50 miles. I was like, okay. So how did, so what happened?

[01:09:35] Ken Rideout: In January, a thousand people signed up for this. No, there was no prize. There was no nothing It was just hey who wants to do this and like a thousand people and I’d made a video every day like alright guys day 15 down hope everyone’s getting after it and it like it Motivated me to hear people that were inspired by this.

I I was I was genuinely moved. I was like, holy shit I feel like a massive responsibility now. I was gonna do this anyway, but it was incredibly rewarding and I think that the connections I that I’ve formed as a result of, like I said, showing up for myself, like no one knew. I mean, if I wasn’t in the shape I was in, and Rob said, let’s go train with Laird and Gabby, I would’ve been like, are you crazy?

I’m not gonna go embarrass myself. But my goal in life now is to be able to show up and do anything. Like, hey, we’re going to do, we’re going to climb this mountain. I’m like, okay, I’ve never done that before, but uh, I’ll try it.

[01:10:28] Gabby: Do you think, like, I hate running, first of all, look at how long my limbs are, right?

[01:10:36] Ken Rideout: Every time I see you, by the way, I’m like, so tall, so pretty, every time. Thank you.

[01:10:40] Gabby: Is, um, so, but you, you sort of feel like, hey, everybody can run.

[01:10:45] Ken Rideout: Of course. But, but I don’t say you have to run. What about walking? What about riding your bike? Like, I just say you need to do cardio. I think you need to do weight, like resistance training too.

I mean, we’re speaking the same language here, but I just believe that again, this is like, this is your life. This is your responsibility. Like, how dare you not show up and take care of yourself? It’s almost like, what are you doing? You’re neglecting your, your. Your life you don’t want to live longer And you know, there’s people like I don’t want to live too long.

I’m like, okay Well as long as i’m alive, I want to be healthy something could happen any day, but while i’m here, I don’t want to A rich man has a million problems. A sick man has one When I had my shoulder surgery or i’ve had any kind of illness i’m like I would do anything to be better

[01:11:32] Gabby: I don’t want to get there.

I’ve been down on toilets and thinking I can’t get up hardly by myself You with knee injuries or whatever. It’s like, I don’t need this lesson, you know. What about the calibration between pursuit and family and being present? Because it takes a lot of energy to be in pursuit. It’s something I, I certainly dance with as a parent, um, And I have a, maybe whether people like to hear it or not, as the mom, I have a different type of responsibility than my husband.

And, and even though I know Laird is in pursuit, um, we’re both showing up, but is there times where you go, Oh man, I’m, um, I’m going too far. I’m too obsessed. Like, because I think a lot of us have that, right?

[01:12:16] Ken Rideout: Yeah.

[01:12:17] Gabby: It’s like, okay, we have to work and then I’m going to be in this self care pursuit and I’m trying to be here for my family.

[01:12:23] Ken Rideout: Yeah. No, I have those thoughts. I have those thoughts and feelings a lot. And I’m trying to, constantly trying to find the balance. And I think over the last few years, While I think that there’s a lot of things I can do to improve and I’m sure my wife would agree with that there’s also a lot of things that I’ve done to try to accommodate and find the right balance and it’s it’s it’s in it’s a Never ending pursuit for me to be as good as I can be because there’s always areas of improvement but yeah, that’s something I think about a lot and but there is a part of it now where It’s become, I hesitate to say a bit of an identity, but it has, and I think that it’s something that the kids get pride from too, they’re like, Dad, I heard the other dads talking about you at football, at a football practice, or the kids on the bus said they saw you TikTok with The Rock.

And I’m like, you know, I know that they get pride from that, but that, that’s not why I do it. But there is that, there is that, you know, reward system that I guess could, you know, throw things into an unhealthy balance, because it’s like constantly chasing adulation. I’m very aware of that. Not

[01:13:30] Gabby: just that, but I’m just more from a human side, from a time, from a bandwidth side.

Do you have, have you gotten any techniques or have you figured out something that you’re doing better at kind of Distributing the energy because it takes a lot. It’s like work. It’s like anything. It takes a lot of energy Is there some way that you’ve you’ve you manage it or is it just hey? I just get up earlier before they’re all up and at least bang out the run

[01:13:56] Ken Rideout: No, you know what?

I haven’t been getting up early I get up with the kids get them ready for school have coffee do my thing and when they go to school one of the Nice things about working for myself And it took a long time to get here I was talking to cam haynes about this the other day and people say to him a lot like oh man Must be nice to be able to do i’m like You Yeah, it is nice.

Guess who created this? Me. Guess who helped me? No one. I did this. You can too. Like, you can have anything you want, but don’t look at someone else and live a life of envy and like almost be nice. Yeah, it is nice. You should try it. This, anyone can have what I have. I’m not a great athlete. I just started trying hard, but I don’t know.

[01:14:33] Gabby: So just, it’s, I,

[01:14:36] Ken Rideout: what I was going to say is I, I do that. Yeah. Yeah. Do the thing, I get them ready for school. Once they all leave, then I go run. I’ll take calls while I’m running. I come home, eat lunch, do my work, do my work. So I’m trying to, I try to fit stuff in so it doesn’t. Interfere with anyone else’s stuff, but my wife is the best because if we have saturday morning, you know The weekends are like saturday Okay, saturday morning.

We have game starting at nine and they end at seven at night and i’m like, oh my god Can you take the morning shift so I can run and then that’s that’s usually what we do to balance things She’ll take the morning shifts on the weekends, but then i’ll be At those damn fields for so long so long

[01:15:12] Gabby: Yeah, and you think any of your kids are going to be professional soccer players?

