The Business Of Thinking

Shot Two Weeks Before His First Race - A Story of Resilience

ā€¢ Richard Reid ā€¢ Season 1 ā€¢ Episode 19

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0:00 | 1:02:36

What happens when life keeps knocking you flat? Aaron Burros went from nearly 400 lbs to losing 178 lbs through running - then was shot two weeks before his debut ultra, followed by seven years of PTSD and a corporate cover-up. His message: treat the source, not just the symptoms.

Key Takeaways

Running is therapeutic, not therapy. 

You are the CEO of your health. 

Small steps compound. 

Serving others lifts you when depression hits.

Episode Highlights

A doctor's warning at 40 started it all. 

Aaron lost 178 lbs, was shot saving colleagues, survived a smear campaign and near-fatal sleep deprivation. 

Now heading to Tokyo for his Abbott Majors six-star finish.

Timestamps

03:19 Walking to work

10:36 Running vs therapy

19:01 The shooting

25:53 Cover-up

37:41 50 marathons quest

58:19 Final advice

šŸ”— Connect with Aaron Burros

ā­ļø Connect and Subscribe

Thank you for joining us on The Business of Thinking podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe and leave a rating! It helps us bring more insightful content on the psychology of high performance. Find more about Richard Reid's work at www.richard-reid.com.

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https://richard-reid.com/master-authentic-charisma/

Production Credit: Edited and produced by @the32collective_ / https://www.the32collective.co/



SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Business of Thinking podcast. This is the place for high achievers who want more than motivation. They want mastery. Here we skip the surface level talk and go straight into the psychology of high performance.

SPEAKER_02

Hi, and welcome to the Business of Thinking. My name is Richard Reid. And we often talk about sport as being a way that big people build resilience and people grow. And today's guest is a prime example of that. I'm very delighted today to be joined by Aaron Barros, who is uh an ordained um priest. Is that resolute? Ordained minister. Ordained minister, okay. He's also a coach and an author. And just to start things off, Aaron, tell us a little bit about your background and how you arrived at the book and everything else that you've done in recent times. Because it's it's quite an in-depth and interesting story, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01

Um very much so. Um I was in sports early in uh coming up in my childhood and was uh actually mentored and trained by my older brother to be a quarterback. And so I played sports in high school and um also was going to uh play at the University of Houston as a walk-on here in Houston, Texas, in the U.S. Um, unfortunately for me, I was taking my brother to a dialysis appointment, and we got uh T-boned while I was driving and ended up getting hit in such a way that uh the doctor said that if I took a wrong hit in football and playing quarterback, it was on my left side, I was a right-hand quarterback, that uh I can end up being paralyzed. So I gave up sports at that point. And um, and then like a lot of people, life takes over. Um, you're working, you you get married, you have kids, um, you focused on raising your kids, you focus on providing, and next thing you know, you wake up and you you schedule in your prostate exam at the age of 40 to get checked out. And um my doctor tells me that everything is good except for the fact that I need to lose 40 pounds or it was gonna lose me. Oh wow. And I man, I hadn't played sports in decades, so it was kind of hard to get involved at that point in time. And I remember trying to go out and you know, having a mind of sports, you know, decades before I'm like, I know what I need to do to work out, but didn't have any kind of motivation, didn't have the energy. Um, I was nearly 400 pounds. And I just remember crying out to God and like, Lord, I need your help. And the next thing you know, my my truck broke down and my engine was no good. And that's when the gas prices around the world were skyrocketing. Um, so I didn't want to get a new engine at that time, and nor did I want to buy a new vehicle at that time. And so what I ended up doing was moving closer to work. I was about 17 miles away from work. I ended up moving closer to work where I was two miles away from work to where I would have to walk to work in the morning for 30 minutes and walk home, plus whatever I did on my job. And then eventually that walking turned into trying to run to work for 15 minutes and um run home from work for 15 minutes. And 15 minutes ended up turning into 20 and 2530, 3540. Next thing you know, I was playing hide and go seek with myself. And I worked up until I was running an hour, literally. And then after an hour, I tried to run an hour and 10 minutes, hour and 20, hour and 30 till I got up to the two.

SPEAKER_02

Building up slowly because what people can do, they kind of throw themselves into it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I got up to where I was doing two hours, and then I said, Well, I'm gonna do two hours and 15 minutes, worked up till I where I could run two hours and 15 minutes, and then I went to 30, then 45 until I was at three hours. And then when I was at three hours, it was just so relaxing. It was so therapeutic. Um, I looked forward to it. I was in uh big box retail management, so very, very stressful job. Uh, we had a hundred and probably about 88 employees and um customers, uh contractors, yeah, I mean, organizations, whatever. It was a very stressful job. So I really began to look forward to getting off work, jumping in the shower, throwing on my running clothes, and just going to get lost in the trails and relaxing, meditating, praying, and just having my alone time with God and just alone with my own thoughts. Um, grew up in a big family, worked in retail, was was rarely alone with my own thoughts. So that was very therapeutic. Um, the first two months, once I literally got to running, the first two months I lost 40 pounds. Wow. And then the first year, I ended up losing 100 pounds the first year, and then the next four years, in total, I lost an additional 78 pounds. So I lost uh in five years 178 pounds, which is like losing a body.

