#350 – The Toughest 66-Year-Old On The Planet

Robert Hamilton Owens is a man of many hats. He’s been and done a lot – mountain climbing, radio and TV personality, keynote speaker, minister, Ironman, philanthropist, triathlete, Special Ops Pararescueman, and father of five – to name a few. But of all the pursuits he’s undertaken, there’s one title that best describes this literal force of nature: Robert is The Fittest and Mentally Toughest 66-Year-Old in the World. Period. This is according to Joe De Sena, who is the dude who founded Spartan Races.

Kyle and Lil also give a great overview of all the shooting sports at the Games.

If you would like to learn more about Robert and his 20X principle, you can purchase his book here.

Transcript

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Kyle Case  0:04  
Hello and welcome to the Huntsman World Senior Games Active Life. My name is Kyle case and I'll be your host on this amazing journey as we attempt to help you get the most out of your life. Joining me in our studio today is my co pilot Lil Barron. We do this show every day now. I love the way you say it makes you feel like you really are saying hello I should be in several weeks. Several months actually a couple of months, kind of briefly highlighting our sports, the hustle and well Senior Games I thought today we would just continue that. Might as well. So a couple of weeks ago, you'll remember that we talked specifically about capillary action shooting yes that was a fun one that was a highlight so today I want to touch on some of our other shooting sports games just really briefly so let's start with interest. Okay, let me start off with just saying, Wow, yeah, the interest is pretty cool, you want to talk about ice cold pinpoint accuracy. This is your sport. It's highly accurate specialized firearms. It's amazing. It's called bench trust because the shooters do support their firearm and themselves on bench. Oh, and they're shooting at targets of different lengths, you can just sign up for different planes, but up to 200 yards away. 200 yards is two football fields. Oh, I know you know that but just think about standing in an Enzo and looking at the other end zone and then timesing that by two, wow and the target that they're shooting at is like the size of a pencil eraser, that's the bull's eye. So again I'm talking ice cold accuracy. Now just imagine this in the unlimited division, that's one of the divisions we have that allows you to use any sides and supports on your gun, your gun is supported on the bench. So you lean over the gun, you're looking down the sights, you got it all solid up against your shoulder, but every few seconds, there's like this little blip, this little jiggle in your sights you know why, because that's your heart beating. Oh, so you have to squeeze you have to time the squeezing of the trigger in between your heartbeats. Oh my goodness. So this is, this is the level of sophistication and accuracy that we're talking about there, it's a great sport. In addition of interest. We also offer handgun. So we're shooting handguns at targets that are 25 yards away in this case, the handguns used are 22 LR pistols and remarkable revolvers, 32 and 45 caliber centerfire pistols and revolvers as well. Both Ventris, as well as handgun take place at the reckless rifle and pistol range out at the Southern Utah Shooting Sports Park in Beverly events are run by the local clubs, so we're grateful to them for their time and their expertise, but lil, that's not all. We also offer shotgun sports. And there's a bunch of different options for the shotgun enthusiasts, let me just focus on one, Well let me just say we have sporting clays five standard skeet and trap. You can shoot any combination of those events for those who are maybe not familiar, let me just define sporting clays, I wasn't really sure either. I'm glad I did the show because I hear these words but I wasn't really sure what they all meant so sporting clays is the closest thing to actual field shooting of all the shotgun sports. So rather than having the clay pigeons that are thrown from just a standard, everyone gets the same thing. They come from all angles that it's designed to replicate the way the birds fly the way the rabbits run around so these clay pigeons are coming from all over the place, and can really be challenging. That's one of them that we have and then, like I said, we have the others. If you're interested in shooting shotgun shooting specifically you can combine any of those events. It's just a ton of fun. So if you're interested in shooting of any kind. We can take care of you and your needs so visit sr games.net and get registered before it's too late because Registration closes on September 1 And that's just right around the corner, so don't miss out. Right, Lil yeah today's guests. Literally can knock your socks off. This gentleman is amazing Robert Hamilton Owens is a man of many hats, he's been and done a lot, including but not limited to, mountain climbing radio and TV personality keynote speaker minister, Iron Man, philanthropist triathletes Special Ops pair rescue men, and perhaps most difficult of all, father of five CC's undertaking there's one title the best describes this guy, Robert, is the fittest, and mentally tough a 66 year old in the world, period. This is according to Joe de Sena, who happens to be the dude who founded Spartan Race. He knows a little bit about what he's talking about when it comes to toughness. Robert, welcome to the show. Wow, thank you guys. Hey, we're, we're excited that you could join us and we're looking forward to visiting with you, you obviously you've had some military experience, I know that you train the soldiers. Do you shoot shotgun sports or ...

