Please pardon the errors, this was transcribed by a computer… gotta love artificial intelligence!
Kevin: [00:00:00] hello, and welcome to the over 50 health and wellness podcast. If this is your first time joining us welcome. And I'm so glad you're here. I'm your host, Kevin English. I'm a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach. And my mission is to help you become the healthiest, strongest, most vital version of yourself.

And if you're a returning guest, Thank you so much for being here. We have a great show for you today. But first, I want to let you know that today's episode is brought to you by the silver edge. The silver edge is my personal training in nutrition coaching service that focuses on strength. Health and vitality for men and women over 50.

I help people get into the best shape of their lives so that they can become stronger. More capable, more confident and more richly engaged in their lives. If this sounds interesting to you, I'd love to start a conversation. You can reach me via email at Kevin at silver dash edge.

Dot com. That's Kevin at silver hyphen edge. Dot com. Okay, enough of that let's get on with today's show.

What do alcohol and drug addiction. The Sahara desert. Income and mortgage loans, eco challenges. Ultra running prison and Matt Damon all have in common. Well, they're all featured in today's story. My guest this week is Charlie angle. Charlie is an extraordinary human being on a number of levels. He is the author of the book titled running man, a memoir of ultra endurance.

And the star of the documentary film, running the Sahara. Charlie is also a recovering alcoholic and drug addict.

Charlie: [00:02:06] Yeah. Well, I, you know, I went to Carolina and I think I, I assumed that based on my stellar high school career, there would be a.

A banner on the dorm saying, you know, welcome Charlie. Like we're, we're glad that you're here. And now our, our college lives can start. And what I figured out pretty quickly was that I was very average but I wasn't an average drinker. I was an All-American. First team drinker, and I could drink more than pretty much everybody else.

And this was the eighties and cocaine was pretty much ubiquitous on college campuses and I found my way pretty quickly into that world. And ultimately it ended up leading me, you know, out of college after three years. And I spent the next 10 years after leaving college, pretty much in that world of addiction, kind of high functioning addition addiction, I guess, but.

You know, I was always the top salesperson at every job. And I was, you know, I felt like if I could just achieve on this side, then my bad behavior on this side would balance out. And, you know, it took a lot of years of punishment and self abuse too. Pull myself out of that, but, that's why also I say, you know, I would love to think that if I had gone to college and I had been a runner on the team, things would have been differently, but I don't think so.

I, you know, I'm a fourth generation addict, genetics are a pretty hard thing to escape. And I think the only thing that would have stopped me from the path that I was on is if I had never picked up a drink, but. That that didn't happen. It wasn't going to happen no matter what sport I played or anything else.

So I think the die was cast pretty, pretty much. The day I was born. And, you know, I was going to have to go through this journey of some suffering and learning before I could find my way.

Kevin: [00:04:21] So Charlie goes from heavy partying to full blown addiction fairly quickly. And unfortunately for him, things are going to go from bad to worse before they get better. He mentioned that maybe if he'd been a runner things might've been different, but as a fourth generation addict, Is genetics would be hard to escape.

Speaking of genetics and running. Charlie's grandfather was kind of a big deal in the running world.

Charlie: [00:04:47] I would still argue that he's still the greatest track coach in the history of the state of North Carolina. So he was, he was an All-American in track running at UNC chapel Hill. And then. Things were a little different than the year after he graduated. He became the head cross-country coach at UNC. And then a couple of years later added the head track coach to that and stayed in those two positions for about 40 years.

Kevin: [00:05:13] Wow. Yeah. So you may come by some of this running, honestly, then he's kind of the Dean Smith of running

Charlie: [00:05:19] out there, right? Yeah, it really is. I'm I'm sorry. Unfortunately, he died when I was only a year old, but he his influence was amazing because he, as families do, I grew up being told stories about coach Dale and about you know, his accomplishments, but also just telling me that.

I reminded them of, of him and that they thought I would be a runner and I, who knows if that's actually true or not. But the fact is that when you're a kid and you, I hear that kind of thing, you know, I think you, you want to think of yourself in those flattering terms. And so I, I just thought of myself as a runner from a pretty early age.