[01:15:15] Ken Rideout: I would, that’s one thing, if there’s anything I’ve done that made, that I feel proud of as a parent is not trying to project my expectations on the kids. And I think that because I have my own outlet, I’m like, I know who I am. I know what I am. My kids are a combination of me and my wife and I have four and they’re so vastly different to think that I can influence their healthy influence their life.

I can introduce them and. You know gently suggest that they do things they all like different things and we know like none of them are into like high Performing like aau. They just they just haven’t shown that kind of well, they’re young but they’re so young except the little one is

[01:15:56] Gabby: Oh really? He’s your killer, right?

[01:15:57] Ken Rideout: He’s a good fighter. He is tough. That kid is tough. He’s like a dad’s, he’s like my little dream come true. He’s like, first flag football game, every time he gets the ball, he scores like four touchdowns. I’m like, I’m looking at my wife, I’m like, he’s good. You know, the other kids are good too, but they’re like, he’s, he’s got, he’s got the older brothers that he’s been trying to keep up with.

So now he’s like out there with kids his own age. He looks like a big, even when he’s walking out there, I’m like, he just looks like he’s ready. You know?

[01:16:26] Gabby: Do you think you’d be, I mean, you’ve done marathons, you’ve done triathlons, you have done an extraordinary race that I want to get into, the Gobi, uh, race, the Gobi March, um, do you think you would have been as good, as good as you are at all of this if you hadn’t gone through your addiction issue?

[01:16:52] Ken Rideout: I don’t think so. I think that that really created a void in my life that even if it’s to myself or to someone else proving that I was worthy of something that I could persevere and push through and overcome. And there’s definitely an element of You know, I’m trying to prove myself again, even to myself.

I don’t, I don’t know who I’m performing for. My wife could care less like about run. I mean, she likes it, but she’s like, I mean, I’ve won races like a mile from my house and she’s like, man, I’m going to come down. It’s probably going to be too hard to get all the kids around. So, which is fine. I treat it.

It’s like business. There’s your wife coming. I’m like, um, it’s a work trip. I’m going to run in like work, you know? Um, But no, I I that’s a good question. I’ve never thought about it like that, but I would definitely say that the um experience that I had With my addiction definitely carries over into the training because like I said at times it becomes like a penance And I feel like one day off is going to be the first day of a really bad habit

[01:17:57] Gabby: We were when I when I talked to rob, you know Sort of this the epiphany of at the time when you maybe were making some of the most money that you’ve ever made You You might have been the most miserable.

[01:18:08] Ken Rideout: A hundred percent I was.

[01:18:10] Gabby: And maybe the deepest in your addiction.

[01:18:13] Ken Rideout: A hundred percent. I was so uncomfortable with my station in life.

In making that kind of money in finance. It just was a very I know that there’s going to be people who may not have Ever had that kind of money that I like f this guy. I get it. I completely understand. Yeah, and I know I said many times like Money doesn’t necessarily make you happy I had a lot and it made me addicted to drugs not the money but just the experience the expectations the pressure of having this it was you know, I was too young and it was just all too overwhelming and uh Yeah, I’ve never been happier now and I definitely, uh, don’t have enough money to not work.

I work, but I like, I work on things. It’s funny. I say I work, but I really don’t. I do things that I like to do. I, the people that I work with, I like working with them. And if I don’t like them, then I just won’t work on that particular mandate or with that partnership. And I’ve been extremely lucky in that regard.

[01:19:12] Gabby: Do you think, you know, it’s almost like you have survival. So you come out. And then it’s like, okay, I got to go for the zeros because that gives me stability. And then sometimes I feel like we get into life and they get, we get the luxury to ask ourselves, what’s it really all about? And I feel like you’ve gotten, you okay, Justin?

I felt like you’ve gotten to the place where this is the luxury. When we get the luxury, when we get breathing room to look up, go through some shit and survive it, Okay, but what the deeper meaning what is it really all about it feels to me like you’ve had that cycle and now you’re, you know, living in that other other part of it.

Um, so let’s talk about your first triathlon. It was, you, you got, you were fortunate to kind of qualify, um, and, and Hawaii. Yeah. So for people listening, you weren’t, you weren’t really great in swimming. No. So you, you’ve, you had to muddle through that, ask for help at your local pool. So you, you, you weirdly have.

Yeah. You’re like, okay, help me out. How does this look? I mean, a lot of people don’t, won’t do that.

[01:20:21] Ken Rideout: Yeah. No, no, definitely. I’ve always embraced my own weaknesses and haven’t hid from them. Like I said, I’ve tried to like not have those kinds of secrets where I’m trying to pretend to be something that I’m not.

I’m like, what you see is what I really am.

[01:20:33] Gabby: But it just shows you. Laird always says, you know, there’s only one first day.

[01:20:36] Ken Rideout: Yeah.

[01:20:37] Gabby: Like when we can get through just that first day.

[01:20:39] Ken Rideout: Yeah,

[01:20:39] Gabby: it’s kind of amazing

[01:20:40] Ken Rideout: hundred percent.

[01:20:41] Gabby: So you go to Hawaii

[01:20:43] Ken Rideout: Yeah,

[01:20:43] Gabby: and wait, how many kids did you have at that time

[01:20:46] Ken Rideout: two?

[01:20:47] Gabby: And the whole family goes.

[01:20:48] Ken Rideout: Yep.

[01:20:49] Gabby: How’d it go?

[01:20:50] Ken Rideout: Oh

[01:20:51] Gabby: So it was a turning point in my life. You were sort of lucky to get in right? It was like a New York. Uh, that’s right Right. You had a lucky, almost like lottery. Yeah.

