From 320 Pounds to Running Record-Setting Ultra Marathons…
A former 320-pound drug, alcohol and fast-food addict, David Clark turned his life around through running, nutrition, sobriety, Buddhism and an insatiable desire to help others. As an ultrarunner, David made the rounds with finishes in races like the Badwater 135, Rocky Raccoon 100, Javelina Jundred and 6 trips across the Leadville Trail 100 course, which was hands down his favorite. He passed away in May of 2020.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with David Clark about going from 320 pounds to running record-setting ultra-marathons.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How true happiness cannot be found in material possessions,
– Why it’s important to have the right mindset and believe it’s possible to achieve true happiness.
– How training barefoot can improve foot mechanics and performance.
– Why redefining the perspective of your foot can lead to healthier choices in your life.
– How embracing challenges and finding joy in movement can lead to personal growth.
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
Do you think losing weight is about exercise or diet or both? Or maybe none of the above? Well, I’m sitting with someone who’s going to answer that question in a way that you’ve probably never imagined. Welcome to the MOVEMENT Movement podcast. The podcast for people who want to know the truth about how to have a happy, healthy, strong body. We cut through the mythology, the propaganda, sometimes the outright lies about what it takes to run, jump, hike, do CrossFit, yoga, whatever it is that you like to do, enjoyably, healthily, and betterly. That’s my word of the day.
David Clark:
I like it.
Steven Sashen:
For those of you who’ve been part of the podcast, you might not recognize where we are because I am at the home of my friend David Clark. We have a poster of what you can see of his legs and what’s going on. Oh, no, that’s just like a tag that you’re on. It looked like you had some sort of weird…
David Clark:
That’s the middle of the Leadville 100, man. That’s a top of the iconic Hope pass.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, sweet. Here, wait. I’ll lift this up so you can see. There he is.
David Clark:
Ah, beautiful. Book plug. I love it. Cool. On Amazon.
Steven Sashen:
Don’t start pitching already. My god. We’ll get to the pitching part in a second.
David Clark:
Well, I’m relieved. I got to tell you because I thought you said this was going to be about the bowel movement.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, no. That’s a whole different MOVEMENT Movement. So before we jump in, just a reminder, if you’re into what we’re doing, obviously come to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. That’s where you’ll get pointers to everywhere You can find us and follow us and share and friend and request or review and blah, blah, blah. You know the drill. I’m not going to bore you with that because you get it. So I’m here with David Clark. David and I, just FYI, we’re in his house because we just recorded an episode of his podcast, which is called?
David Clark:
The We Are Superman podcast.
Steven Sashen:
That they can find where?
David Clark:
Stitcher or SoundCloud, iTunes, anywhere you list podcasts or my website, wearesuperman.com.
Steven Sashen:
Perfect. And David has an incredible story, which is what we’re going to tell in just a sec. But first we’re going to do a movement. Now, one of the things that David is known for is fighting. Just randomly picks strangers and just beats them up. Why do you do that, man?
David Clark:
It started on Black Friday. No, I’m just kidding.
Steven Sashen:
I was at Walmart and I wanted that television.
David Clark:
Cabbage patch doll.
Steven Sashen:
So… Oh my god.
David Clark:
Did I beat myself?
Steven Sashen:
Well, no, I heard comedian Dom Irrera doing a thing about Cabbage Patch dolls that I can’t repeat, but if you look up Dom Irrera, that is the Cabbage Patch, but that’s not what Dom does when it comes to the Cabbage Patch.
David Clark:
We’d fight for that.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a good idea. So we like to start with the movement, and I asked David if he had a movement he wanted to share, and what is the movement that you wanted to share?
David Clark:
I said punching.
Steven Sashen:
Now let’s talk about punching from a perspective that isn’t about the thing that most people think of, which is violence, et cetera, because I know that’s not the way you think of it. So talk about how you think of it and let’s have people do a thing that you want to share with them.
David Clark:
Well, yeah, obviously punching can have all kinds of different intentions. It can be just from keeping somebody away or inflicting damage or just competition, which is what I do it, but there is a science behind it, obviously. It’s not as simple as just throwing your fist in someone else’s direction. In fact, that’s usually the best way to get punched in the face yourself is just to start blindly.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I think someone said, you know it’s a bar fight if someone starts with a overhand right.
David Clark:
Yeah. And those guys, they’re not going to hurt each other.
Steven Sashen:
No, no. It’ll end up on the ground. It’ll get messy and very homoerotic. So why don’t you do the world’s fastest punching something, and punching is actually, I think it’s very interesting because it really does activate pretty much every muscle you can think of from your navel up in ways that are not your feet. Well, if you’re actually fighting, fighting starts at the feet and goes through your hips, and that’s the end result. But it is a really powerful thing just to be doing in general, which I find really interesting. So why don’t you do the world’s fastest little punching something that people can do even if they’re maybe in their car, which is where a lot of these things happen.
David Clark:
Yeah. I think the thing that you’d want to just connect without getting to a whole mechanics of a punch, which usually starts, like I said, from the feet up, is to just make sure that your body’s connected to your punching. So when you start with your hands up protecting your jaw, you’re going to rotate into it. And then as this one pulls back, the other one goes forward and actually a little nuance pro-tip that your fist starts out in a straight motion and actually rolls over at the point of contact. This is the hardest part of your body right here is connected here to the elbow, to the shoulder, full extension. So those punches are just coming out.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a really satisfying thing for people who aren’t into the “violence” part of it. It’s just a really satisfying motion because it is one of those full body motions.