Robert Owens  5:14  
No, I just got shooting the day I got out of the military. Okay, guys, really get up and keep going and I just said I'm done with guns, especially with my five kids, I said, I'm not going to do guns anymore so that's fine, that's fine 

Kyle Case  5:26  
I don't blame you, there's, there's a lot of logic behind that decision there. So listen, this intro, obviously you've done a lot of things we congratulations on an incredible career on really living what we call the active life. The name of the show. You've probably taken it to an extreme, but not everybody does. And that is awesome. But I want to talk for just a second, Robert, it didn't always start out that way today like I think a lot of people would look at you and think oh well it's just in his genes everything's made easy for him, but your childhood wasn't always that easy was it, 

Robert Owens  6:00  
You know, I'm an adopted kid got adopted three months old, there was about 50 Babies lined up in bassonets nets can get as many as you want,

Kyle Case  6:08  
how you can take baby buffet right

Robert Owens  6:11  
there was a lot of a lot of guys coming home having relationships after the Korean War. And so my parents wouldn't got a girl and he came back out boy. Nice adoption was a great privilege Oh, yeah. And then I was a special needs kid. So I had bad ankles and bad feet that were corrective shoes and boots. So to really start running to sixth grade. Oh wow. And my mom was a teenager out of UCLA and better masters at Wellesley in Boston. So she was always looking out for me like we're gonna find a niche for you somewhere. And I tried everything and failed at all of them I just wasn't any good kid said, We have to have him on our team. But she threw me in the water, and when she threw me the water she said I took to it like a fish with my diaper on. And so that, again, we're in a water, Dana, beach kid returns with my mom or my grandparents n teh ocean. I spent a lot of time in the ocean, and then boogie boarding and surfing and stuff and then some guys came to me and said in high school, my first week of high school, the three year high school essay wants you to swim. And I said only, and they said just show up. So I got in found my home, found my niche, or my group, and

Kyle Case  7:30  
that is awesome. I have a friend who kinda had a little bit of a similar path he tried a lot of things, basketball, football, just, it wasn't wasn't for him soccer wasn't his thing. And he ended up in a lot of problems as well and love that he just loved it. What a great sport.

Robert Owens  7:44  
I was so so fortunate. If you want to talk about overcoming my coach was a Hungarian Olympic genre band check, James, and John had just showed up, because his, his team had just jumped symbol, and all those players, slammed back and asked for asylum in Sydney. So for us, he didn't speak much English, there are somebody who's hard up for a job coach. And so he came to begin to train us like Olympians, and we were just kidding, this, this guy comes with this authoritative thing, and says, You Will you are and begin to throw pinboards in our head, call us names, and he went from my high school to Long Beach State of Wyoming State University of Michigan and the University of Michigan to the US Olympic coach, as well as US Olympic sport game coach for 20 years, Michigan, I still see him today at 84. He started his career breaking us kids. Yeah, so that's a wild story. We learned from an Olympian, we acted like we were Olympians. 

Kyle Case  8:55  
That is awesome. I love that there's such an impact from that a coach can have on the person's life for sure and it sounds like he definitely had an impact on yours. You talked about swimming and how that kind of became something that worked very well for you. And you've also, he also talked about being broken. I want to I want to get into your triathlon experience. I know you've done 12 Ironman, races, and that is amazing. For those of us who need to be reminded of the distances of triathlon remind us the swim the bike in the run. 

