My name’s Rich Roll, and I am an ultra-endurance athlete. I’m a vegan. I am a husband and a father of four children. I also am a practicing attorney. So day to day my life is made up of being a dad to four kids, practicing law, getting my training in, and enjoying family time with my wife and kids, making food together, and enjoying our life together here in the beautiful Malibu Canyon where we live.

In 2009, Men’s Fitness magazine named him one of the “25 Fittest Guys in the World.” He has been interviewed and featured on CNN on several occasions, and invited by the network to write about his inspiring journey of self-awareness and health built on a plant-strong diet. Within two years, Rich Roll had transformed himself from a miserable 40-year-old in the worst shape of his life, to an extraordinary vegan athlete competing in the ultra-challenging, Ultraman World Championships… and placing 3rd overall in all Americans!

Just before Supreme Master Television visited Rich and his family in their gorgeous home, he and fellow vegan endurance athlete Jason Lester, had just completed the Epic5 Challenge – “an unprecedented athletic and spiritual odyssey” that involves not one, but five separate gruelling triathlons on Hawaii’s five islands – that’s five 2.5 mile swims, five 112 mile bike rides, and five 26.2 mile runs, in the span of five consecutive days! Perhaps PETA said it best: Superman is vegan!

When I first started getting back into competing, the most rewarding thing for me was just pushing my own limits and trying to achieve something that I never done before or go faster than I had ever gone before, something like that. But now really the most rewarding aspect of what I am doing is that I am sharing a positive message of wellness for other people. That it’s not just about a race performance or how fast did I go or what place did I get. It’s about an ongoing journey that I am on of discovery, where I am learning more and more every day, and I am here to share that with other people. And hopefully some other people will glean some knowledge or insight or inspiration from that, that will help them in their own life. And to know that that is working, is the most gratifying thing.

Today, on Vegetarian Elite, on the first of a 2-part feature, we will get to know the plant-powered athlete, family man, entertainment attorney, and spiritually-centered Rich Roll.

So, so after I turned 40 and became a vegan, and had all this energy and I started running and swimming, and getting back on my bike again and riding and realized that I needed some structure to this and I needed a challenge to focus my energy in a productive way. And I thought maybe an Ironman would be cool, like lots of guys who turn 40 want to do an Ironman. It’s kind of like the bucket list, you know, check that. Yeah, I did an Ironman kind of thing and I started looking into that because I always thought that would be a fun thing to do one day.

And I just read an article about this race called Ultraman in Hawaii, which is actually a double Ironman distance triathlon. It’s a 3-day race, it circumnavigates the entire big Island of Hawaii and it’s limited to only 35 people. It just captured my imagination and I just had to learn more about this race. So I went to the website and started reading about it, and it really, there was something, there was like a switch that flicked in me where I knew I had to do that race. And it just seemed so extreme and so impossible, and yet the same time it was like calling out to me.

And I think the reason for that, is that it wasn’t just a race where thousands of people show up. It really looks like it was this spiritual adventure where these 35 people kind of embark on this extreme task together and they’re mutually supportive. Although it’s a race, everyone is kind of looking out for everyone and there was a kind of a family aspect to it. And I think the purity of that spoke to me, and so I was determined to find a way to get into that race and contacted the race director, kind of double talked my way into getting her to agree to let me in even though I hadn’t done anything that would qualify me as being ready to be able to handle such an event. I was able to, it’s a long story, but I was able to get in. So I really only had six months to prepare for it.

The Ultraman is a tough 3-day test of endurance through a 6 mile swim and a 90 mile bike ride on the first day, followed by 170 miles of biking on the second day. The last day of trials is a 52 mile run.

And I just set out training as much as I could for that six month period, and showed up and actually ended up doing fairly well. I had a respectable 11th place finish that year. And being able to accomplish that in such a short period of time gave me the confidence enough to know that if I really focused, that I can do really well at events like that.

And Rich accomplished all this after he transitioned to a plant-strong, animal-free, vegan diet.

I really do attribute my nutrition program with helping me achieve those goals in such a short period of time. It’s a critical aspect of how I was able to do that.

What was the most challenging competition that you did?

So I went back to Ultraman the following year, and that was very challenging because I crashed my bike on the second day and had to pick myself up injured and complete the event. And I ended up finishing 6th, and I had a great result and it was a wonderful experience, but it was challenging in that I never had to come back after a physical injury to complete a race. So that was challenging, and then a friend of mine and I just completed something called Epic5, which was an event that in which we did five Ironman races on five Islands of Hawaii.