David Clark:
It is.
Steven Sashen:
All those things.
David Clark:
Even the people that train at the gym where I train on it, 99% of them are never going to get into a cage. They’re never even going to spar, much less actually fight. But there is something very satisfying about the movement. It’s a flowy movement. It feels good. We listen to hip hop or heavy metal.
Steven Sashen:
Well, wait, we have a punching bag in our office that we got, because I asked people what they wanted.
David Clark:
What’s his name?
Steven Sashen:
No, no. We have an actual punching bag. And one of our employees that did say, if I’d known we were going to have a punching bag, you could have got me to work here for free. So there’s just something satisfying about that motion and making contact. And again, it’s not even the violent thing. There’s something about just contact that I think resonates with us.
David Clark:
I think that flows through our whole message is that it connects us to something deep within our evolution. Even running does, you might compete with running. You might be running away from a predator or to hunt. Fighting’s the same thing. Its programmed. We have to protect our families. We have to fend off our tribe so even if you’re not actually fighting, there’s something that connects.
Steven Sashen:
You’ve never been in a fight. I have gotten punched in the face once.
David Clark:
You didn’t do well?
Steven Sashen:
No, actually I did really well. I kind of saw it happening. It was a really weird situation. I’ll tell the story at another point, but I just had this weird feeling if I just let this guy do his thing, it would all be over very quickly. And as he punches me in the face and as I’m going down, all I can think was that was louder than I thought it was going to be. And then I got up and it was all over. It just felt like this weird karmic something. It just had to get itself resolved and we’d all be fine. But, oh, there was something you just said that reminded me. Oh man, I had a funny thing that popped into my head and then it fell out. Maybe it’ll come back.
Anyway, let’s chat about why we’re here. So why we’re here is that David has one of the more amazing stories that I’ve ever heard. I’m not going to try and tell it because I couldn’t do it justice. And when you hear this, I guarantee I’m going to keep, by the way, moving towards the camera because I didn’t bring power for my computer. I’m going to keep doing that to make sure it stays on. It’s one of these stories that if you see David now, you frankly probably won’t believe it. So let’s start with how would they see the before picture and then tell them what the going through and after story is?
David Clark:
Yeah, it’s a long journey. I started in many ways my real life, current iteration of life started August 5th, 2005. I woke up 320 pounds.
Steven Sashen:
You probably went to bed 320 pounds.
David Clark:
I have no idea.
Steven Sashen:
You went to bed. It’s not like you suddenly…
David Clark:
I had about 25 pounds of food in me.
Steven Sashen:
But it’s not like you weighed 150, then you woke up 320. It’s not like a Freaky Friday deal.
David Clark:
That would be kind of cool.
Steven Sashen:
That would be very Freaky Friday.
David Clark:
I woke up like I did every morning.
Steven Sashen:
That’s what I was going for.
David Clark:
At, like I said, 320 pounds.
Steven Sashen:
How tall are you?
David Clark:
I’m six feet tall.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s a lot of David.
David Clark:
Literally half now. 160 pounds. And there’s a host of other problems too that were contributing to that. I was addicted to fast food and drugs and alcohol, and I had just bottomed out in every possible way, man. I lost everything I had. It was a very successful company at one time. I thought that was going to make me happy. It didn’t. And I had wife and kids and love in my life thought that would make me happy and it didn’t. So I had all of these great things that I was thankful for, but yet there was still something missing. And I said in my book out there that I finally came to this conclusion that I wasn’t a 320 pound alcoholic by accident. In all of these times I was trying to find the right diet plan, the right motivational book or workout plan or something to get leverage on myself. But that moment was when I realized it was my thinking that needed to change. I always joke that you only have to change one thing, everything.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. So when you say it was your thinking, what specifically, or can you identify some, if you had to boil that down, what was it? That was the thing that was leading to all of that.
David Clark:
Yeah. I had to stop searching for happiness with my eyes open because I kept thinking it was out here. It was on the lot. I could drive it off. I could buy the house. I could open up another retail store. Something was going to make me happy. My bank account was growing and my happiness was shrinking, and I realized that wasn’t by mistake.
Steven Sashen:
It’s funny, it’s not an uncommon story that people have what seems like great outward success, and then suddenly it hits them. It’s like, oh, this is not what I thought it was going to be. Why do you think you were struck with that realization, or why didn’t you recognize it along the way?
David Clark:
Because that really is the problem. Success. There’s nothing wrong with success. There’s nothing wrong with having nice houses and cars and all these things. But the problem was that I placed my value on that. I grew up in some tough circumstances, hard times fell on my family. I spent a lot of years homeless, living in the back of my father’s truck, kind of disenfranchised, disconnected from reality. And I always thought someday I was going to do this thing. And I started, I went to college, I had to get a GED, go to college, did well in college, was selling mattresses part-time. I got it. I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy this company that’s failing and I’m going to turn it around.
But all of these things are, if I had a house, if I had a car, those were going to make me feel complete. And that’s the danger. It’s not having the houses in the cars, it’s thinking that that was going to be the solution and it wasn’t. I used to stay awake late at night and wonder towards the end, what is the secret of life that all these people seem to know that I don’t know because maybe it’s not the secret of life, but it’s definitely the secret to not drinking yourself to death.
