-Dear Dmitry Voloshin, welcome to the Egoist program. That more often I hear your name in the syntagma of the man-legend. How do you feel? Don’t you think that at some point you start to merge with the monument of your own achievements?
-It may seem to others that I am doing something unimaginable, something impossible, some things that normal, ordinary people do not do.
-It’s actually unimaginable…
-Well, I don’t see it, I’m coming up smoothly, I have steps, while I’m going up, and when I get to the top, I realize that I’m on top. If you look up, of course it seems unimaginable. I do not feel like a legend or I am a person who does what no one else does. I don’t have that feeling. Maybe I will do something that will surprise me or my children. But now even my children are not surprised, because they have gone with me all the way and when I came from Oymyakon and all said, wow this is a cosmos, it is impossible my children ask, well, my dad ran, he went there to run and ran.
-While in Moldova almost 90% of citizens complained about the amount of food and the endless holidays, you were in the freezer of the world, in Oymyakon, the coldest point of the earth, where the maximum or minimum temperature was registered as 71 degrees below zero. What were you doing in Oymyakon? You didn’t go there for fun, did you?
-I went there to fulfill one of my childhood dreams. As a child I dreamed of conquering the Pole, but time went by and those dreams first turned out to be unrealizable, then naive, then stupid. Well, how can you dream about it. But last two years when I learned about the existence of such a place, I realized that this dream can be real if properly prepared, having the baggage that I already have, the baggage of endurance racing, baggage of marathons, freediving breathing in extreme conditions. I realized that it’s achievable. So I decided to realize my childhood dream and go to the pole of cold and do what nobody could do before me.
-Did you spend a year preparing?
-In general when I was analyzing, when I was asked how you did it, how you were preparing, how you were training, why you did it, I started to think. Probably not one year prepared, probably to it has led me here last may 10-15 years, that is, in order to run in Oymyakon, I needed ability to run, what I was engaged, ability to breathe properly, I was engaged in diving, ability to expend energy economically, which has given me for example marathon in desert, I needed money which I earned for last 10 years. I needed a team of friends to help me, which I also work … PR I needed my writing skills so I could write about it beautifully.
-And a purpose.
-Many things and it was leading me to this point. I mean it’s not just, I did a year from scratch and I went. I just realized that smoothly, smoothly everything was going to this point and this puzzle came together. I went to Oymyakon in the beginning of January because it was the coldest time there from January 1 to January 14, the most peak frosts, I went there to catch this frost by the tail and I came just as the old New Year was coming and when we arrived just the frost was leaving. We were in a hurry, because the frost comes in waves, cold, cold, warming, again cold, cold, cold, warming. That’s the kind of barrel we came in one and it was just coming to the top. To the top, that is already colder and colder was 52 -53 and we quickly came from Yakutsk in the car, unpacked, packed, this night we ran, while the cold has not yet come heat. And when we got up at 5:00 in the morning and ran outside, we realized that we did not have time, because you have to earlier, it was 49. And I promised that warmer than 50 degrees will not run. And we understood that we didn’t have time and waited for the next rush, the next rush was on the 14th and we had a week of wonderful times in Oymyakon.
-How?
-First met a bunch of amazing people. Oymyakonsky Ulus is such big area, as pair molds and we were in village Tomtor, that is directly where was measured from temperature 71,2 degrees was measured in village Tomtor, and Oymyakon is nearby village, is there 38 kms between them. And there we have got acquainted with the remarkable people who have shown us this district, we were on ice fishing, almost have fallen there under ice, we have hardly crawled out, they have taught us to make stroganina from fish, when they catch raw fish, they throw it out on the street, it freezes and in half an hour they take the knife, cut it like wood…. You dip it in salt and eat it. We rode on snowmobiles, we did different experiments with frozen macaroni, we smashed tangerines with a hammer, inflated bubbles that froze into balls.
-Yes, I saw, I saw you smash tangerines and peppers with a hammer. Where did you get the pepper and the tangerine? How did they get there?
-They sell fruit and vegetables in the stores, but probably only for tourists, because locals don’t buy them, it’s not customary to eat fruit and vegetables. -Tomorrow they brought us a bowl of roast horse foals. He said, this is your breakfast. I said, “How can you eat two kilos of fried meat for breakfast? They say, “Well, that’s how we eat.
-Because of the cold?
-Well, yes, they’re all about protein-fish and meat, that’s the main thing. They have a problem with vegetables and porridge, so they practically don’t eat.
-I realized that if the car stands in the cold for 20 minutes, the wheels become square. That’s why they’re always on the move. The most terrible trip for you was from Yakutsk to Oymyakon, because if the wheel would break, you would stay there forever.
– Frankly speaking, we were scared – we are not used to the distance – 950 km in Moldova – it’s two countries, and in their case it is just a trip between the cities, and the trip is more extreme, because first of all there is very little traffic, second – it is 50-55°C and the third – there are frozen rivers on the road, We had a spare tire and the driver stopped joking, stopped talking and drove silently to the nearest tire shop.
-Was the driver a local? -Yakutian, yeah.