We did an Ironman on Kauai, and then went to Oahu and did an Ironman there, and then Molokai, Maui, and finished on the Big Island. So five consecutive Ironmans in under seven days. It was extremely challenging dealing with the logistics of traveling island to island on a daily basis with all of our gear, being exhausted and sleep deprived and still trying to get in an Ironman essentially every day. And now I am getting ready to, I’m in the midst of my training and preparation for Ultraman 2010, which is Thanksgiving weekend of this year.

When we return after this brief message, we will get a glimpse into the lesser known, yet vital facet of Rich’s life – his family. We will also learn what inspiration fuels his training for these extreme events. You may be surprised! You are watching Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Vegetarian Elite and the continuation of our program on plant-strong, incredible endurance athlete Rich Roll. By now, you are probably wondering how Rich keeps going during these super-strenuous athletic events and training. Where does he gain his motivation to not give up?

My wife is the biggest inspiration and getting me to get on this program and to stay on it.

Is she vegan herself?

She is now, but actually that the time when this started, she wasn’t. She is now. She is a great catalyst of growth in others and always trying to get people to achieve their personal best in whatever it is. So she has been huge inspiration in my own personal growth in many areas.

And though words
could never show
Still I wanted you to know
That your presence
Is really something in my life

As married life partners, Julie Piatt and Rich Roll together forged Jai Lifestyle. The concept has evolved from producing yoga retreats in luxurious locations around the world, to include plant-based nutritional products, vegan cookbooks, and instructional videos on how to better one’s life through a vegan diet, meditation, music, and so forth. Their ideals are mutually and wholly benefiting.

I’ve been vegetarian for years, but Rich inspired me last summer when I saw his piece on CNN, he inspired me to go totally vegan.

Rich’s, the distances that he’s been training and the type of races that he’s doing, it’s just completely out of my imagination how a being could even do that, it’s not in my make-up. But one of the most beautiful moments for us was when we went as a family to crew for him. We’ve made a movie together, we have four kids together, we built this house together. So he was freaking out and I was saying, “It’s cool, relax, how tough can it be? We’ll figure it out.”

And when I got there, he had a meeting for us. He had everything prepared, the course, and what nutrition he had to take and it all has to be timed a specific way. It’s very complex, very, very complicated. But I realized by being with him on this experience that he is a pro-athlete, and I had never seen that because I had never sat with him during that process. So, I would say that day, in the Ultraman race, he won the first day. And it was one moment I’ll never forget in my life. It was a huge inspiration to us and changed all of us.

Julie shares with us how unconditional love helped Rich reach these heights of his physical fitness and encourage his journey of self-discovery.

When we married we had a very spiritual ceremony, and we met in yoga. So for a long time I had wanted him to come on this spiritual path with me. And I was immature and didn’t realize that the spiritual path is totally solo, it’s a solo one. So, I had seen that he had some density that was keeping him from himself. So I had offered lots of things, lots of meditation techniques, lots of dietary advice, all kinds of things. And it seemed like the more that I offered, the more paralyzed he became.

So finally, after many years and of trying different things, I embodied the concept of Divine love, how are we loved by Consciousness, and it’s exactly how we are. And if everything is Consciousness then Rich is Consciousness. So I simply decided to just love him in a Divine manner. And it was at that moment, a couple months after, he could feel the difference, the shift. He asked me to get him herbs to cleanse and even then I had no idea that it was going to be one week turning into three weeks, turning into become a vegan, and then he would become an ultra-endurance athlete. I never, never had any awareness of that.

Time and time again
The path is leading me within
Still your smile
Is a light along the way

Your laughter filled the air
You spoke of mountains
And secrets kept

Information on Jai Lifestyle, along with Rich & Julie’s vegan cookbook “Seed,” can be found at www.Jai-Lifestyle.com

I think spirituality is a centerpiece of my athletic endeavors. And one of the reasons is that I like multi-sports triathlon so much is that it’s involved being outdoors a lot and it’s involved a lot of alone time, whether you’re running on a trail or out riding a bike or even you know swim in the ocean or pool, you’re kind of in an isolation chamber and the training session becomes like an active meditation. And it’s really been a practice of acquainting myself with my higher self and developing a greater more profound connection to my higher power and to the universe at whole and to my fellow man. And so, for me, training and racing is really just a metaphor for spiritual practice. And it’s about an ongoing learning experience, a journey in personal growth, and greater connection to the universe.

Visit www.RichRoll.com to learn more about Rich Roll’s adventures and vegan ventures

Thank you gracious viewers for being with us today on Vegetarian Elite. Please join us again next week for the second half of our program on Mr. Rich Roll and his super human athleticism. We’ll hear more about his transformational journey and what a vegan superman eats every day. And now please stay tuned for Between Master and Disciples, coming up next. May you enjoy abundant health and blessings of inner serenity.

This is Rich Roll saying Be Veg, Go Green 2 Save the Planet!