Steven Sashen:
But see, that’s the thing that’s so funny is that if you ask any of those people who you thought had the secret of life, if they thought they did, none of them would say they did. And many of them would say the same thing. It’s not working for me. I thought it would make me happy. I like to say that success is four times worse than failure. Because if you get there and you’re not happy, you’re not happy. If you expected to be happy, then your hopes were dashed. There’s nowhere to go but down and no one likes to hear a successful person whine.
David Clark:
That’s true.
Steven Sashen:
Thank you. Goodnight.
David Clark:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Great. Now I’m going to do the camera thing again.
David Clark:
No, and that’s it, man. So I bottomed out, and that’s the beauty of rock bottom is that I had a tremendous amount of ego driving me too, the old kind of ironic egomaniac with an inferiority complex. All of this is going to prove that I’m worth something when deep inside I know I’m not, or I think I not.
Steven Sashen:
It’s not even ironic. That’s the math. It’s like when you think that’s the problem, the only real option is to try to prove the opposite unless you investigate and discover that there’s no there there for it and the whole thing falls apart. But let’s move into the movement side of things.
David Clark:
Yeah, absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
So you had this wake up call, and then once that happened, then what happened?
David Clark:
So I needed something to connect me to something deeper than all of this external stuff. I wondered who’s the David Clark? That’s not a business owner. He’s not a father even. He’s not a son. He’s just a raw human being. And I figured that I might have a good chance at finding a little bit of that if I did something with my body physical and something that had a big emotional attachment to it, something where the stakes were high, the emotional stakes were high. And so for me, I have no idea why, but it popped in my mind to run a marathon.
Steven Sashen:
Which is such a common thing for someone who weighs 320 pounds to think.
David Clark:
I didn’t even know how far a marathon was. I had no idea. In fact, it’s funny, I thought when I’d researched it and found out it was 26.2 miles, I figured no one else knew this information. This is surely lost to the ages.
Steven Sashen:
That’s how they get you.
David Clark:
So I got a little silicone bracelets made up that said 26.2, and no one will know what this is. This’ll be my own little thing. Obviously I had a tenuous relationship with reality. And this was before the days of Biggest Loser and stuff, where now you see that a little bit, but I didn’t know. I assumed I went to, my first race was the Turkey Trot at CU on Thanksgiving Day, and I assumed everyone there was going to be 145 pound elite athlete. And that certainly I was going to be the only one. I think I’d lost some weight to 270 or something at that time, but obviously I was wrong.
Steven Sashen:
There are a lot of people who were there for the turkey.
David Clark:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
I’m totally serious actually.
David Clark:
The turkey that I brought.
Steven Sashen:
Now, here’s my favorite story about that. My friend Lorraine Mueller, who was a world champion marathoner, she won the bronze in the Atlanta marathon. She went to one of the Turkey Trot races because she needed the Turkey and because she was an Olympian, they put her the front of the line and right before the start, she looks to her left and her right and there’s four other Olympians who all were there because they wanted the turkey.
David Clark:
Boulder. It’s Boulder, man. It’s Boulder.
Steven Sashen:
So how’d that race go?
David Clark:
The Turkey Trot?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
David Clark:
It was one of the most amazing days of my life.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really?
David Clark:
I ran every step of it. It hurt, which is kind of funny to me now having run 40 plus hundred milers, but I’d never put myself in a situation like that before where I was moving my body, physically using my body to create an experience that I felt was missing from my life. And I ran every step of it. It occurred to me that I probably would’ve been faster had I done run walk. But to me, I wanted to run every step. It was 40 minutes or 38 minutes or something, but I felt like a runner. I felt like a runner.
Steven Sashen:
And then how did the running evolve from there? So actually I’ve got to ask this obvious question. What were you running in?
David Clark:
I was running in ASICS GEL-Nimbus.
Steven Sashen:
Ah.
David Clark:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Big thick padded motion control thing. So I’m going to cut to the end of the story ish and say, this is not where David ended. So what was the evolution and how did your running evolve and what happened to your body as you were doing this and jump into that part if you would.
David Clark:
So I had to obviously address the way I was eating too. So in that process, I started eating whole foods and eventually that led me to being a plant-based guy. But so I was feeding myself well. I eventually got to the marathon and did that. It was the inaugural year of the Denver Marathon. I’d lost 140 pounds over that 15 months I think it was getting there. And I did that. And that finish line was kind of a starting line of a whole new way of living. I eventually did an Ironman and then I got hurt, then I got hurt, I had two herniated discs in my back, which had probably been there for a while just from being overweight. And the running made it worse because I was running very poorly.
Steven Sashen:
And how would you define poorly?
David Clark:
Slamming my heels into the earth and just being disconnected from the ground and not really knowing that I was floppy the clown out there. I had no idea.
Steven Sashen:
Was your basic idea when you first started just get to the end and you weren’t paying attention to how you were doing it?
David Clark:
It was all about managing the pain and the stress of running. It was like I never thought about running smoother. It was just like, can I be fit enough to move my body? It was very mechanical and push yourself hard, which I was. I was working on the gym and I would do intervals on the treadmill and just trying to work my body to burn calories and lose the weight I wanted to lose.
But anyway, when I got hurt and I had to have spinal surgery eventually, that’s when I was like, something clicked. The stakes were really changed for me. I was like, okay, I can walk away from this. I could go back to my old life and all these things, or if I want to do this, I’ve got to treat it like it’s something I need to get good at. And I’ve played guitar and I did well in my business until I screwed it up with drugs and alcohol but I did well. Whenever I apply myself to something I did well at it. So I kind of became a student of it for lack of a better description.
Steven Sashen:
Literally a student or just an internal, figure it out on your own? What you do?
David Clark:
First thing I started do is reading everything I would find. I read Chi Running and I read every book I could find by Galloway and Hal Higdon and marathon training plans, running form. The internet was around, I think, but pretty new. But you could search, you could find books. So I just bought books and just read. And that was part of the process for me too.
Steven Sashen:
So what did you get from the books, or how much were you able to apply what you learned from the books?
David Clark:
Yeah, I think Chi Running actually did give me a picture. There was some descriptive terms in there. Eventually I found Born to Run too, which helped me tremendously. I think the first stages, if you will, of my through 2008 when I was just recovering from my back surgery. And then 2009 when I started to apply everything I’ve read and try to make it translate to moving my body, I was still using running shoes, “Nike”, whatever. And so Born To Run actually gave me the picture of actually what would it be like if there was no shoe.
Steven Sashen:
What’s the name of that book? I’m going to write that down.
David Clark:
It’s probably Doug McChristopher, or no.
Steven Sashen:
It’s actually, I’m going to put in a quick plug for people who don’t know the book and there are people who don’t. It’s an amazing book by Chris McDougall. And even if you’re not a runner, it’s just an incredible story.
David Clark:
It really is.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a great adventure story. There’s a great science story woven into it. My wife, Lana, who is not a runner, I eventually talked to her into reading it and she like everyone, just couldn’t put it down. So if you haven’t yet, please do. You will not regret it.
David Clark:
And that book created that picture for me. What do you move like as a human machine without anything? And that was life changing. So I did start switching to running in very minimal footwear, but I had a sufficient amount of fear still built up. I didn’t buy the whole thing yet so I had to stick a little toe in. And so I started running once a week in minimal shoes, and I spent a good year stretching that out.
Steven Sashen:
That’s actually not a bad transition plan. When people ask, how do I make the transition? First, it’s how to get started. And then if I’ve already got a running program, what do I do? And I go, yeah, just inject a little something and then expand that slowly. Start at the beginning of your run in something barefoot or like Xero Shoes and then add a little more time or pick one day and then extend that. So there’s a lot of ways of doing it, but whether that was intuitive or just figuring out that was the only way you could do it, that was a good way to do it.
David Clark:
Yeah, I’d read enough to know that people get injured doing it. People go too soon. They go from wherever they are and run a marathons and all of a sudden, I’m just going to buy a pair of Vibrams and just go run on the concrete as nature intended me to run.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on. Hold on. This is one of those things people say, we didn’t evolve to run on concrete. It’s like, if you ever go to the places where human beings evolved.
David Clark:
Into Moab.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly. It’s like a lot of that hard packed dirt is practically concrete. We evolved to run on anything.
David Clark:
People were out there hurting themselves because they were trying to do too much too soon.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. They were just trying to make the switch immediately from doing 10 miles a day in big thick padded shoes to 10 miles a day, essentially barefoot. And some people are able to do that, and that’s the problem. There were a few people who had perfect form. They were really great, and they were able to do that, and they ruined it for the people who needed to learn a new pattern of running a new gate style, which does take a little bit of time to do that. So anyway.
David Clark:
And I was operating off of the database that I just created. It took me a while to get to a marathon, so it’s going to take me a while to get to running barefoot or minimal.
Steven Sashen:
The flip side, I was on a panel discussion when the barefoot thing was just taking off, and there was a bunch of physical therapists who were all saying, well, it could take you three years to develop the ability. And I finally said, how many people in this room have run at least a mile barefoot on concrete or a road? And I raised my hand and no one else did. I said, you guys, you’re making up a story that based on no information whatsoever. You haven’t even been doing this thing long enough. The whole barefoot thing hasn’t been around long enough for you to have had anybody come through your clinic for two years or three years. So it’s just this idea that they had come up with. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t make a successful transition to at least being comfortable running barefoot or in something truly minimalist much, much quicker. And then it can take time. It takes time to develop, but it’s not like you’re not going to be able to do it for two years.
David Clark:
Right. You have to learn to run differently. And I think a lot of people missed that somehow. They changed shoes and still kept running the same.
Steven Sashen:
Well, annoyingly in the very early days of the minimalist movement, that was the way it was positioned by companies like Vibram even where people thought, well, let me say it differently. The big shoe companies have basically trained people to think that it’s all about the shoes. You get this new magic shoe and everything’s going to be great, even though that’s what we said three years ago, and it wasn’t true then. No shoe company has ever said, remember when we told you that that shoe that we did three years ago was going to change your life? Sorry, we pulled that totally out of our butts. This one though, this one’s the real deal.
David Clark:
Believe me this time.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. So we’re all kind of programmed for that. So it’s not surprising that that’s the way people took the whole minimalist thing.
David Clark:
For sure. And I was actually told that the correct way to run was to hit on your heel and then roll forward, and then push off. I was told that by people in the running industry, the running shoe industry, whatever. But so I still had that in my brain.
Steven Sashen:
The running industrial complex.
David Clark:
I love it. But I’ve actually always been one of these people that’s very willing to dispense with the common ideas of things, the general emotions. But I don’t want to do it from a place of ignorance. I’m willing to let go, but I want to know what I’m letting go of. And so I felt it was somewhere in between. I didn’t know what it was, but it was like, it’s somewhere in between, so I’m just going to take it easy, be smart. And it was amazing. The way I felt. It didn’t take me very long, I did spend that one year, but before I started transitioning onto the trails too, and the first time I put on a pair of minimal shoes in Ran Sanitas.