Kevin: [00:06:01] Yeah, I guess we could say that quite the self fulfilling prophecy there. So talk to us about running. When did you start running? What are some of your earliest memories of running

Charlie: [00:06:12] know? I'm, I'm actually talking to you now. I've been all over the world and lived all over the country, but I'm back in Durham, North Carolina right now have been for a few years.

And my first memories of running were actually about a mile down the road from here when I was. probably seven or eight years old and just kind of growing up out in the country. It's not in the country anymore, but you know, on a farm with cows next door, and, you know, we rented a hundred year old house and both my parents were still college students and, you know, and I just sort of grew up with this sort of Bohemian lifestyle.

And I remember. Running around the front yard and my underwear, you know, and rain and, heavy, typical North Carolina, spring rainstorms, and just the freedom and the happiness and the, and the joy that I got from running, I think really embedded itself in my, in my heart.

it's come and gone in my life from time to time, but it's, it's always there. You know, every time I look for it, it's there waiting for me.

Kevin: [00:07:33] Running was embedded in Charlie's heart at an early age. And as he says, every time he goes to look for it, it's there waiting for him. And that will certainly be important later in his life. Charlie will go on to be an overachiever in high school. He'll run cross country and track and let her in multiple sports.

And even be the student body president. He'll go on to UNC chapel hill where he wanted to play football, but just wasn't big enough. He did play JV basketball within coach Roy Williams. His dad actually played for the legendary Dean Smith before him. But even though his grandfather was a running legend at UNC, he chooses not to run in college.

Meanwhile life moves on and Charlie left college, a full blown alcoholic and drug addict. And he's in that heartbreaking yet vicious cycle of getting clean and sober. Only to fall back into the arms of addiction again and again.

Charlie: [00:08:30] Yeah. And I mean, it's a common thing with, with addicts. I mean, here's the thing, everybody listening to this right now, you, you fall into a couple of categories. You either are an addict. You have a friend or a family member who has struggled with alcoholism or addiction, or, you know, someone who has, because it just, nobody escapes it.

And the fact of the matter is when a person like me says at the end of a really bad stretch you know, whether it's a binge or whatever it might be. Like that deep down shame and just a horrible feeling. When I say that's it I'm done. Like, I'm never doing that again. I mean it, with all my heart and the person, if you've ever heard someone say it, they mean it because it sucks who would choose to live like that.

But what happens of course, is most of the time a day or two later, you know, of course you don't feel so bad. And even if you take an action, like going to a meeting or whatever, suddenly we begin this process of taking back control of our lives and and pretty quickly that voice starts saying, well, sure.

You know, you worked hard this week. I mean, surely this time you can have two beers. You know, and for me, I never had two beers in my life. Two beers just always meant that I wanted them. You have all the beers. And despite the fact that I had never one time ever really controlled my drinking I continue to tell myself, cause that's what addiction does that, that this time would somehow be different.

And. And it just never was.

Kevin: [00:10:15] It never was you're right. You're right. And you've gone to some really dark places in your struggles with addiction, but to your point, you had brought up that you were highly functioning during, this was kind of surprising to me as I read through your biography, that you would go through, some really dark.

Bad episodes, but yet at the same time, you've had a successful career. You were a self-starter, you had this kind of, this crazy hail dent, repair business going on. You were making good money. But you kept falling back into that. And so During that time. Did you see yourself as an addict or did you just see yourself as somebody who partied heavily?

How did you evaluate yourself or what was your self talk like then?

Charlie: [00:10:59] Yeah, Kevin, I certainly knew deep down. I mean, I knew I was an addict and The major push though to quit. Almost always came from outside of me. You know, it came from a boss, it came from someone else. It came from my wife, it came, it came from those places outside of me.

And, and it took me a long time to learn that Until I was going to go to a recovery meeting or to treatment or to make the steps that I needed to make to get clean and sober. And so I was the one doing it for me. It just never was going to change. And I always talk about, you know, my son being born when I was 29 And Brett basically was going to change everything, right. Just cause his mere presence on the planet. Like surely now I could stay sober for him, for him. And you know, a couple of months, you, you know, the story a couple of months into that you know, I found myself and working in Wichita, Kansas, and. Brett's two months old and I'm in the worst neighborhood in town, smoking crack and drinking and sitting on the ground, outside my car while the police searched through my vehicle.