[01:20:58] Ken Rideout: It was like a roll down spot because New York was a new race. They had an extra amount of spots for my age group. And I like got like one of the last ones.

So I make it to Hawaii. And that was like, it’s funny how we set ourselves up for these things. Like that was the only goal I never thought through, what are you going to do when you get there? Cause to me it was like qualifying for the Olympics. So when I got there, I was like so intimidated that I was like, I don’t even have aspirations to do good here.

I just wanted to get there. And by not having that mental focus taught me a lesson that I still carry with me today. And it’s still, it’s changed my whole attitude on training forever. Because when I got through the bike, I was dying. I mean, I, I got off and, you know, I wasn’t in good contention and my time wasn’t great.

It was a real big learning experience. Experience, deep learning curve. And as I’m running down a leaky drive, like a mile or two, and I see my wife with the kids and she’s, and she’s recording and we have this recording. And I look at her and I’m like doing the cut sign across my toe, like, turn the camera off, turn the camera off.

And she’s like, and I run up and I stop and she’s like, what’s going on? I go, I’m done. I can’t do it. I’m destroyed. I’m just, I’m so tired. But the truth was I was just like weak. I could have walked, which would have been the right thing to do because I did do that one year when I went back and I had been sick, but I was like, I disrespected myself.

I mean, when I think about it, like, I could cry. I’m like, what up, baby? I was like, I can’t believe you did this to yourself. Even as I started walking back to the transition area and over dinner that night, I was telling it to my wife, like literally would like tears in my eyes. I’m like, I can’t believe I did that.

I’m humiliated. I can’t believe I quit. And she was like, well, you can come back next year and do it again. And I, I, I, And I did, and I ended up doing like a 939, which was pretty good, relatively speaking. But I’ve used that lesson, and that, the way that I felt when I was sitting there crying about being a quitter, I was like, I’ll never quit again.

I’ll die first. I don’t want to feel like this again. I don’t like the way it makes me feel right now.

[01:23:02] Gabby: And it,

[01:23:03] Ken Rideout: and it’s, it sounds. Maybe corny to people, but I’m like, no, I’m, you’ll never see me give up again. Never, because I know that that pain pales, that the pain I’m feeling physically pales in comparison to that feeling that I can’t control.

I can control my physical suffering, and I can control how much effort I put into this. Look, there’s some days you’re just not gonna finish, and you know, but, but you know, I couldn’t have done anything else. I was gonna, you know, I literally was, like, had an injury. I was gonna drop dead. My bike crashed.

Something legitimate happened, but you know if it’s real and if it’s not.

[01:23:35] Gabby: Right

[01:23:36] Gabby: It’s a very different thing.

[01:23:37] Ken Rideout: Yes.

[01:23:37] Gabby: So what year was that?

[01:23:39] Ken Rideout: 2012.

[01:23:42] Gabby: How old were you? 41. Are, are your runs comparable or faster now to, to them from that

[01:23:52] Ken Rideout: point in? In, well, 2012 to 16 I was still doing triathlons. And then in 16 I started just running in from 16 to 22.

I ran faster every single year till I was 49. And then last year, 23 I think was the first year. I didn’t run a faster time. I ran a 228 marathon and in my 50s and I ran a, um, 110 half marathon, 13 miles, like 522 per mile. That was my proudest race ever. I was like, while it was happening, I was like, holy shit, I’m running fast.

This feels good.

[01:24:28] Gabby: Is it like you wake up and all the stars line up and you’re rested and it’s just the rhythm of life?

[01:24:32] Ken Rideout: I wish I knew what I did or how to bottle that feeling or how to like recreate that feeling. There’s an element of, well, first it’s cold. Like it’s, you’re always going to run faster when it’s, I mean, cold, real cold.

Yeah. Um, your body spends a lot of its energy trying to cool itself down. Yeah. So it was the two races where I ran fast was in the marathon and the half marathon, the PRS day, it was really cold. There was very little wind. There was good competition. So there were people to like work with and, uh, It’s just, man, when it happens, you’re like, oh, it’s working, it’s working.

And then there are other times, like in 21, I won the master’s division in New York City for over 40 at 50, which I don’t think anyone’s ever done in a major marathon before. In every single step, I was like dragging a piano. I was like, I’m gonna die. Please, God, why is this not working? And I just suffered through, I ran 233, which was still decent.

I mean, I had run 2 28, 2 29, so to run 2 33. I was like, the time isn’t great. But when I looked at the results, I was like, oh my God. I, I won my age group, but I think I won 40 plus too, and it, I think I won like $5,000. It was a big deal. The previous winners were like, MEB Kalasky and my friends Abdi Abdi, Rockman five time US Olympic Runner.

I was like. So now whenever I see them, I’m like, Hey, what’s up fellow marathon champions. Um, but that was, uh, as I was finishing that New York city race, you know, this wave, there’s different areas. So you don’t really know someone might be 10 seconds ahead of you, but they may have started in a wave behind you and vice versa.

You don’t know. Where these people are in their time. Yeah, because it, you know, so as I’m coming up the finish line in New York City, who’s Shalene, Shalane Flanagan, who won New York, is running behind me, chasing me. She had run all the majors, so she was trying to do something different. This was a slow, slow time for her, but she’s closing on me and the crowd’s going crazy.

So. I know they’re not cheering for me. It’s like this random guy and I look back and I see her and I’m like, oh hell no. I go into a mad sprint. I must have looked like a spaz and I won that Masters division by three seconds.

[01:26:42] Gabby: So Shalane was your hero?