SPEAKER_02

That's a serious amount of weight, isn't it? And it and and I think it's fantastic the way you built it up, and and it sounds the way you are in the story now. You're pretty much running the time that it takes to run a marathon, aren't you? Just by starting off from walking two miles a day.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And and it was I mean, the the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, the physiological, the mental, uh well-being of my my life just took a turn for the best. I started eating better. Um I began to look at the my mental aspect of it as I was an emotional eater. Uh so stress, emotions. I mean, I was eating bluebell ice cream with a pack of king size MMs and washing it down with a bottle of Mountain Duco Red every night. That was my comfort. That was what I did to go to sleep. And you think about eating a pint of bluebell ice cream in Texas and king size MMs, washing it down with a liter of Mountain Duco Red. I mean, you do that about five, six times a week. And no wonder I was about 400 pounds. And so my weight on the index, I was supposed to be like around 215. And so I was carrying a uh a ton of weight on myself. And so I began to deal in, dig into the emotional part of why am I eating like this? So I had to go back and I had to deal with my trauma from a from childhood. Um, I had to deal with my daddy wound, not having my father in my life. I had to deal with not being accepted by my mom. And it it was just a lot of stuff. And so I taught myself early. Um, to protect myself, I would get loud and to comfort myself, I would eat.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. And and and you know, it's incredibly brave to go back and look at those things. Because I guess in a lot of cases, it's easier just to keep keep moving forward, isn't it? Not not to go. How did you go about delving into some of those things? Was it sort of thinking about some of those things? Was it going into therapy? How did you revisit those?

SPEAKER_01

So um, apart from um the Lord saving me uh back in 1996, I was reading the Bible, I was studying the Word of God, but uh but more importantly, at this particular point, I went to the College of Biblical Studies here in Houston and I took a course on biblical counseling.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And so I took that course and it just opened my eyes up to a lot of stuff I was facing, and it challenged me to um face the demons, to pull the skeletons out of my closet, to slay my dragons. And it was a lot of work, and it was it was scary as an individual. I'm a you know, I'm 6'3, you know, I was almost 400 pounds, you know, I'm a big guy, you know, I'm a man's man, and you know, to to have to look in the mirror at myself on a deeper level, it was it was very scary to be vulnerable, um, to cry, to heal.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I had to, I literally had to give myself permission. It's okay for you to heal, it's okay for you to cry, it's okay for you to ask for help. And so that's where it all began. But eventually, um, you know, I would get with my pastor at my church and the elders, and we had a counseling ministry at the church, and and so I would go to the conferences that we had at our church. Um, and I just spent the time during that next five years doing a lot of work on myself, getting healthy, because what I did not want to do is what happens if I can't run anymore? What happens if I can't spend that time out there like that? Yeah. Now I was taking care of the symptoms, but I wasn't attacking the source. And so running, I would hear people say that running is my therapy or the gym is my therapy or lifting weights or cycling, whatever is my therapy. And I ended up adopting that, saying running was my therapy. And then I said, hold on, running isn't my therapy, it's therapeutic, but it's it's not my therapy. And so I began to challenge my friends and people in my sphere of influence. Hey, that's not your therapy. It's therapeutic. It helps you deal with the symptoms. Yeah, it's not the source of what causes the symptoms that encourage you to go out and do what you're doing. And I had friends that had eating disorders, I had friends that were suicidal, I had friends, and so they would they would throw themselves into running, doing triathlons, cycling with the MS-150, and and doing all these extreme things because it helped with the symptoms, but they never faced why they were feeling the way that they were, or why they were suicidal, or why they were in such deep depression. And so for me, it was like if I'm gonna be able to help anybody, I gotta be able to help myself, first of all. So what I did, and I use this uh metaphor. Well, it's not really a metaphor. I mean, if anybody flies, everybody experiences, they tell you that if you're traveling with a small child or an elderly person and you lose uh cabin pressure, the the mask's gonna drop. And they tell you, put the mask on yourself first and then help the loved ones you're with. Because if you try to put the mask on your loved ones first and they're fighting, and you don't get the mask on them, and you pass out and they pass out, then everybody can suffocate and die. And but if you put it on yourself first and they pass out, then you can still put it on them to help them. And so that was my mentality. Let me help myself first so that I'll know how to help others. And so that's what I began to do and challenge my friends and my sphere of influence that hey, it's therapeutic, you got to get therapy for why you're doing what you're doing. And and most of my friends, they didn't know why. And so I would challenge them. And I've literally had friends that would stop talking to me.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I was gonna ask you that because it's it's great to get extra insight, isn't it? But I guess not everybody reacts well to that.

SPEAKER_01

No, but I've had friends that have reached back out to me years later and say, you know what? Thank you. I didn't appreciate what you were saying to me at the time, and it didn't feel good, and I didn't want to hear it, but it it was like a gnawing on them. It wouldn't leave them alone. And they thought getting rid of me, not coming around me, not going to work out with me or run with me was just gonna pass by it. Um, but it didn't. So they would they they would do the homework later and get the help later, and then they come back and tell me, thank you. I really appreciate it, even if it's just a message or a text message, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And and and sometimes it is that, isn't it? It's given the message, but the message has got to land at the right time, and sometimes it needs to germinate with people a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, and so uh for me, I thank God because even though I was thinking that at that moment, I really wasn't, you know, like seeing the necessity of it. Um, however, for me, I was so far into running and and honing in and the trail running and everything, to where my friends started saying, hey man, you need to start, you you know, you need to do this professionally. And so you know how it is when you're working out with your buddies and your friends and everybody blows smoke and and and you know, everybody like, yeah, you doing good, you know, because you're helping people and um you're running and you're doing well. And so at first I was like, yeah, people just you know saying that to make me feel good, I appreciate it, you know, thank you. But it wasn't until I started having professional athletes reach out to me and say, hey man, have you ever thought about actually being an ultra marathoner professionally competing? That I really started like, okay, taking notice and like what is going on with this? And then one day I was at church and my my pastor asked me, he said, big man, and um, that's what he called me, big man. He said, Big man, you ever thought about running professionally?

SPEAKER_02

It's getting serious. No, it's not just a bit of a lot of it's getting serious.

SPEAKER_01

God didn't got involved. And I said, I hear you, God. And he said, I have a friend of mine that is a professional running coach. And he said, I uh he he uh does the fitness at Fort Ben Fit out in Sugarland, Texas, in Houston, outside of Houston here in the U.S. And he he says, Um, I always share with him about your journey and stuff and this and that and your times. And he he asked me, Had you ever thought about turning professional? And I told him I would talk to you. And if you're willing to talk to him, I can set y'all up a meeting. And I was like, sure. And so I go talk to this guy, and um he's he's since passed um uh through the whole situation with COVID. It was very difficult for him. But um he's since passed, and his name was Andy Stewart, and he owned a store called Finish Line Sports in Sugarland, Texas, and he he he coached from the kids up to professional runners, and we talked, and he explained to me the ultra trail running circuit and the competition and um if I do well, how I could make a a good living and get endorsement deals. And and I was like, and I can do all this by doing something that I enjoyed that you know, because retail management, if you ever worked retail, especially big box retail management, man, it is it's it's not something you want to um find yourself having a career in for the rest of your life. And so I was excited, and here I am, man. Like I got a coach, I signed up for the Brazos Band 100 with trail running over 200.

SPEAKER_02

What kind of age were you when this started? Sir? What kind of age were you when you started getting into the ultra marathon running?

SPEAKER_01

I was 44 when we were talking about it. I was yeah, yeah. I had a birthday coming up, it was gonna be 45. Um I signed up for the Brazos Band 100. I was gonna do the 50 miler, I was gonna compete. The coach wanted me to just, you know, he said, see what you can, see how how you can keep up with the professional runners. And I said, keep up with them. I said, I'm gonna beat them. What are you talking about? I'm I'm you know, I'm competitive, right? I am competitive. And so I was like, I'm just going to, you know, I said I'm gonna stay, I'm gonna keep them within a within a quarter mile view. I don't want them to feel threatened. I want them, you know, to get lazy on me and feel comfortable on their run. And I said, but that last lap, I'm gonna take them. And I said, I'm gonna win this thing, and that was my goal. And so the very thing that I was encouraging other people to do as far as dealing with the source of why you were where you were, would come back to be a benefit for me. Because two weeks before the benchmark run for my professional career, I went through a workplace shooting where I was shot several times, saving my co-workers' lives. And that changed my whole life. Literally. It was a it was a workplace shooting.

SPEAKER_02

Um other employees shooting people.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, other employees and and um it it was it became a living nightmare for for several years the situation.

SPEAKER_02

Um just a few weeks before the first race.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, two weeks before my my benchmark run. Literally two weeks. Thirteen days to be exact. Um and it it I wouldn't go on to still do the run. Um had to have surgery, but I talked to the surgeon and he said the bullets um wouldn't do any more damage than they had did. And um he just said, it just depends on your threshold of pain.