And there's bullet holes in the car. And you know, and here I am again for the, for the hundredth time. And it was only at that time that. After six days of not sleeping and probably not eating that I had this incredibly clear thought come through. And that was just that, you know, nobody's coming to save me, you know, there, there isn't some body outside of me that's going to save me.

And certainly not until lots of people are willing to help me, but not until I was ready to help myself. And then,

Kevin: [00:12:51] so talk to us about that. How did you finally crawl out of that hole? How did you manage to turn that corner and internalize that and realize that, okay, I've got to take charge of me and my life.

Charlie: [00:13:02] Yeah, well, I mean, on that night in Wichita, I literally went to my first AA meeting. I've been to plenty AA meetings. I just never been to one because I really, really wanted an answer. And I'm not a look, I'm not a particularly religious person. I certainly fall in the category of a spiritual person.

And in the program in 12 step recovery, you know, there's a lot of talk of higher power. And which I certainly believe in and have you know, there's a, there's a power out there. Certainly that's greater than me. Let's put it that way. And it took. You know, it took developing an understanding of having a relationship with the greater world and realizing that that I didn't need to be in control of everything.

So I went to a meeting that night and I got up the next day and I put on my running shoes and, and actually for the next three years, Those are the two things that I did every single day for three straight years, you know, I went to a meeting of some type and I ran and I ran as hard as I could every single day, you know, because I thought if I did that, maybe I could actually pound the addict out of me.

And because it was, it felt to me like that guy was trying to kill me. And so if I just ran hard enough, then maybe it would go away. And it, and it really took those three years of doing that though, to gain an understanding of the fact that my obsessive qualities the addict, if you will, were all the best parts of me, like without those things, you know, I probably would have been sitting on a sofa with a remote control in my hand doing absolutely nothing with my life But I needed to stop, you know, I needed to stop drinking and doing drugs because that was the part that was killing me. And if I could just stop doing that. And as my mom used to say, if I could take my superpower, like she literally turned addiction as my superpower and. Not as an affliction, but as a superpower.

And if I could take that and point it towards things I was passionate about, then I could actually make a good life for myself.

Kevin: [00:15:21] Yeah. That's that's quite an insight. Isn't it? Your addiction as a super power. And I wanted to ask you about. the difference between addiction to drugs and alcohol in what you're doing today, I think it would be easy for an outsider to look at you and say, well, you're just transferring an addiction from one thing to another.

Is that fair? I think what you're alluding to there is it has a little more substance than just, well, you clearly he's taken this addictive behavior and just transferring it to something else.

Charlie: [00:15:51] Right. Well, it's always weird to, right. People do still say it and I've come to understand that in general, those people have, they have a problem with lots of things and that addiction is all about being invisible.

It's about having no feelings at all. And if you have a feeling. You drink or drug them away and it's about pain and just being invisible and running, couldn't be any farther from that. You know, anyone who's ever run or biked or swam or gone to the gym regularly, like when you get in the, in the hardest part of your training or your workout or a race, there is nowhere to hide.

there's nowhere to go, except, right here in your heart and in your, in, in your chest. And you have to be fully present all the time, which is the exact opposite of drug addiction. And I think that there's, you know, being a critic is always the easiest job in the world. And there's a, strange thing that happens out there with like people who don't exercise, tend to look at people who exercise and like, ah, look at that guy wasted his time, doing all that stuff.

Well, I don't know. My suspicion is if they. You know, if they gave it a try and they actually felt some of the emotional benefits and the physical benefits I will freely admit that I might look at the person that I might consider to be less motivated, you know, sitting on the sofa, watching TV every single night and say you know, man, that guy's pretty unmotivated.

And I mean, it's not for me to say, you know what he should or shouldn't do, but. You know, I, I think that switching addictions is if that's the worst thing I'm guilty of that I'm in good shape.