Robert Owens  9:31  
This was two and a half miles, the bike is 112 miles, which is the road around a Oahu on uneven ground. And then the last is a marathon, which is twice as much free,

Kyle Case  9:41  
so you know you throw those references to distances out there, because, am I correct that you were there for the very first Ironman race today. 

Robert Owens  9:52  
That's incorrect, that's a place to be beginning, the first year, the second year it's 15 and I can your three, okay, and there were 100 of us. Okay. That was the last year it was on a little corner, that's where the World Championships are today, but all those races and our Honolulu race numbers that got transferable record. 

Kyle Case  10:13  
Yeah, I knew that it started there in, in Kona and or i mean Honolulu. And these distances, holy cow, like, it's so easy to just kind of throw those numbers around, especially if you don't have a point of reference, you know, he just developed to enough miles that I can drive that. And then, you know, when you're swimming, to be a long way. Should be a long ways. You crawl out of the water, at least some and then you jump on a bike for 112. And that just because, let's just run a marathon, yeah. But anyways, so you're there at the beginning, like I said at the very very beginning that was my mistake but the third year, about about 100 people. This was not an established thing like it is now now there's a brand, they have watches. Most of us are familiar with Iron Man and what that means. How did you hear about it and why did you decide hey that's the thing for me that's just crazy enough for me. 

Robert Owens  11:22  
I had just gotten to college, got out of military GI Bill, read a Sports Illustrated on May, 16 1978, and it was on YouTube, and they had gone and covered, and said, This is the craziest thing in the world. That's sort of what this article in Sports Illustrated so I read it, and then I read it again. And then I read it again I said, I can do that. I'm a pair rescue beach guy. And the big thing was is that it used to be that swim was the toughest ocean swim in Honolulu. And so that meant the pool guys would drown. And so, when we did was moving Waikiki was building that was heavy storms. And so the point of the Iron Men back then was to do the three toughest races in the model. To find out who was the greatest swimmer to fight against each other. Anyway, it wasn't early guys for brick and beard guys had costumes on guys, bicycle shop and swim trunks tennis shoes, no helmets no, no, the aid stations. Just show up as you're looking at the bar of course nobody was at the party and it was one of those military kind of thing. We want you to just to show us what you got.

Kyle Case  12:47  
And so you did there's about 100 people there. Do you remember the 100 that started did everybody finish or were there people that didn't quite make it through

Robert Owens  12:55  
others lots of people didn't make it. Remember how many, but there were tons of people that it was a hot day, it was boiling on the backside of it was like 110 or 15 degrees, because there's no wind, just washed away anyway. Lots of folks to Vegas, I passed out a 14 mile mark in Marathon some guys yard. I've seen guys on TV. Just doing involuntary wiggle for everything your body's out of control and you're saying your body. Hey, come back to you anymore. So, as you know just a West, some army guys came up. Start important game radio. And sure enough, got up and finished with it bro well tend to start with a group of guys like 15, 16, 17, 18 I woke up on the ground 54th place. And then I did the juice stuff and made it back on the 39th. And then when I got through and they said, You're done. I'm done I'm just getting going, I'm just sorry it's over 39 And it was, it was a wild

Kyle Case  14:16  
incredible experience in every sense of the word. So I'm assuming you signed up to do the next years, Then,

Robert Owens  14:23  
I didn't do anything for 20 years. Okay. Hiatus took five b i just did a local adventure stuff in Reno, Nevada, Rob was top 50 I did that at 2750. I had a son was a punk, they said, Hey Dad, you're really old, aren't you 50 starting to have this century. Muscle just turning your keys now you know. I don't like him, or likely saying, I'm gonna make a comeback and put this in his face, so I took all my kids and put them in finish line and took them to Ironman Florida in 2000, and they might have earned and come back and found out that I enjoyed the market shake and stuff so I started doing. I started dealing with every year that it wasn't for my crashes or something. Having trained and then hopefully make it to the race day anyway so I've been doing it ever since. 