SPEAKER_02

So really with the bullets that inside you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And so I I said, Well, I have a high threshold for pain. Apparently so. So I should be good, but to be honest with you, the pain and the stress of what I went through, the PTSD, the sleep deprivation, because I didn't sleep for the first 10 days, I couldn't even close my eyes to try to sleep because I was hallucinating. I had so much trauma going on with me that I'd never experienced in my life. And all I knew for me was it's running was a running was a place to help me. Yeah, so I looked forward to doing the race, but around mile 35, um, probably just before then, I started falling. Um it was a pretty much a flat race in the trails. It was very non-technical. Um fast course, and I was falling and didn't realize that the pain from the bullet and everything sending signals to my brain. My legs were giving out on me. And I remember a guy running up to me saying, Hey, you okay? And I was like, Yeah. And then I fell a couple of more times. He came back up and I said, Well, I said, I I just tripped over something. And then we were on this one part of this course where it was just like sand, sandy rocks, just very fine gravel. I mean, just flat as can be. And I fell again, and he came up to me, he said, Don't tell. Me, you tripped over that little pebble. And I looked at him, and he said, He said, I am, he said, I'm a um EMT from San Antonio, Texas. And he said, Something's going on with you. He said, What is it? And I explained to him what it went through and what I'm running with. And so he encouraged me. He said, Man, he said, walk for a while and and let your body rest for a moment, walk for a while, um, and see what you can do. And so that's what I'm trying to do. And I get to run in again, but the stress of everything coming down on me. Uh, about mile 40, I started experiencing vertigo. And I don't know if you ever had vertigo.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, but I've heard people have had it, had it in this really struggled.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So equilibrium between your ears. Um, that's how we don't experience the earth rotating the way it is, um, gravity, um, us going thousands of miles in space, flying around and the gravitational pull of the sun, the moon, all that, we have this the equilibrium between our airs. And so when you get vertigo, that is thrown out of whack. So if you ever see uh in NASA or any space program where they're trying to spin them out of control in these these chairs in these chambers, that's what they're trying to induce with them so that their orientation that in that field that they can try to orientate themselves. And your sense of gravity becomes super strong, where it pulls you down like a magnet, and you're spinning around, everything is spinning, you don't know what's upside, you don't know what's from the right side up to the upside down, and you get nauseous as well.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so it must must be quite terrifying for you. Were you able to make connection in that moment of what was happening, or was it all sort of happening too fast?

SPEAKER_01

It was just happening too fast. It was like me being thrown out of a plane uh without a parachute and somebody yelling at me, swim, swim. It was useless. And so I when I got the vertigo, I was trying to run. I was running in circles, falling down. And so uh one of the course marshals came and and and helped me up and put me over in this gazebo to sit on this bench. Um, because at the Brazil's Bend State Park in in Texas, uh, they have alligators. So he was like, Man, you don't want to lay down on that ground and become gator food.

SPEAKER_02

Just not that's the mix.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So um helped me sit up and stuff. And he was like, What's going on? And I was like, I got vertigo. And um he was like, That's it. I was at mile 40. I only had 10 more miles to do. I was like, man, let me knock these 10 miles out and this and that. Give me a second. He was like, Nah, you're gonna end up hurting yourself or an alligator gonna eat you, you know. So they called for a cart to come get me. And at that moment, I realized how bad it was. And I didn't think it could get any worse, but it would definitely get worse for me.

SPEAKER_02

And we say it would get worse that day, or we're talking sort of in the in the future now in the future, over the next five to seven years.

SPEAKER_01

Um unfortunate for me, the company I worked for um is a multi-billion dollar year company um with over 350,000 employees worldwide, and they pretty much unleashed a smear campaign on me as though I was the one that did everything. Like I shot myself and shot other people, and it was it was I really thought I was being punked. I was I was waiting for the cameras to jump out and somebody to say, hey, we we slipped you a Mickey, and we, you know, we did all this stuff to make you think. It was a living nightmare.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I never with a PTSD, but then you you you're trying to justify your existence and and and your innocence.

SPEAKER_01

You you're hallucinating. I had sleep deprivation for almost seven and a half years. Um, anxiety, depression. Uh I would have crying spells that last two to four hours uncontrollably. I would be in public eating, and they would happen, and it was just embarrassing. Um, I would get triggered with the PTSD, and I would be hiding up under sinks in public places and restrooms. They would have to call the police to get me out, um, ambulances. I I mean, living it was it was vivid. I literally, at one point, I called my psychologists and psychiatrists and told them that I think that they should have me committed because I told them I've I don't know if I'm even talking to you right now. That's what I would tell them.

SPEAKER_02

I don't I'm losing touch. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I said I was losing touch on reality from hallucination to the sleep deprivation was was terrible. And on top of that, um I was dealing with the company um trying to protect their image. Um, they went so far as to say that I lied about being shot. Um it was it was terrible, man. Yeah, I remember when the detective came up to the hospital to interview me, um, the respondent detective from the homicide division of the Houston Police Department.

SPEAKER_02

After the initial incident.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. He called me a hero. He said, You are a hero. He said, I talked to several of your coworkers, and you saved more lives than you realized. He said, Three of my co-workers told him they knew for certain that had I not did what I did to save their lives, they would have been dead. He said your company should be proud to have uh someone like you working for them. They should celebrate you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

When you're and yet it sounds like you got you got punished for for doing the things that you did.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they they smeared me.

SPEAKER_02

What was their motivation? What was to get a sense of why they were doing that?

SPEAKER_01

Your guess is as good as mine. The only thing I can go off of is what I experienced, what I knew to be true. And for me, they were more concerned about their reputation and their stocks and whatever else was involved with the people that they knew did what they did. I mean, they went so far as um to throw their power, their weight, and their money around to where the case didn't even make it to tr to trial. It wasn't even prosecuted. Yeah, and they knew who did it. The police knew who did it, and but the company didn't want anything done because they didn't want to be in the news, they didn't want the publicity.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And so it was swept up under the rug, and I was attacked. I was I was made to look like the bad person. I was they literally gave doctored evidence to to other lawyers and people to say that I was not shot to prove to their statement that I that I was not shot, which was was was totally contradicting the evidence of what happened, and the fact that I had to have surgery to remove bullets, and the fact that there were witnesses and the fact that it was on on camera. Yeah, I mean, they just they did a a sweeping cover-up.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so that just I guess adds to the challenges that you were having. And and the whole time, this five to seven year period when you were struggling with PCSD, what was happening with sort of everyday things and and you're running? Was you running on hold during that period, or were you still keeping that going?

SPEAKER_01

Well, my running dropped like the dial index on Black Friday or back in 1920. Um it went downhill, it went downhill gradually at first. Yeah, um, I have progressive muscle weakness in my right glute.

SPEAKER_02

So, this is your custom of the big time, and then suddenly all of that being taken away from you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I still have a bullet in my right glutus maximus that if they took it out, I wouldn't even be able to walk without assistance. And so uh I made the decision to leave it in. My uh surgeon said that my leg would progressively get weaker. Yeah, that at some point in my life that uh I will need assistance for walking, but I I said I would rather it happen gradually than all at once. Yeah. Um, so it went downhill. I mean, I was pacing marathons um just for conditioning. I was doing um marathons at uh 255, two hours and 55 minutes up to four hours and 10 minutes. And in the technical trail, I did a half marathon in 89 minutes. That's moving, but it dropped down to where I did the London marathon, and I was just gonna take it easy. I was doing the Abbott World majors, the six stars, and I was just gonna take it easy. I was like, I'm just I'm gonna do this in four and a half hours. That was taking it easy, and so I said the first the first half I'll do in two and a half hours, and then I'll do the second half in two hours. Yeah, it ended up taking me nearly seven hours. The first half I did it in two and a half hours, my glutes stopped firing, and it took me um four hours just to walk the second half of the London Marathon, and it didn't get any better from that.

SPEAKER_02

And I guess that must have been absolutely demoralizing for you, given where you'd been not all that long before.

SPEAKER_01

Well, not only demoralizing, I had it snatched away. I I this friend of mine said that I was experiencing runner's depression. And I just didn't understand it at first, but you know, getting the mental help help I needed, I came to realize that you know, as a runner, you experience that runner's high so much that when that's snatched away from you like that, you go, your body goes into withdrawal pretty much, and you get depressed. Yeah, and so on top of what I was going through, I ended up having runner's depression. And then the nail in the coffin for me was my weight gain was coming back.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01

I knew that it was gonna come back somewhat because I wasn't running as actively as I was before, so I was expecting 20 to 30 pounds, but I eventually ended up, I eventually ended up out of the 178 pounds I lost, I eventually ended up gaining back 119 pounds.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, so so most of it being put back out.

SPEAKER_01

So then when I went back to the 300 club, because I went from 219, I was 219 at the shooting, and I got up to close to 300. When I got over 300, I was just depressed all over again.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01

And then it kept climbing, and I I topped off at 329 pounds. Now, when I started this journey, I was at 394. So I was like from 329 to 394, and that that's nothing. That that's just that's easily. And I was like, I promised myself I would never get this big again. Yeah, and so here I am battling with sleep deprivation, which is putting a lot of belly fat on me, um, a lot of fat around my organs and everything, my fatty liver, cholesterol level going up. I mean, I'm experiencing everything again. Now, let's rewind, if you will. Remember, I was telling you about running was therapeutic, but it wasn't therapy. So now not only am I dealing with all this depression, sleep deprivation, hallucinations, PTSD triggers, and everything else, but I'm also dealing with my emotional eating.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So now I'm back to the source of why I was the weight that I was. Now I was not the weight that I was before. The weight wasn't coming back because I was emotionally eating, but because of everything that happened, and I'm at 329, now I find myself looking for comfort foods because I don't have anything else to turn to. And I refused, I refused to do alcohol, drugs. I'm like, I'm not running to that stuff, yeah. Yeah, and so I wasn't able to run, and I was like, it's time to fight. It's time to get your life back. And so pretty much at in 2019, 2020, I decided I was gonna go on this quest to do 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 weeks, and I was gonna be raising$50,000 for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. And the reason why I was gonna do all this is because I needed to get hope back in humanity. So I wanted to focus on those who were less fortunate than myself, which is the elderly and children. So I was like, I'm gonna focus on the children because the children are suffering with pain that they can't control, and I couldn't control mine, and they don't have an option to say, hey, let me take a break from this pain. And so I wanted some motivation to where I wouldn't be so much concerned with woe as me, yeah, but that I would be concerned about somebody else's plight more than my own.

SPEAKER_02

That's so important. When you focus on the needs of other people, your situation becomes more and more tolerable. So it makes a lot of sense, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was giving the very thing I needed, and I didn't have much of it, even though I needed a lot of it. And then also I wanted to do the 50 state challenge because people was like, Why didn't you do it virtual? Well, I wanted to do the 50 state challenge um because it made me get out of the I thought I was in a cave, but I was actually buried under a mountain. But I had to get up, get out, and I had to travel and I had to get involved with dealing with other people instead of being isolated in this depressive mode. And so that's why I was going to do the traveling. Yeah, and then in the 50 weeks, I wanted to do it in one year because I had to I had to get my life back. I didn't have time. I didn't this couldn't be a five-year plan, it couldn't be a three-year plan, it couldn't even be a two-year plan. I was desperate. And then all of a sudden, here comes COVID. So in 2020, it shut everything down. So for a year and a half, I had to wait, which made it even worse because my my right leg was getting weaker. And I wasn't able to work out, and I was and I was steady gaining weight. So all this stuff was happening gradually at first, and then it just fell off the cliff, yeah, and I was free-falling.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so you had your plan of how you were gonna get out there, but you were you were being held back.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, being held back by the world pandemic. So not only was I experiencing my own personal pandemic, trauma, tragedy, but I was also thrown into the world's pandemic. And my doctors were worried about me, people were concerned about me. Um, because over here in the US, I mean, people were committing suicide, they couldn't take it. Yeah, yeah, and and and here I am, and I told my doctors, I was like, you know, this is what I've been doing for the last four years. Yeah, I'm like, so it's not bothering me. I said, what's bothering me is is that I'm I can't get my life back. And so when things opened up, I had a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, and a plan D because races were canceled at the last minute, the week of, two weeks before, whatever. And I was like, I'm going for this. Yeah, and then I would get places and get stuck because there were no planes, no crews, no pilots.

SPEAKER_02

So you had to be pretty, pretty resilient if you went already, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And then on top of that, I would show up to places when I started it, it was in January, so it was cold, cold. And so I would show up like the first one of the first races I went to was um go short, go long, go very long. It's an ultra race in uh Oklahoma. Yeah, coastal Oklahoma. And I go to check in my hotel, and they say, Oh, we're sold out. And I'm like, I got a reservation. What do you mean? Well, we're overbooked, and so we don't have any room. And I was like, uh, I said, I just crashed down here in the lobby, you know, just and the guy was like, No, because of COVID, we can't have anybody in our lobbies. I'm like, Are you serious? I'm like, dude, it's like 20 degrees outside. And he was like, I'm sorry. And so they told me I had to leave, the security told me I had to leave. And so I ended up, I said to myself, if I'm going to have to sleep outside, because I couldn't find anywhere else to sleep, everything was full. If I'm going to sleep outside and die and freeze, then I'm gonna make sure somebody finds me. So what I ended up doing, I drove to the start line of the park where the race was gonna be. They had the gates up, you couldn't go in, so I parked right there in front of the gate. So people would have to wake me up. And if I died breathing in the cold, then at least they would find my body. That was my thinking.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

But I was desperate. Yeah, I was desperate. I wanted I wanted it more than food.

SPEAKER_02

And it sound sounds like you needed your your redemption to get out of the situation.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And so I was, like I said, man, it was that's so in 2021 to 2022, that's when I did the the quest. And the reason why I called it a quest. Is because what I planned in 2019 to do had morphed because of the because of COVID. And then as I, like I said, as I was going, I would get stuck in places and couldn't get to my next race, or I got stuck in airports without planes, without pilots or crews. I mean, I was in Denver, Colorado, in the airport. It was so packed, and that airport is huge, but it is so packed in there that people were had cots, they made pallets and cots alone, and you would just walk past hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people laid out on the floor, and nobody could go anywhere.

SPEAKER_02

So I I guess with all those things stacked against you, it would have been a lot easier just to give up, wouldn't it? You didn't No.

SPEAKER_01

And nobody would have blamed me. I'd been through a living hell going through a pandemic and experiencing because I'm still experiencing sleep deprivation at this time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, which makes everything more difficult straight away, doesn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's so serious that I didn't know this. I didn't know you can die from lack of sleep. So my insurance company was approving medication that was costing like for a month's supply was costing a couple of thousand dollars.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Because it was a life or death situation, and my my psychiatrist was explaining it to me. And I was like, Hold on, what? She's like, We gotta get if you don't get some sleep, you could literally die from not sleeping. And I had no idea. So could you imagine had I not dealt with the source of why I was 400 pounds, the emotional eating, the healing, and then to have to go back through this, if I didn't deal with that, I would have been at a place where I would have just started eating to comfort myself, and I would have easily shot over 400 pounds during this time. Now, fast forward back to now. Um last year, February, I was 329 pounds. It gradually started going down. My weight after about four years started going down, peaked at 329, started going back down gradually, gradually. It took me a while to get under 300. But in May of last year, at the end of May, to um the the um, I would say about August, I lost 40 pounds. By the end of the year, I lost another 20 pounds. So I'm I'm 66 pounds down from 329. I am hit it to the Tokyo Marathon in March, and I wanted to be 255. I'm going to get my six-star with the Abbott World major marathon. And I was doing that as an act of kindness for a friend of mine who lost her brother to drunk driving and to bring awareness to drinking and driving and the dangers of it, especially for graduating seniors of high school and college-age kids. And so I was doing that as an act of kindness. Now I was supposed to do that the whole year in 2019, and I did for the six world majors at the time, which was London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York, and then the world shut down. So I had Boston and Tokyo to do. What I finally did Boston after three tries because of COVID, and then I went to Tokyo. But when I was in Tokyo three years ago, 2023, the month, three weeks leading up to the Tokyo Marathon, my weight shot up. I gained 25 pounds in under three weeks.

SPEAKER_02

So what was happening there? Was that 18 again?

SPEAKER_01

Or no, that was just the sleep deprivation. I was still experiencing it. And it was, it had my weight just up and down and and just all over the map. And so it felt like I was running with a dead body on my back. And so I got swept at the 11k mark, which is the seven-mile mark at the Tokyo Marathon, which is one of the hardest marathons to complete, because they have nine separate cutoffs. So if you're not at a certain point by a certain cutoff, you out, and you have nine of them. That's unheard of with a race. Normally a race may have one if they have that. You might have two, which, like the Marine Corps in the US, just added a second one where they had two because they had 50,000 runners. So, but Tokyo has nine, including the finish line. Literally, if you don't cross the finish line in time, they you could be coming down, you could be 10 feet away, and they will not let you finish to get your start.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Very harsh. And they're very, I mean, it is, it is, they got they got these big buses lined up. It'd be like three, four, five of them. Just driving along the course, and you got to get on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you don't get on and you're gonna walk, then they come and they take your bib and everything so that you can't sneak back in a race. But so I had 78 seconds short of glory. That's what I call it. I failed 78 seconds. And had I not had that extra 25 pounds, I mean, I ran seven miles nonstop without getting any water or anything. I was I knew where I had to get to.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So now I'm going back and I'm I'm running um for charity. All the runs that I did for the Abbott World majors, I did for charity because again, I wanted to focus on other people and not fall into that woe is me, not feel sorry for myself. You know, I've had people tell me, man, you can give up, man. Ain't nobody gonna trip. You've been through a lot, man. You've you've accomplished a lot, you've done a lot, you know. But this race for me is not about anybody else but me and what I know I need to do. And so me getting back to running and serving the run, the global running community is where I find my purpose, where I find my reason to get up every morning, where I find my reason to push through. Because when you're depressed, I tell people all the time, get outside, get in the sun. That's what I did. I baked in the sun. People kept telling me, man, you're getting too dark. I didn't care less. I'm fighting depression. So I needed vitamin D, and I didn't need a pill, I needed the natural vitamin D. Um, I needed um my medicine. So, of course, I partnered with my doctors. I needed exercise, so I had my trainers. Um I did a lot of research, and I came to find there's medical uh research that proves the two greatest things for people that suffer with PTSD. Number one, massage therapy. Not just getting massages, but people that know medical massage therapy, that don't just learn how to do massages, but take that craft to another level and learn about the body, the pressure points. Um, so massage therapy, and then the other one was running. Those two things help with PTSD and mental health more than anything. And what's what's was sad is is that even though there's medical evidence of that, insurance doesn't cover it. What they cover is you being on medicine for the rest of your life. Not getting healed, not being made whole. Just my soul symptoms.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's my goal. And so I've been battling, and I got to the point where I said, I am the CEO of my own health care. And I told the insurance companies, I don't work for y'all, y'all work for me. I put my plan together and I told my doctors and and and and my massage therapists, my physical trainers, I said, listen, this is my plan, this is what I'm doing. You may not believe in it, and fine. If you don't, please exit stage left kindly. I won't be mad at you. I said, but this is my life, and nobody's gonna fight for my life better than I am. Because after you get off work, you're going home. I gotta live with this. And I was serious. And and so I had one doctor that the company was making me see he didn't want to, he didn't want to be a part of it, and because the company wanted him to do something else. And I was like, no. And so the company I worked for, they sent me to seven doctors to try to get doctors to say what they wanted them to say.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And the doctors wouldn't, yeah, they wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And they was like, this man is not fit for work, and he does not need to be working. And so my mental health and well-being was was on the chopping block. The company just wanted to get rid of me and and and save face, but I was being cast out. I was being thrown out like a baby with the bath water. And I knew that that this is what they were trying to do. So I fought. And I am better because I fought.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Where where are you in terms of your recovery now, would you say?