Kevin: [00:17:39] Yeah. Just as I wanted to bring that up, because I clearly that's. I think for people who don't have a familiarity with addiction, that would be an easy, convenient thing to say, well, look at this guy We're going to go on and talk about it's you're not just running, you're not just a runner and folks, maybe that aren't familiar with, you are in for a bit of a surprise here as we go into the next part of this conversation. So you're going to spend three years. You're going to go to meetings every day.

You're gonna run every day. But you're going to go on to do a lot of running and you're going to go on to do some ultra running. So talk to us about how you get into, I believe, was it eco challenge first before your bad water stuff? Is that the sequence a little bit? Talk to us a little bit about where you go from running every day, which I think most people listening to this, they can relate to that, but I probably could run every day, but.

Take us from running every day to eco challenge Badwater and then we'll maybe talk about the Sahara after that.

Charlie: [00:18:37] Well, you know, so I, I did, and it was three years. I ran every single day and I ran something like 30 or so marathons during that time too. And I'm the one who used, made the joke, right? Like obviously I had that whole addiction thing under control and you know, and I was, I was.

I was addicted to the feeling that I got from running and people mistakenly think that it's running, that I love. My joke is that I love stopping is what I really love because that's where the endorphin release sort of, if there is such a thing as a runner's high. Yes, there are those very few moments while you're like out on a run and the weather's perfect.

And just, everything's just right. And I think that atmosphere makes for sort of a high, but it's actually the endorphin release. I mean, it's a physiological thing that comes after finishing hard exercise and short, plain and simple. I hit this point where I said, okay, well, if running a marathon makes me feel that way.

Then what would it feel like to run 50 miles? And then what would it feel like to run a hundred miles or hundreds of miles across deserts and jungles? And, you know, it's funny. I didn't even know if this is going to be a video. Well, anyway, because that map back there that you see on the wall behind me is actually a map from the Borneo eco challenge.

That Mark Burnett himself handed to me as team captain at the beginning of that race. And, you know, I found my way to adventure racing as I like to say, because I needed to learn how to suffer properly. By the time I found my way to adventure racing, I'd been sober for five or six years. And adventure racing for those that don't know, like the eco challenge is 10 or 12 days, usually covering three to 500 miles of cycling, running whitewater rafting orienteering navigation and you have to have a team of four and you stay together the entire time.

So you can't, you're not allowed to like, kill and eat one of your teammates. Like you have to, although technically that would mean. Keeping him along with you, but you know, you have to stay together. So there's the team dynamics of it, but these things don't happen on a flat road. They happen through jungles or mountain ranges or, you know, so I raced in Ecuador and Vietnam and Fiji and Tibet and Nepal and just, just these amazing places.

And what I really gained from it. Was a physical understanding of suffering because sleep deprivation is another big part of these things. You're a good team. We'll go 10 days averaging about an hour of sleep per night. And you know, so as I used to say, though, I've developed that skill in 12 years of hardcore drug use.

So I was pretty good at that part. But the, the summary suffering that I, the physical suffering and searching that I learned during those years, for five years of adventure racing, I did every single major race in the world. So a couple dozen races, and I just was completely enveloped by it. And. I developed a love for also for what I like to call cultural exploration.

I mean, I, I don't like to do athletics or running or anything just for the sake of doing it. Yes. I enjoy the experience, but what I really enjoy is interacting with people. Especially people that aren't accustomed to seeing me or someone who looks like me and the same back to them. And like, that's what I became truly addicted to.

And I was working for ABCs, extreme makeover, home edition as a producer, which is another story in and of itself. But. And I had this trip to the Amazon jungle plan. Then I was doing a seven day stage race. So I started going to a bunch of these things. There's a very famous race called the marathon de sob in Morocco.

And it sort of the, the first one of these most well-known, but for seven days, just like tour de France, it's a stage race. So you run a certain specified distance every single day. You have to carry all your gear in a backpack on your back for the whole seven days, all your food, everything. And the winner is determined by cumulative time.

And so I ended up winning four or five of these big races and developed a love for these things. And I'm in the middle of the Amazon jungle. I'm going to skip ahead actually, to, to what I know, where I know where we're going. I'm in the Amazon jungle, I'm in a jungle hammock, like watching the, the jungle floor be alive beneath me because everything's trying to bite you or climb in your sleeping bag.