Kyle Case  15:16  
And it's awesome. So how many do you have under your belt,

Unknown Speaker  15:18  
I'm done. I didn't make my last one. I came home to have seven marathons in seven days on seven continents and felt like I was going backwards, and pretty soon I didn't do too well. One woman had a heart attack. I had a heart attack the docs that we've been doing your heart, you got to, you have too much air and you're just laughing, there was a Navy SEAL goes into seven marathons was, back to back, which forced them to my war eventual and made my comeback. And we're not gonna get COVID And that's not coming out for a long time with lung issues, so I'm training. Now for number 13 again, hopefully doing my new normal. In November, going around Florida again see what my logs. 

Kyle Case  16:11  
Well, That is awesome. I'm just gonna put a pitch in here in St George Utah where we are based we are hosting an Ironman we've been doing a half Ironman for a longer time but next year we're doing the full so put it on your calendar, so just climb over now of course hurricane. Nice climb guys attention, it's a tough course.

Lil Barron  16:33  
So just so you know I have volunteered at Iron Man out at swimmingly read. 

Robert Owens  16:41  
Thank you very much. I'll look for you next time. So,

Kyle Case  16:45  
Robert again like my intro, you know, we're just touching on a few things but there were a few other things that I wanted to maybe just quiz you on. You mentioned the seven marathons and seven comments and seven days, holy cow is incredible. Another thing that you've been involved in is called the 300 is smarter, I'm wondering if you can give us a description of that 

Robert Owens  17:05  
movie 300 idea yeah okay so no one had really done that from Sparta to Thermopolae as the legend qinglian itis to those folks to fight the Persians, and so we did a Navy SEAL fundraiser for the families of the guys that died in Benghazi. So there were four Navy SEAL contractors that died in the Clinton cotton with you. And we want to raise money and boy, you're a warrior, run event and do redo that to 38 so it's 230, miles in eight days or 30 miles a day across Greece, and we raised money for that. And it was, you know James Lawrence who is, is in your area of the woods Iron Cowboy.

Kyle Case  17:48  
We know him as the iron cowboy.

Robert Owens  17:51  
We did what he did with us. It was funny. We were out there on the course and I said hey James, he goes you know, everybody needs a stupid one on the resume. It was, it was a long hot. Anyway,

Kyle Case  18:11  
I've been to Thermopolis before actually, my son and I are kind of interested in Spartans and I help coach and wrestling team we're in the snow Canyon warriors and so we kind of adopted some of these warrior ethos, and it's mountainous too. It's not like flat land.

Robert Owens  18:28  
You know what, we would start off as you know the Bible, and we go down the other side, and then go back up to another ski resorts here just, you know 4000 foot climbs all day long for eight days, and it was madness, and it was, it was a challenge. 

Kyle Case  18:49  
It sounds like it was, it sounds like it was speaking of challenge. Tell us briefly about the 50 hour challenge for the Navy SEALs, what is, what does that mean look, the day's class look like.

Robert Owens  19:05  
It's Sunday night at five o'clock  always Sunday night, Friday night, And the psychological barrier is that most kids, if they can make it to Wednesday night without sleep. They can make it to Friday. And that's the 50 hour work. So we wrote a program for those who want to be special ops and we say to them, we have a six hour, a 12 hour, a 24 hour, big boy correlates 50 hours notice. And if you, if you think you want to do this kind of stuff we encourage you to test yourself, because you've never been delirious like this before. You've never. You've never been out of your mind. And so we're going to do that for you so you understand where you want to get.

Kyle Case  19:50  
We're going to drive you put you're completely out of your mind also just get ready right.