-Yakutians, yeah. He changed our whole mood, we understood that no one’s joking around here, that if something happens, if the car stalls, we can stay here, because there are very few cars going by, and then we came to the river. The river was warm and filled the road with about ten centimeters of ice. The car that was trying to drive through fell through the ice and immediately froze. People were pulled out and a line of cars was formed that could not pass. They are waiting for the ice crust to form, they are standing around at 12:00, they are running out of gas, and when we arrived, they decided to make a road through the forest, straight through the trees, some fallen logs. And the good thing is that there were a couple of jeeps there and they helped the other cars, they were dragging them through the woods. For about an hour and a half or two we pushed them there, the children came out pushing, pulling, hooked and banya was only I think in our eyes. These women eat in Oymyakon from Yakutsk, the normal phenomenon. Dragged each other in different directions and parted. But of course it is very strange when such things happen in such a cold and people are normal. You think, what are they afraid of?
-How do they live? What values do they have? One saleswoman even felt sorry for you, because you’re from Moldova, and our place is somehow worse than Oymyakon?
-They are so used to living there, they feel so comfortable that it seems so natural, with freezing temperatures and lack of communication, they have no Internet, they have problems with electricity, they have no fresh food, no milk, they only have milk powder and all the food they catch is mainly from the forest. There’s a store in Tomtor, we went there to buy some products for an experiment. The store was like this, I don’t know what kind of store you have, there probably isn’t even a Moldovan village like this, meaning 100 or maybe 200 houses, a lopsided shed with snow on it, a creaking door, and we walked there through some corridors and came to a Soviet store, there were some compote on the shelves, a box with one banana and one tangerine, I don’t know who they were keeping it for. There is a lot of vodka, I am fine, we started talking, and they said, “We see you are not from around here. – We are from Moldova. Her face changed so much. – Oh, they are poor! – What do you mean poor? This is us poor, this is what the man who lives in Oymyakon, who works in this barn, is telling us. That’s terrible. We found out that they are told on TV that everything is sad in Moldova, everything is very bad here, it’s unstable, we are poor. And you wonder at the optimism of people who believe that it’s much cooler to live in Oymiakon than in Moldova. They believe in it, they feel good there, it’s amazing.
-It’s amazing how the human being can adapt. X-day, -60 degrees?
-Yes, we were waiting for the weather and the time came, I was up all night, I was thinking about the race, I put on socks, pants, went outside, put on a mask, put cream on, I ran the first kilometer 2 -10. I drink tea, eat gels and go over the whole route, going over everything in detail by seconds, finishing, getting into the car and going home and then I wake up again, put on a sock, put on pants. All night I tossed and could not sleep, but I marathon runners will understand me, people who do sports know that the worst thing is not to sleep before the race – the worst thing can be, because there is very little energy left. It’s important to get a good night’s sleep, no matter how you train, what you eat. The most important thing is sleep. Sleep was not at all in any eye, I woke up every hour, looked at the thermometer, the thermometer was 58, then 59 was already in the morning and that’s it and we got ready and ran out thank God and before the start and drove away on a large stele, there before the city where it is written what their temperature is recorded.and com not approach the director of the museum, we were before them, they have a museum, we were their guests and said: Dmitry, Dmitry wait, you must not run you need to placate our spirits. They are pagans, they do not have Christianity or Islam, they worship the spirits of the cold, forest, fire, water. She made me pancakes and brought me hot ones in a bag. She said: Take the flapjacks, put them on the snow and ask the spirits to help you, if you don’t do it all, you won’t make it. I of course, come on. I took the pancakes, asked the spirits to help me, to help Eve, to help everyone, that everyone was fine. Such meditation metta and… Vanya took the gun…
-What are the spirits’ culinary preferences? They eat pancakes, don’t they?
-I said that I’d better give them to me, I would eat such pancakes with pleasure later, when I ran I remembered that they were hot, they were appetizing… They left them for the spirits, but the spirits must also have a good appetite. Shot the gun and ran. Here is the start itself was at night .
-Do they have a 4-5 hour day?
-5 hours of sunny day, the rest is night, there’s twilight for another couple of hours and then night. It’s a scary place, but people live. Here I ran for an hour in the dark, it was dark, the temperature had dropped by one degree, it was 60 and then the temperature began to rise slowly at dawn, the truth is the difference between minus 60 minus 55 no, you can not feel it. I’m running, I feel good and the weather is beautiful, the guys recorded a low temperature. Everything is going according to plan, I think now I’ll run again as usual, I won’t remember a thing, because when I run I concentrate so right left, right left, now somewhere or other, I won’t forget anything. I am running in the coldest place on the planet, there is no colder place even at the South Pole, it’s warmer there, I must enjoy the moment, look around, look around. What a beautiful place, all white around. And for about 15-20 minutes I was still enjoying myself, I had strength, I was in a good mood, and then everything went downhill of course, after 15-20 km, it got worse and worse. I was looking closer and closer and no longer thinking about beauty.
-I have seen photos and videos where your whole face is in icicles – your nose, eyes, eyelashes, your nose is frozen, and your mask has turned into a layer of ice.I realized that when you feel bad, you start to negotiate with your brain. What were you negotiating now?
-Well, my brain is trained, it does not tell me to drop everything and go to the car, it says something else. We had three plans for the race: 1 run between Tomtor and Oymyakon, between two villages 38 km exactly, was a plan more advanced, more realistic run a marathon distance of 42 km 195 m and was a plan optimistic, run 50. It all depends on the condition of the environment. I didn’t know how I would feel at 30km. So at 30km I made a decision that I should run 50. That is, I felt more or less told the guys that I will run 50 today. They tried to dissuade me, but nothing came out, but my brain is more cunning than the guys and so he began to give me after 40, closer to 40 miles was 42 well look. Or all no one ran 42 will be enough, it will be cool. What he did not think up, and you do not see anything, you see you freeze your eyes and then you’ll be blind. Are those black spots on your face normal? He was spinning, spinning as hard as he could but when we ran for 43km my brain said he could not go back, let’s be patient, he calmed down and there was silence in his head, but those were the hardest times, 6-7km, of course it was sad and there was a sight in my head.
-In the most difficult moments you sing?
-Yes, there are technologies, meditations when you feel pain but you don’t suffer and one of the techniques is to fly away from reality somewhere, so I sing Soviet songs about the Great Patriotic War and imagine how hard it was for those people who fought, who were killed there, who had friends and on their background of course my race is a kindergarten, I understand that this is nothing difficult in it, no one will die, no one is risking their life, that everything will be fine. It’s very inspiring, gives me strength, I’m distracted from reality and leave in his world and helps to move forward.
-By the way, 2 participants of our program, Ana Cazacu – the only “iron woman” in Moldova and Ion Lazarenco, who made it through 8 straits, confessed that they sing when it’s difficult. Ana sang carols, Ion sang something else or prayed. The doctors tried to dissuade you from such a venture. Even Mr. Zhirinovsky was concerned about your health. You didn’t get the feeling you were going to the other side of the world?
-It was really scary to run, there was no one to consult, no one to run to, the doctors didn’t know anything about it.
-Without the help of doctors and rescuers?
-The guys told me, let’s find someone yakutian doctor . I say: no, Andryusha, you will be responsible for my life, you will report to my wife.He had this: let’s find someone, I can’t. I said, it’s okay, you give me a shot of adrenaline in my heart and everything will be fine. This is a joke, I was just saying, you’ll figure it out, you’ll do electro-decompression, on purpose, I was winding you up. Well what could have been in my mind the worst. There is a wrong mask can breathe cold air, alveoli freeze, burst and blood comes out and you suffocate and die, but I controlled my breathing, I knew that the mask I had to break through the air there to minus 20 degrees. It was minus 20 and I was running and minus 30 when I was running a marathon at the North Pole, so there is nothing wrong with my lungs. That is why I was not worried about it and, thank God, I had a good mask. I only had to change it often, it got cold fast. The second is that hypothermia is hypothermia.
-Three hippos?
-Yeah, three hippos. Hypothermia, hypoglycemia and hypoxia, which is very little oxygen when you breathe and you have a hard time breathing-it can shut down the brain because the lack of oxygen first shut down the brain. I was free diving, I know, thank God, and I also understand what is happening to me, I feel the hypoxia, its symptoms, so at these times I just opened my mask, took light breaths, put it back on and run again. That is, I had an idea about what happens to me and tried to change more often, to have a normal passage. Hypoglycemia is when there is not enough glycogen, i.e. not enough energy for the muscles, i.e. food in fact. I drank warm sweet tea, I ate gels, but the paradox is that at this temperature, at this hypothermia, the body consumes much more energy than usual. At the marathon 42km I usually need 3 gels, I took and ate 5, but it was necessary to take not 5, but 7-8. Because you do not eat, everything goes, the body needs a lot of energy to warm up the body. Eats eats eats eats and I did not calculate a little with carbohydrates and I ran hard at the end.Because a lot of resources went to heat the body.
-I saw you finish when you tried to unfurl the Moldovan flag.
-It was funny, show me that bit. When I ran, I remember that I stopped, melted the flag and ran, well, 5 seconds -7 seconds it took me. When I watched the video, I laughed so hard.
-At the finish line you said, “Don’t ever do that again.” Why?
-I’m not ready yet to repeat it again, but I generally encouraged people who do not know what it is. If first I have already run, it’s already clear, a person does not die at such a distance, I’m sure that next year there will be many athletes, mainly from Russia fastest.
-You’re the only one so far in the world who has run such a long distance in such temperatures?
-Yes, at this temperature, this distance, yes, for the first time. They will go and fight for the temperature and for the distance. Moreover, we’ve decided to organize an international marathon in Oymyakon next year for the most extreme athletes in the world. My friends from the North Pole, from Sahara desert, who go there, they love such challanges, such challenges for themselves, and we want to organize a race in Oymyakon with ultralow temperatures.
-Didn’t it have any consequences? And after that, you didn’t see anything for two hours?
-When I ran the last 7-8 miles, I started to notice that my vision was blurry, hazy, as if I was looking through an old plexiglass, but I thought I was smearing a special ointment, bear fat face, not to freeze, got into my eyes and there was a film. That’s when we arrived, I washed my eyes, I washed my face and look nothing changes, I all-all silhouettes see people, I have a heartbeat knock-knock-knock. Can you imagine I lost my sight, I certainly did a great run, but no record is worth no health. No one told about it, no one warned. The only thing I read that if you had an operation, I had an operation to improve my eyesight, I used to wear glasses, here at Zelinsky, and they said that there may be problems if you overcool. I remembered this and now I have to go under the knife. A local hunter Vanya came by. I complained to him, he said it’ll be alright, it’ll pass. When we go sailing in the wind for 3-4 hours we all have the same problem, just wait for an hour, your crystalline lens is getting blurred, now you will warm up and everything will be fine, he took me to the sauna, and I came out as a good old man.
-You had a purpose for which you ran. You ran to help Eva, a little girl with cerebral palsy. How did you find her and why did you choose her? Are you happy with the amount of money you raised for the treatment?
-When I got the idea to run a non-run, I realized that in order to do something so complex really necessary to approach it not as usual, just run, I wanted to find a helper, I did not talk about it before, here I want to say that Eva is not just a child whom I help, she helps me too, she really helped me, emotional help, when I was hard, yes I thought also when and about family and about her, but also karmic help. That is, when I do something good to somebody, I receive something good in return. That is why we helped each other. We have such a symbiosis, and we found it very easy, we went through websites where people are looking for help and paid attention to this girl and read the description, then we met, I was caught by the fact that she is fighting bravely for her health, she is trying to do everything by herself, she did not give up, she, in it is seen a spark of life, it is clear that if she has a spark and more to support the treatment, yes character, she wins the disease and everything will be fine, so I wanted to help her.
-Do you keep in touch with her? Have you become something like a godfather to this girl? You can not make a gesture and then give up this child.It seems to me, it is a connection for life?
-This is a good question, what I want to do for Eva, besides the fact that we have now collected and her site has more than 10,000 dollars, we will soon announce the amount of money we have collected, I have written books about the desert, which also gave her . I will now write a tale, finishing the story of how Eva lost, then found health with the help of, well, that she was helped by the battle with glutathion, with Genghis Khan, with the mythology of Yakutia. A fairy tale based on real events. So we’re going to publish a book and part of the money from book sales will be transferred to her. So she has enough for four or five rehabilitation courses, I think that will be enough to make her healthy.
-Let’s go to the other extreme. I think you have the Serpent Gorynych and Fat Frumos in you. Didn’t die at 60? Let’s try +60. Could you survive underwater without air for six minutes? Let’s try something cooler! I think you’re constantly testing your body to see what the limit is.
-This is the hardest question journalists ask me.
-Are you running away from yourself or towards yourself?
-I do not understand the question, I’m an athlete, I have a complicated intellect. I generally came up with beautiful answers, what drives me, what motivates me? That I want to expand their boundaries and opportunities, but then stopped breaking my head and I do not know why I do it. It’s just if the party is tasty cake, this cake is eaten, or here if you had the opportunity to buy a Bentley, you bought a car, you would have bought it all the same money on it, you have dreamed about it. I would buy a Bentley, but why? If you have another one, you can ride in the old one. I have an opportunity to run there and there to swim, to do something, I use this opportunity. It seems to me that it is so natural in a man that when he has an opportunity, they do it, when they have no opportunity, they don’t, but they just dream.
-I was watching your photos as part of a flash mob for 10 years. In 2009, you were an absolutely bored guy, with no signs of joy on his face. in 2019, we see a completely different person, with a different character. When and why did the desire to get something different arise? Perhaps it was a midlife crisis?
-It’s hard to say why this happened.
-You had money, life was good, but nothing made you happy, nothing raised your adrenaline level?
-7 years ago I didn’t look very good, but I had a very unpleasant atmosphere inside. I, I had the feeling that I had already done everything I could in this life, and what I could still do in this direction, I wondered. I earned some money which was enough for me a month and I did not want more just. Why make billions if you can’t spend a certain amount of money and that’s it and my motivation to make money was gone. In creativity I made a few cartoons that traveled around the world, collected a bunch of awards, as if I showed that Yes I am somehow as a creator. The family has, two children, everything seems to be fine there. Well, not really normal then, then there were problems, if you’re interested, I’ll tell you this. But, but the engine was no more, I did not understand what I should do next. That is, I was not interested in anything, I was a fed, tired, often drunk, fat man with hypertension, who did not understand what was waiting for him. There was a feeling that I had already climbed the mountain at the peak of my life, now went downhill.
-That’s a typical portrait of a 40-year-old businessman, isn’t it?
-I was a typical representative of that kind, but I don’t know why it happened that way. -I asked you, Dima, how did you find sports? Here’s why. I’ve been struggling for a few years…
-Who buys sports cars, who marries a twenty-year-old, and you chose sports, why?
– I don’t know, I think I’m a bit of a fatalist, not even a fatalist, I believe in the world order that Buddhists talk about, and I think I was given a chance, given a chance to do something good. I mean who do I think they are? Someone who sits on top and watches, there’s a problem with sports in Moldova, people are divided, everyone is right, leftist, red and blue, there are revolutions. We must do something to unite them, to do something good for Moldova. What can we do? If we make a sport? Yes, that’s a good idea. Let’s make sports, let them all go in for sports, sports unites society. How can we do it? We don’t have a government, we have thieves. Wait, let’s give someone an opportunity to tell people that doing sports is cool. I don’t know, who’s the healthiest person out there? Yeah, 90% aside, that’s 10%. And how is he going to talk about it? Does he have some kind of resource, a media resource, some kind of website and maybe some kind? Yeah, there’s about 50 other people out there . They can do that, that’s good. Do they have enough patience? That is, they have the desire to do a long term project? Yes, here are three more of them, that’s left. And how many of them are willing to work for free? That is, just for the idea, did not earn? Well there is some, who sits in front of the monitor, there sits in a folder sad, drank cognac just now, does not know what to do next. And send him a link to the account of the Russian Ironman. Let him look at it and send me the link, I see how a normal, office manager of some kind transformed into an Ironman in two years and a fat man. I read me and I have a poof, I want the same thing. And it went on.
-What if you hadn’t gotten this letter?
-I think if I did not receive this letter, I would have received it through other sources. The universe has given the opportunity to prove themselves, that is, gave a kind of advance, here we give you and you try. if you succeed, we will help you further. And so I used my resources, in order to hold a marathon, I had a strong team …
-But you’re the first one who got people off their couches and sent them running?
-I have some talent, a loud word, to write more or less normally in a human way. It’s not exactly genius, but what I write, people read it. I began to train, I began to exercise, I had a goal, I began to write about it, I began to blog, I wrote Facebook. My friends saw it, they also began to connect and I ran my first marathon. And when I ran my first marathon, I realized that this is a huge segment that people don’t notice. Next to them are sports, and people live without sports.That’s what they lose so much in life.It’s necessary to tell everyone about it and I began to promote the sport, started writing a blog. I need to tell everyone about this, I started to popularize it, I started to write a blog. I started to drag everyone by the hand, my friends have joined in first, then others, then came the Kishinev Marathon, people ran and I can not say that everyone, half the people tried and quit, not them, but half the people entered the sport and never went out again, because they understood that it provides a basic life complement, that life becomes harmonious, whole and you feel that you are living a full life .
-I noticed that after every serious challenge, you lead people on. Even now you said that there will be a competition in Oymyakon. Did you take part in the mud run, did you do the Gladiator in Chisinau?
-Yes, I’m a thief, I confess I go around the world, I see what’s going on there, I adapt it and I do it in our country.
-Tell us about the Gladiator. There was a text where you call yourself a dirtbag who eats from the floor, and where you ask the question: what is the healthier person who bathes 3 times a day? For the love of dirt did you organize these competitions?
-I’m always looking for the most interesting, most unusual races around the world collect. Year 3-4 years ago I learned about the Taugai, they are called the most difficult endurance race, takes place in early, late January in England Birmingham, consists of 15 km of obstacles in the mud in the water up to your waist, and the water you know, 2-3 degrees temperature. And you go in shorts in these here in a short T-shirt, shaking, I so nowhere froze, even in Oymyakon not so did not freeze. We did this distance in 4 hours, we were dead to the bone. Just on the finish, when I took a hot cocoa, I spilled the first glass, I couldn’t hold it, I just threw it away, I drank with both hands, it was very cold, but it’s cool, it’s so cool to suffer so much. I should bring it to our people, make everyone suffer. They told me not to do it in winter, because there can be accidents there, people get cold. Let’s do it in summer. Good in the summer, then the hottest time to choose the heat, so that people there stunned . Last year we had the opportunity to do this mud race, it was a lot of excitement, it’s very family, you know, such a friends, about mutual assistance. Yes it’s not important who’s first, it’s important to help, come as a team and it unites you, then that there’s a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. And when you come you feel like a real soldier. it was all great. Next year we’ll make another children’s version, or there will be a huge puddle of mud, where kids can just jump in there to the delight of their parents, to swim in the mud, throw mud, but when you can afford it, and there is a shower, wash them. parents do not allow to get dirty, not good. And here will be a special puddle.
-What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?
-I’m thinking now whether or not to be frank with you. I had a terrible period in my life, not all the skeletons out of my closets yet, there are more secrets, but this is now to tell about it, I had a very difficult period in my life and it was peak in 2002 -2003, I had epilepsy and just by this time I had two or three seizures a week and it would be honestly a scary period. Because I never knew if I would wake up normal or if I would wake up having a seizure and then I wouldn’t remember anything for days. That is, I live in constant fear that it is about to happen. It just so happens that during this period I met my sweetheart. She took me to the doctor for a long time, we took special medicines and in a year I have much less number of attacks, then I had one attack a year, then even less…
-How does it feel to have epilepsy on the inside?
-And you just lose consciousness and do not remember anything, and when you wake up first of all your mouth is bitten, your tongue bites your lips, all in blood and you do not understand who you are, who these people are, what happens, that is the memory is completely lost, that is something had to do, what meetings, where you should go, you remember nothing. then slowly you remember people, you remember who you are, what you do, this day or two and then again after a couple days you have, then life turns into hell. I thank God that I got rid of it, maybe this disease gave me something, maybe I got some benefits, some preferences, I do not know what they are, maybe my brain works differently after the disease, but I do not regret that I went through it, in general I have no regrets about anything in my life. You asked what was the worst, before me was the worst period, it was very hard.
-You say you have no regrets. There is a saying that today we are what we chose yesterday. Have you ever wondered why you chose what you did?
-My friend Ruslan once asked me, Dima, if you had the chance to call yourself in the past to tell you what mistakes not to make, what not to commit. I would call you any day of my life and tell you to do everything you planned, you don’t have to change anything. But we make mistakes. There are no people who are perfect, who do not make mistakes. But I think that our mistakes form our personality, form us as we are now, so if I had not made those mistakes, I would be a completely different person and we probably would not be talking to you now. Perhaps there would have been no Oymyakon, no Viki, no Simpals, nothing. At once there was nothing with you constantly be on the subject for when I see that the child is about to fall out of the chair or get around but I see that his health is not threatened by it I try I do I just want to get away.I go up to him and just soothe him in the car flying little burns I see that I can not let him get burnt. Let him fight the man.
-Do you have the same approach to raising children? Do you let them make mistakes or as a loving father, protect them from mistakes?
-Well, with my wife we’re constantly fighting on this subject, when I see that the child is about to fall from a chair or get burned, but I see that his health is not threatened, I try, I’m just there, now he falls down, bumps, I go up and just calm him down. Or he climbs into the fire, or gets burnt, and I see that I can prevent him from getting burnt, let him get burnt. It is impossible to teach a man to say ‘Do not touch that’ until he gets burned himself. There is no one who has not been burned, so let it all happen under our supervision. I do not protect them from danger and hardship, we had an experiment with my son when he was 7 years old, we sent him to the flakara on foot, I do not know how much, 2 stops, he knew about where and went to the store. I said, let him go, it’s okay, he won’t be lost, if he does, he has a phone, if anything, he’ll call. He went, he was gone for an hour, 2-3 hours, panic started, and we went to look for him. It turns out that he got lost, so he went to his grandmother, grandmother was not home, he was picked up by some man, he told the man his phone number, and he lost his phone. But the man was found and since then he has no fear that he could get lost. He walks, takes the trolley bus to school himself, and he has no problems. That is why I think the harder it is for a child in his childhood, the less he will be afraid of trouble, the less he will be afraid of difficulties, and the easier it will be for him when he grows up.
-I am alarmed by your next sentence: “The average temperature on Mars is -63 degrees. Does this mean that you would go there if you had such a goal?
-As a child I also dreamed to go to space, like all normal boys. Even now I would like to go with pleasure, but my finances do not allow to go to space, flights are very expensive, I’m not so rich. Maybe someday, all my income will grow, and the price will fall, and we will meet someday in 10 years, maybe. Then I’d love to. We’ll sell some thing, make some money.
-You also dreamed of being a fireman and a garbage man?
– No one dreamed of being a garbage man, no one wanted to pick up garbage.Everybody wanted to ride in a garbage truck, that’s different. Who likes picking up that stinky garbage? But you when you’re riding in a garbage truck and it’s your job, it’s pretty cool. When I was a kid…
-And you worked 11 hours on a garbage truck?
-Yeah, me and my friend Aday, we decided to work one day on a garbage truck, clean up the city and see what kind of work it was. We agreed to drive them around town at 14:00, we were dragging, loading, taking them to the dump and back. It was an experience of course, such a very bright, I looked at how these guys work, just so zahuvalas all garbage men, all when I see now, I say respect, they who know me, they have already told me about two jerks who dowshiftings engaged. They have two days off a month, not six, not eight, but two days. They work two weeks without stopping, then one day of rest and two weeks without stopping.
-How do they hold out? -How do they hold out?
-How do they manage it, I have no idea, that is, they come home, they finish work at 5 and go home, wash, eat, go to bed. Because at 5 they have to get up and at 6:00 they go for a drive. I don’t understand … how people live in Oymyakon, these people are used to it.
-In the same post about trash you write about how you swam across the Ganges. It is the dirtiest river where Hindus dump the remains of their dead during the funeral ritual. In the video, you were the only one swimming there because the others were in boats.
-It was at the very beginning of my sports career, I could not swim, but I realized that I was attracted to the unknown.And what a normal person would not do. I always felt like a challenge. I and my guys went on a trip to India, across Nepal and hit the city of Varanasi, a place where they burn dead people, they ascend into heaven. Well, what is not burned before they are exalted is thrown into the river, it all flows downstream on the Ganges River, it’s considered a very dirty place. They wash and piss and poop there, you can’t show that to girls. So I thought to dedicate my beloved, to swim such a river. So I spit, all I did was to close my eyes, I jumped in, she was not so big, 300 maybe. So I swam over and got out of the water, I said that I was dedicating this swim to you, my love. And when I really got there, she said go wash in the shower for 3 days so I wouldn’t see you.
-Dovey appreciated your gesture? As far as I know, you also dedicated the bug race to her? And you ate those poor bugs that lost the race?
-You’ve probably seen the video from our corporate party, we celebrate the company’s birthday every year on April 1. Last time we decided to have a bug race, those big, fat Madagascar bugs. Made a track and everyone put his beetle and who was first, he leaves alive, the remaining losers had to eat their beetles. And I participated with my wife and she was lucky, her beetle came first and she did not have to do it. The others ate their beetles, they do not taste as disgusting, very nice crunchy, like chips. I ate these Colorado beetles and cockroaches and butterflies. I don’t have a…
-Why?
-Why? When I entertain earthworms, they say, “Daddy, eat the worm. And when I do, I show them that our squeamishness, our aversion to dirt, to insects, is just our fantasy. In reality, if there is a situation when it will be necessary to eat them, you will eat them because they will be the only source of subsistence, so these barriers are removed from the child. He has any restrictions, they told him at school or he gave birth to them, so you have to remove them little by little and tell him that it’s possible, it’s possible and it’s possible.
-So you have become a hero to your children’s peers, because they say, at school, that their dad eats earthworms.
-Yeah
-Do you do all this out of overconfidence or do you do it out of insecurity and self-confidence? -It’s said that the greatest heroes are the cowards who one day decide to overcome themselves.
-You may be right, probably, probably there is something in it, maybe I prove to myself that I’m not a coward, I can do better than others, that I’m strong, that I’m not weak, but I had a story at school that I was beaten at school. I was a nerd, I was there a lot of time to study, I had a lot of interests related to science, and electronics and soldering blah blah blah. But my social role in class was somewhere near the bottom, in the social ladder I was and often got hit on the head. So maybe in this way they formed some kind of complexes in me and now they find a way out, that I want to prove to the whole world that I’m not a wimp, that I can, but I do not compare you with anyone and do not try to tell someone that I’m cooler, not cooler, there measuring, that something to show, it’s already past.
-You’re only proving it to yourself, right?
-Only yourself.
– What race is closer to you: the 230-kilometre desert race (MDS), the sailing of Gibraltar, the marathon at the North Pole or the race in Oymyakon?
-Probably the desert. Probably because it’s a six-day race for me, where you live with strangers you see for the first time in your life and share shelter and food and fire with them, day or night. And during the day you run and test yourself and this race gave me a lot, it showed me a lot, it showed me how little a man needs to be happy, this book, I forgot to bring you a book, a book in which I wrote that a man needs 2 square meters in life to be happy and after life 2 square meters is also quite enough. Like the Hindus sleep on boxes. That may be and yes, and there is food here, and you can read a book and listen to music and sleep. What is that all about? You can’t take it all with you. You build minimalism, absolute minimalism, you have nothing extra. Just so that you can just spend those six days. You get such an Experience, mental, that you are happy, you don’t need anything else there. You feel very good, you run in, lie down, put your feet up, and lie smiling, you lie smiling for half a day, very good.
-What you say reminded me of two things: that the percentage of happy people among the poor and the rich is the same, and the second is that in the book “Simplicity of Art” it says that the Japanese were used to a minimum amount of things, because they often had to hide from enemies, taking with them only what they could carry in their hands. At one point you fell off your feet and then there was a magic bug that told you, “Dimitri, get up and run!”
-There were a lot of adventures, enough for a whole book, what was happening in the desert, but the last and most difficult stage was the marathon, when you had to run 42 km. I had to run very fast and I was running so fast that I ate all my gels ahead of time and ran out of them, I ran out of energy and my mind wandered a little bit, I mean I had water, but I had no strength, I started to stagger and the picture floated in front of me. I sat down on the dune, because I was beginning to think that I would just fall down. Then a beetle appeared, but then I understood that there was no beetle, but at that moment I saw a beetle, who came up and started to talk to me, and asked: “Dima, why did you eat my grandfather? I said, what grandfather? You ate my grandfather in Orzat, and we had before the race, we were resting there with the guys, and me too, they said, we know that you’re there, maybe beetles… No problem… We drank whiskey, all right, and so he came to me to take revenge shortly. So somewhere in my subconscious sits that I’m doing something bad, that kill animals, and then it torments me in this way and I realized that if you have Beetles, they need to eat when you want to eat, not just for fun. Beetle reminded me of this, but strangely enough, when my conversation ended, I had the strength to get up and slowly begin to move, catch up, I began to catch up with the runner, I asked him for a gel, he treated, brotherhood is such.
-Did the beetle forgive you or not?