And this guy who I never met before, just kind of blurted out this thing. And he said, Hey, have you ever thought about running across the Sahara desert? And I, I basically just said, no, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Like wha why. Would anybody want to do that? And you know, I couldn't, but I couldn't stop thinking about it.

So it's like he created this ear worm. And I like to say that, sometimes things said to us by a stranger just in passing can actually change the entire course of your life. And that happened to me. You know, that simple question that he asked me changed the rest of my life and some. So I'm for good.

Some things were good. Some things not, not so good, but and I began as, you know, to plan this big journey across the Sahara desert. And I wanted to see if I could be the first person to ever cover the entire distance of the Sahara desert. And as you know, first in the adventure world are very, very hard to come by.

Yeah.

Kevin: [00:24:47] So that, brings us very nicely to what probably a lot of people know you for. Right. Is he, isn't he, the guy that ran across the Sahara, he did that movie. Right. So. like you said, a stranger in passing puts this idea into your brain and you think immediately, well, that's ridiculous. Why would I do that?

Let alone now. So talk to us a little bit about the lead up. So you've got this idea, but an idea to an execution of something that massive, what does it take to get there? I know you have a fun story that involves Matt Damon in here as well. Talk to us about making this thing in actual reality.
Charlie: [00:25:24] I began to just tell people with no evidence whatsoever that I was going to be the first person to do. So I think it's almost like, you know, when you probably, you know, maybe when you started thinking about starting a podcast, you, you may have talked about it for a year or two before you actually did it.

You know what I mean? That's what humans do. We T we, I say we take ideas and we try them on like pants. And we wear them around for awhile. We don't know if we're going to keep them or not. And I just started to DLP and people said like, most people said, you know, you've done a lot of hard things and whatever, but that's just not possible.

You can't do it. Like you can't find resupplies. It's too hot. Like nobody can run that far across sand. And maybe it's the addict part of me. But every time somebody said that to me, I felt my heels digging in just a little bit more and, you know, and I let them own the impossibility of that idea. And I took full possession of all that was possible.

I just said, I'm going to do this. And working on this TV show, I had a, a crazy connection to a Hollywood director named James mall with won the Academy award for best documentary a couple of years earlier. And I went in and I pitched him. I said, Hey, I told him about this idea. It was the worst pitch I'd ever done in my life.

I showed up late and had a terrible story. And he stood up at the end and stuck out his hand and said, yes, I'll do it. And. The lesson there being always ask. You never know. And he calls me a week later as you know, he called and he said, Hey, I told you we need a production partner. And I just hung up with Matt Damon.

And that would like to executive produce this project. And he would like to also be the narrator. Would that be okay with you? And I actually thought I was being punked, you know, I mean, I, I didn't, I fully did not comprehend this and I, and I did dead pan back them. I said, you know, I was really hoping. I was really hoping for somebody better than, than that.

But yes, that Matt Damon would be just fine. And so now I have two Academy award winners attached to a film project about me running across sand. I don't know why that's going to be interesting, but You know, ultimately Hans Hans Zimmer became the he did the musical score and he's by far the greatest composer in the history of Hollywood with more Academy awards in any way, but a year and a half later, incredible planning full time time.

I mean, my life was consumed with this. I'm sitting there with two teammates in Senegal, in West Africa and we are getting ready to start this journey and there's. 20 people around me, film crews, support team, my two running teammates, by the way, one of the two running teammates was the same guy who asked me the question to begin with in the Amazon, my friend Ray.

And you know, I figured that would teach him to ask me a question like that. I, I would make him come do it with me you know, and. Everybody's excited. And all I can think is I've suckered all of these people out here to the Sahara desert and we're all gonna die. and about a week into the expedition, that was almost true.

Both my teammates were on IVs. It's 140 degree ground temperature. Every single day two crew people had already quit. It was, it was just simply a horrendous situation. I had to basically evaluate the expedition differently. I realized that I had been so deeply focused on the finish line basically for a long time.

And. Going against all of my teachings in 12 step recovery, which is basically that you have to just focus on one day at a time. And so on day eight, I had to reevaluate and really get back to focusing just on one day at a time. And all I thought about on the morning of day eight was running a marathon before lunch.

