Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How To Achieve The Impossible with James Golding #302

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

CAUTION: Contains themes of an adult nature. Today’s guest has survived cancer twice and been hit by a truck at 70mph. By all accounts, he shouldn’t be here. Yet James Golding has gone on to be a world record-breaking endurance cyclist – and raise £4 million and counting for charity. He now believes that anything is possible and we can each achieve anything we set our minds to. If you’re feeling lost or lacking in motivation, you need to hear what this man has to say. During this powerful conversation, James talks us through the timeline of his life so far. From his initial cancer diagnosis to the emergency surgery which gave him a survival rate of just five percent. From recovery against the odds to a horrific road traffic accident. And through a second bout of cancer and treatment, followed by depression that was even harder for James to overcome. James’ account is moving and honest, with a thread of such positivity and resilience running through it. We explore where this comes from and why he turned to his incredible cycling challenges as a means to give back to those who cared for him. James has a remarkable ability not to get disheartened by setbacks – and he’s experienced some pretty major ones. His attitude, he tells me, is that you should always move forward. Take one small step at a time, but keep an eye over your shoulder to remember where you’ve come from. It’s this fluidity that I think gives James such strength. Words that could seem trivial or clichéd from someone else sound anything but when he shares them. He really does embody the term inspirational. When we recorded this conversation, James was about to embark on the Race Across America or RAAM – the world’s toughest bike race covering 3,100 miles in nine days. And his plan was to win. Unfortunately, an untimely bout of Covid sadly derailed his hopes in this year’s race– but I feel confident he’ll somehow use this as a jumping off point to achieve even more. This is a remarkable life story that I hope will leave you feeling inspired to take positive action in your own life. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Order Dr Chatterjee's new book Happy Mind, Happy Life: UK version: https://amzn.to/304opgJ, US & Canada version: https://amzn.to/3DRxjgp Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/302 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

If you're not happy with something that's going on around you or the situation that it's in, you can't look to other people to create that change for you, you have to make that change. And that might hurt, but how much is it going to hurt compared to turning around and looking back at your life in 10 years time and saying, I should have changed it then, or I could have done this differently. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. If you're feeling lost in life or lacking in motivation, I think today's conversation is

going to be right up your street. Today's guest has survived cancer twice, he survived being hit by a truck at 70 miles per hour, and by all accounts, he shouldn't really be here. Yet James Golding has gone on to become a world record-breaking endurance cyclist and raised over £4 million for charity. And he now believes that anything is possible and that all of us can achieve anything we set our minds to. Now during this powerful conversation, James talks us through the timeline of his life so far, from his initial cancer diagnosis to the emergency surgery which gave him a survival rate of just 5% and then from recovery against the odds to a horrific near fatal road traffic accident, a second bout of cancer treatment, followed by depression, that was even harder for James to overcome.

James' account is moving and honest, with a thread of positivity and resilience running through it. We explore where this comes from and why he turned to his incredible cycling challenges as a means to give back to those who'd cared for him. James has a remarkable ability to not get disheartened by setbacks and he's experienced some pretty major ones. His attitude, he tells me, is that you should always move forward. Take one small step at a time, but keep an eye over your shoulder to remember where you've come from. Words that might seem trivial or cliched from anybody else sound anything but

when James shares them within the context of his life story. He's someone who really does embody the term inspirational. When we recorded this conversation earlier on this year, James was just about to embark on something called the Race Across America, also known as RAM, the world's toughest bike race with the plan being to cover over 3,000 miles in just nine days. And his goal at that time was to win. Unfortunately, an untimely bounce of COVID sadly derailed his hopes in that race, but I feel confident he'll somehow use this setback as a jumping off point to achieve even more.

This is a remarkable life story that I'm pretty sure will leave you feeling inspired to take positive action in your own life. I hope you enjoy listening. And now, my conversation with James Golding. I've been pretty excited to talk to you ever since we started to interact on social. And there's kind of like so many different places I think we could go with your story, which is super inspirational. I think for me, the place to start is you have had cancer twice.

You have been knocked over by a truck at 70 miles an hour. By all accounts, you shouldn't be here. you have been knocked over by a truck at 70 miles an hour. Yeah. By all accounts, you shouldn't be here. Yeah. But you are. And there are many people around the world, I know because they tell me all the time,

who are struggling, who feel that they've got no motivation to get out of bed that life it's not going the way they want it to go and they feel stuck in a rut yeah what would you say to them i've been there i i'm gonna i'm gonna throw this a different way and say that in many respects and i normally put far more context behind me saying this before i do it but i think cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me because of the way that it ever happened to me because of the way that it changed my life and because of the way that it changed my outlook on life it made me realize that was far more to life than the things that were holding me back

the things that were causing me to be in exactly the same position as those people we've talked about that don't want to get out of bed in the morning that don't feel that there's anything there for them we find ourselves um quite often stuck in this um i call it third gear where there's there's no extra there's no there's no there's no push in the morning and there's nothing above a certain level that you get to and you're literally going through the motions and that's not to say that i don't still have periods of time like that, because I do still have periods of time like that. I've dealt with the black dog, as we call it, sitting by the bed and not wanting to get out of bed in the morning and feeling like there's nothing there. In fact, again, normally, we would talk about this a bit later on, but actually, I think the worst period in my recent life was between 2014 and 2016.

I didn't have cancer at that point in time I'd had cancer I was in recovery I was riding my bike I was working with a couple of charities but I was suffering with depression at that point in time. And there was a trigger that changed that, which was my son drawing a picture of the entire family. And everybody on that picture was smiling apart from me. And it was at that point in time that I turned around and went, the only person that can change this is me. I'm the only person that can create change in this situation. It's not anybody else that's

around me it's not it might be the environment i've put myself into but it's not louise it's not the kids it's not my dad it's not my mum it's not the people within my circle with my close circle but the only person that can change this is me and i then went and started speaking to somebody to get the help that potentially i should have got years ago but wasn't ready to get that help yeah if you're not happy with something that's going on around you or the situation that's in you can't necessarily you can't look to other people to create that change for you you have to make that change and that might hurt but that's going to hurt now to get the better outcome further down the line. And how much is it going to hurt compared to turning around and looking back at your life in 10 years time and saying, I should have changed it then, or I could have done this differently.

I don't want to be that person that, I don't want to be a person that turns around and goes, could I have done that? Should I have done that? I've learned, and I wasn't've learned and i wasn't that person yeah i wasn't that person i was the person that would go through the routine that would just go through the motions and be unhappy because that was almost what society said that we should do yeah cancer was the best thing that happened to you yeah you said it now i've circled it what i've been researching you to many people that's quite a provocative statement it is it is provocative um but there are a lot of people that i say that to that look at me and go i get it i understand

where you're coming from. I understand how it changed your life. And again, something else that I've turned around and said is that if I met the me before having cancer, I wouldn't like me. If I met me in 2004, 2006, I probably wouldn't want anything to do with me because I was in that rut that we've just talked about. I was in that routine of getting up in the morning, going to work, doing my job, going out on a Thursday night, going out on a Friday night, going out on a Saturday night, sitting, sleeping, doing whatever all day Sunday and going back to it Monday and moaning Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and doing it again on a Thursday. And it was about what watch I was wearing, what phone I owned, what car I was

going to buy next after I've just bought the new one. It was all materialistic. It was all about how much money I could earn and where that was going to take me. But there was no where that was going to take me. But there was no nutrition in my life at that point. There was nothing good about what I was doing. It was what I believed from the people that I was surrounded by and the situation that I was in, I believed that's how I should behave. Did you know at that time that you weren't happy or did you feel, yeah, this is it. I've got a bit of cash. I can go out with my mates at the weekends, drive a nice car. Yeah, this is it, man. I've made it. made it but I certainly think I had the opinion um of um I'm doing well but that was because of I think that was because of um I was told I was always told that I'd never do well and the judgment of doing well from my point of view and I think it's i think the um the message has changed a lot over the last probably over the last 10 years um with the release of the internet and and well with the

the upspiking in internet and podcasts and the things that we're now able to see we can actually we can actually see that it's not all about sitting in a certain area and out looking and going well he's clearly done well for himself he's got a nice car he's done well for himself he's got a nice house he's done well for himself he's got three houses or etc it's now more about hasn't he done well for himself they've achieved x too often i think we're always looking forward at the next thing one of the things that annoys me more than anything as soon as you finish an event on a bike like for example i said this morning that um i can guarantee you that as soon as we finish our next event within a day or two somebody will turn

around to me and say so what's next yeah not it's taken you six years to get here. It's taken six years of hard work. It's taken 11 years of dreaming to get to where you are now. What's next? Yeah. And when you see people buy a new car, so what are you going to have after this? Why do I need to have something else after this?

Yeah. this why do i need to have something else after this yeah this plays out in all of our lives to some degree i think it is how we're conditioned one of the themes that i've been talking a lot about on this podcast over the past 6-12 months really is this idea that happiness is not the same as success it can be for some people if you're intentional about your life and your choices but for most of us we're not we are unconsciously living and we end up you know going down a certain path that we think we're meant to do we end up there maybe like you in your 20s with you know thinking yeah this is it i'm earning a bit i'm going out with my mates you know this is kind of life but that what next question i think is is massive because

what next by definition is future focused and not content not happy in the present yeah um i think there is there is i think you always have to have in your mind of a what's next because the world keeps moving forward. But in the same sense, like you say, we don't sit and value. So one of the things I talk about quite a lot is reflection. I think that all of us as human beings have this big, not problem, but we have this inability to actually sit and reflect on what we've actually achieved in our lives. To be able to look back and go, do you know what, I've done all right, really. And I don't necessarily mean in terms of our earnings, in terms of our house or our car or those material objects which

come and go in terms of what you've actually achieved. So when I'm talking to somebody and they say, oh, I would love to do the London to Paris, or I'd love to do the London Marathon, or I'd love to climb Kilimanjaro, but I could never do it. I go, well, you've already climbed a mountain in your life anyway. You've already achieved so much more. And actually some of the key monumental things that you achieved within your life, you did in the very early stages of your life without the internet, without the assistance of others, without a coach, without anything else. So yesterday in a speaking engagement, I stood in front of 80 people and said, what's the most impressive thing that you've ever achieved in your life? The most impressive admirable thing you've ever achieved in your life. I'm asking you now, what's the most impressive admirable thing you've ever achieved in your life?

I know the answer to this question and I met you half an hour ago. Now, I feel my answer may be skewed by having watched your TED Talk. Now, I feel my answer may be skewed by having watched your TED Talk. So I'll pretend I haven't seen your TED Talk, right? And you're not sure that counts, but... Okay, well, look, I'll tell you, let me answer that in two separate ways. If without thinking, without thinking about your TED Talk, without thinking about preparing for my conversation with you, what's the most impressive thing I've achieved in my life

um I'd probably say being involved in the creation and the bringing up of my two wonderful children walking learning to walk you learn to walk between nine months old and 12 months old you had no experience you had no knowledge you months old. You had no experience. You had no knowledge. You had no internet. You had no coaches around you apart from your parents that you aspired to be able to do the same as them. And you dragged yourself across the floor and you picked yourself up on a bit of furniture and you fell over.