Robert Owens  19:56  
I wanted to do an experiment to see if I could get a strong in my 60s As I was in my 20s. So I put these five events show up. I trained for three years to see in the experiment, as we speak an awful lot of topics I speak on as you choose. And so, experiment was to see if I can do two things at 66. And so, no one was going to have ever attempted in my many years, and do it. And if I'd known how hard it was, I wouldn't have done it because,

Kyle Case  20:41  
well it sounds like you've definitely challenged yourself in a variety of ways, and come out victorious over and over again with that about 90 seconds left. If you could synthesize that lesson that idea of challenging yourself overcoming obstacles and share that, what would that be,

Robert Owens  21:03  
most people are lazy and disciplined, don't have a purpose, and they exist, and we teach, and it's been part of my life because my book is called Beyond average that you don't have to live average. You don't have to live mediocre. There's 20 times more potential in any of us any stumbling disorder. And so it's important that the listener know that they can do so much more if they just find a reason to be healthier, or smarter, or do something that they, they think is impossible. Then, we work hard to tell people your best days are ahead, but your decisions are determining your destiny. And so we say at any age. What do you want to do, we want to be, what do you want to accomplish. And do you have people that will help you get to those places and most people don't try, because they don't want to be uncomfortable, but when we were young people, they were saying everything you want, that diet. Whatever it is, it's going to lie outside your comfortability, and you need to tackle yourself and wrestle with yourself and come up with points that you can use every day. Do something difficult, which will give you confidence to try more things whether it's sort of language, or it's saying, athletics, but every day we should do something difficult to tell ourselves we can win and get wins every day are things that we don't think we're able to win. And we

Kyle Case  22:46  
love that idea of finding win every day. Tell us how to find your book. 

Unknown Speaker  22:52  
My website is just my name is Robert Hamilton once the book is called Beyond average, because I've always been average I've never won any. I was never, you go to Amazon and find the book you can go to my website and find the audio book, wherever Hilton owns most of the guys want the audio book. Yeah, that's where you go and if the listener wants to write me or talk to me or the potential Ironman there and St George want to talk. I talked to all over the world all the time. Hey Robert, what do you think, What do you do and what do you think and we can hear what you all.

Kyle Case  23:30  
Well, that sounds good. One more time, the title of the book. 

Robert Owens  23:34  
Beyond average 

Kyle Case  23:35  
beyond average. Great, great set of priorities says beyond average living to 20 experts. Excellent, excellent. We'll put a link on our show notes so people can access that.

Robert Owens  23:45  
And I hope the listeners will challenge themselves and do something to get wins every day. Every day I

Kyle Case  23:51  
love it, or thank you so much for joining us, and great stuff great information, we'll have you back sometime I think it has some more stories to tell. Evernote. Lil yeah that's good stuff. Yeah, this thing's totally cow. I love that when something every day, every day, that's something we can all do. Let me run through a couple of things just to wrap this up real quick here as a quick reminder that registration is open, but we're closing on September 1 Yes, so visit SR games done there you'll find all the schedules rules the dates. We're getting a lot of questions about COVID-19 which we get it, we understand that but you can also find our updated COVID-19 plan. Once again, the website is Senior Games dotnet we encourage you to get familiar with the website but also specifically with that COVID plan, now's the time to sign up to be a volunteer if sports are not what you do, that's fine we can sure use your help as a volunteer. All that information is also at senior games.net I want to remind you to tune in live next to every Thursday at 5:30pm Mountain Time on a 1450 or FM 83.1 for the Huntsman World Senior Games active life. We of course take this live show and turn it into a podcast and you can find this podcast anywhere that you find your favorite podcast, we'd love to have you write a quick review or give us a rating you can do that right on your iPhone, by just scrolling down to the bottom of your apple podcast app and shooting us and stars, to see what I did there shooting stars, find this as well as previous shows right on our website at CD games.net So check that out today's inspirational thought this perfectly with Robert I realized it was going to but my thought is this I love it. It's not the mountain we conquer ourselves. Until next Thursday, stay active.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai