® Benjamín Juárez

The main thing is realizing that even if you feel terrible for a while, that’s not how you’re going to feel the whole time, he said. Things change if you just keep moving.

aquathlon
a rapidly growing sport with 450 Swimrun races worldwide, follows most of the original route, through forests, villages and farmland, not to mention one particularly tumultuous stretch of the Baltic Sea.
There are 52 swim-run transitions. Athletes race in pairs // obstacle course
The finish line, on the isle of Utö, is on the doorstep of the bar where this caper was imagined, which is poetic because, like the race itself, Roll’s story also has a boozy beginning.
His 2012 memoir, “Finding Ultra,” is an intimate account of his three-act metamorphosis from alcoholic entertainment lawyer with two arrests for drunken driving, to a 208-pound sober couch potato, to vegan ultra-athlete.
“The pounds melted off,” he said, “and I began thinking, if I could turn things around so quickly, how far can I take this? That’s what set in motion this domino effect.”
His most downloaded episode features David Goggins, a former Navy SEAL who overcame poverty, racism and obesity to become an endurance racing champion.
A skilled interviewer, Roll’s conversations run long — up to two hours — yet his heady mix of intelligence, athleticism and soul has helped the Rich Roll Podcast average over 1 million downloads a month. The show frequently cracks the top 100 on iTunes. // But it is not just the size of the audience that’s notable, it is the people he has reached.
Still, despite the following from luminaries, he says that what motivates him is everyday fans. “I get messages from people who feel alone, and live in places where these ideas are not part of the local culture,” he said. // One came from a plumbing contractor in Louisiana, Josh LaJaunie, who in 2011, at 32 years old, weighed 420 pounds. Roll inspired him to go vegan, lose over 200 pounds, and become a champion ultradistance runner.

[A Brutal Competition, Island to Island, in Sweden]{}

[Rich Roll, who produces a popular podcast on fitness, swimming in the Ötillö Swimrun World Championship in the Stockholm Archipelago.]{.css-8i9d0s .e13ogyst0}[[Credit]{.css-1ly73wi .e1tej78p0}[[Credit]{.css-1dv1kvn}[Tomasz Jakubowski]{}]{}]{.emkp2hg2 .css-1nwzsjy .e1z0qqy90 itemprop="copyrightHolder"}

By [Adam Skolnick]{.css-1baulvz itemprop="name"}

At dawn on Monday, 300 athletes from 24 countries donned wetsuits, swim caps, goggles, hand paddles and running shoes, and dove into the surf off Sandhamn Island, Sweden. (Yes, in their shoes, too.)

The odd attire fit perfectly for the Ötillö Swimrun World Championship, an adventure race in which athletes swim and run 75 kilometers (or 46 miles) across 26 islands of the Stockholm Archipelago.

In the field was Rich Roll, 50, one of America’s better-known endurance athletes and the man behind a popular podcast and social media feeds that make him an influencer’s influencer among top athletes, actors, authors and entrepreneurs.

Like many a grand adventure race, the original Ötillö (Swedish for island to island) was hatched as a bar bet among four friends in 2002. They covered the distance in 28 hours.

In 2006, Michael Lemmel, a veteran adventure racer, took over and turned it into a formal event, but it was still the only race of its kind, an adventurous version of the typical aquathlon, featuring frigid swims, multiple transitions and cross-country running terrain covering much longer distances.

Today’s version, the pinnacle of a rapidly growing sport with 450 Swimrun races worldwide, follows most of the original route, through forests, villages and farmland, not to mention one particularly tumultuous stretch of the Baltic Sea.

There are 52 swim-run transitions. Athletes race in pairs (Roll raced with his longtime coach, Chris Hauth), swimming a total of 10 kilometers (six miles) and running 65 (40 miles), including a half-marathon deep into the race. The course record is just under eight hours.

Despite frigid water temperatures in the high 50s, the swims were easy for Roll, a member of two national title teams as a Stanford swimmer in the mid 1980s, and they were mesmerizing, the water often teeming with undulating jellyfish. He’s also a veteran distance runner, but he had never dealt with the kind of terrain he found on Monday, made more complicated by slanting rain.

[Image]{.css-1ly73wi .e1tej78p0}

[Rich Roll in the swimrun. The race, 46 miles in total, covers 26 islands. Six miles of the total are swum.]{.css-8i9d0s .e13ogyst0}[[Credit]{.css-1ly73wi .e1tej78p0}[Tomasz Jakubowski]{}]{.css-vuqh7u .e1z0qqy90 itemprop="copyrightHolder"}

“When you finish a swim you land on these giant rock slabs, which are incredibly slippery,” Roll said by phone after the race. Most of the shoreline amounted to slick boulders and loose rocks, he said. One athlete bashed his knee; another split his chin. Both had to quit early, among several who bowed out as the day wore on. “The whole thing is an obstacle course.”

Competitors scrambled up sloped, granite cliffs that led to tangled forests, thick with brush camouflaging fallen trees, or muddy bogs with head-high reeds. About 90 minutes into the race, Roll’s legs were cramping, and when the terrain finally evened out onto gravel roads and tarmac, he could barely move. Roll, 5-feet-11 and 165 pounds, is a two-time Ultraman (an endurance race in which athletes swim, bike and run 320 miles over three days) finisher but, in Sweden, nature had humbled him.

“I thought I was in danger of not finishing,” he said.

The finish line, on the isle of Utö, is on the doorstep of the bar where this caper was imagined, which is poetic because, like the race itself, Roll’s story also has a boozy beginning.

His 2012 memoir, “Finding Ultra,” is an intimate account of his three-act metamorphosis from alcoholic entertainment lawyer with two arrests for drunken driving, to a 208-pound sober couch potato, to vegan ultra-athlete.

The athletic turn occurred when, after his 40th birthday, he picked up cycling and running, then started swimming again, and stopped eating animal products.

“The pounds melted off,” he said, “and I began thinking, if I could turn things around so quickly, how far can I take this? That’s what set in motion this domino effect.”

Included in his “domino effect” was the EPIC 5, one of the most difficult endurance events. In 2010, he and fellow Ultraman, Jason Patrick Lester, completed five Ironman distance triathlons (swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, run 26 miles) in just seven days.

In 2012 he started the Rich Roll Podcast to share what he had learned and to discuss wellness, training and risk with a wide range of guests. He has interviewed the Hall of Fame basketball coach and civil rights activist George Raveling; the Olympic gold medalist and volleyball star Kerri Walsh Jennings; and the musician Travis Barker, along with humanitarian aid innovators, yoga gurus, best-selling authors, football players and more than a few endurance athletes and adventurers. His most downloaded episode features David Goggins, a former Navy SEAL who overcame poverty, racism and obesity to become an endurance racing champion.

“That conversation was mind-blowing,” said Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, among the boldface names who follow Roll’s podcast. “It was so inspiring and so raw, unlike anything I’d ever heard.”

[Rich Roll, left, and his coach, Chris Hauth, who competed with him in the swimrun. The two came in nearly three hours behind the winning team.]{.css-8i9d0s .e13ogyst0}[[Credit]{.css-1ly73wi .e1tej78p0}[Tomasz Jakubowski]{}]{.css-vuqh7u .e1z0qqy90 itemprop="copyrightHolder"}

A skilled interviewer, Roll’s conversations run long — up to two hours — yet his heady mix of intelligence, athleticism and soul has helped the Rich Roll Podcast average over 1 million downloads a month. The show frequently cracks the top 100 on iTunes.

But it is not just the size of the audience that’s notable, it is the people he has reached.

“He’s had a huge influence on me,” said Shaka Smart, the head basketball coach at the University of Texas. After tuning into Roll’s podcast at the suggestion of a friend. Smart became vegetarian. “What’s intriguing about him, beyond the physical part of it, is it seems like he’s having a ton of success doing what so many of us coaches are trying to do, and that’s helping others become the best version of themselves, and at the same time trying to become the best version of ourselves.”

“I think his power lies in his authenticity,” Walsh Jennings said. “He’s a total story of triumph through adversity. It’s really empowering.” At 39, after missing out on the gold in Rio, some were surprised that Walsh Jennings didn’t retire, and instead set her sights on Tokyo. “Rich is part of my inspiration when I hear people say, ‘You’re 39 years old, what are you doing competing against 20-year-olds?’”

Still, despite the following from luminaries, he says that what motivates him is everyday fans. “I get messages from people who feel alone, and live in places where these ideas are not part of the local culture,” he said.

One came from a plumbing contractor in Louisiana, Josh LaJaunie, who in 2011, at 32 years old, weighed 420 pounds. Roll inspired him to go vegan, lose over 200 pounds, and become a champion ultradistance runner.

Those are the people Roll was thinking of when he decided to get back in race shape last November after a five-year hiatus. Hauth helped him ramp up training, and by summer Roll was running 35 miles at a clip, and hammering collegiate-level 6,000-yard pool workouts the day after running a marathon. He kept his audience updated by discussing his training on his podcast, Facebook Live streams and Instagram posts and stories.

Roll said he pushed through pain and discomfort again on Monday, and in the final two miles of the race, which ended with a steep, quad-busting 600-meter (1,968 feet) trek on Utö, he finally found his rhythm. He and Hauth, 47, finished as the top American team, in just under 11 hours (10:44:46), nearly three hours behind the champions, Jesper Svensson and Daniel Hansson, who competed for the Swedish Armed Forces and broke the course record despite the poor conditions.

Though it took longer than expected, Roll was proud to have finished what he called, “the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” And he said the race confirmed something he often talks about when it comes to training, racing and life.

“The main thing is realizing that even if you feel terrible for a while, that’s not how you’re going to feel the whole time,” he said. “Things change if you just keep moving.”

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