[01:26:44] Ken Rideout: Then again on the flight I was going to Seattle to Portland, Oregon for something and she was sitting on the uh, In the seat right behind me in first class on a Delta flight the next day.

And I was like, yo, I got an awesome trophy and everything because of you.

[01:26:58] Gabby: What do you do right after when you’re finished? What do you do to do? Are you drinking something? Like, how do you restart the recovery process?

[01:27:06] Ken Rideout: I stagger back to the hotel, order up some cokes and pizza and burgers.

[01:27:12] Gabby: You fold your pizza in half? How do you eat your pizza?

[01:27:13] Ken Rideout: No, usually I try to take my time and savor every bite.

[01:27:17] Gabby: But you don’t have like, okay, I’m going to start hydrating or get somebody to work on my muscles?

[01:27:21] Ken Rideout: After the marathon, no. And I never get massaged. Never? No, never. It, it, I would love to. If someone wanted to come to my house and massage me, I’d love to do it.

It’s just, by the time I run, deal with the kids, do my second workout, I’m just like, how am I going to fit this in?

[01:27:40] Gabby: Ken, if I said to you, maybe you’d be a little faster if you got massaged once every two weeks. Find an hour.

[01:27:48] Ken Rideout: I mean, I would love to.

[01:27:49] Gabby: I mean, if you’re, if you’re racing, cause let’s talk about the, let’s talk about the Gobi.

[01:27:53] Ken Rideout: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:27:55] Gabby: First of all, explain to people what the Gobi is and where did you get the idea? And why did you do?

[01:28:01] Ken Rideout: Yeah, this is a crazy story. I was talking to a friend called Scott Teru, who happened to be the president at Equinox at the time. He’s since left and now he’s the CEO at, um, Iron Man. And I was talking to him.

He was a friend, a friend named Gary Brown had connected me with, um, Scott. Scott wanted to talk to me something about running. He, he, we had mutual friends and he was like, I got some questions. I’m doing this race. And he started describing the race. And I said, when’s the race? And, and I had just run Tokyo in March and this is in like April, May.

And he’s like, uh, it’s in the beginning of June. I think it was beginning of June. And, um, I don’t know what he even made me say. I go, dude, let me see. Let me look at that thing. I go, dude I bet I can win this and he’s like, have you ever done an ultra marathon? I’m like, no Have you ever run with a backpack?

No self supported. So you had to carry all your own food for six days Sleep in bag like i’m a baby. I don’t sleep in sleeping bags. I don’t like rough it I want to stay at the four seasons. I’m like i’m a baby and uh This was all of those things and he was like you should try to get into it See if you can get in and um, I said what would take to get in?

[01:29:04] Ken Rideout: Well, it was sold out. So I had to email the race director and I sent her an email with like some of my results and some articles like I had, they had just written an article in Wall Street Journal in New York Times and I sent her the articles and I’m like, Hey, I know it’s sold out, but any chance that I can get into this?

And she was like, yeah, you’re in. And all of a sudden I was like, Oh my God. And then I said to my wife, I’m like, yo, am I crazy to think about doing this race in Mongolia? And she said, yeah. Do you want to? I’m like, not really. I’m like, it seems like over, like, it seems really intimidating. And I’m actually nervous.

And she’s like, well, you’re the one who’s always preaching online about like doing things outside of your comfort zone. And I was like, I’m doing it. As soon as she said that and challenged me, I was like, all right, I’m doing it. And then of course, she’s like, how much is it? And I told her like, well, about.

All the expenses and she’s like, yeah, no, we’ll take the kids to Hawaii. No, thanks So I reached out to some awesome brand partners that i’ve been working with like, um athletic brewing athletic athletic brewing and um equinox um and they were just unbelievably supportive and uh The funny thing is after the race the athletic brewing guy was like, I can’t believe you did it and I was like, dude Are you trying to offend me?

What do you mean you can’t believe it? He’s like, you know how many people tell us they’re gonna do things and never do it Like you’re the first one who’s actually said you were gonna win something and you did.

[01:30:23] Gabby: Yeah,

[01:30:23] Ken Rideout: so

[01:30:24] Gabby: we’ll lay out what the race is like .

[01:30:26] Ken Rideout: so it’s it’s a hundred and fifty five mile Six day self supported stage race across the gobi desert in mongolia.

And again, I don’t I don’t do trail races I mean I had been when I lived in the palisades i’d run in these trails every day like so I had I had some experience, but I had never Camped I don’t I literally I don’t know anything. I didn’t know anything about the technical sleeping bags Did you learn how to set up a tent or anything before you left?

Oh my god. This is so funny I had they were like, okay We have you can sleep in the communal tent of like four to six people in a tent Or because of COVID the couple years before they’re like, we give you the option also of bringing your own one man tent and as long as you put your tent and you can bring a supplemental sleeping bag because we want the doors in the tents to be open for COVID so that Eric, so we’re going to let you bring an extra sleeping bag, but we’ll Transport the sleeping bag in the tent in a dry bag from camp to camp.

So I was like, yeah, I’m definitely sleeping in my own tent. And my wife’s like, dude, we don’t even have a tent. I’m like, I’m just going to buy one. So I bought a tent. Now again, so naive. I bought a tent. Unknowingly that you could take on a bike trip that you could literally attach to your handlebars. It was like a coffin So the day I kept telling her i’m gonna set that up in the living room and sleep in it one night just to get a feel For what i’m getting into So the night the day before i’m leaving she’s like are you even gonna set the tent up to make sure it works?

And i’m like, yeah, let’s go. I set the thing up. It was I looked at i’m like I can barely fit in this thing. Where am I gonna put my stuff at night? What if it starts raining?