And you dragged yourself across the floor and you picked yourself up on a bit of furniture and you fell over. And you did it over and over again. And now you get up in the middle of the night, you walk down the corridor through the bathroom door and you go to the toilet and you walk back to bed without even thinking about it so if there's something in your life that you want to be able to go and achieve don't tell me that you can't do it because you did that between 9 and 12 months old and now you have 20 30 40 years experience of falling over and picking yourself back up again you have the internet you have the textbooks you have the ability to communicate your goals and dreams

with a whole host of people some of which will walk away some of which will laugh at you and tell you that you're not able to achieve it but some of them will stand by your side and they will do everything within their power to help you achieve that goal yeah the ted talk would have been first my answer um and i'm worried this is such an important point i think because that can almost sound trivial to people yeah okay all right mate i get you i learned how to walk okay well. Well, first of all, I've been learning from people who are in AI and who are in engineering and say we still can't teach a robot to walk like a human. I think what you actually have to do to be able to walk is frankly, I think just one of the most incredible things in terms of what your brain has to do, balanced, you know,

two sides of the brain, you know, all kinds of things, right? So that's one aspect. But I think what you just said is not trivial at all. It's actually so much more powerful because of your story, because of what you've been through. And I think let's get into that. Let's get into the context, right? you've mentioned where you were in your 20s in terms of work maybe maybe paint us a picture of the run-up to 2008 um well two yeah 2008 um i was always i think if we even if we even go back a little bit further than that, at school I was identified by my mum as being different to the other kids, which I didn't engage with the kids in my village.

I did engage with them, but I didn't engage with them in the same way. I wasn't the football kid. I wasn't the rugby kid. I tried to be the rugby kid. I tried to be the rugby kid. I tried to be the football kid. I was good at swimming and I found riding a bike, a mountain bike when I was sort of 10 or 11 years old. And that was something that I kind of fell in love with.

I think it was perhaps the simplicity of a bike that can take you such a long distance or you can go anywhere that you want to on it. I then moved up to secondary school. So in my primary school days, I think we were the biggest class in the history of the school and there was about 30 kids in the class. Now, my mum and dad had split up when I was about three years old and they spent a long time arguing over different factors, court appearances about who I was living with,

where I was living, what school I was going to, all these different things, whether it was dad's opinion and he was right or whether it was mum's opinion and she was right. It was a fractious um relationship i lived with my mum predominantly and my my stepdad and i my dad was um married with my step mum and i i don't think i really as much as i thought at the time i had stability i don't think looking back on it that there was really any stability because I was always split between two areas.

And then in secondary school, I didn't, again, I didn't really fit in very well. There was an element of bullying. There was an element of me then reflecting that bullying onto other people, which if you look back at may have manifested itself as bullying, but that was never what it was meant to be. It was the emotions that I was going through at the time. And I say that because when you look at the Red Bull video, somebody that was in my class actually commented on it that I never left school at that period of time. And actually I was the bully. And I replied to the guy and I said, I'm sorry if you felt that I bullied you, but I never did. You clearly didn't know the things that were playing out in my life.

I never even used to go on the school bus to school because I used to get my mum to take me to school from the village we lived in because of the grief that I would get on the school bus. And I stopped going to school at 14 years old. And that caused huge eruptions within my mum and dad. Then arguing again, mum, I was one of the first kids that was allowed to leave school early on the proviso that I went into an apprenticeship scheme. But that wasn't going to work. Why? That wasn't going to work for my dad at that time because he wanted me to sit my gcses and i get why i get i sometimes find it difficult to talk about because i don't

want to sound to my dad like i'm having a go at him because i'm not because i understand why he did what he did and the principles that he had that's fully understand it but these are things that if we're now talking about my life and how we got to that point, then these things, I need to be able to talk about these things. So that then changed the dynamic again. I learned how to become a plasterer and I got on very well with it. But I ended up working with a guy who lived a long way away. So I'd ride my bike to his house every day, 10 miles each direction, 10 miles there in

the morning, do a day's plastering and then drive back. So I was an incredibly fit kid. And then my mum and stepdad split up and I then went to live with my dad at his house. At this point, I then went to work at a bike shop locally. And after a period of time, I decided to leave there. And I remember my dad saying, after a couple of weeks, you need to find a job within four weeks. We need to find somewhere else to live. And I went to work, uh, a, um, a building materials testing factory in Daventry. Um, and I hated it. I hated everything about it. It was clockinging in in the morning and doing the same thing day in day out bucket of gravel would come in you'd put it in the sieves you'd wash it through you'd shake it through you'd you'd wrap you'd you had to you the sieves were all different grades

and then you take the sieve out and you have to weigh it and what was in there and write out this chart and give it to somebody who'd do the calculations on it and i lasted about four weeks um and like that four weeks i walked into a local estate agent in daventry um guy called david rose who i'd known my dad through um through his building firm was good friends with a guy called stewart garner who owned a local estate agents and dave rose used to work for stewart so i'd met dave at these garden agents. And Dave Rose used to work for Stuart. So I'd met Dave at these garden parties and things that we used to go to every now and again. And I walked into Rose and Sargent, as it was, estate agents in Daventry. And I had my head shaved up to here.

I'd got purple hair. I was racing mountain bikes at the time. And I was dressed in this factory track suit. And I turned around to Dave and said, I'm Jimmy Golding Johnson. racing mountain bikes at the time and i was dressed in this factory track suit and i turned around to dave and said um i'm jimmy golden johnson and he was like oh i haven't seen you for years have you got any jobs and he went yeah i have actually can you um come back on saturday and i said yeah i can come back saturday so i went around the corner to a hairdressing salon that my mum used to own and spoke to Nikki and said,

I need to come in on Saturday morning. Can you colour my hair back to the same colour that it is and cut it? And she was like, okay. So I went back in that Saturday morning. She recoloured my hair. So no purple hair anymore. No purple hair, cut it. I went and bought a pair of trousers and a shirt.

I went in and sat down with Dave Rose and he said um okay we talked about various different things um and I remember one question he said to me he said if I asked your girlfriend um what you're like what would she say and I turned around and went well she'd she'd say I was all right and he was like that's not an answer that's not an answer and we talked for a little while and then he said look can you start on monday and i went yeah yeah i can so i started on the monday um rang the other company and said i wasn't going back now this was no you know i didn't let them down this was no this was nothing out of the ordinary for this company you know it was a fast turnover of staff in there anyway so i started at the estate agents and um bought a mobile phone couple of days later that was a Nokia brick back in those days it was 90 what would it have been

it would have been nine probably 98 at that point um and um I started as an estate agent and I didn't get on very well in Daventry. I was doing my best there, but then he moved me over to the rugby office. And within two days, I think I was in Daventry for about six weeks, maybe eight weeks, and didn't sell anything, didn't put anything on the market. And then I got the opportunity to go to the rugby office, which was the second one. And I went over there and within two days of being there, I'd sold a house. And that was the beginning of me then becoming an estate agent, which I know people will tell me, oh, estate agents.

And they do get, there are some really bad ones out there and there are some that work particularly hard. And I remember in particular one conversation I had with a couple who were looking at two houses and I actually convinced them to buy the cheap house because they wanted to do stuff to the house. And actually, if they'd have bought the more expensive one, they wouldn't have been able to afford to do any of the things that they wanted to it. Whereas they could buy this other one, having a baby and they could turn it into a home. So one of the things I always talk about with sales is that the first thing that you need to do if you're going to be any good at sales is find out what somebody needs forget about what they want it's

not about what they want because you'd have people that turn around and say we want four bedrooms we want an en suite we want a lounge we want a dining room and you turn around and say okay why why do you want four bedrooms and they say we've got two kids and we want a spare room or we want the study so if I can find you a three-bedroom house with a lounge dining room and a downstairs study, would that do? And they go, well, yeah. Okay. So again, it comes about matching those people up. But anyway. But that speaks to also this wider point, doesn't it? Which we're sort of touching on, which is, it's kind of like you said, it's not necessarily what they want, it's what they need.

Yeah. And I guess even what we think we want in life, it's probably not what we really, really want, actually. We think, as you say, we're conditioned by the people around us, right? Yeah. What did it feel like when you made that first sale? Because up until then, I'm getting the impression that you were told you were no good at school. You didn't fit in. Your mum told you you're a bit different from the rest of the kids. In a nice way. In a nice way, right? And you're

bullied, you're leaving school, you're not turning up for your exams, all this kind of stuff. And you're bullied, you're leaving school, you're not turning up for your exams, all this kind of stuff. So what does it feel like in your early 20s to actually complete a sale on a house? I don't know, maybe talk to us about that. I felt like I'd found where I was meant to be. I think looking back at it now, I'd found what I thought was my happy place at that point in time I really I think I had um that feeling there's there's two feelings that you get from that there's one that you've managed to get your vendor who is who you're working for the money that they want for their house which can do a multitude of different things in terms of either releasing money that they want for their house which can do a multitude of different things in terms of

either releasing money that they want or it can enable them to move up to something bigger so there's there's a there's a whole thing from that um and then also um you're also getting somebody to buy something that they want so for me in some respects moving because i'd worked in the bike shop for such a long period of time as well of selling bikes again that was about taking out three or four products within the bike shop somebody says right i've got between 400 and 800 pounds to spend on a bike or four and 600 pounds to spend on a bike and i'm thinking i'm going to buy either a kona specialized or a marin which were the the kind of the the brands at that point within the store. And you pick the three out and you compare the three and you say, well, let's go for a ride on them, see how you

feel. That's got this componentry, that's got that. And for many ways for me, selling houses became no different, they were just bigger numbers. Again, you're finding somebody saying, I want to spend between 60 and 70,000 pounds on a house. And I want to be within this area and I need three bedrooms. So you turn around and you say, well, there's, there you go. There's those of what I've got. This one's here. That one's there. The benefits of this one to you are X, the benefits of that one, and you're marrying them up. So for me, it was never, it was never necessarily about how much money that i could turn over it was it was about the service and the joy that i get from people achieving the things and getting the things that they want so that that's so powerful and whilst we're sitting here talking about it now that's

still what i'm doing when i go into a big company and do a speaking session and then those people then go and sign up for a triathlon or for a for a running event or for a cycling event and they go and achieve something that they didn't think that they could achieve that's why i do what i do there's so many things about that which come up for me one of them is that in the midst of you know everything that was going on back then so you know you're struggling a little bit you know kind of you know what am i going to do in my life you know everyone's told me i'm worthless sort of thing and you end up at a state you make this sale but you actually sell them a cheaper house yeah and i have this model of happiness which has got three components i call it core happiness one of them one of the legs of that core happiness tool

is what i call alignment so when the person who you really are and the person who you are actually being out there in the world are one and the same and it strikes me that even though back then you would probably say you well i've heard you say that you were materialistic. Even within that, there was little glimmers, weren't there, of who you actually are, which is I'm not taking the bigger sale, bigger commission, bigger everything. Actually, I'm going to do the right thing for these people. That's powerful to hear that. Yeah, and I openly admit now that I feel that i lied to my i lied to myself about who i was for so many years because of in that industry and in that way of life because i

was behaving the way that i thought i needed to behave to fit in with that industry and to fit in with society i have i can count on two hands the amount of people that I still have communications with from the old town that I used to live in and from the industry that I was involved in. That, because I'm not that person. I'm now being able to, I've now been able to be the person that I really am. Yeah. And cancer allowed me to change that. Because when I was laying in hospital, so many people didn't come and see me.

So many people that I thought were friends and that I thought were part of my life didn't come to see me. They didn't come to see how I was. And I realized at that point that everything that had gone on, I didn't realize at that point, I became to realize it over a period of time. I think anybody that sits here and says that,

or anybody that sits there and says that they had this flash moment where everything changed, it's like, you didn't. It manifested over a period of time. I think there's very very very few people in the world that have the bolt of lightning yeah you know i i can sit there and i say in speaking engagements now that if i told you that i sat in a hospital bed and came up with this grand master plan that within 14 years i was going to raise all this money and be standing on the start line of the world's toughest bike race and doing a podcast with you, complete lies. Because it was one step at a time.

Yeah, I mean, we're going to get to all of that because I was literally getting sort of tingles in me this morning at the thought of you coming to the studio as I was watching the videos. And I was thinking, man, I'm lucky I get to speak to people like James about their life because there is no doubt in my mind that people who've gone to the limits of life, have gone to extreme adversity, often

learn such powerful lessons about what is life about, what's truly important that I think for many of us, we can learn so much from stories like yours if we're prepared to listen. But before we get to the diagnosis, you mentioned that comment on YouTube from someone who you're at school with. There's a Red Bull video online. It's a beautiful sort of 14, 15-minute kind of motivational kind of summary of your life. It's really you know fun to watch and actually you don't know this but the reason i invited you onto the podcast was because of how you replied to that comment right because when you approached me and i i

checked you out and i thought this is an interesting. And I was just looking at the comments on that video and I saw what your old school colleague had said. I couldn't find it this morning actually, but as you said, it was something like, well, I don't recall that, you know, that's not quite true in terms of what happened. And it was so beautiful to me, the way you answered that. I thought this is a guy with a high degree of emotional intelligence to be able to in a YouTube comment spots beautifully articulate an answer which was just showcasing that actually everything we see in someone else we don't know what's going on behind that even when someone is apparently bullying what's going on on the other side of that bullying how does that person feel about themselves so yeah i don't think i shared that with you no you didn't no no you didn't um no i didn't know that at all no i didn't um and what what does it make you think of when when you hear that um the i'm kind of i feel slightly emotional i think that um

that you'd that that was one of not that that was one of the reasons, but also that you felt that way about the response because you don't write the response like I did to get a reaction from somebody else. I wrote that response because that was my response. And I responded to so many of the messages on that video because I felt that I needed to take the time to do that because let's be under no illusion, I'm where I am now in terms of what I'm doing

and how I'm doing it because of the support that I've had from so many people. And that comes from people writing comments on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, whatever that is. We had facebook and twitter at the time we first started this but you know um and and that's because of their input i class them as being part of one step at a time the road to ram and and they are as instrumental in me getting to where i am today as one of my financial partners or one of the

product partners that we have on board. Let's just explain what RAMP is because a lot of people won't know that term. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. All of this goodness comes in one

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or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. So RAM stands for Race Across America. So across america is known as the world's toughest bike race it starts in oceanside california and it finishes in maryland annapolis it's 3100 miles it's about 3096 92 just depends on certain road directions at the time so we say 3,100 miles and we'll be aiming to achieve that between eight and a half and nine days so i'll be riding for in the region of 22 hours a day and sleeping for no more than two hours a day for eight to nine days for eight to nine days that's the plan and I would like very much to be the first British rider to win Race Across America.

No Brits ever won it before. And the caveat that I put with that all the time is that that's not about, that's not me being cocky saying that I am going to win Race Across America. That's not me being arrogant saying that I'm better than any of the other riders there. That's about the mindset that I'm putting into myself and that I'm putting into my crew. And I'm hoping that all of my supporters and followers will also pick up on and that my sponsors will pick up on because I believe that if I believe it, my crew believes it, my sponsors believe it, then we're all working towards that common goal of winning Race Across America.

And if we're all pushing in that same direction, I'm going to sleep Race Across America, I'm going to eat Race Across America, I'm going to train Race Across America. And if we get there and we don't win Race Across America, somebody there was better than me. But why shouldn't I have that mindset that i can be the best at what i want to do why shouldn't i believe that i can achieve yeah believe to achieve there

it is why shouldn't i believe that i can achieve the things that i put my mind to which takes me back to the walking comment yeah we were born to achieve great things we've already achieved great things there's no reason why we can't continue to achieve great things. We've already achieved great things. There's no reason why we can't continue to achieve great things. And actually, if you want to be the MD of your business, or you want to be the best at what you do, tell those people around you that that's what you want to do. But we don't tell those people around us for the fear of what they might think about what we want to do. So for example, an analogy that I use sometimes is the guy that's sitting in the office that started 12 months ago that wants to become MD of the company over a long period of time. But there's three people in the office who have been there for six or seven years.

And he doesn't want to tell anybody that he wants to become MD because he doesn't want to upset the three other people that have been there six or seven years because they're more in line for the job than he is. The truth of it is, those three people don't want to be MD. And he tells them that he wants to be MD. And they go, do you know what? You'd make a really good MD in the future. I'll help you.

You can learn from me. I'll support you. But we don't tell them because we're afraid of what they're going to think. Yeah. I just want to respond to something you just said, which reminded me of my own life when I publicly stated a few years ago that my mission is to help improve the lives of 100 million people over the course of my career.

And I was really nervous before I said it I've had for months I thought people gonna think I'm cocky um you know is that an arrogant thing to say it was really trying to understand where does this come from all that kind of stuff and the truth is I thought well it's not cocky I don't feel like you know I I genuinely I've seen the power of the media through being on telly or when you can simplify complex messaging and inspire people i've seen the impacts it can have very quickly but what you said that it just reminded me of the fear i had because what will people think and it's really interesting now that actually i think if anything i don't think i've ever had a negative comment about it that i and i see a lot of comments yeah it's more been inspiring for people uh it's in many ways it's energized people and you know someone asked me the other day how are you gonna um

measure if you've if you've achieved that and I've come to the conclusion and the realization I should say over the past few months past few years actually it doesn't matter yeah like for me actually doesn't matter it's just as you say it's like putting the intention out there that this is what I'm trying to get to yeah and if I don't and I make it 92 million yeah right well that's still pretty good and if it's only one person yeah who's changed their life on the back of something that they may have heard on a podcast or writing one of my books it's like well that's still impact that's still change and so it started off being something I was afraid of it's now turned into something actually that's really quite liberating

for me because I actually for me it's not about measuring that number it helps me make decisions in my life yeah do you know what I mean so it's that relationship to it which i think is it's really important but that's that's also so um as we were just saying before we started was that one of the things that i'm trying to also talk about at the moment is winning race across america is my goal that's what i want to win race across america i've been i've i've been very open about that um but i don't want that to be the defying point of my journey because if you take if you take winning race across america out of the equation and even if you take cancer out of the equation and you look at what i've done since or what we've done i use the terminology we because there's a as i've said before it's a whole team it's those people that are it gets commented quite a lot that i don't talk about me i say that i just ride the

bike but the point here is that it take cancer out of the equation and you take the the winning race across america that bit in the middle of having started cycling to raising a hundred thousand pounds to being hit by a truck to then then raising more money, to now having raised over 3 million and breaking a world record. That in itself is something. And then looking at that and saying, well, actually, you've got your trustee of a charity down in South Africa helping kids in deprived areas with education and sport, and you're looking to bring that program to the UK

and work with the British Army cadets around that. And all of this other stuff gets diluted by the fact that you had cancer and you're going to win Race Across America. Yeah. Because that stuff's still there. Like, whether you win or not, all that other stuff, that real stuff,

the change you stroke you and your team, you and your tribe have created, it still exists whether you do that or not which is but so many people would reflect on the you didn't win race or you came second but i got to race got less people more people have summited everest this year than have ever completed race across america that this this is massive right because and this is where i think your cancer diagnosis really comes in for me which is because i was wondering before you came i thought i've seen you publicly say in your ted

so i'm going to win race across america right and i was thinking man to go and say that publicly world's toughest cycling race i was interested what is his relationship to winning what happens if he doesn't win i think it's become more peaceful over the years i think um i've become since 2016 i've i think 20 2016 was was probably quite a big turning point and i think it's progressively got not saying that 2016 was the end of being stressed and aggressive or towards the challenges and the things that I was doing. I think it was where I started to find more peace in certain things. And race across America, winning race across America will be a defining moment in what I've achieved on the bike but it's not a defining moment of who I am that's what I mean about racecross america and cancer it's and and that's part of my I suppose

in some respects for want of better wording that's a slight problem with in my head of where I'm at at the moment that I don't want cancer to be a defining factor of of who I am so in um in February I posted a picture of me in hospital on the 24th of February. And I put a post on LinkedIn and Instagram and everywhere else and said, this is the last time that I will publicly share this anniversary. That was the day that I was rushed into emergency surgery. That was the day that I met Phil Barragranath. I don't remember meeting him because I was out of it at the time.'s my surgeon so you posted earlier this year yeah on the anniversary of what the very first time no of the emergency operation

i was diagnosed in the november and on the 24th of february i was rushed into emergency surgery so that was how many years ago at that time uh that would have been 2009 okay so what we 2020 so about 13 years ago or so so you posted a photo saying this is the last time you'll see something like this well this will be the last time i publicly i'm not saying i won't use the photo again but this is the last time that i will publicly remember this anniversary why because it's not about that my story isn't my life isn't about that one defying day of the 24th of february where doctors rushed me into emergency surgery to't my life isn't about that one defying day of the 24th of February where doctors rushed me into emergency surgery to save my life it's not about that that's a key

point in my life that's one day in my life where Phil Baragranath went above and beyond I love the guy implicitly I speak to him on the 24th of February every year no matter where I am no matter where he is we have a phone call, whether that's a five-minute phone call or a 20-minute phone call. That guy, when he openly admitted that he didn't think there was any way that I was going to make it, but he had to do what he could do. But me sharing that photo on that particular day, that's just an anniversary.

And I've got a lot of anniversaries throughout the year now. And they come and they go, and I don't even remember them. They come and they go, and I've got a lot of anniversaries throughout the year now and they come and they go and I don't even remember them. They come and they go and I go, something clicks sometimes where I don't feel great on a certain day and then a couple of days later I go, I know why I didn't feel very good yesterday. And Louise will be like, why? And I go, it was 15th of April,

which was the day I walked out of hospital. Or it was the 11th of November, which was the day that I out of hospital or it was the um the 11th of november which was the day that i was admitted to hospital first time around that that publicly announcing that photo gets a reaction every every year and it's not about the reaction that you get from that photo or from that anniversary it's about actually that was the beginning but what about the rest of this that's gone on man i'm getting shivers because um i really am i can honestly i can feel it everywhere um you're changing the story you're changing the narrative constantly you're not getting stuck as powerful as that story is to me at least on the outside having never met you before having what we just had a few

dms on instagram that is it until today yeah like i just see a real fluidity there and how you how you approach life you know that story helped you move beyond it and maybe gave you some drive or motivation, you get to another point. But then you've got that fluidity of thought to be that, I'm not going to stick to that story for the rest of my life. I'm still not going to be, you know, 90 years old and still being defined by that. No, no, that story, maybe it worked for a few years and now time to shed it and move on. It's like that, the only constant in life has changed, right? And I think many people, and I put myself in this in the past for sure, you cling to identities, you cling to stories because you think that's who you are. It makes everything about you. Does that ring true

to you? I think it does ring true, but I think there's other factors in that as well that I don't want my kids. Freddie, in some respects, Freddie has been too submersed in the fact that daddy's had cancer twice and he shouldn't be here because he was told we'd never be able to have children. He's openly said that to people. I remember Louis saying to me once that Freddie introduced himself as Freddie. My dad's had cancer twice and I should never have been here. You know, you kind of go, that's not right.

You know, that's not right. You're here and that's one of the best things that ever happened to me. And you need to come away from that. I don't, as I've already said throughout this, I don't want people to, being my point of view, and this may differ, but my point of view of being a cancer survivor is that you don't want to always go on about cancer, but you want people to remember because what you've been through is going to have an impact on the rest of your life in some way, shape, or form. There will always be that worry of, I don't feel very good today. I remember that pain. Is it? And that goes on for a certain period of time. There's a big lost some way shape or form there will always be that worry of i don't feel very good today i remember

that pain is it and that goes on for a certain period of time there's a big lost feeling when you come out of cancer treatment i did a lot of work with macmillan originally about it um but it does need to change i we've moved over to portugal um there's things that there's other things that i want to achieve in my life with the coffee shop that we've got, with running bike tours, with doing stuff with Freddie, with doing stuff with Lila, to doing stuff with Louise. And Race Across America and some of the other stuff has consumed quite a lot. I mean, Louise and I joke about it that my bike came on our honeymoon

because the bike for me is so much more than the big races and ticking boxes. What is it? It's my medication. It's my freedom. It's my putting my head in a certain place. I could go out for a half an hour bike ride in the morning on a bad day and feel great for the rest of the day. It's my happy place.

We've all got a happy place. We just have to find what that happy place is. Cycling was my recovery. I openly admit that I got to where I am now by accident. I didn't plan, already said it, I didn't plan to be standing on the start line of Race Across America. When I sat in my lounge back in 2009 with a massive hangover from going back to normal, as we call it, after treatment and thinking this isn't right.

This really isn't right. I can't go back. I don't want to go back to where I was before because that's doing a disservice to Phil Barragranath, to Charlotte West, who was the nurse that looked after me on the high dependency ward, to Phil Baragranath giving up his family holiday to make sure he was still in the hospital to be able to make sure I still got the care that I needed, to Charlotte West working double shifts to be there. To me, going back to normal was like, no, I can't do it. So what do I do?

I'm ready to go back to work, but I don't want to go back to work. But I want to go back to work, but I can't go back to work because i do i'm ready to go back to work but i don't want to go back to work but i want to go back to work but i can't go back to work because i'm not really ready to go back to work that whole the best way of describing it is you've got the flu or a cold and three days afterwards you feel great and then you get up and walk to the end of the house and you go no i'm not ready yet i'm not better yet and that was the same situation i was going through there so i picked a bike up and i rode five miles around the local reservoir and it destroyed me but three months later i was riding from there to my mum's house which was 10 miles away and i'm saying i need to do something to give back to those people and i'm looking for something and i came up with this idea of along with somebody else this idea of cycling across america and raising a hundred thousand pounds as a doctor one of the things there that jumps out on me is

in 2009 you wake up with a stinking hangover and you know a few months prior to that maybe a year prior to that you know the surgeon operating on you didn't think you were going to make it through the operation i think i've read you had a we're given a five percent chance of survival yeah afterwards you go and get a smash and you you have this hangover and you suddenly realize wait this is this is not right how come you got that realization right in that moment because many people many patients i've seen i've been people in the family who get the diagnosis, they've had the heart attack, right? Or people get the type 2 diabetes diagnosis and they hear what the doctor says and what the nurse is going to tell them about them losing their leg or stuff, but they still then go and consume all

the high sugar, high calorie foods, don't get up and move, all those kinds of things. So I'm fascinated. Why did you get that realisation? And why do many people not get that realisation? Is it because you were literally at the end? Yeah. I mean, there's been articles where I've talked about the fact I laid in hospital and I cried and I cried with my mum and I cried with my best mate Ross and I just said I just I just want to die I don't I can't I'm done this just let me go and this was this was as I was actually getting better but I I couldn't sit up in bed I couldn't even lift my own head off the pillow so I think there potentially is an element that I had been so far in that other direction um I think there's also an element that going out been so far in that other direction. I think there's also an element that going out and getting smashed all of a sudden was surrounded by all of these people again, who were so pleased I was better and so pleased I was out,

but didn't come to see me whilst I was in hospital. So you begin to realize that there's, there's not that genuine. It's not as, it's, it's not as genuine. And I think I'd always, I think i'd also realized yeah i think i'd also realized that um one of the things i did whilst i was in hospital and i've still got it somewhere at home is i had a diary and i wrote certain things that

i wanted to do in it when i got better riding a bike wasn't one of them but i wrote a list of certain things that i wanted to do when I got better um so I think there was a I think there was an accumulation of a number of different things I think also I was I was actually I was ill for a long period of time I was I was in hospital yes I did certain days at home and short periods of time at home but essentially I was in hospital from the beginning of November to the end of April and some of that was and that was on so many different different wards and different places and intensive care to high dependency to physio unit to all these different places so i think there was i think there was a number of factors in number of factors at play in that

and i think that in some respects if you've and i'm i'm speaking from my point of view of how i'm thinking now if you've got somebody who potentially has a heart attack and puts the stent in and that's done relatively quickly yeah they don't have the time to actually reflect on the fact that they're kind of like well that was it was yeah i had a stent in it was done within a couple of weeks and i'm all right now. They don't have the time to reflect on the fact that the mortgage company is chasing you because you're about to lose everything. They don't, you've got people coming around to you and saying, James, do you, do you have a will at 28 years old? Yeah. You don't, there isn't that there. They're all things that you might

not think about, but they're still things that you might not think about but they're still in your subconscious yeah they're still there yeah i think i think you're probably right i mean of course there's there's a whole host of different factors and um i i just to be really clear i'm not saying that with judgment on anyone like i totally get change is hard for many people and it's just fascinating to me it just just, you know, just lit up in my ears when you said that. So why? What happened there? Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first National UK Theatre Tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can

break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life. And I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour and I can't

wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal In it you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions

I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to

drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. I do think most people, in my experience from what I've seen what you what you sometimes find mostly from people that I've spoken to if they go through something that I did they they either go back to to normal and then explode let's call it a later date or they explode straight away yeah there is there is that okay i'm gonna bury my head carry on as normal all of a sudden i'm starting to get the heart flutters again and i don't feel very good okay something's got to change yeah but and there is the also there is the i'm okay now i'm going to rebel against this illness and i'm going to prove it that I'm okay and everything. So I do think that most people, a lot of people will go through quite a significant change at some point, but it's where that is.

And then it's like me not being ready to get the help that I needed. I was angry. And this is going back to your earlier question. After I had cancer, I was angry. I was angry with cancer. I was angry I was angry with cancer I was angry with with everything so I didn't necessarily go about the events and the the things that that I could have done in the way in a in a structured way in terms of fundraising and the speaking engagements and everything else it manifested itself in a different manner but I was angry with cancer I hated it but 2016 was the change in that when I started to get the help that i should have got and i surrounded myself with the team that i've got now who they're yeah my boys i love them well let's go back to the your 20s right you're an estate agent yeah you're making sales um you

think you're sort of getting somewhere with your life you're making a bit of money uh i believe you had a nice car back then you know and uh from you i've heard you say you were pretty materialistic back then driven by money then you have this chronic backache yeah right let's pick up from there um tell us what happened um in whatever way yeah so i think it. So the market had crashed in 2007 and I, at that point, owned my own business, which was called Round the Houses. We were working mainly with developers. We got to the point all of a sudden

where we sold everything that was built and we had a lot of property that we were selling off plan. And we decided that, or i decided that actually because we were hemorrhaging money week on week month on month because nobody was actually buying anything nothing was built we didn't know what was going to happen so we closed the business down and i actually went back into plastering which is what i'd learned to do when i was 14 yeah some guys i knew who owned a building company well i can we can't find a plasterer anywhere. And I was like, I'll do it. So I went back into plastering. I went and bought some kit and got back into it and then got offered more work and more work and more work. So I was

back on the tool, so to speak. I had a couple of guys working for me. I bought a new van and we were getting work, not coming at us from all directions, but we were a couple of weeks busy. And then I started to get this back pain and it would be worse at night than it was during the day. And I kind of didn't, I didn't really think too much of it initially because I thought it was just because I'd gone from sitting behind a desk every day to being quite, not lax-y-daisy. I mean, I was always in the gym. I was, you know, I was fit. But going from being fit to being plaster fit is another level. You're doing, basically, plastering is another version of step aerobics on a daily basis, all day.

That's the best way I can, you know you a bag of plaster is 25 kilos and you're probably going to get through between four and six bags a day at least um and you're up and down on platforms you're up and down on steps and ladders and you're you're you're running around it's quite fast paced so i just assumed that i was standing funny i'd been doing some ceilings and was yeah standing a bit on the skew whiff. And it slowly got worse. And it got to the point of where I would probably have a can of Red Bull and a couple of painkillers in the morning. And then I'd have a couple more painkillers.

And then in the evenings, it would be really bad. I'd be fetal position in bed at night, trying to stretch it out, to then speaking to my chiropractor, who was a friend of mine, and saying to him how I felt. And he said, well and come and see me and i went to see him and he he said to me look i need to see you for the next four weeks obviously there's little bits that we're cutting out of here but he said you need to come and see me for the next four weeks now you've been a nightmare with your appointments james and i'm like well when i'm plastering if the wall's not dry the wall's not dry so like if I've got a three o'clock

appointment and that's still wet I can't get here so anyway we he said look I'll do you've been a nightmare appointments you pay for this appointment I'll pay for the next one you pay for the next appointment and I'll pay for the next one but if you miss one appointment don't come back don't want to see you again I was like okay all right fair Jumps on the couch, saw him and he was like, mate, you're in the best shape I've ever seen you in. Look, go away, come back next week. Come back next week. How are you feeling?

Worse, like really bad. He was like, okay, I want you to go and see your doctor now. I was like, now? He was like, I want you to go and see the doctor now. Tell him to check your pancreas your digestive tract and something else something's not right you're in the best shape i've ever seen you in something's not right went to the doctor sat down with the doctor and said my chiropractor suggested i come to see you he suggested that we look at my pancreas my digestive tract and i can't i can never remember

the third and the doctor looked at me and went, there's nothing wrong with you, you're fitting well. Do you think that's because it was a chiropractor saying it? Yeah. And he said, you're fitting well. There's nothing wrong with you. You're fitting well. Take some painkillers. You've changed jobs.

It's muscle pain. Checked you over, you're okay. Go back to the chiropractor the next week. And he says, right, I want you to go back to your doctors tomorrow. I'm like, okay. He says, I'm going to write to your doctor and I'm going to send a recorded delivery. And I want you to ring in here tomorrow and we'll confirm that it's been signed for and that he's got it.

And then we want you to ring up and go back in again. I said, okay, fine. Next day, ring him. Yes, it's been signed for. Ring the doctors. Can I make an appointment to see him? Yes, you can. Go and see the doctor and say, Stefan Vossen, my chiropractor has asked me to come back.

He's written to you. I've not had a letter. I said, well, it's been sent, recorded delivery. He's got it. Well, I've not had anything. And I said, look, I'm still in a lot of pain, worse than I was last week when I came. Okay, well, if the painkillers that I gave you aren't working, then we should give you something that's stronger and i'm looking i'm looking at this stronger painkiller and i can't remember what they what they were but they were um they were like kind of tamazapan-esque and i'm like i'm not going down that route so i i went took my prescription and went and then a week or so later um i was in the shower and i found a lump next to one of the generals as I say in a school speak school talk which gets every boy in the room absolutely laughing his head off and um I went back to the doctors but

I went to see a different doctor um and and he was like look let's get you down to the hospital for some bloods um and then we'll refer you to a specialist over in Coventry and we'll see what we can do so okay fine that afternoon I got a phone call from his secretary to say we want to book an appointment with you in Coventry. I said, okay. So no, in rugby. The appointment was going to be in rugby. And I said, fine, perfect.

When will it be? And she said, it'll be eight weeks time. I said, eight weeks? Can we not? Well, he's got another appointment in rugby in four weeks time, but he's fully booked. So it'll have to be in eight weeks when his next appointment's on. I said, well, can I not just go and see him in Coventry?

It's like 20 minutes up the road. There's no – for me to take time out to go to rugby hospital or to drive one junction down the motorway is irrelevant. So can I go – well, no, because you've been referred to rugby. So I can't go and see him in Coventry because, no, you need to go back to the you've been referred to rugby so i can't go and see him in coventry because i know you need to go back to the doctor and get them to refer you to coventry so i told my mum about this i know this man that's honestly what have you made so i told my mum about it um excuse the terminology but but batshit crazy doesn't come close to to where my

mum went when i told her this so she then gets on the phone and explains to this secretary of what pain I'm in, to which her response is, if he's that bad, why don't you take him to A&E? And I think two days after that, or three days after that, I rang mum at about eight o'clock and I felt far, far worse at that point than I had any other night.

So you're in excruciating pain. Yeah, to the point of rolling up in a ball on the sofa because that was the only way I felt comfortable. And I imagine your tolerance to pain is possibly quite high. Stefan, who was my chiropractor at the time, and Aurelie, who was my massage therapist moving post-cancer, have always said the problem is that I don't feel pain. Yeah.

So anyway, this secretary turns around to my mum and says, well, if he's that bad, why don't you take him to A&E? So two days later, I ring mum and I'm like, this is a lot worse sooner than ever before. And she's like, do you want to go to A&E? I said, no, let me just take some paracetamol and see how I feel in half an hour. I rang her back in 20 minutes and said, come and get me. I want to go to A&E. So she picked me up and drove me over to Coventry and Warwick Hospital. And I remember walking in the door to A&E and it was rammed. It was absolutely heaving. But there was one chair in the corner of the room and mum said, you go and sit down. And I walked over to this chair and sat down now I I still don't remember whether there was a moment of me sitting down and falling asleep or whatever but it felt like that the moment that I sat down and looked up there was a nurse there with a wheelchair to take me through to triage whether that was mum turning around and saying I've got James Gold in here and they'd gone on to my name my file whatever

it was and there was a big flashing light saying, we've got his blood, he's not good or whatever that was. They took me through to triage. They gave me some painkillers, which were amazing. And that was the best night's sleep I think I'd probably had in about four months. The next morning they moved me um onto um onto a ward i was just trying to remember the number of the ward but they moved me on i think it was ward 18 um that they moved me onto and they then put me instantly on um oramorph and a selection of painkillers to be able to manage the pain it was about pain management to start with whilst we worked out what was going on they then turned around and said we're going to do an ultrasound tomorrow morning and if it's testicular cancer then we'll have you in for an operation tomorrow afternoon um and we'll work

out where we go from there i went down the next morning for um for the ultrasound so this was the 13th of november i went down for the ultrasound um and came back up about an hour or so later they came over and said we think you should ring your mum and get her to come in you're going to see the doctor this afternoon so we came in mum came in and i remember i don't remember his name but this guy was huge um he was a german doctor and he took me and mum up the up the ward over the corridor and into his office. And he said, it's not testicular cancer, but I found an abnormal mass wedged between your spine, kidney and bowel. And I think it's cancer.

And they then took us from that room across the corridor into another room where there was Andy Stockdale who was um who was sat there who was my oncologist there was his trainee and there were two people from Macmillan and we sat down and they said this is we found this abnormal mass which is 11 half centimeters and I got up and walked off and mum came back to my bed and she said you need to listen to them you need to listen to what they're saying I'm like like, mum, they're going to do what they do. I can't, I've got no input on what they need to do being done. It's up to them. And whether that was just, whether that was the 300 milligrams of morphine

plus Orimorph that I was on at that point in time, there's a picture somewhere of actually the point we got to, and there's a picture which my spade-like hands are literally full of tablets that I was on on a daily basis. And Andy always has said that I was a bit resistant, but we then did a keyhole biopsy, and they turned around and said, it's a primary repitoneal seminoma and it's wedged between your spine kidney and bowel but because of where it's wedged we're not able to do surgery

on it it's too risky so we want to go down the route of doing some chemotherapy and it's going to be pretty aggressive chemotherapy so then we can see what's going on and then work out a plan of action after that i went home um for probably about two weeks and then went back into hospital um where i then started my first lot of chemo and the nurses actually admitted to my mum i'm not sure if it's on the first lot or the second lot but the first lot kicked me down the ballpark. I shaved my head. I was like, cancer's not taking my hair. I'm doing this before it can. And I started my first lot of chemo and things weren't too bad, but then over the course of the week.

So the idea was that I'd have a full week of chemotherapy. I'd then have three weeks off and then I'd have a full week of chemo, another three weeks off, maybe i'd have a full week of chemo another three weeks off maybe a booster each week in between but then i'd have another three weeks off and then the final lot of chemo um and i did the first lot i then went neutropenic and was put into isolation over christmas and wasn't allowed to see any family or or anybody um so you know neutrophils being the kind of important white blood cell that helps to fight infections yeah neutropenia i got mouth ulcers and thrush all down my throat and all

through the back of my mouth so i was struggling to even eat anything at which point they then um decided that they wanted to put a feed tube direct into my bowel to be able to to feed me because it was the only way that I was going to sustain any sort of weight. I hated the idea of having that in. But actually over time, they then refused to give me my third and final lot of chemo because there was swelling on my ankles. So I think I had something like about four blood transfusions over the period of time uh four well four four big lots of blood over the period of time from christmas to towards the end of january and then what actually happened was the feed tube that they'd put direct in my bowel actually went through the back of my bowel so what was happening

was all the food that was being pumped into me was actually just sitting in my cavity all the food that i was eating was sitting in my cavity so i'd blown up i just enlarged but they couldn't work out why um they did various i'm not getting nutrition at the same time i guess yeah because it's it's just not going anywhere it's all the food i'm eating is just rotting in my cavity rather than actually going through my system um i remember um going to burger going i remember going seeing the nutritionist with my mum and i remember her telling me that i just needed to keep consuming as many calories as i could so i was big enough and strong enough and i'm like well i'm i'm huge anyway and she was saying no you need to eat so i had a burger king on the way home we ordered a pizza that night next thing i

remember is waking up in intensive care. But I had no idea where I was. I had no idea how I got there. All I could see was as far as my eyes would move. And I knew that there was somebody stood at the end of my bed. I couldn't talk. I woke up in intensive care with 35 stitches in my stomach. They'd brought my bowel out onto the surface.

I'd got two tubes in my right-hand side. I'd got two tubes in my left-hand side and one in my stomach. They'd brought my bowel out onto the surface. I'd got two tubes in my right-hand side. I'd got two tubes in my left-hand side and one in my back. I'd got a central line in my chest. I'd got two cannulas in each arm. I'd got a tracheotomy in my throat. I'd got a tube up my nose as well. And then I'd got a urethra as well. And I couldn't move.

Like a catheter in as well. Yeah. And I didn't know where i was i didn't know how i got i thought i'd had a car crash i had no memory of anything that had gone on before i had no memory of having of having cancer were you scared yeah yeah but i was confused i didn't know every there was an element of looking back at it now and being able to as I've said a number of times there was every when I woke up everybody looked fuzzy you know like Miss Piggy it's got the fuzzy look to her and that's what everybody looked like their skin looked as if it was fuzzy it looked like there were stars falling from the ceiling when I first woke up and I didn't know I didn't know

where I was I thought the guy over the other side had got loads of trophies next to his bed but I wasn't sleeping so they moved me out of intensive care as quick as they could um and put me then onto um not a intensive care ward but a high dependency ward so there was one nurse per two beds rather than just one per bed yeah that was where I met Charlotte West that was where when I when I came out of when I was brought I was in a coma for two weeks in intensive care. And when they brought me out of that, out of the, it was an induced coma. When I came out of that, that was when I met Phil.

But it wasn't the first time I'd met him. And that was the beginning of where our relation, he didn't want me to come off intensive care yet, but he also appreciated that there was no routine in my life at that point. Sounds weird to say but um the the obviously you're more than aware but intensive care is one person looking after you 24 hours a day there's no daylight very rarely is there any any source of external daylight there's no food cart there's no paper man coming around at the same time every day

and um by moving me out of there and moving me onto the high dependency ward, that was the second best night's sleep I'd ever had. Because the first one was when I went into hospital and got put on painkillers. And then I started to develop the relationship with nighttimes again, curtains opening, lights coming on. There was some routine, so I knew when I was going to sleep certain things on telly became the routine for me Jeremy Kyle was a big thing because it was just easy to watch and it just got rid of time homes under the hammer was a second

thing it just got rid of time and I focused on I focused myself on on small goals I couldn't even lift my own head off the pillow I couldn't I could barely wiggle my. I couldn't even lift my own head off the pillow. I could barely wiggle my fingers. I couldn't move my legs or my toes. I could barely lift my head off the pillow. There's a couple of pictures around of both that intensive care and that period of time. But I could, as I said, I could wiggle my fingers,

but I concentrated my efforts on the small goals, which became things like, tomorrow we're going to take your stitches out. Okay, or staples. They're horrid. They really are horrid. But we're going to take your staples out. Okay, well, let's focus on the staples coming out.

Again, this goes back to that point of what I was saying earlier of, I would love to sit here and say there was this grand master plan of staples and tubes and da-da-da, and then we're going to do da da and then we're going to do this and then we're going to do that there wasn't it became my main objective at that point in time was being able to go to the toilet on my own that was my biggest goal 28 years old I want to go to the toilet on my own that's it it's there and I can't even get to it I can't physically get myself to the edge of this bed let alone stand up and walk across the

room and go to the toilet on my own and that's the one thing i want to be able to do and that's why you say being able to walk is yeah the most incredible thing that we've all done at some point in our life yeah i couldn't lift my own head off the pillow i couldn't wiggle my fingers but when i learned to wiggle my fingers i was able to move the button on the bed that would then sit me up straight and then what i'd do is i'd let the bed go down and see how long i could set up sit up for and then i'd fall backward i'm chuckling but i'd crash backwards the nurses would all run in and go are you okay and i'll be like yeah i'm fine and they're like you're doing the bed thing again and i'm like yeah and they're like, you're doing the bed thing again. And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, stop it. Cause I was getting told off for doing this. Well, how were you feeling at the time? Were you, you know, I was trying to get a sense of you,

you mentioned there was this anger, anger at cancer, right? Were you feeling angry at that time? I don't think I was angry at that time. I hadn't had a chance to become angry at that point. It was survival, I guess. It was tomorrow tomorrow I'm going to get those tubes removed. It was, at nine o'clock today, I'm going to turn, at nine o'clock today, I'm going to turn Jeremy Carl on. At 11 o'clock, it's going to finish. I'm then going to watch Homes Under the Hammer. They're then going to bring my food round.

They're then going to bring my medication round. Jeremy Carl's then on again in the afternoon. And then my mum's going to turn up to see me or with some more food at a later date when I'm able to eat. Now it's tea time. Now it's visiting time. Now I'm going to sleep. And tomorrow we're going to do exactly the same thing again. It was a routine of ticking boxes day in, day out to be able to slowly get better.

Those staples coming out to, okay, today we're going to take out your drain in in in the back today we're going to take out the other drain that you've got um today we're going to stop using your central line to actually we're now going to make you down for a procedure to take your stent out that you that i had in my kidneys at the time to to the to actually now being able to with two nurses instead of three nurses be able to move to the side of the bed to sit there to then eventually get into the point of I remember the first time that I wiggled my toes and the first time I moved my one leg in the middle of the night and the euphoria I had from moving that one leg to standing up for 10 seconds

before blacking out because I hadn't stood up for months to then standing up for a little bit longer the next day to again at 28 years old using a zimmer frame and the physio god I still hate her but I love her because she stood there one day and she got hold of my zimmer frame and she said you've got two choices. One of them is the floor and one of them is follow me. And she just snatched out my hands and walked. I had a choice and that was to follow her. So I followed her. She then put me back in my bed and said, we'll do that again tomorrow. I won't repeat the language that I used, but to then even to the point of me pulling my feed tube out and then saying um we need to put

your feed tube back in because there's no way that you can physically eat enough food on a daily basis to put weight on you have to have your feed tube in otherwise you're just going to sustain the weight that you're at to me going bring it on i was eating 6 000 calories a day what weight were you at six stone six stone yeah and you were what you're 14 so i've got 14 stone 14 under half your regular weights um and i've seen the images yeah that have been shared before um you know you mentioned earlier in the conversation james that there were times in your life where you felt like giving up. Was that around this time? No, it was this time.

It was there? Yeah. Because I'm hearing you sort of thinking, okay, great, James is making small goals, he's making achievements, so I'm going to do this. But what were some of those dark times there? Yeah, there were. I i mean one of the things that i don't often get to talk about and and you will understand this far more not being disrespectful

to anybody listening to this but you will understand this far more than anybody else so when they bought so what they'd basically done was the tube had gone through the back of my it being put into my bowel to be able to feed me and it'd gone through the back of my bowel so when they opened me up they took something in the region of nine liters of fluid out of my abdomen when they opened me up and what phil did was um he moved my stomach muscle stomach muscles to one side and he brought my he put a cut in the side of me here and he brought my bowel down he brought the loop out of my of my bowel out onto the surface which is where the hole had gone through because he said there was no point putting you back together because it would have just fallen apart again inside of you there was there was nothing

in you to help you recover or help you repair so they'd brought it onto the surface and put this little bar underneath it so i'd got this curl with a bag over the top of it and then what actually happened was um that then turned itself inside out so i almost had this naturally developed stoma come up appear on my stomach which they then decided to use that as a feed tube so now um or certainly this was at the time the stoma bags were just bags and then all of a sudden they started to come with a with a tube inlet in them and that was actually invented by my nutritionists wow and that was invented for me because there was no way that they could get food into me because i wouldn't have this tube so that was one of the things that you know i contributed

in a way and and that was um so this so it turned itself inside out and i remember things like um phil saying we need to we need to stitch this up but there's no there's no point giving you an anesthetic because it's not going to work so there were whilst there was whilst there was this goal of stepping forward and stepping forward there was always setbacks and um i should have shared it with you but there was a letter that phil barrow-grann has sent me that um that actually says in there that um i had enormous setbacks but never seemed to really get disheartened by it but i did get disheartened by it i did cry about it i did just not want to carry on and um so it wasn't plain sailing it wasn't three steps forward and two back is still forward people go well that's

obvious here it is but three steps forward and two back you're still moving forward and and like i said yesterday to somebody you never want to be on a direct directory whilst in our heads we would like to always be moving forward on a direct directory to actually move forward and then step back gives you a chance to actually reflect on where you're going and make sure that you're making the right decisions in the in where you're moving and all. And all of this happening was something that I reflected on far, far later on. And that's where, for me, one step at a time comes from. That's my slogan, one step at a time. Because one step at a time, we can achieve anything that we want to. And I say to people, take cancer out of the situation and that process, apart from the

learning to walk bit, the only thing that makes me different to anybody else is that I had to learn to walk twice in my life side of that we're all the same the difference is that I can remember that learning to walk process you don't remember it because you did it between nine months and 12 months old but if you did remember it you'd look at things a whole lot differently. My goal was to go to the bathroom on my own. My goal was then to walk to the nurse's counter. My goal was then to walk off the ward before I got in a wheelchair and got taken to my car to go home.

And then my recovery started. It's quite something and um one of the things that that literally stopped me in my tracks when i was watching your ted talk was the message that when you're a kid you you know you've said it what 28 was that you sort of you'll learn to walk with a zimmer frame when it? You sort of, you're learning to walk with a Zimmer frame. When you're a baby or toddler, you're learning to walk with a kind of like a plastic toy with a handle that you're holding onto. Same thing.

Same principle. Same principle. And I was like, yeah, I never really thought about it like that. That is, I mean, do you remember? I mean, obviously within those kind of micro wins, I mean, I don't know, going to the toilet, for example, there's something that many of us take for granted.

We just don't think about it. We just, when we need to go, we go. What was it like? Can you remember the first time after your diagnosis, after being in intensive care, after that struggle? Can you remember the first time you went by yourself and no one had to come in with you? Yeah, because I remember what was looking back at me in the mirror.

It was me, but it wasn't me. What do you mean by that? I was probably seven stone by that point. I'd got a bag on my stomach. I'd got scars all over me. And you hadn't seen yourself in the mirror until that point? No.

Even in your room? No, I was on a ward. There was no mirrors in there. I hadn't seen myself in that way since I came out of intensive care. I hadn't seen myself going into, even going into intensive care, coming out of intensive care is irrelevant.

I hadn't seen myself. The first time I went to the bathroom on my own was the first time that i saw myself in the mirror i mean what was that like because on on i guess on one hand you've got the euphoria of man i got it and man i couldn't i couldn't move my toes a few weeks ago a few months ago whatever like i'm i've now got here was it almost every nurse telling you that you look better than when they first saw you come into come into intensive care or into emergency surgery but you have no how bad did i look and so you've got the euphoria on one level and then you look at yourself in the mirror what went through your mind then i think i i i remember

crying at that point but i'm i don't really have a particular memory of what went through my mind but i just stood and looked at it i remember standing and looking i'm seeing it now i'm seeing myself stood in in that toilet looking at myself to potentially then having a setback a couple of days later or that something else happening but you always i now always look back um and reflect as i've already said on it's like now in training i'm riding for some people this again will make sense but i'm riding, for some people this again will make sense, but I'm riding seven hours, between five and seven hours a day. And I'm putting a power output of kind of 260 watts, which is high. And my average heart rate is somewhere around 122 at 31 kilometers an hour.

Whereas you then look back and you go, well, how far have you progressed? Well, you go, well, at the beginning of the year or this time last year um i was putting out 230 watts or 220 watts and my heart rate was 135 so you look back at how you've developed over you all we should always we should always be moving forwards and looking forwards but we should always just take a quick look over our shoulder to remember where we've come from so this is the, one step at a time. For anyone who's listening, watching, who does feel lost and unmotivated, this is really powerful, this idea that actually it doesn't matter where you currently are. It's just one step at a time, isn't it?

Yeah. Change one thing today. Change one thing. What one thing could you change that would make a difference i jokingly i sometimes say at speaking engagements with companies if anybody hands their notice in tomorrow morning it's not my fault because we all have the power to change the situation that we're in there's to be, some people would argue that, but essentially we do. There may be certain circumstances around it that are not easy to change and that need thought to change, but essentially we can all change the situation that we're in. If you're not happy with where you're living, move. Yes, there's going to be a cost involved but how much does that cost way up to your happiness

um if you're not happy with your job then find a new one that might be more difficult because but you've got to look because again what's more important the job that you've got or your overall happiness how does your lack of happiness affect those people around you maybe there's a situation of where you've got a huge mortgage which means you're working longer hours but if you downsize the house and move jobs would you have more time with your kids which makes them happier which in turn makes you happier which also means that you sleep better there's all there's there's factors in everything but because we're so submersed in that what's next and what do we do now we don't sit there and go do you know what i was and this was 2016 so 2016 end of 2016 when um when louise and i when i'd been getting the help and louise and i were we'd been through a really tough time with it as well and it was christmas um we'd had a really

nice christmas we'd had some friends around for new year when and louise and i sat there or stood there new year's eve everybody had gone we were just about to go to bed and we were just talking and it was a little bit about what so what we're going to do next year where do we we're going to be okay aren't we what where do we go and i saw i remember saying that um i needed to i needed to do this i needed to do race across america because i'd been told so many times that i would be good at race across america and it was something that was sitting in my head i didn't want to get to the point of where I asked myself could I have done well at race across America now was the time for me to do it or or not but first of all I needed to go back and break the seven day world record if I couldn't

break the seven day world record there was no chance of me being able to do race across America what's the seven day world record so the seven day world record was 1700 miles i think at the time in seven days but it's a different rule set to race across america so you have to use um a standard road bike um and you have to ride it for as many miles as you can a day for a seven day period no hand-ups from vehicles so you can't be past anything out of the window of a car um it has to be very traditional you ride a bike and is this a qualifying event no it's not but for me it was if i can do the seven day world record then that puts me instead to be able to gain the sponsorship that i need to be able to do race because of course it costs a lot of money huge right that's the other thing we haven't really

thought about that's a whole nother that's a whole whole other but let's just right 2008 you get your first cancer diagnosis yeah um you know you end up a few months later with this kind of turning up in intensive care you you subsequently find out that your bowel was opened out all over the table you know you weren't going to survive all this kind of stuff right you get to the point where you can now go to the toilet by know you weren't going to survive all this kind of stuff right you get to the point where you can now go to the toilet by yourself you see your face in the mirror and you're pretty shocked by you to the point where you say actually i don't know who that guy is yeah right at some point then you get out there's two more big incidents in your life as part of that story what comes next um so the the next bit was the recovery and wanting to give back to to the people that wanting to give back to the people that have been

there for me so phil bar granath and charlotte who we've we've talked about um and that became looking for a challenge and that challenge was to cycle across america the idea this is not race across america this is just this is this is just cycle well this is just this is not Race Across America? No, this is just to cycle across America. This has nothing to do... I didn't even know Race Across America existed at this point. So is this a race to cycle? It's just a, no, I'm going to cycle across. I'm going to ride from LA down to San Diego,

and then I'm going to ride across to Austin, Texas, and then I'm going to go to Jacksonville, and then I'm going to go down to Miami. So like someone might say, I'm going to do a marathon can you sponsor me? Yeah. Your version of that was I'm going to cycle across the entire America and raise some money for cancer. Yeah and the reason how that came about was a combination of a couple of different things. One of them being that I'd gone through this hungover thing and didn't want to go back into that way of life so to speak and looking for something that I'd gone through this hungover thing and didn't want to go back into that way of life, so to speak, and looking for something that I could do. So I found six days in the Midwest of

America as a Macmillan challenge. I found the Rocky Mountains as a Macmillan challenge. There was a couple of other things, John O'Groats to Land's End over sort of nine days. But for me, there was something that sat in my head that said that these weren't challenges caveat that's not me saying that they're not challenges and i take my hat off to anybody that's taking on on a challenge for me weighing six stone being unable to lift my own head off a pillow was a challenge not riding a bike for between six and nine days so i wanted i wanted to find something that was big now the difficulty that i had with getting my head around riding across europe was different continents different

sorry different countries different cultures um different languages and i found that a little bit too daunting and then the idea of cycling across america came up and i jumped at it and the idea was that um i'd seen i'd seen phil barrow granath um july the 25th i'd seen him and he told me this was after they'd put my bowel back in and put everything back together and he told me that whilst i'd been in they there done another scan and the tumor was continually regressing and getting smaller so technically in his eyes I was in remission and I was all good and please never darken my doorstep again just Phil and I used to have various debates and the one debate that I always talk about was when I came out of having my bowel

put back together and he came in and I was eating chocolate and ice cream. And he said, you're on fluids only. And I went, yep. And he said, so why are you eating chocolate and ice cream? I went, they're fluids. He went, no, they're not. I went, technically they're fluids, but they can maintain a solid state in a different environment. To which he just looked at me and went,

do what you want, James, in a nice way and just walked off. And the next day he came around and he said, right, so have you been to the toilet? Is everything all right? I was like, yeah, yeah, it's good. And I said, can I go bungee jumping now? And he was like, just leave. Just leave, James.

So my mum picked me up and off we went. So we have this great relationship. And I'd been in to see him and said to him that I'm thinking of doing this ride across America. And that was where the 5% conversation came up. So the idea of riding across America is we would finish in Miami on the 25th of July, which would be a year to the day of being given the all clear. I would celebrate my 30th birthday in Austin Texas so we'd do it in 2010 um I'd always wanted to go to America on my birthday because it's the 4th of July so it's American Independence Day I'd always

wanted to to feel what that was like um and um that was the plan and and I celebrated my 30th birthday in Austin Texas and then six days later just outside New Orleans I was hit by a truck at 70 miles an hour from behind it put me 120 feet down the road it broke three of my ribs it smashed up all my elbow it took all the skin off my legs the guy that was riding with me was in was in a very bad way um but i spent three days in hospital um then got a lift across to miami and flew home but it was fifteen thousand dollars which my surgeon looked at and he was like these things just don't cost that kind of money that i mean it was like staying at the hilton the hospital was literally you push a button and you order what any food you want it really was that extreme and people are like really and i'm like yeah that's

what it was like but everything has a cost yeah you got a bill at the end yeah um i remember laying by the side of the road and the ambulance driver picking me up and saying um do you do you have a way of paying for your treatment are you you able to pay for your treatment? That was his main question. Are you able to pay for your treatment? To which I was like, yeah. I was next to a fire ant's nest, so they were pretty worried about the fact this fire ant's nest could erupt at any moment.

And they wanted to get me moved as soon as they could. But I came back to the UK. You were hit at 70 miles an hour. Yeah. Yeah. And you were just on a bike yeah yeah one of the things that actually this is a debate that goes on continuously but i got my headphone in one ear one of the doctors said that that potentially saved me from having far more injuries because i didn't hear it it's that whole it's that whole baby falls over picks itself straight back up again adult falls over tries to set themselves

and falling over and breaks their wrists because you're so relaxed you didn't hear it so your body's just sort of i guess floppy and fluid and chill yeah so i came back to the uk and um within a short period of time i decided that i was going to go back and finish what I'd started. I wanted to go back and finish it. Wait a minute. You'd been knocked off your bike, right? Could have killed you, that sort of crash. It wasn't as bad as where I was 12 months before.

Yeah, so this is what I think is so incredible about your story. One of the most incredible things is this perspective you have on life that you're now able to bring. Because for many of us, that sort of bike crash, forget that, even just walking, crossing a road and being hit 30 miles an hour, right, is a huge trauma. It could kill us. It could have a huge impact.

We may not recover from the injuries, et cetera, et cetera yeah did you get down on yourself when that happens what happened you go to the hospital are you like oh man i can't believe my luck i remember one of the things being in hospital in america was when after i think of a day of being on the ward one of the nurses came in and said we need to get you walking again and she came in with a zimmer frame and i said don't worry i've done this before and that was um that was tough i don't think i don't think i did it i don't think i stood up that time i sat back down and said we'll try that again later but i turned around and said i've done this before and that really mean it yeah You felt that? You thought, no, no, I can do this. I've been hit by a truck, but I'm still 13, 14 stone. I'm still able to move around. I'm still able to do everything that I was doing before.

Yet I'm not as worse as I was. You know, and I then did a – I was going to jump on quite a way then. But I then did – when I came back to the UK, I then rode across France to go meet up with some people doing an event called the Alps Challenge with Macmillan, which was three days riding in the Alps. And I rode there from Calais and I met these people. And that was when my perception of what Macmillan was

and the help that I'd got changed massively because I met these 30 people who were from all different walks of life from gardeners to accountants to a journalist to a bricklayer to all different walks of life and all of a sudden I realized that actually the care and support that I'd had it from Macmillan was from the nurses but it was because of them so it was because of the work that they were doing they were riding in first thing in the morning till last thing at night they were dragging themselves up mountains in the rain in the wind and everything else to raise money to provide Macmillan with funding to provide those nurses with wages to be able to care for me my that

picture became a whole lot bigger that all of a sudden I couldn't just go back to America and finish what I'd started I needed to go back and do the whole thing again I needed to go back to the start because I still wouldn't have ridden across America I would have ridden from LA to New Orleans and I would have ridden from New Orleans to Miami so I wouldn't have ridden across America. In your head? Yeah. So I needed to go back and do the whole thing again. So in the January, I went back and did the whole thing again. Less than six months from the accident,

I was back in LA, ready to start again. It's just an incredible story. How much money have you raised so far for charity? For a selection of different charities, through my fundraising and through events that I've been part of with corporate partners and everybody, we're over 4 million now. And that's Cancer Research, Macmillan, UK Youth, Action Medical, Great Ormond Street. I'm on a committee for Great Ormond Street where we run an event called the velodrome challenge every year um there's a whole host of people that are involved in that um gordon ramsey does the food for us on on that event um they come along every year we have a number of um olympic athletes

and things that come and take part but in four years we've raised over a million on that event alone um but then i've done all sorts of things from uh b&q having 300 members of staff take part in the blend i'm sorry the london triathlon as teams of three working on on relays um to a company called aaron estates estate agents in the south um I think, 350 people do Blenheim Triathlon, teams of three working in relays. So there's been a whole host of down to pig roasts and all sorts of stuff to people taking part in a 5K run to the money that I've directly raised through just giving and virgin money and everything else.

It's incredible how much money you and people you've worked with and organisations have raised. Six months after that car crash, you're back again in America racing. Okay, so you do that, you raise more money, but there's a third part to this story as well, isn't there? Well, whilst I was riding across America for the second time, Louise rang me and told me that she was pregnant that's not the the third thing but she rang me and told me that that she was pregnant and i was we were both told we'd never be able to have children so that was a real because of your illness because of my illness and because of

something that she went through when she was younger as well um and we were told that there was more chance of the moon hitting earth than me personally ever being able to have children was what I got told by my surgeons and we found out that she was pregnant which for me created a very difficult mental challenge at that point because I'd put into my head that I was never going to be able to have children I'd worked on the basis I'd dealt with I'd always wanted children and I'd dealt with the fact that I was never going to be able to have children and then found out that I was going to have a child, which I openly admit that I didn't deal with in the best way that I could have done or should have done. We've been together for years. We're married and we go through everything together.

Everything that we do, we do together. We're not joined at the hip, but, you know, if there's something that Louise wants to achieve, we do it together. If there's something that I want to achieve, we do it together. If there's something as a couple we want to achieve, we do it together. And, you know, she's a key part in everything we do. So my crew chief and my road manager on Race Across America will be in daily communication with Louise.

So some of that will be her telling them what to tell me to get the best out of me, not just the other way around. And so I came back from that and then I went to Mallorca riding. I then cycled across Mexico with Macmillan again and then I went out to Annecy for a week riding with some friends and then when before I went to Annecy I went for a for a scan for a checkup and then when I got back from Annecy I had a phone call from Andy Stockdale who said that they'd found something on the scan and could I come back in to see him.

I went back and see him that afternoon and he said, we've found another tumor. This time it's on the other side. We want to do some bloods and some x-rays and we want to work out what we're doing. The difference was the first one was the size of a big grapefruit. This one was the size of a ping pong ball. So again, in my my head and in fact

i was talking about this yesterday that um in some respects for me that came that diagnosis came at the perfect time that's weird to say and people will take that sometimes in the wrong way but all of a sudden i was back in the system i was one of the reasons why they believe that or the studies show that a lot of cancer patients suffer with being left alone or elements of depression post-cancer treatment is because they're under such intense care during that treatment that there is then for the recovery side of it is right you're okay now back to normal yeah but what does normal now look like you've just told me that i'm that you've used the word cancer for starters and now you're telling me that i need to go back to normal

but normal looks very very different so for me at that point i've done all of these challenges i didn't know where i was going next or what my future looked like and whilst I'd got the joy of having a baby on the way I'm then being told that I've got cancer again but for me I was back in the system I was back with Andy Stockdale I was back with the Macmillan nurse contacting me I was back with a treatment plan I was back with back in all of that and that weirdly provided me with this element of comfort but at the same time I also knew that I was going to be okay because this wasn't as bad as the first time around what a complex mix of emotions going on I mean what about the idea that yes the tumor's smaller now than what it was a few years back but the first

time you got the diagnosis of course you weren't expecting to be a dad did that come into your mind at that time when you got the diagnosis um no i don't think it did really because freddie um freddie wasn't necessarily a reality at that point because louise was pregnant with him but he wasn't here and those emotions were so strong you know i was looking forward to that at that point i got my head around it and and every we were moving in the right direction together but essentially um it was about getting better for freddie we didn't know he was a freddie at that time and we didn't want to know whether it was a boy or a girl but in my head i was always

saying he's going to be a boy there's been no girls born into our family for years and then so so there was it was about getting better but i still i still carried on doing events i still did the great swim series i still did um the london to paris over three days with an event company called hot chili who who i do quite a bit of stuff with to then, so it took us from June right the way through till September to actually find a surgeon that would do the operation. Nobody wanted to do it. They all looked at my file and they all looked at the tumor

and wherever it was and said, don't want to do it. Too risky. Because of being too risky because of they thought that the wall of my, they thought that everything had glued together inside of me because of the amount of surgery that I'd already had. They didn't know what they were going into. So it was a guy called Cockleberg who we found in Leicester that was actually going to do the operation. And I went to see him for a consultation and he sat there and he said, I don't want to do it i need to speak to andy because i don't want to do this there needs to be another way around this he got in touch with andy and andy said there is no other way around

this um so he agreed to do the operation and we went through the whole list of everything that could go wrong that that illustrious list you know this could happen that could happen um you probably won't be able to have any more children after this you might not even be able to have intercourse after this you might be it might be um that we do the operation and you're in hospital for three days it might be that we have to do an operation and you're in intensive care for a week and in hospital for another five or six weeks after that. And it was the whole, the usual list of worst case scenarios. And what are you hearing?

Because you've sort of semi been here before, right? What are you hearing as the surgeons, the doctors are going through this list? I'm partly scared of it, but at the same time, I've been through this list um i'm i'm partly scared of it but at the same time i've been through this before so this isn't new territory by this point in time you started to you understand and i talk to people about the fact that you have to remember that um in the nicest possible way you have to remember a doctor is never going to give you best case scenario. It's too risky for them. And, you know, Phil Baragranath was dragged to a tribunal because he apparently did something wrong in surgery.

All the guy was doing was trying to save somebody's life. You know, he does it day in, day out. I'm stood here because he took a chance. He openly, Phil Bargrann openly admitted, if I hadn't been as young as I was and as fit as I was when I went into hospital, they'd have put me in the corner and made me comfortable.

He openly admitted that. If he hadn't have, whichever way you want to put it, but if you want to put it bluntly, if he hadn't taken a gamble and done that operation, I wouldn't be here now. Am I grateful for him taking that gamble god yeah yeah i love i love the guy he's the inspiration behind everything that i do and i i there's lots of other inspirations and people sometimes say to me who's your inspiration and they expect me to turn around and go i I'm Armstrong, Brad Wiggins, or other high profile celebrities. That guy.

Because without him, I wouldn't be here. Yeah. So I'd already been through all of that before. So yes, there's an element of hearing it. There's an element of, do you listen to it? My granddad always used to say the secret to 65 years of marriage is the difference between listening and hearing so he used to say about my nan but and advice and it is great advice so i that's kind of where i was at that point in time thankfully i remember

i went to the alps i did a three-day stage race again with Hot Chili, which finished on the Saturday. I flew home on the Sunday and I went into hospital on the Monday morning to have the tumor removed. Freddie was born two weeks later. I spent three days in hospital. I remember waking up and the anesthetist saying that they'd managed to get it with keyhole, but he'd spent half an hour working out

how he could get my tattoo back together down the side in case they needed to go in that way because it wouldn't have wouldn't have married up in the same way that it would have done and and i spent three days in hospital and i went home and i then um freddie was born two weeks later i two weeks after that i started chemo i did um i did a week of chemo just as a as a flush and then after that i did radiotherapy once a week for six weeks i think it was um off the back of that and then um started the recovery process in in 2012 and where we went from there yeah three huge huge incidents in your life which of course have taught you so much one of the things that really just made me stop when going through your story was when i think it was you and your wife

have said that dealing with cancer was easier than dealing with depression when did the depression start i think it was after that from what i can tell it was yeah and again that's something for people to get their head around because cancer is the thing that it strikes fear into people's hearts the thought that they or a close family member or loved one may get cancer at some point right yet that idea that depression was harder than cancer you can see cancer you can and metaphorically you can see it somebody tells you that it's there somebody tells you that that is within your system and this is how we're going to deal with it this is the process that we're going to take to deal with it.

There's no, you can't see depression. You can't, it's not a material, do you get what I mean? Yeah. There's no material substance to it. It's waking up one minute and feeling fine to the next minute and not feeling fine. Or it's to waking up in the morning and questioning why you've even woken up it's to waking up in the morning and being awake but

your bed being this special place that's got a force field around it that nothing can get through and as long as you stay in that bed you're going to be okay whereas cancer or any other illness or many other things somebody's sitting there and saying this is what's wrong with you that's the only way that i can really put a description on those two things and it took that um picture that your son drew. I thought I was fine. I didn't identify it. I thought I was fine. I thought I was, it goes back to being in third gear.

Yeah. I was just going through the motions. You said before that you were angry at cancer and that that stopped in 2016, right'm i'm interested here that this hidden illness the depression that you and your wife are describing is harder than cancer and you've articulated the reasons why you think that might be how important was it in your recovery to let go of that anger and that resentment hugely hugely important hugely important and i think um there was a combination of a couple of things that happened there was the whole route finishing me coming back freddie drawing that picture there was

trek bikes picking me back up as a supported athlete, which I'd been with them years ago. Various things had happened internally that they weren't able to be able to support me anymore, and they'd said they'd get me back when they could. To them getting me back and saying that they wanted to work with me to having Dean Downing, who is my coach. I'd met him a few times before, but we became a lot closer in 2016 to him becoming part of everything that I was doing and him almost understanding me and what I was capable of doing to me saying, I want to go for the world record and would you help me with it to him saying yeah I'm there I'll

support you through it definitely um so there was there was a combination and getting that help talking to talking to several different people about my experience and what had happened and then so a combination of those things happening and looking at them and going actually instead of being angry I need to be grateful instead of being, I need to be grateful. Instead of being unhappy, I need to be humble and go, actually since this happened, I've been involved with Trek bikes. I've been involved with Adidas. I've got my best friend, Mark Sinclair, who is at Adidas.

I've got Ross Turner, who's also my best friend, being both joint best man at my wedding, to riding some of the best amateur cycling events in the world, to being able to speak at places such as Macquarie Bank, Morgan Stanley Bank, and all of these places, and none of that would have actually happened if I hadn't have been through those situations. If I, Mark Sinclair openly admitting to me that being involved with me cycling across

America to raise money for charity was a really good feel good factor for Adidas as a brand. But the fact that when I got hit by a truck and turned around and said, I'm going back to do it again, took it to a whole nother level that changed everything, changed everything to then going back and doing it again and continuously trying to move forward and tell this story and raise this money all of a sudden it goes from instead of being angry let's not physically try to be grateful for what i've been through um and i'm not i'm not suggesting that i am grateful for what i've been through but my story and my life would look the polar opposite of what it is now if I hadn't been through those things.

I get the sense that you are grateful for what you've been through. Like, I don't know if that's fair to say or not. I think I know I agree with you. I think I am grateful. But again, the public perception, I don't want people to turn around and go, who's this guy sitting there saying he's grateful for having cancer that's that's could it be a fear of saying that because potentially what will people think because for me it seems very much as though cancer woke you up yeah woke you

up to the reality of what it is to be alive and breathing and going to the toilet by yourself and interacting with the world. And I get this strong sense that if I could summarize it all from my perspective, it's almost as if it flipped a switch where now, instead of being a sort of passive recipient of life, you have become like an active participant and you have gratitude for being here instead of simply taking it for granted. Yeah, completely. What is it?

We all have two lives. We start living it and when we realise we've only got one. It's just an incredible story. It's an incredible story. It's an incredible story. And I can't stop thinking about you going to the toilet by yourself for the first time, honestly. Like I really think that that person who's listening or watching right now, who's struggling to get out of bed and struggling to make sense of their life, many of them probably can go to the toilet by themselves, right? And therefore, you're able to look at that and go,

what an incredible experience. Well, I'm so grateful that I can actually do that. Do you ever feel that when you're out somewhere? Do you ever think, man, I can do this by myself? Yeah, all the time. The brain is, we shut our brains down too easily. It's always there. There's always that memory kicking around,

and it will always come up at the, not the most inappropriate times, but there's always something there to give you a little reminder. Something happens. We talk about it, you know, senses senses whether there's a smell or a vision or something that you see that just takes you back to somewhere or other and we should just pause a little bit and go yeah hold on and remember and think about where that's taking us back to and think about what that was like at that point in time and that goes back to what i was saying about you know i i want to i want to move on from

i want to move on from that cancer diagnosis and that cancer story i don't want to forget it i don't want to i will use it in speaking engagements i will use it when i'm talking to people about my experience but i want to move on from that onto something else now but still people to realize that and it's about in some respects it's it's like when i talk to people who are going through cancer at the moment and they tell their colleagues or people that they that they know that they've got it they don't want any sympathy from people for them having it but they just want them to remember that if tonight they don't want to come out it's because of they've got other stuff going on in their heads so i i don't want my life to be structured around that six months of my life

because there's so much more that we've done or three years there's so much more that we've done in terms of working with companies inspiring people to to to the charities that i work with to the kids that i'm a trustee of the charity for, to the world record that I've broken. You know, I broke a world record. How many people that are able-bodied have gone and broken a world record? You know, it's still a world record that I went and broke,

whether I've had cancer or not, to then being able to stand on the start line of race across America. Whether I've had cancer or not, I'm still standing on the start line of the world's toughest bike race. How will this, how will these experiences that you've been through help you in three weeks time when you are what did you say two hours sleep a night whilst trying to ride for maybe eight days seven eight days to those they'll help massively more in a subconscious than they will in a in a conscious but what happens like many of us we set ourselves challenges in

in relation to where we are in our lives so for someone that could be i want to walk around the block right you full well know that challenge right for some people it might be i want to do my local park run you know i can't run at the moment but i'd love to do that 5k on a saturday go and walk it yeah go and walk the 5k walk to the 5k i was about to say this that you know if if you're if there are those people there that that that don't want to get out of bed that don't want to get up that don't want to go and do something make one small change okay you you're in bed five days a week get up for one day a week just get just get out of bed once in that five days you want to go outside but you haven't been outside in however long just go and stand on

the porch just or stand in the hallway and open the front door yeah that's we don't you know we the problem is is that we sometimes get carried away with okay i'm gonna go and do i'm gonna go and do 5k then i'll do 10 then i I'll do 15, then I'll do 20. But hold on a minute, you've not done the five yet. You don't even own a pair of trainers. So go on Amazon and buy a pair of trainers. And if you want to run that 5K, if you can't walk that 5K,

you're not going to run that 5K. So it's clearly documented in so many different places that you've got that 5K route that's there. If you want to do a park run, it's on the same route every week. So go up on Wednesday night when there's nobody there or go at 6 o'clock in the morning when there's nobody there and just go and walk it and then walk it again a couple of days later or walk it once a week, then walk it twice a week,

then walk it and run 1k run half a k run five meters yeah and slowly build up from there because your your resilience will will increase i spoke to a guy i spoke to a guy yesterday um and he was saying to me that he's he sort of said you know you're you telling me about your story makes my 10 miles on a bike look insignificant and i said it's not insignificant he said he really enjoys it he really likes doing it i said your goal now isn't to go to 22 hours a day your goal is to go from 10 miles to 12 miles from 12 miles to 14 miles and then from 14 up to 30 but you know what if you then go out one day after that and you can only manage 20 don't get disheartened because you're still 20 miles ahead of you were when you started to do

your 10 three sets forward one set back you're still going forward correct you're still going forward yeah so if you if you do that 10 10 10 15 20 20 20 20 and then you end up back at 15 you're still further ahead than you were yeah and don't get disheartened by that. Because if you want to jump forward, you always take a step back. There's analogies all over the place. You can take inspiration from everything that we look at. I tell you what, they don't sound like cliches when they come out of your mouth. Do you know what I mean? In the context of your story, some of these things I think sometimes can sound trivial to people can sound oh that's a cliche I mean first of all most cliches are cliches because they're true yeah but there's

something about hearing them in the context of your story that I think makes them incredibly powerful thank you yeah I Phil Jones who you met earlier he really helped me a long time ago with the whole inspirational thing because I don't see myself as being inspirational I see myself as being James Golding who's been through whatever and has a story and I tell that story and people would say you're really inspirational I'm just me I'm no different to anybody else we're all we're all the same um and um i now i now take his point a bit that if people are listening to my story and they take inspiration from it that means i'm inspirational and i take that and all i want to do is people that hear my story to either take something from it that helps them improve the way that they are

or what they're doing, or even if it doesn't help them, it helps them turn around and help somebody else. That's it. And again, with the kids that we work with through the Buffalo Foundation, if I can, I said over the last couple of weeks, if I can help or have an impact on helping

100 kids for example two of them may go on to achieve greatness and be amazing but 50 of them may go away from it thinking okay i'm not going to make it great but I'm going to help another 10 kids or I'm going to help 20 kids or I'm going to help 30 kids. And then those 30 kids may then turn around and help and support another 20 or 30 kids. And it's continuously paying forward. It's not, those two are special and are important, but it's about the small impact that we can have on so many other people's lives, kids, adults, whoever that is.

That small impact, acorns growing to big trees, another cliche, we can have a small impact on somebody's life that leads to a massive change. Yeah. And we all have the ability to be able to do that in some way, shape or form. And I'll keep doing this for as long as I can keep telling my story that it inspires people

and it encourages them to either take that step themselves or enables them to then go on and help somebody else to take their that step themselves or enables them to then go on and help somebody else to take their next step. James, it has been such a joy chatting to you. Thank you so much for sharing everything that you have. I know you're inspiring people. We definitely need to do a part two at some point. Love to.

But in the meantime, I wish you all the best. Thank you. I really do. Thank you. Cheers, man. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do have a think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better,

you live more.