Steven Sashen:
Which is a trail up a mountain, right up in Boulder.
David Clark:
Technical sharp rocks. I was kind of like, I don’t know if I should do this, but I felt like an animal in a good way, a primal. I was like, I never want to run anything else again. So I felt like I thought I was running before, but now I really started doing it.
Steven Sashen:
This is the thing. It’s funny. I always joke that you can always spot a barefoot runner from a mile away because they’re smiling because there’s something just so satisfying about feeling things. And I went up Sanitas with a friend of mine, a woman named Jesse, who does everything barefoot, and we’re running up Sanitas barefoot, and people were looking at us like we’re crazy, but we are the ones having fun.
David Clark:
Right. Yeah. And it’s actually funny because as my running evolved and eventually I went on to do Leadville and 40 different hundred milers.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so here’s the point to brag. So say more about that and things you’ve done.
David Clark:
Yeah, so like I said, I’ve done Leadville, I think eight times, Hard Rock, Bad Water, some of the toughest races on the planet. I wanted to challenge myself, and I started moving from the back to the front of the pack and managed to pull down some wins, not against Scott Jurich or Rob Car, but some regional wins and some said a couple American records on treadmills of all like 12 hour treadmill runs. And I even ran 48 hours on a treadmill. But anyway.
Steven Sashen:
I’m just going to pause there. Yeah. Oh my god. I’m trying to think of something that I would enjoy less than doing 48 miles on a treadmill.
David Clark:
There’s nothing. But nevertheless, you would enjoy it in some way.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah. I would enjoy stopping.
David Clark:
But this crazy thing happened though, as I got faster…
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on, hold on. Wait. I want to back up. What made you even think to do a 48 mile or 40 hour treadmill thing?
David Clark:
You’ve known me long enough to know that this thing is not connected to anything really solid.
Steven Sashen:
I’m like, seriously? Because there had to have been a moment where you thought of this idea and thought, yeah, that could be interesting. And then you told someone and they had a response that’s the way normal people would respond and you justified it.
David Clark:
Well, honestly, there was a part of me seeking out the things that my other, because we live in Boulder, Colorado, you rubbing elbows with Olympians and ultra running royalty, and I kind of sought out the things no one wanted to do.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
David Clark:
People didn’t want to do Bad Water, so they would go, Bad Water, it’s on the roads, it’s 130 degrees, so okay, I’ll do that. People are like, ah, I can’t run on the treadmill. But I lost all the weight running on a treadmill. So the treadmills there, I’m like, oh, you don’t want to run on the treadmill? I’m going to do it for 24 hours. So in 2015, my 10th year of sobriety, I wanted to do 10 epic events to celebrate that year. And at the very end, I didn’t have a 10th event and I didn’t know what to do. I’d run the Boston Marathon four times in one day, I’d done Bad Water. I ran 343 laps around a high school track here. And so I had no idea what to do, and I was sitting out there on the couch, and literally I thought I could run 40 hours on a treadmill. Oh, shit.
Steven Sashen:
Now I’ve got to do 48 miles on a treadmill.
David Clark:
I was mad at myself for thinking it.
Steven Sashen:
I love it.
David Clark:
But what I was going to say, honestly, as I started moving up the front of the pack, this great thing happened. People would recognize me a little bit and they’d go, so there’s this expectation and you can’t run through an aid station like this when people are expecting you not to. So I would notice as I’m suffering, you’re 80 miles in whatever, and you’re coming up on an aid station. So I’d straighten up and I start running because of the other people that instantly my body changed. I felt better. I felt better. I was running, it was taking less energy to run faster. So it was just more and more reinforcement that helped me go to the next level is that I wasn’t letting my body break down. Your body is going to break down, but it didn’t mean my form had to, or at least I could mitigate that somehow.
Steven Sashen:
It’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about this until you said that, but I watched a video of some guy who’s run every day for the last 60 years or something, and his form has gone to not good, let’s say, and the people around him were running similarly. And when you do look at people running ultra marathons, a lot of them it looks like, yeah, there couldn’t be having less of a good time. And I can imagine there is this unconscious thing where you get the idea that that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
David Clark:
Yes. You just accept it for no reason.
Steven Sashen:
And then to question that I imagine is a revelatory phenomenon.
David Clark:
The best compliment I’ve ever got. I ran across the country in 2016 with five friends who are all ultra runners. We did this together for mental health awareness, which is ironic. And I was running with all these very accomplished athletes and runners, ultra runners, and I don’t think there’s a single person who didn’t mention you don’t run like an ultra runner.
Steven Sashen:
Yep. Interesting.
David Clark:
That is the best compliment I’ve ever got.
Steven Sashen:
Very interesting. Yeah, it is a fascinating thing. Another thing that I’ve seen people do is when they get into barefoot, I’m going to do that, the camera thing again, they get into barefoot or minimalist, and they have the idea, one idea they get is I’m supposed to land on my forefoot. And so what they do is they still reach out as if they’re in shoes. So they’re going to overstride, but then point their toes. So they land on their forefoot way in front of their body, but they also have the idea that it’s supposed to be less stress, so they bend their knees a little more. So then they ended up running kind of like Groucho Marx walking fast, and they’re able to do this. It works in that they’re able to continue moving, but it’s not running. And the first time I saw someone do that, I went, how did you think to do that?