[01:31:59] Gabby: What if it starts raining?

[01:31:59] Ken Rideout: So which it did so You Now I’m like, Oh my God, I can’t do this. So I take the tent, I take the extra sleeping bag, and I’ve got all my stuff set up.

And when I arrived, I said to the woman who was organizing, I go, listen, I think my tent poles got bent in transition. Is there any chance I can get into one of these communal tents? And she was like, yeah, there’s a tent right there with three women. You’re in. Oh, you lucked out. Now, keep in mind, we’re, we’re like.

There’s no showers, there’s no like, you have one change of clothes and then your camp clothes. So like every night when I’d come back, I’d rinse out my clothes. I mean, they’re seven days in the desert. They’re like standing up on their own when you’re taking them off. But I’m like on top of that stuff. So I’m washing up.

So every night I’m like, Hey guys, um, I’m gonna, I don’t have a towel or anything. We’ll just wear, we all just have bare necessities. So I’m just going to stand in the corner here and I’m going to turn around and change just Just fyi and they were like by the third day. They’re like dude, stop telling us what to change No one’s looking at you.

No one cares. We’re too tired for that shit. It was it was like that It was like as soon as the things kicked off you were like, I don’t care what anyone’s doing. I’m only caring I’m only concerned about myself eating So I had all freeze dried food like uh mre’s meals ready to eat just pour in they would provide either Not cold water, but like room temperature water in these big bottles and they had boiling water that they set up kettles and they would pour the boiling water into the MRE and then you just It’s crazy how quickly I adapted and adjusted to it and started to look forward to it.

I was like, I can’t wait to get that chicken and rice dish tonight.

[01:33:30] Gabby: Do you have like bars and goop during the day?

[01:33:32] Ken Rideout: A little bit. I had a little bit of everything, but again, I, I learned so much while I was there. So the first day I got blown out. I finished like fourth. It was 125 people roughly. I finished um, fourth.

But I was blown out. Yeah. Oh, well, because I was like I could, I should be able to kill everyone like in my mind that 51 percent was like, I’m gonna kill everyone. And they killed me. And then the funny thing is, I was talking to this kid, Killian Ryan, who’s a Irish kid living in South Africa, and he’s like, yo, Those guys in the lead, they say they’re gonna, uh, wear you down every day.

They’re going to slowly wear you down. And I was like, you don’t fucking wear me down. I’m going to kill them. And he was like, he was laughing probably like this guy’s crazy.

[01:34:12] Gabby: When, wait, when you say that, because I know you and I also know like what a tender hearted person you are. When you say that in that moment.

Do you think they believe you? Like, do you think they go, this guy’s serious?

[01:34:23] Ken Rideout: Yes, because there is a part of me that does believe it. But when you say that,

[01:34:26] Gabby: so you’re not like, ha ha ha, like you, it’s like you’re really saying it.

[01:34:29] Ken Rideout: I say it with just enough of a ha ha ha that they’re like, is he serious? And I kind of like the reaction.

I kind of like seeing some of you like, oh, this guy’s crazy. You know, and then I can laugh about it afterwards, which we did, but um, after the race. But then the second day was so that was 21 miles. The second day was 28 miles and I was starting to get really concerned because It kicked the shit out of me.

I was I was beat up.

[01:34:53] Gabby: What does that look like? You mean like on time kicked you like beat you?

[01:34:57] Ken Rideout: No, just physically like with with like a mile to go we ran across a dried riverbed, but it wasn’t dry It was like So like every two or three steps I’m with everyone is just falling into the mud. And I’m like, I got all my stuff with me and I’m a neat freak.

I need to take like three showers a day. So I’m just, I was, I was miserable. I was so miserable. I was like, I gotta get out. I was like. Counting down the days like I was in prison like one more. I only got to sleep in this tent two more nights So then the second day was 28 miles and I was like, all right I got to be more because I took it out super fast on the first day I just like took off running just to see what would happen I just was like testing everyone and The second day those the two there was a Swiss athlete and an Israeli guy really nice guys and they got off the front But I had them in my sight and I just was pacing myself and just saying I’m not gonna have Efforts, I’m just gonna stay steady and slowly I ran up on them chit chat chit chat and then slowly they start to fade away And like with five or ten miles to go I look back.

I can’t see anyone It’s just me and I’m like, oh shit, maybe they’re hurting like let’s go and I end up winning that stage by eight minutes But then I was in second overall. It’s like cumulative time. So the Swiss guy was still ahead of me And then the next day was 24 miles. He won that stage and I was now 12 minutes down.

And then we come to the 50 miler and I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never run 50 miles and I’ve got a 20 pound backpack on, which is, I can’t, Oh, 20 pounds is so much weight. Running 20, running 50 miles with a 20 mile backpack when you don’t have experience.

[01:36:33] Gabby: I mean, I, what are the tricks of running with a

[01:36:34] Ken Rideout: backpack?

I had, it was bleeding on my shoulders, my neck, my waist was to be

[01:36:38] Gabby: very fitted, right? Yeah.

[01:36:40] Ken Rideout: Yeah. And then on the second day I fell down in the back, the strap ripped off my backpack. So I had tied it together. And then at the end of the third day, a woman dropped out and she gave me her backpack.

[01:36:49] Gabby: That’s legal.

[01:36:50] Ken Rideout: Yeah. Okay. You can get stuff from other people if they’re aren’t racing. I don’t think it’s like encouraged, but they, the woman said like, yeah, if she’ll give you the backpack, you can take it. Yeah. Now I have a woman’s backpack. It’s not like it fits me and this stuff is technical, so it’s like, you know, it’s like wearing someone else’s shoes.