And after lunch, all I thought about was running a second marathon before dinner and in that way slowly but surely we began to make our way across the desert and it took, you know, we made it and ultimately it took 111 days and we ran basically two marathons every day for 111 consecutive days. And again, we had crazy temperatures.

We had sand storms, we ran out of food and water. We had air, you know, I always say it's just like planning a business, planning, a family planning, anything you write down the list of all the things that can possibly go wrong. And you kind of think how you would deal with it. And what most people don't take into account is that they all go wrong at the same time.

Because that's the way it usually works. It's a cascading thing. You know, you run out of things, then people get sick and it happens to be the hottest day of the entire expedition. And before, you know, it, you're lucky to continue going. And that expedition really changed everything for me though. it was also the launch of H2O Africa.

So Matt Damon and I co-founded. This clean water, nonprofit called H2O Africa. And today it's known as water.org and it's the world's largest clean water nonprofit with over $1.5 billion in funding. And you know, all of that came from just the, these seemingly foolish idea of running across the Sahara.

And I didn't. Look, man, you read the book. I didn't run across as a Hara because I thought any of that would happen. I ran across the Sahara because I wanted to see if I could do it, you know, and, and it was just that simple and all of the other things were ancillary to that. And, and again, as you well know, and I'm sure we'll get to in a sec, you know, there's some, some not great things that came out of running the Sahara.

Being well-known, if you will even in a fringe sport can, you know, make you a target and you saw the film too. You know, the film is, I always say to people, if they ever see running this era, which you can still get on iTunes, it's like on both the hero and the villain of the film.

Kevin: [00:32:09] I was going to bring that up. So for people like new, I saw your, I first heard you on the very first interview you did with ritual on a hundred years ago. That was all the film. And then when I read the book, I was like, Oh, okay. So Hollywood's taken a little liberties there and I wanted to give you the opportunity for anybody who's seen the films.

Good. Wait, wasn't that guy kind of a Dick at the end of that. I remember that. So could you explain a little bit about that? And then we can talk about the.

Charlie: [00:32:36] Yeah. Well, you know, and I always laugh about that because I always say to people, look, you, even, if you watch the film, like why would I, for those who haven't seen it, you know, it basically makes me look like I try to leave my two teammates at the end and I'm going to like finish ahead of them. And so I had just spent 4,500 miles basically dragging my two friends across the desert.

And it's like, if I had wanted to leave them or kick them to the curb, I could have done it at any time. And I don't know, people may not think I'm all that bright, but I'm also not. I don't think many people would find me foolish enough to think that if I wanted to make myself look like a jerk or a Dick.

I couldn't have picked a better way than to like leave my teammates at the end. In fact, you know, and, and I've talked to my teammates a lot about it, you know, we're still friends and I asked them, what was it about? I mean, I have been totally dedicated to them for two years. I put the entire expedition together.

I did all of this. I invited them to come with me. So what in them made them think. That I might actually leave them at the end. Like what, what possible lack of trust and what way had I ever shown myself to not be trustworthy? So it's interesting that they don't catch any crap for actually, you know, I mean, because quite frankly, if you see the film, it's their words that actually turn it into me doing something.

I don't even know they're having these thoughts. I literally am just trying to get closer to the finish at which point, you know, I would have sat down a mile before I got there and waited for them to catch me. And then we would have finished together. Like all of this is like news to me. And so it's interesting that nobody ever gives them a hard time.

You know, why didn't you trust your teammate? You know, so if you ever have res Ahab on, on, you can ask him that, but you know, but it's human nature and I understand it. And I, and I do freely, you know, just like most of the rest of my life, I'm probably 90% nice guy and 10% jackass. And so, you know, the like three times I yelled at somebody in the Sahara all three times over almost four months of running 50 miles a day and having to manage the entire expedition, all three of those times are in the

Kevin: [00:35:11] sure.

Yeah. That makes good drama. Right. You got to have some conflict

Charlie: [00:35:15] in there, but I actually, what I love and it creates conversation. I've never been sorry about it. I also say to people and I believe this to be true. I think that a person who's watching it, the viewers own life experience has a lot to do with how they view the film.