They go, well, you’re supposed to land in your forefoot. I went, yeah, but not like that. I don’t know what that is. Irene Davis saw this in her lab. She set up a force plate on a treadmill and said, try and keep the force under this line. She had basically a monitor, keep the force under this line. And she found quite a few people would do the kind of Groucho Marx thing to try and catch the ground rather than actually use your springs the way they’re supposed to be used and apply less force by absorbing that with the muscles, ligaments, and tendons that are designed for that, not by doing things like this with your body. Yeah, interesting.
David Clark:
It’s like tension before punch.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s a really interesting point.
David Clark:
You got to roll with a punch.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. You don’t want to get tense in advance. On the one hand, you have to be aware of it, but you also don’t want to anticipate and take more than is actually being thrown at you, which you see all the time. So it’s like you’re ready to go when it wasn’t even that hard of a punch. Yeah, I’ve seen that in fights. Interesting.
David Clark:
And interestingly, when I made the switch, I kind of took a step back from ultra running a couple years ago and started doing some boxing and MMA, and I would do everything in the boxing gym and the floor and in the ring barefoot.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I was just going to say, talk about that connection and it is about connection between running and fighting, let’s say in this case, and just the whole phenomenon of using your feet.
David Clark:
Well, so I’m really very fortunate that I’ve got to meet some really cool people. And my first fighting MMA lesson was with a world champion, five time UFC champion Pat Miletich. I’ll give him a shout-out, and they just drill it to me over and over again, how punching and striking starts in the feet and it’s just screwing your feet into the ground. You don’t come up. You come down. And so as I’m hearing footwork, footwork, footwork, I think I want my foot to be doing the work. You know what I mean? These boxing shoes they have where you tie all the way up to the knee. I don’t want to look like a sexy school girl. I kind of do, but not in the boxing ring. That’s a bad idea.
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. Just to be clear, if you want to do sexy school girl, you got to really rethink the facial hair.
David Clark:
Yeah. Well, I don’t know.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not saying get rid of it. I’m just saying it’s a different kind of sexy school girl.
David Clark:
But yeah, that’s good point. Good advice. Saved you guys. So I just started doing that and not sparring, I wouldn’t because people step on your feet and stuff like that, but most of my training I do barefoot, including the conditioning drills and all that kind of stuff. And it just made me feel more connected. If my feet are doing the work, I’m feeling it.
Steven Sashen:
Did that affect the way you were running as well? Were you doing any running?
David Clark:
No, I was still running what I call recreational. 40, 50 miles a week.
Steven Sashen:
You were running. I met Dean Karnazes. Yeah, Dean’s famous for doing 50 marathons in 50 days, and he’s famous, most importantly actually for ordering a pizza while he was running and having them deliver it to him, while he was running, rolling it up like a burrito and eating it. And when I met Dean, I said, I’m the anti Dean Karnazes. He said, what do you mean? Actually, it was fun. I went to introduce myself. He goes, I’m know who you are. So that was very sweet. But then I said, I’m the anti Dean Karnazes. He goes, why? I said, well, when I say I’m going to go for a fun run, I’m going to go do 50-meter repeats. And when you say, I’m going to go for a fun run, it’s like, I wonder where I’ll be in three days.
David Clark:
I’m going to do 50 state repeats.
Steven Sashen:
It’s like a whole different world.
David Clark:
Yeah, absolutely. Now he’s a good dude.
Steven Sashen:
He’s a very interesting cat.
David Clark:
And he introduced the world to ultra running in a real way. In a real way, I think.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. He’s very interesting cat. I get a lot of emails from people who say, well, can I run barefoot or minimalist or can I run in Xero Shoes because I weigh, fill in the blank? And usually their number is way less than where you started out. What would you say to them?
David Clark:
Yeah, I would say to trust your body. Fear isn’t always correct, and in fact, most of the time it’s not. Most of the time, I think we mistake fear and common sense. I’m not afraid to run out into traffic at rush hour. That’s just common sense. But I’m afraid to trust my body. I’m afraid to move. I’m afraid to do these things that I might get injured, but this machine is so powerful, and so okay, well just trust it a little bit. So you evolved over all of this time, millions of years, hundreds of thousands of years, whatever you want to call it. So trust that it’s going to work for you. Doesn’t mean you have to go crazy and whether you’re running in shoes or not, you don’t want to try to do too much too soon.
So trust your body, keep it small, you can do it. You’ve been moving. Okay, so I’ll back up for one second. People used to say to me, or people say to me now, aren’t you worried about hurting your knees? All that running you’re doing? Aren’t you going to hurt your knees? I’m like, you know when my knees are in the biggest jeopardy is when I was 320 pounds standing in line for my third Big Mac. That was a lot of stress on my knees. So if you’re carrying around extra weight, your body’s kind of grown strong to carry that weight around.
Steven Sashen:
It’s funny you say that. I have a friend who lost a lot of weight, and one of the things she said is, I miss being strong. She had a lot of fat mass, but she also had more muscle mass. And she just says, I miss being strong.
David Clark:
But you can keep that muscle that’s activating and moving you around, and you start activating using your running muscles and other things, and it’ll do you well. I think running is like anything else. It’s like a piano. It’s like tennis, golf, whatever. The better you get at it, the more you’re going to enjoy it. So learn to do it right.