Yeah. Oh. So, um, so

[01:37:06] Gabby: what happens in the 50 mile run?

[01:37:07] Ken Rideout: Yeah. So we start, we start. Trekking in very quickly. Like, do you still think I’m going to win? Do you even care? Do you just want to get through it? At that point? I was thinking like, okay, top three would be respectable. But let’s see what happens with the kid.

The Swiss kid who was leading was good. He was a serious mountaineer athlete, very skinny and fit and he had his Yeah, like streamlined everything. And some of them have poles, right? He had poles, yeah. I didn’t have poles. I didn’t bring them. Would

[01:37:36] Gabby: you race with poles again next time? Yeah, this

[01:37:37] Ken Rideout: time, yeah, definitely, on that race.

If you do this again, if

[01:37:41] Gabby: you ever did? So what happens, you’re 50 miles, you go out.

[01:37:45] Ken Rideout: So we take off in the, I was just listening to music in one headphone because I had my phone and I had a little solar charger that I could charge it at night so I could listen to music or podcasts while I’m running.

[01:37:56] Gabby: A

[01:37:57] Ken Rideout: mix of everything.

[01:37:58] Gabby: Okay.

[01:37:58] Ken Rideout: I’ll listen to Carole King followed by N. W. A. And bread. My kids are always like, Dad, this is the worst. Every other song is like terrible for them, but I’m like, No, no, it’s eclectic.

[01:38:11] Gabby: It’s getting me through, yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:13] Ken Rideout: So I ran up next to the Israeli guy, and just, I don’t know what made me say it, I was just like, Hey, Dave, did I ever tell you that I never get tired?

I feel awesome today. Did you? Yeah, and I just looked back and he was like, all right later guys He was walking and now it’s just me and the Swiss guy from like 10 miles on And we were working together and he’d we if we said three words to each other that would have been a lot I would have been happy to chat with him, but he just was very stoic.

I don’t think he was doing intentionally. Yeah It’s very, very to himself. So, and I mean, where, why it’s like this, it would be like, if that, if the trail went out your backyard and just was like down the hill there and up the other side, and it’s like, there’s no markings, it wasn’t as rugged, but it was like, it wasn’t on a dirt trail.

Some of it was, but a lot of it was just through the dirt. Pastures and like rolling green fields and and then there were like areas where we would get into these Um, I don’t know what they were called like prickly bushes and if they stuck into you It would be like those jumping cactuses where things sticks in you need to take a stick and pry it out Because you can’t grab it.

It’s like all spines It was it was crazy so he Me and the swiss kid we’re working together. So like we’re walking on the uphills We’re running on the downhills in the flats and we’re starting to work and we get to 35 miles And they surprised us and they had coke at an aid station and I was like, oh, that’s my that’s my like secret Weapon in a long race the end like last few miles of a marathon of iron man Coke, sugar, and caffeine.

So we’re both there. And matter of fact, I have a picture of me sitting down and him spraying water on me with, like helping each other, you know, it’s like a little bit of camaraderie. At this point, I’m not, you’re against the race, right? At this point, that’s right. We’re in this together. I’m not trying to beat him, but we’re, Now we’re running and he’s like I gotta walk for a minute So i’m like, all right Let’s walk there’s little pink flags every couple hundred yards and i’m like let’s walk to the next flag and then we’ll run too So we do it then he’s like I gotta sit down.

I’m like dude, you cannot sit down We’re in the desert like we have to keep moving to the next aid station It’s like nine miles and we have just the water we can carry So now he’s out of water and i’m like sharing my water with him. I’m like Try to help him. Like, I wanna win and kill him, but not really kill him.

Now. I’m like, yeah, you, you wanna kill him

[01:40:23] Gabby: fair and square, right? Yeah.

[01:40:24] Ken Rideout: So I’m like, man, so I’m, and he was a really good sport. ’cause I was like, yeah dude, just gimme a pack. Let me carry a pack. We’ll get to the next aid station. You can take a break. Whatever. Like I’d, I. This is now dangerous. He’s in bad shape.

So eventually after like an hour of this, now we’re way so far ahead of everyone. Eventually a truck comes by a support vehicle and they start giving him care. And they’re like, okay, you can go. We’ve got him. And I was like later, I ran like the fastest 10 miles of my life just to put so much daylight between me and the other guys.

And that was when I had like, I put like 90 minutes on the next closest person and got into the camp at like 5 p. m Which was a nice break because the neck because people a tip would take so long like if that was wednesday morning We didn’t race again until friday morning because people were finishing late into the night early morning thursday So I had like two days to sit there and be like I did it like I still had a marathon to run the next day and then five miles and um It was just, man, I was so relieved, but I had taken so many caffeinated, um, hydration tablets.

I slept two hours that night on my like whoop recovery score. I had like a 2%.

[01:41:31] Gabby: Yeah.

[01:41:31] Ken Rideout: And then the next day, same thing. I slept like three hours and I’m like, why can I not go to sleep? So then we had a marathon. Me and the Swiss guy basically ran together. He finished like a minute in front of me, took off sprinting at the end, but I was up 90 minutes.

So on the last day, They kid Killy and Ryan said to me, it’s five miles ceremonial. We’re going to run into Genghis Khan’s old fortress. And he says, um, yo last day, man, you can walk like, are you going to take it easy and let someone else win a stage? I was like, are you effing crazy, dude? I would never disrespect the leader’s jersey.