If they are not, you know, people, I don't know for what it's worth military police, fire teachers CEOs, anybody in a position of authority is very sympathetic to me. And people who maybe didn't like the PE teacher who yelled at them or the coach who gave them a hard time or the boss who they thought might've been unfair.

They tend not to like me, my character and the film. I don't know. I just always say, look, I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just that, you know, most of the time we would come, any of us would come up short. If our entire lives during even a section of time were filmed and the worst of who we are occasionally is there for everyone to see.

But I thought I still, to this day it creates great conversation just like this. And so you know, I don't ever argue with it. I just say that there's always more to, you know, to any story. And as you know, I'm going to go in and cut to the chase as, you know, running this era. It, it. Put me on the map. I was on Jay Leno in the morning shows and NPR, and I got a speaking agent and I was speaking all over the world and I got sponsorships and some cool stuff happened for me.

I'm on the board of this amazing nonprofit and a second one that I helped start. And about a year and a half or so after the film or after the expedition and the film and come out. I'm just out running errands one day. And I come back to my condo in Greensboro, North Carolina, and six armed federal agents came out of a coffee shop and handcuff me and put me in a car and took me off to jail.

And it wasn't until the next day that I knew anything about what was going on. But basically I became the first and only person in the United States at the time to be charged with overstating, my income. On a home loan application. And for that, I could be sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and, you know, look the details of it aren't important.

But if anybody wants more, you can go to my website, just charlene.com. There's New York times front page articles right there. And I always put this, I bring this stuff out. So nobody else has to. You know, but ultimately I was a big fish in a little pond. I had just enough notoriety in 2009 and 10 to be interesting to the feds because they needed somebody to blame for the mortgage crisis.

And apparently. I was your man. So you're welcome people.

Kevin: [00:38:17] And that was your fault. That is what you're saying. Okay. It was all Charlie dammit. Yeah. That's amazing because people can remember back then. Tell me what banker, what bank institution went to jail or was punished severely. There weren't any right there.

Weren't and that's, again, people can go on your website, they can, they can Google this information, but just very interesting. You got caught in the crosshairs, in this very freaky story and these crazy circumstances, and somehow you ended up doing

Charlie: [00:38:48] jail time for that. Yeah. Well, I mean, the crazy thing is I went to trial cause I didn't do it, you know, and I mean, everybody says I didn't do it, but I didn't do it.

And actually a jury found me not guilty of. Providing false information on the loan application, because I didn't do that. My mortgage broker did, and he admitted to actually forging my name on the loan application. So one would think like that would be the end of it. But no, I, I signed the closing package that contained the false information and I put it in the mail and it didn't matter whether I knew it was in there or not.

I mean, I didn't know, but it didn't, it wasn't relevant. And I was found guilty of mail, fraud and sentenced to 21 months in Beckley, federal correctional Institute in Beckley, West Virginia. And on Valentine's day of 2011. My two kids took me to prison and drop me off like summer camp, just a really bad summer camp.

And, you know, and I was, I was pissed off when I got there. But it took me about a day Kevin to, to realize, and to really grasp the fact that fair or unfair. Didn't matter. It was irrelevant at this point, fair or unfair did matter. And I had to figure out how I was going to get through this situation.

And, you know, I'm happy to say that I actually did what I always do. I, I turned back to running and I started to run every single day in prison. And if we were on lockdown and I was stuck in my cell, I would run for six or eight hours sometimes in place and people thought I was nuts, of course, which is always like to say isn't necessarily a bad thing in federal prison.

And you know, and strangely though, this law of attraction, rather than promotion people started coming up to me after making fun of me for months, people started guys started coming up to me and asking if I could teach them how to run and. You know, when I got to Beckley, there was nobody running, maybe two or three guys on a regular basis and a year and a half later when I left there, you know, there were, there were 50 guys running with me every single day am I running group?

And half of them were doing yoga with me on the softball field three days a week. you know, and it was amazing what power people took from that. And I assure you not once. Did I go up to someone in federal prison and say, Hey man, you know, you look like you could get, need to get yourself in shape.