Steven Sashen:
The thing I like to say about what I love about barefoot is that for me, and for many people that I’ve heard of, the whole thing about minimalist or barefoot running, or more, actually, let’s say it in a different way. The whole thing about running where you can actually feel the ground and get the feedback that your body is wired to receive is that if you take the time, you learn to listen to and respond to that feedback. And so your feet become a coach. Actually, Lana says this, we’re not selling anything magical. We’re selling shoes that become a coach for you. If you’re hearing too much noise, if you’re getting too much friction, which means assault’s wearing down too quickly, all of these are your coach telling you what you should do next, what you should try next. And we’re so wired to listen to something external and have someone try and tell you what to do rather than feel it internally.
In fact, the fastest way to change a movement pattern is to do two things. First, to get real time feedback. So you’re either watching in a mirror, so you can do this in a treadmill, watch a mirror if your knees are caving in, try and just point them out, put a mirror in front of your treadmill, move your knees so they’re out. Or if you’re landing in some strange way, just give you something so you can actually see it in real time. And then after you get used to doing that, then just get rid of some of the feedback. So put a curtain in front of the mirror for a few minutes, and then just extend the amount of time that you have no feedback from the external situation so that you’re starting to feel what was going on internally. So you just switch the, let’s see, the external does this while the internal does this. And that’s the simple key to doing it, because it’s all about getting that information and knowing what to do with it.
David Clark:
It’s like we joked about you can work with your coaches all the time and they’ll tell you to keep your hands up, move your head. You go sparring one time, start getting punched in the face. That problem is going to take care of itself one way or the other. You being knocked out, or you’re going to remember to keep your hands up.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, you mean, oh, up. I thought you meant up. Oh, up.
David Clark:
Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. I think it’s interesting the way my internal definitions of things have changed and rearranged, because when I think of running now, it’s so tied to minimal running. That’s what running is to me. Running is spiritual for one for me, and it involves minimal movement. Just like food. When I used to think of food, I would think of, oh, there’s bad food. There’s good food. There’s foods I have to stay away from. Food has changed for me now. I have food, which is healthy, whole food plant-based food, and then I have junk and crap that I either don’t eat or it has a different category, I won’t eat it or I won’t think of it as food. And when I talk to weight loss groups, I actually say that. I say, there’s no such thing as food addiction. You just have a two broad definition of food, just the food. You’ve allowed all these things to exist under the umbrella of food, and they’re not. No one’s addicted to broccoli and chicken breasts.
Steven Sashen:
No. No, not so much. I was in Costco yesterday. They had little mini pretzels covered in dark chocolate with caramel, and I bought a bag.
David Clark:
That’s a dopamine delivery mechanism.
Steven Sashen:
It’s not food.
David Clark:
But it’s okay.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I have two a day. It makes me extraordinary happy.
David Clark:
Two bags?
Steven Sashen:
No, I’m not that guy. You look in my freezer, there’s the thing of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that’s been there for three years.
David Clark:
It’s been in there so long, it’s just Ben, it was before Jerry came. Ben’s ice cream.
Steven Sashen:
It has so much freezer burn that it’s all freezer burn. But I just want a taste of something every now and then, because that’s something very pleasant. But it’s not something where I find myself mindlessly doing because I don’t find that enjoyable. I’ll go through a phase where for three weeks in a row, I’ll be thinking I could really use the right piece of cake, and I never can find it. It never shows up. And then either the whole thing goes away, or on week three, I go, oh, I know where to get that. And then I go have a piece of cake and I feel extremely happy, and then that’s it.
David Clark:
Whereas for me, there was no such thing as the wrong cake.
Steven Sashen:
No, I got to tell you, wait, here’s my favorite cake story. When I was living in New York City…
David Clark:
How many do you have?
Steven Sashen:
At least two that I can think of. No, three actually off the top of my head, but this is my favorite. So when I was living in New York City, I was doing standup comedy for a living. I’d be coming home 1, 2, 3 in the morning, and I was always looking for just a piece of chocolate cake in part because I was on my bicycle for 20, 30 miles a day, just getting around town, and I just needed calories. So I was eating donuts and cake because I just needed calories. So I finally found this one corner deli place two blocks away from where I lived. And right by the counter, they had these little things of cake that were wrapped up in Saran Wrap, and they were a dollar a piece.
And I went, oh, what the hell? I’ll try one. And it was just my favorite. It was incredible. And one day they didn’t have any. And I said to the guy behind the counter, where’s the cake? He goes, oh, he’s over there. And I went and looked and I went, I’m not seeing it. He goes, yeah, right there over there. And I’m looking, I walked back, I said, I don’t see this. Right there, over there. And I go looking, and I don’t know why he spoke with that accent. He was from New York. No, it’s not true.
David Clark:
It’s a Jewish girl.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly. So he’s pointing me over there, and I’m standing there and I’m going, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only thing here is a bunch of boxes of Entenmann’s chocolate. Oh my god. You’re cutting up an Entenmann’s chocolate cake into eight pieces and re wrapping them and selling it for a dollar piece. It’s a $3 cake. And I thought I didn’t like Entenmann’s chocolate cake. So of course I started buying the entire cake. But the joke is…
David Clark:
Discount.
Steven Sashen:
That’s right. And the joke is it lasted longer because I didn’t need that much. I needed half that much. So it was best deal ever, which is the perfect kind of thing for a Jewish deli to find is a good deal on chocolate cake.
David Clark:
So you can have your cake and you don’t have to eat it either. Something like that.
Steven Sashen:
I saw that you started that and it was going to peter out quickly. It’s like, I don’t know where this is going to go. So any other thoughts that you want to share just about what you’ve… Here’s a crazy one. For someone who’s thinking about doing an ultra for the first time, what advice would you give them?
David Clark:
First of all, you have to come to grips with the fact that if you’re thinking about it, you’ve already decided to do it. Surrendering acceptance.
Steven Sashen:
I’ve thought about it, but the thought is, I don’t want to do that.
David Clark:
So you haven’t thought about doing it. You’ve thought about not doing it.
Steven Sashen:
That’s correct. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about not doing distance.
David Clark:
Hey, why the hell not? Do it. Do it. Life’s too short, if you’re thinking about it, if that sounds appealing to you.
Steven Sashen:
No. If life’s too short, you should be a sprinter. I get my running done in a much shorter period of time.
David Clark:
Running is life. Whether you do it for small increments of life or long increments.
Steven Sashen:
I’m okay with that. Somebody asked me, I was interviewed for a documentary, they said, what are you going to do when you can’t run? And I literally sat here like this for about 30 minutes going, wow, that is the most depressing thing I’ve ever thought of. And actually, right now I’m having some trouble because I’m having spinal issues, so I can only get a little bit in before one of my legs goes wonky because of my spine. But in fact, my training partner said to me today, she says, I can’t believe you still come out every week. I have to. I’ll do as much as I can because what else would I do? So I really enjoy that. And the fact that it’s a mild tweak in my spinal cord’s, like, all right, whatever.
David Clark:
I have kind of a different take, man. I just think that in inevitably, I won’t be able to run. I’m very aware of that. So I enjoy it. I really take the time. Every time I go up Bear Peak, which is my favorite run here in Boulder, I touch the little marker and I go, it’s not today.
Steven Sashen:
Nice.
David Clark:
Because I just came off of a really bad injury too, with tearing my Achilles, and it made it peaceful to get through that because I was so present in all the times I could go up there that it’s hard to retroactively be grateful.
Steven Sashen:
That’s true.
David Clark:
If you do it in the moment, it’s a lot easier. So I was like, oh, I can do other things. I can find happiness in moving my body. I can go to the gym, I can swim. I can do other things.
Steven Sashen:
No, exactly. In fact, I have been thinking about it because there’s a high probability that I’m going to have to get my spine fused at some point. And so I won’t be able to run for a couple of years. And I’m thinking, what am I going to do? And I’ve actually started getting back into some things that I really enjoy. Other kinds of movement, I’ve gotten back into archery, which I find terribly entertaining because it’s all about intermittent reinforcement. It works great for a moment.
David Clark:
I could be the vegan archer.
Steven Sashen:
You could be the vegan archer. I have to tell you, when I go to the archery range, you would not be the only one.
David Clark:
It’s Boulder.
Steven Sashen:
I got to tell you. No, no. Actually, I go to the range in Broomfield, and I have to tell you, it’s one of my favorite places to go because the range of human beings that you see in an archery range, pun intended, is incredible. There’s goth chicks and crazy hunters. And not that all hunters are crazy, but these guys are crazy. And everything in between, little kids, old people. It’s the most eclectic group of human beings I’ve ever seen in this area. And I love.
David Clark:
Natalie Portman and Ted Nugent.
Steven Sashen:
That’s really what it’s like. That is really what it’s like. It’s so much fun. So I do think about that. There are a couple guys that I know who are paraplegic, who are wheelchair racers, and it’s like, can I get in your chair? Because that looks like that would be really fun, frankly.
David Clark:
And they’re like, screw you.
Steven Sashen:
No. They’re like, yeah, I’m in. So they’re all into it. If somebody’s in a wheelchair, like an electric wheelchair, I’m the guy who walks up and go, how fast can that thing go?
David Clark:
So I had Gabriel Cordell, not to go off on a tangent on my podcast. He’s a guy. He rolled his wheelchair across the country. Unmodified wheelchair. Just a regular.
Steven Sashen:
That’s sweet. Crazy. That is really outrageous. There are a couple of times going down the Tetons where that could have been a little hairy.
David Clark:
Yes. There’s a documentary on Netflix called Roll With Me.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really?
David Clark:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, okay. I’m going to have to look through that. Oh, that’s a blast. Anyway, so advice. So if you’re thinking about doing it, you’ve already decided to do it.
David Clark:
Do it. Yeah. I think just do it, man. What are you waiting for? We’re so, so strong. We’re so capable. We just got to believe in ourselves. A tiny little belief can turn into something unimaginably beautiful.
Steven Sashen:
I’m flashing back. I was at a talk that Tony Krupicka did about ultra running, and some guys said, I’ve run a 50-mile race and I want to run a 100-mile race. What do I need to do to train? And Tony said, nothing. It’s all in your head.
David Clark:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Sweet.
David Clark:
That’s it, man.
Steven Sashen:
All right. Anything else you want to leave our friends with?
David Clark:
No, that’s it, man.
Steven Sashen:
That was easy.
David Clark:
You know how to find me. We are Superman on all social media, Twitter, Instagram, my website, wearesuperman.com. It’s not me, it’s you. We.
Steven Sashen:
That’s sweet. So thank you for being part of the MOVEMENT Movement podcast and being part of the movement because we are creating a movement for people who understand that natural movement should be as obvious a thing as natural food is right now. So join us at jointhemovementmovement.com where you can find links to all the other places you can find us. And if you have anything you want to share, anybody you think you should want to have on the podcast, or if you want to be on the podcast, send an email to move@jointhemovementmovement.com. And as I love to say, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe and live life feet first.
David Clark:
Swing and miss this.
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