I have to go. All out this is a race to the death and that’s what it was me and the swiss guy got in a full sprint And I beat him and I was like i’m not i’m not gonna let anyone have an easy win I’ll never forget there was a stage of the tour when lance had the yellow jersey And a guy beat him just at the at the top of a long climb and lance said yeah I let him take that stage victory and that beating that he took from that guy the guy from the Coaches, everyone was like, you never do.

That’s all I could think was like, no, I can’t let someone win if he beats me. Cool. But I’m not letting him win.

[01:42:35] Gabby: What did that race teach you that no other race has taught you or that maybe you learned about yourself?

[01:42:41] Ken Rideout: You don’t know if you’re too afraid to try. If you’re afraid to fail, you don’t get to have the prize and maybe you, maybe you win, maybe you don’t, but if you don’t, I guarantee you’re going to learn a lot more failing Them by sitting on the couch talking about coulda shoulda woulda you only get one chance through this simulation of life You might as well try everything and that’s if I’ve done anything well in my life It’s like trying all these things like who would think that they could try get to go work on a trading desk with no experience Oh, fuck it.

I don’t care. What are they gonna do? Throw me out? They did

[01:43:18] Gabby: and I came back a guy with a green suit would think Growing up you said you We’re in boxing And I’m sure you probably played like baseball or some other sports. That’s right. Football. You played in college. Is this the most That you’ve ever felt like an athlete in your life?

[01:43:37] Ken Rideout: 100 percent 100 I tell my wife all the time. I’m like, I cannot believe that i’m recognized as the equivalent of a professional athlete I can’t believe it when I was a kid. All I wanted to do was be a professional athlete. I would have done anything and to think that I found this little niche in running and that’s not at all to compare myself to real professional runners, but This has become a bit of a career for me and it’s like helped my finance career immensely to have this kind of recognition.

I think that when people see the kind of commitment and determination I’ve exhibited in this, it’s People want to be, uh, even for myself, I want to be around people like you that are like committed, that show up every day. They’re like, they’re not spectating. They’re in the trenches doing it. I want to be the man in the arena, not the critic in the crowd.

That’s my worst fear.

[01:44:25] Gabby: Yeah. Nobody, those critics in the crowd. Um, okay. My last question, cause I could ask so many, what shoes do you run in?

[01:44:35] Ken Rideout: Reebok. They’re coming back. Reebok’s coming back to running in a big way. My friend, um, Nick Woodhouse over at Authentic Brands Group They bought Reebok from Adidas with Shaq And uh, I just gave a speech in uh in Boston last Monday with Shaq Me and Shaq were the two speakers doesn’t even seem real for me to say that but it did happen

[01:44:57] Gabby: That Shaq actually gave a whole speech, man.

Oh,

[01:44:59] Ken Rideout: it was so good. It was so good. He’s so charming and wonderful funny You know, he’s like telling the ceo you better get this shit, right? I’ve got too much invested in this, you know There’s like all these partners. He’s just he’s just such a nice guy and you can be

[01:45:12] Gabby: nice when you’re that big too

[01:45:13] Ken Rideout: He’s so big.

[01:45:14] Gabby: It’s awesome.

[01:45:15] Ken Rideout: But um, yeah Reebok is Reebok has some awesome shoes the other thing that I just wanted to say is one of the nice things about Coming through this uh addiction has been being able to help other people. I recently helped a um, undefeated fighter, gets sober, and they just randomly reached out to me.

It didn’t have like a previous relationship. It was like, hey, I’m going through this. And I told him what to do. And then I called his dad. And I’m like, what’s your dad’s number? He’s like, what? I go, I want to talk to your dad. And I told him, this is what you have to do to get to this point, to get to the Vivitrol.

Make sure he does this, this, this. And they did it. I was like, I can’t, I was astounded. But one of the nice things about. Being able to do that is I recently started working with uh, a really nice guy called Zach Clark at a place called Release Recovery. And they provide um, addiction recovery services, aftercare services in New York.

Um, you know, sober living facilities and counseling and case workers. And then they also have a non profit that will basically get, People into treatment. So like if you just call the release recovery Foundation and like I need help. They don’t they don’t run addiction centers like oh with treatment center but they will pay for your treatments through the work that they do and That’s been incredibly rewarding for me to be a part of that and see people take control of their own lives because everyone if you haven’t struggled with addiction.

Everyone knows someone who’s struggled with addiction and it’s a painful, it’s a painful thing to see someone going through. So to be able to um, be a conduit to help get people into treatment has been, it’s been one of the greatest things that’s happened to me as a result of Going through this is to be able to be of service to others and help other people.

And I say to people all the time, if, if anyone’s listening to this and going through their own struggles or knows someone or has a family member, like send me a DM on Instagram, I’ll help you get into treatment. There’s a better life. It doesn’t have to be this way. And look, I did it. I’m telling you, if you, if you’re struggling with it.

Get at me and I’ll help you. Uh, you help yourself. But anyway,

[01:47:23] Gabby: yeah, and you don’t have to run a marathon after No, no, no.

[01:47:27] Ken Rideout: No, no.

[01:47:28] Gabby: Do you Have you shown yourself grace now after all this time?

[01:47:34] Ken Rideout: That’s a good question I talk about that with my therapist all the time. It’s very hard for me That’s, that’s the stuff that, the physical stuff of like, that really sounds hard, this sounds hard.

Yeah, it’s all physically hard, but that kind of work to me is very difficult. It’s difficult for me to talk about addiction. It’s difficult for me to talk about my feelings and my children because that’s just, Those are things that I just can’t punch my way through, you know, and um, I try to it’s very very difficult It’s probably like my biggest bone of contention with myself is not being able to Show myself patience Peter Attia said this once on a rich roll that when he he had talked publicly about going to his own Um, uh, intensive, uh, trauma healing center and talked about the way we talk to ourselves and the, the negatively is, is, is so negative.

Like you would never talk to your friend like that. I would never say the things to someone else that I would say to and about myself. And when I catch myself doing that, it’s always like so startling. Cause I’m like, I can’t believe you would talk to this guy like that. Like, cause again, there’s two people that live in my head, like the, you know, the Little kid and the like alpha tough guy who’s like helping me navigate the world And when they start getting into conflict, it’s like, you know, the the scare guy is like don’t ever talk to us like that again And this guy’s a bully.

[01:49:01] Gabby: Yeah,

[01:49:02] Ken Rideout: but I digress

[01:49:04] Gabby: No, it’s just I think it’s a thing that a lot of humans are dancing with is Keep doing the work and keep being accountable um And keep working towards betterment but also Giving yourself some grace.

[01:49:21] Ken Rideout: Yep. You know, that’s that to me is the hardest Challenge of them all is finding that right balance.

[01:49:27] Gabby: Yeah, I will I want to I’m gonna extend An invitation to you, which is I think if you I think it’d be interesting You know a lot of people to start drilling down on your nutrition.

[01:49:38] Ken Rideout: Oh, I’d love to I

[01:49:39] Gabby: think it would be very interesting To see how where maybe that would happen And like a massage here and there.

[01:49:47] Ken Rideout: Well, one thing I would like to say about the diet is I recently started working with inside tracker and they, I got all my blood work done. And I was, I mean, I had a panic attack. I had high APOB, high AP little LP, little a, like all genetically high.

I have convinced myself that I’m an anomaly and none of that matters to me because I can’t affect it. And they were like, the diet can only affect that minutely. It’s not going to like, Transform your genetics

[01:50:26] Gabby: Yeah, but cholesterol has been a very interesting message So we we can talk about that after but really talking about people who understand about a particle count particle size Um in relationship to itself each other ldl and hdl.

You can’t just look at your numbers No,

[01:50:43] Ken Rideout: that’s fair I would say the one nice thing that I did realize in going through that whole process with inside tracker is that they actually like Don’t just test the blood, but then they had someone call, walk through it with me, provide tons of resources. That was, uh, our friend, uh, John Baer.

Yeah. Introduced me to them and connected me and, uh, I love John Baer at JackTail. It’s such a nice guy.

[01:51:06] Gabby: Yeah. So, Ken, I can’t wait to see your next adventures, um, we’ll see if you slow down or speed up and uh, maybe just remind people all the places that they can find you.

[01:51:14] Ken Rideout: Instagram.

[01:51:17] Gabby: Just Ken Rideout. Yeah, Ken Rideout.

Look for lunatic.

[01:51:20] Ken Rideout: On Instagram and uh, you mentioned I’m, I’m in the process of writing a book, um, that has been a very, very, um, At times difficult process of like kind of reliving and telling these at times very embarrassing stories But I don’t think you can appreciate where what I’ve done or where I’ve come from without knowing like the Difficulties that came with it not to over dramatize my life, but do you go home at all?

To Boston? Yeah. No, no, no. I’m going to Nashville with

[01:51:56] Gabby: my

[01:51:57] Ken Rideout: kids. No, there’s no. Is that

[01:51:58] Gabby: a reboot? A restart?

[01:52:00] Ken Rideout: Yeah. Okay. I’m gonna restart it. That’s why with my wife it’s so important to me. It’s like, this is my family. That’s your family. That’s it.

[01:52:07] Gabby: I think we have permission to do that sometimes if we need to.

Yes. Can write up. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. And this time we have it recorded.

[01:52:15] Ken Rideout: Thank you.

About Ken Rideout

With over 20 years of experience, Ken’s diverse & international capital markets career shares a common thread with his athletic achievements – a commitment to excellence that produces top-tier results.

Ken began his career in finance at Cantor Fitzgerald, rising through the ranks to become the European Head of Commodities Sales & Trading in London. After 9/11, Ken returned to the US and took over as Head of their Credit Derivatives Sales & Trading team in New York.
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He joined Natixis Capital Markets in New York as the Head of Credit Derivatives Sales to Hedge Funds. Ken later joined Credit Agricole’s fixed income sales team where he quickly developed relationships with a blue-chip list of credit investors. Ken marketed & sold Investment Grade, High Yield, and Emerging Markets debt to his clients while orchestrating the placement of billions of dollars in private transactions including exotic asset securitizations and highly-structured ABS.

In 2016, Ken moved to LA and headed business development at The Palisades Group, a management-owned, SEC-registered investment advisor with a focus on bottom-up research and control-based credit management services. Strategies included whole-loan, real estate, and exotic credit investments.
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In 2018, Ken founded Camrock Advisors where his team acts as a placement agent and business development consultant. Camrock Advisors has successfully raised capital for multiple mandates financed by hedge fund, private equity, and distressed credit investors.

Ken’s athletic achievements reflect the same dedication and hard work that he put into his career. Ken has competed at the Iron Man World Championships in Hawaii 3 times, with a personal-best time of 9:39. In December 2019, Ken ran a 2:28 at the California International Marathon.In January 2020, Ken won the Pasadena half marathon with a 1:13:05 time. His top finish was against a field of nearly 9000 athletes.

Ken co-hosts “The Fight” With Teddy Atlas, a podcast with over 125,000 subscribers. Ken shares his deep knowledge of the sport with the legendary trainer and offers his listeners insight as a devoted husband and father as well as a world-class runner and triathlete.

#261 Facing Down Addiction and the Power of Recovery w. Ken Rideout

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About Ken Rideout