-Yes, I asked him for forgiveness, I cried a little, he told me it’s okay, never do that again, I ran after him and some athlete gave me some gel, I asked him to give me something to eat… The spirit of this sand marathon is amazing, in a normal marathon you fall down, it’s unlikely someone will come to you, you’ll be waiting for an ambulance, there you will be pumped and everyone is running as fast as possible, here everyone has some problems, People share water, their last meal, and thread and needles to stitch up their blisters. Such things become like relatives, because everyone understands that the task is to survive the six days, to get out of the desert, and what place you take is secondary. When you understand that all people are brothers and there is a feeling from such moments as I ran a long stage, we had 90 km and dragged the last kilometers of one guy, he already had no strength, he was just falling down, we helped, helped, dragged to the finish and came running and fell right to bed, because it was very hard, ran 12:00 hours and here I had something to urinate. There people do not go to the bathroom, do not sweat, if before the start of people hid behind the Dunes somewhere, after 3-4 days, a meter away and the girls and the boys pissed right around the tent, no one bothered at all, someone sitting, someone standing, all the same. I stepped aside and suddenly I see a light on in the next tent, and there were Spaniards there. I walk up and ask, do you have any toilet paper? And I look at them smoking cigarettes, not marijuana, but just tobacco. I said, can I have a joint? They say: sure, sit down with us and we were like this at 3:00 am sitting in the desert, under the stars and smoking Spanish tobacco for a joint, looking at these stars and people go, finish 1, 2, 3 . It’s just so surreal and such moments are remembered for a lifetime. For the sake of it is worth going, to gain this experience. And it’s not difficult, honestly tell you to finish babka sixty years old, there is no strict time limit, can not run, go. No problem, we’ll wait for you if there’s the fastest in 11 hours run long, grannies came in 24. They sent on the road, ate, slept again, got there. So we have everything in our heads, fears all sit here…
-So you wanted to be in the first hundred, but suddenly the competitive spirit woke up, Anton left aside and decided to fight one-on-one with the desert…
-I’m a fighter, I’m a wrestler, probably if I’d been in sports since childhood I’d have qualified for the Olympic gold medal. It’s just the way I’m built. Other people have completely different objectives, who just want to compete, but I’m not telling you, here’s a marathon just run for fun. So let’s overtake this one, well this one I say, and let’s from 4:00, and let’s from 3:30, and let’s let’s … Here it is, here’s the damn thing when I’m done, when I just enjoy the process. no, I constantly some numbers, signs, places. It’s not right. It doesn’t always have to be this way, it has to be both.
-I wonder how you reconcile a gesture of generosity – giving away a can of Coke after a day of thirst – and a competitive spirit, like: stand back, I have to finish at least a second early to prove to myself that I can?
-It’s a little different, the fact that I gave Cola to a girl, but it was also a kind of Challenger for me, I mean, well drinking it of course is easy. You pay $3,000 for the event. They bring you to the desert, you take your food, you eat by yourself, they don’t give you anything, just give you a bottle of Cola, it costs $1, you’re sorry. No coca-cola, no cold drinks and on the fifth day people get in line in the morning to a huge truck which brings a can of coca-cola, sweaty, ice-cold desert and you have not had anything sweet and cold for five days. Of course this can gets a huge value, they even sell them there, people with money buy them and I found it interesting not to drink this cola, but to give it to someone .I got much more pleasure as Iya drinks this cola, as she thanked me for it. It’s much more enjoyable than just taking a couple of sips of sweet water, I think that’s obvious.
-Your company Simpals has the atmosphere of a beautiful madhouse. -How do you keep that atmosphere and make money on top of it?
-We don’t make money, we don’t pretend to make money, we just do things and our main principle is not to make money, our main principle is to spend money properly. This money that comes to us, that is both beautiful and right. The right way is not to buy the boss a car, but to plant trees, organize a sports festival, decorate hospitals, and when the universe sees that we spend money correctly it gives more money. So how our business works, no one knows, it’s more like a miracle, hallelujah, where the money comes from. We do not have work processes like in foreign companies. We have more emphasis on the mood, the spirit, the enthusiasm, the smiles. This is not quite right for business, I do not call myself a businessman, I can not do business, I know how to create a space where people enjoy time and learn to manage resources.
-Last question, maybe a lot of young people who see you will want to repeat your path, what advice will you give them?
– Well, the main advice I probably will not reveal to anyone, no new truth there. Always do what you think is right, what you do is necessary, what your heart wants, don’t pursue money, fancy professions or trends, do what you really want from inside, do it sincerely and the rest will come. Don’t kid yourself.
-From one to ten, how selfish are you?
-7-8. I am more selfish than not selfish. I think that a person has to love himself, learn to love yourself, without this can not truly love others. so, but I really had periods when I was on a scale from 1 to 10, 11 in 2008 I even had 12, the crown was gold to the sky. No, for some reason it seemed to me that I am so cool that the average person, he should talk to me and kiss my hand. There was a terrible period when business was booming and I was so mad, I made so many enemies during this period, I almost divorced my wife, I left the company, I quarreled with partners. It was a living hell. I don’t know what it was. And it went on for a couple of years, then I started to let go when I realized that I was losing everything I had. I had enough brains to realize that I was doing something wrong and slowly started to come back to earth, and when I came back to earth I realized that I had lost a lot and I had to rebuild relationships with my wife, with people, with everyone, to find everyone, to make peace with them, to apologize to them, in order, now they were my friends again. But then again, if I could call him and say, “Don’t do it, I would not, because it’s my life, it has also shaped me, gave me something to understand, some lesson to learn. Maybe without it I would not have understood anything.
Thank you!