SPEAKER_01

So seven and a half to eight years in is when I would say that I really turned the corner after the workplace shooting and a subsequent um attacks from the company um as a result of the guys not being prosecuted. They attempted to kill me three more times. Um the Houston Police Department organized crime unit was part of that cover-up, and I don't mind blasting them publicly because they're public servants. We pay tax dollars to be protected, and they literally would not because the company was throwing its weight and its money and its political power around. Um, and the DA's office never received charges, and they would say, Well, the police didn't submit charges, and then I would ask the DA's office to investigate, and then they said that they wouldn't investigate. So everybody was throwing me under the bus. And these people were literally trying to kill me again, actively, uh, shot at me a second time, and nothing was being done. And so they felt emboden to do what they were doing because they knew that they was not going to be prosecuted. So um seven and a half to eight years was the turnaround, and then um on my way back to the US from um Tokyo in 23, um, that may that uh excuse me, that March, mid-March is when I started sleeping regularly. Now I don't get quality sleep a lot, but I at least go to I I at least go to sleep.

SPEAKER_02

More than it was.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, before I didn't sleep.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The first 10 days I didn't sleep at all. And I experienced sleep deprivation. So I would fall asleep maybe here and there, like for an hour, yeah, 30 minutes, stuff like that out of pure exhaustion, but my body wouldn't stay asleep, even with medicine.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. That's it's it's fantastic that you you you feel your turn in the corner. Yeah, it's been a it's it's an amazing story. I know it's been sort of I imagine it's been very harrowing for you at times, but uh I think it's a great inspiration to other people. We're just coming towards the end now. Any any words that you'd like to to give to other people as as uh inspiration for them with anything they might be grappling with?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, take ownership. Take ownership. If you're paying for something, you're paying for a service, you're the boss. Take ownership of your health, take ownership of your well-being, take ownership of your mental, your emotional, your spiritual, your physical, your physiological, take ownership. Everybody else needs to be advising you, and you need to be making decisions. Because if you're gonna allow other people to make the decisions for your health and well-being, then you're going to be going on their plan and not yours. And you have to live with yourself. They get to go home. You got to stay with yourself. So make sure that whatever decisions that are made, you can live with. Take ownership. The other thing I would say is make a plan. Put something together. Now I know a lot of people, especially combat veterans, um, have taken my book and they've been very moved by it, and they've put their own quest together. And the whole package with their mental health and their health care and everything, and they're getting um, they're addressing the source and not just the symptoms, and they're they're better for it. And I'm grateful for it. And I know a lot of other people that have been faced with mental health issues, but not just mental health issues. I tell people it's a preventative thing as well. Um, if you can do something and you're doing it, um make sure you also look at the preventative aspect of your health. Don't wait until you get into a situation to where you're desperate. Um, that's that's no bueno, as we say here in Texas. That's no good. Um, preventative health care, mental care, emotional. Learn how to communicate, learn conflict resolution, learn how to deal with stress. Um, don't wait until you get in a situation where you're desperate and nothing else matters. And you have to live. Now, I was thrust into that, but I also learned that there's people that wait until they're in those situations that they knew that they should have done something and they just didn't. And now, because of what they're faced with, they're they're putting an urgency on their mental health and well-being or physical and all that. So don't wait. Take preventative steps. And then finally, I would say this. And I know that this may not be for everybody, but I tell people whether you have a pastor or a priest, whatever you do, that's you know, find solace in prayer. There's there's medical evidence of prayer. Now, personally, me, I pray to the one and only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he sent. Um, he is my savior and my Lord. Um, but if you're gonna pray, make sure you're praying as well. There's medical evidence that prayer helps people heal. And so I believe that my God is gracious enough to give healing as he sees fit. But don't, whatever you do, take these three pieces of advice, take ownership, make a plan and pray and and move forward. Don't sit soaking sour and don't die without a fight.

SPEAKER_02

Aaron, it's been an absolute pleasure. It's been absolutely fascinating talking to you's dead. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

This is the business of thinking. Mastery doesn't end here. See you in the next episode.