Why don't you come run with me? Because that's a bad idea in prison, but people are always watching and if you just live your life, that's why I never, you know, I'm as you know, I'm, plant-based. I'm clean and sober and I'm a runner. And unless someone asks me, I never talk about that stuff, you know, because it's, it's not my job or my business to impose my way of doing things.

I'll share what I'm doing. And if someone has a question for me, they're welcome to ask and they, you know, and I think that that's the way. Everyone should be. we seem to live in a world these days where everybody feels they have the right to basically force their opinions and the way they live their life upon us.

And I just don't, I don't dig that. And I don't think most people do, but I don't recommend federal prison in case any of you out there are thinking about it, but you know, it gave me perspective. You know, and the first guy I ever met in there in prison was, you know uh, early sixties black gentlemen who had gotten a 25 year sentence for a small amount of drugs, one gram of crack cocaine, you know, he had had two minor shoplifting charges and he lost 25 years of his life for one tiny little bit of drugs.

And I'm going to say that my situation's unfair. So I, you know, I encourage myself and anybody else to always keep things in perspective. Fairness is a relative term.

Kevin: [00:42:58] Yeah. And I, I think that most of us know the serenity prayer, right. And that's a big part of the, of the AA and to really focus on the things you have control over and just let the things you don't have control over.

Be right. If you, if you're constantly railing against those, that's, that's a tough way to live your life. But if you don't control certain circumstances, but you. To control your response to those. So I think that's kind of the messenger you're putting there. Right? You've gotten this ridiculous situation in prison and here you are.

You're leading yogurt

Charlie: [00:43:30] completely. Yeah, it's crazy. It was a, you know, again, an experience I wouldn't I wouldn't choose to do it again and wouldn't have chosen for myself. There was a lot of loss. But there was also a lot of gain. I mean, you you've probably heard me say my mantra before, but it is that, you know, what happens to us, isn't nearly as important as what we do about it.

And most people, you know, we think that other people are constantly judging us or, and maybe they are to a certain degree, but the reality is it's just like running a hundred miles, man. Nobody else actually cares how you do, you know, nobody can care the same way you do. And yeah, most of us have this feeling very often that we're always being watched and that's a pretty narcissistic way to go.

In fact, most people don't actually, they don't live their lives around what, we're doing. So we just have to keep moving along and that, and again, I know I'm, I'm a little short on time today and my apologies for that. But. I have a big project, a couple more going on these days, the 5.8 global adventure series, which I, I know you were probably gonna mention.

And for people that want more information, it's on my website. All my social media is on my website. So if anybody, you know, I am a. That's one thing about being over 50, right? I kind of abor social media, but I use it because it's a, it's a necessity in life, I guess. so there's lots of stuff on there and I, I hope that if anyone, if I've said anything that anybody wants to talk further about.

Addiction running anything else out there, then I feel I'm a very easy person to reach as you know yourself. Kevin. Yes you

Kevin: [00:45:21] are. Absolutely. And I'll drop all of your contact information into the show notes so that folks can grab you there. And I really appreciate your time. So, Charlie, thanks again for coming on.

sharing your journey, your story, your wisdom with us, you are a fantastic inspiration, amazing ambassador for healthy aging, and I surely wish you all the

Charlie: [00:45:40] best in all your work. It was really my pleasure, Kevin. I want to know when you're going to invite me down to Carolina beach, to run with you and your group.

Kevin: [00:45:49] Anytime, man, I may not be able to keep up with you.

Charlie: [00:45:52] You would be surprised there's a lot of miles on this body. It's not about going. Alright.

Kevin: [00:45:58] Thank

Charlie: [00:45:58] you so much. All

Kevin: [00:46:13] Well, that's our show for today, folks. We only scratched the surface of Charlie's story. And if you want to learn more, I would strongly recommend reading his book titled running man and watching his movie called running the Sahara. You can also check him out@hiswebsiteatwwwdotcharlieangled.com. And that's spelled E N G L E. And I'll put links to his book, the movie, and all his social media info into the show notes, which you can find on my website at www dot silver dash edge.

Dot com. If you enjoyed this episode, I have two favors to ask of you. First would you please rate and review the show on whatever platform you're listening? And second. Please tell a friend about this show. Thanks so much for spending your time with us today and until next time stay strong