Ultramarathon Runner Zach Bitter: Justin Wren Inspires Me

It's amazing what people can do when they decide they're going to do it. Yes. But yeah, I mean, I think for this particular run, I probably would have kept punting it down the road had I not talked to Justin Ren, to be honest with you. When you do something like that, part of the reason I think you do that is, for me anyway, is when I see like endurance, ultra endurance sport too, it can be a very selfish sport because you're putting in tons of training. Race day is like an all day effort with tons of people helping you out. They're taking time out of their schedule, their day to come out there, crew, pace, essentially be your support system while you're out there trying to do all these things. So part of it is like I want to try to give back in a way as well as opposed to just always going out and racing for my own sake. And what will be done? How will it, will you have sponsors? Like, yeah, hopefully what we'll do is I was talking to Justin. Can we sponsor you? Absolutely. Really? Beautiful. We wear like a jerry logo on one of your shirts or something. No doubt about it. Yeah. All right. We're in. Let's do it. Awesome. We got, we got one sponsor on board. Here we go. Yeah. Hell yeah. But yeah. So like when I talked to Justin, I mean, Justin is, I mean, you know Justin, well, he's been on the show. I love that guy. And I think it was on here that I heard his podcast for the first time. I know I heard him tell, I guess what you would call his origin story here. And I think I heard it again on like the Mind Pump Media Guys podcast. And it's when I describe just listening to Justin Ren's podcast or his interviews to people, I try to say like, well, it kind of comes in these stages where he tells his background story of like his experience with bullying. And at first you just, your heart just sinks for the guy. You're thinking like, well, how could anyone have to go through that? I would never want to go through that. And you kind of transition into this phase of like, you kind of get nervous and anxious because you're thinking like, well, who did I say something mean to when I was younger? Or who did I potentially affect in a negative way? And then it's like, then you just want to try to do something to support. And you know, it's really, when you look at someone like Justin Ren, it's mind boggling to me that this guy isn't like an internationally known hero or leader yet anyway. He's becoming that. He's getting big. He really is. He's getting big. I mean, the only thing that's holding him back is he keeps getting sick. Yeah. Well, and that's just it. He's got a fucking crazy, you know, his parasites. He's got it now. They don't even know what they are. Yeah. He picked up some parasites in the Congo. They can't even identify them specifically. And he's really suffering, health-wise. And you would never know talking to him like he just goes about it. Like the guy's gotten malaria. Like most people would probably say, okay, I went over to Africa. I got malaria. I helped some people out. I'm good. I'm good. We'll raise some money for this charity and we'll send it over to him or something. But no, he keeps going back and keeps getting... He's got malaria three times. Yeah. Yeah, three times. And now he's getting on no parasite. He's a saint. So like when I think of like what we... I think maybe like, I mean, Justin Ren is like next level when it comes to like a leader, I think. And I think in the current, especially in the current climate, like, you know, our leaders today tend to be, you know, people like celebrities, athletes, and then politicians and things like that. Like you look around and it can be very underwhelming about just like, you know, some of like, like how badly are people actually trying to help people? And how many of these like politicians actually care about poor people? How many of them actually care about someone who's disenfranchised? Or how many of them actually care about... Right. Why are they doing it? Are they doing it to just get elected? Or do they actually care? Well, Justin, it's just care. Yes. It's all care. 100%. It's all care about ulterior motives. They don't exist. There's no ulterior motive to sleep on a dirt floor in a grass shack with the pygmies like he's done for months at a time. He's just doing it for love. Yeah. Yeah. So I think like when I look at like, I think people want to help and I think people want to do things that are good for humanity, but oftentimes they don't necessarily have that example to kind of like to lead the way. They look into a void in some cases. And I think Justin is the type of person who, you know, if the more people we can get to know about him, his story, and what he's trying to do on the wells and the farms and with the pygmy, as well as his new branch on anti-bullying, the better. So when I reached out to him, I was actually like kind of surprised. Like I shot him a note on, I think, Instagram and Twitter. And I thought, like, he's probably not going to see it because he's not following me. And he responded in like less than a couple hours. Like he followed me. And he's just like, this is so awesome. I feel super honored that you'd want to help out in some way. And it's like, he's just always looking for opportunities to help promote this great cause. So then, you know, when I got that response from him, it was like clarification of what I think I, some I already knew about the guy just from listening to him on your show and others that, you know, he's really in this for a big reason. And if we need to fast track this cross country event to bring him some awareness, we'll see what we can do. He's in everything he does, he does to help and promote other people. Even when I was trying to talk to him about his parasite, I had to get him on track. He's like, you got to interview my doctor. No, no, fuck your doctor. What's going on, man? What's happening with you? Cause I worry about the guy because he's so selfless when he's talking about like blacking out and all this like, after training, they got to get him in the shower because he's shivering and he's pale white. I'm like, bro, what is going on with you? Like what is this? He's like, oh, you got to meet my doctor. He's amazing. Like stop, stop with the fucking doctor. I don't want to get what is happening. He doesn't want to talk about himself. It's amazing. He's the most selfless person I've ever, ever talked to. He's talking about fighting again, right? He's getting over these incredible bouts of antibiotics that you know weaken your ligaments, right? Like when you take Cipro or any of these like super intense antibiotics, one of the side effects is a lot of times people get injured, like your ligaments get injured because apparently there's a weakening effect, which is really kind of, it's really fascinating when you think about the human body as an overall organism and that it's really an ecosystem and that when you flood antibiotics into that ecosystem to try to prevent disease from destroying it, you also have these unintended side effects. And one of them is weakened ligaments. And there's a lot of correlation between people getting staph infection and then blowing out knees, ACLs, you know, tendons and things along those lines afterwards. So both of his shoulders are fucked, you know, and this is post antibiotics. And yet he's still talking about fighting so he can bring more awareness to the pygmy. So I'm like, bro, please stop. Just get your shoulders fixed. Yeah. Whatever you got going on. Let's heal that up first. And then also find out what the fuck this parasite is. Like you don't even know what this, didn't even know this is. He's not even thinking about himself as like, if I can get in and get a fight in by the end of the year, I'm like the end of the year, man, it's fucking December. Like stop it. You're not getting in by the end of the year. You're not getting into the beginning of 2020. Let's heal up. Heal up. We gotta, we want you healthy. He's such a rare, totally selfless person and he's such a powerful force for good for those peoples, the people that live in the Congo. And what he's done for them. I mean, I don't know how many wells they've built so far, but they've made an alliance with the cash app, which is one of my sponsors. So every time someone downloads the cash app, when they use the code Joe Rogan, whether it's for Google, for Android, or for an iPhone, for Apple, you get $10 goes to this cause. So they've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and they're building wells right now. It's just this amazing thing that he's done. And he's just like, you feel like a piece of shit. Like when you're around him, you're like, why am I not this nice? He's so nice. It's like, it wasn't enough for him to find people who are hard off. He had to go and find the most forgotten, most hard off people. Right. It's like so many people in Africa have it rough. You'll never know who's got the roughest, the tiny folks that live. And you know, and on top of that, the guys are world-class mixed martial artists. I mean, he really is. He's one of the best heavyweights in the world. And how much better would he be if he was selfish and spent all of his time training and not getting malaria three times, not having this unknown parasite that they think might be in his fucking brain. I mean, they don't even know what it's, I was just reading this story about some guy who was having seizures and it turns out he had all these worms in his brain. And I'm like, and I was thinking about Justin. I'm like, it was from uncooked pork from this guy and Justin, they think the problem with the Congo is it's so remote and you don't get a lot of people that go there and get diseases and then come back. So they might not, they don't even know what this is. It might be something that no one's ever got before and then made it back to Western civilization to be examined. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. What the hell, man? Yeah. And then you would never know talking to him. No, he just doesn't want to talk about it. Yeah. Let's talk about his friend. Hey, you got to get my friend on the podcast. He's really sweet. He's a great guy. He makes, makes kites like once. Each kite is going to generate X amount of dollars. No. You bottle up Justin Ren and feed it to everyone, I guess. Well, you know, it's an interesting, I'm not just an interesting, it's a, it's a, a beautiful sort of expression of what can happen to a person when they experience deep pain and sadness, and then they find a way out and then they find a way to help other people and that's sort of what he's done. You know, his, his childhood was really rough and he came out of that a super kind person as opposed to being angry and mean. I mean, this is what we need more in the world, right? We need more people building people up and helping and less people tearing people down and hating. I mean, so much of, so much of what social media is used for and so much of what the internet is used for is hate, is anger. There's so much anger, you know, and to see someone like Justin, this rare soul that has found a way to almost universe, I mean, like everything he does is channeled towards good, all of it, you know, including kicking people's asses. Which is like, how do you make that good? You found it. You found a way to make kicking people's asses a good thing. It's beautiful. I'm, I'm really honored to be his friend. So he's one of my, you know, the rarest people that I know. Yeah, no doubt. No, I'd say it's been cool to hear his story and, you know, I think thanks to you, he's probably got a much bigger audience too. So