The Joe Rogan Experience - #1429 - Colin O'Brady

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Colin O'Brady is a professional endurance athlete, motivational speaker and adventurer. His new book "The Impossible First" documents his adventure as the first person in the world to travel across Antarctica unassisted. https://amzn.to/2u9mXtG

three two one boom hello colin welcome back what's up man good to see you i brought a book i wrote it i wrote this book last time since i saw you last the impossible first indeed indeed yeah about my uh solo journey across antarctica and kind of diving deep through my whole life and kind of what brought me there and other expeditions and the ups and downs of it all and you're coming back from another crazy trip, right? I am indeed. What is that nonsense that you did on a kayak? What did you do?

So after I got back from the impossible first, the Antarctica crossing, right about the time I saw you last year, I got a funny phone call actually of all things. People were asking me, you know, what's the next expedition going to be? What are you going to do? And I said, you know, I just walked 54 days by myself across Antarctica. Give me a minute. Give me a minute to relax. And I get a phone call via a buddy of mine from college, connects me to this guy, this Icelandic guy. I've never met him before. His name's Fionn Paul. Don't know his story. I do now. He's an absolute legend. And he says, hey, man, you were just in Antarctica, right?

And I was like, yeah. And he's like, I think we should go back to Antarctica. And I was like, all right, well, what do you think? And he's like, in a rowboat. I think we should row a boat from the southern tip of South America to the peninsula of Antarctica across Drake Passage. How far is that? About 700 miles. Can I see what that looks like on a map?

And I said, please delete my phone number. 700 miles rowing a boat. Yeah, so Drake Passage is known to be, in seafaring, one of the most treacherous, if not the most treacherous kind of passageway in the world. You've got the Atlantic and the Pacific and the Southern Ocean kind of all converging between the Antarctic Peninsula and the southern tip of South America. So you've got 40-foot swells. you know, crazy waves, icebergs as you get close to Antarctica. And the mission or the goal was to see if we could, there it is right there. That's it. That whole area? That whole area. From there to there? From there to there, all the way down to the main peninsula there, Antarctica. How long did this take?

So ultimately, it took us just less than two weeks to do the entire row but it was a long journey in the planning from that phone call all the way through to that year but it was a it was a two-week or 12 12-day crossing so in the two weeks you had to have two weeks worth of food two weeks worth of drinking water on the boat yes so well water actually we have a desalinator so off off of solar panels, everything's solar. There's no engine, no sail, nothing like that. It's just completely human-powered rowing. We have a portable desalinator?

Yeah. How big is it? It fits inside one of the tiny – so the boat's tiny. The boat's like 25 feet long, three guys rowing at a time. So there's six of us total in the team, ultimately, barely anywhere to sleep in these tiny little compartments like the size of like you know sleeping in the back of a you know hatchback of a honda civic or something like that um but uh but yeah so you've got this desalinator that's basically kind of in one of the central compartments so it's probably like i don't know maybe two feet by two feet square something like that um and i mean doesn't doesn't make a water real

fast you can make 10 liters of water in like an hour or two, depending on how hot the sun is. That's pretty good. But I mean, it gets it done. Yeah, it gets it done. Does it taste like whale dicks? What does the water taste like? It was weird. As we got closer to Antarctica, I think it started messing up because it got real salty.

Like it wasn't doing quite as good of a job. The water near Antarctica was like one degree Celsius, so 33 Fahrenheit. I mean, practically frozen cold water. And I think that was kind of starting to tweak out the system um but drinking salt water as we got closer it was like it was still potable but it was like this isn't working as well but early on i mean it worked just fine like it was pretty much you know cold cold drinking water like bottled water yeah exactly but then how does it only do it for a certain amount of time does the filter get filled up or anything um it worked for the entire uh 12 days that we were out there there's guys who have gone on longer you know rowing exhibitions across the pacific or the atlantic or longer stretches of ocean

um that you know works the entire time um but it is one of the things that breaks down so we had extra spare parts fortunately we don't have to use any of that but uh but yeah no it uh it worked and then yeah of course we had to bring food for the entire time as well on there. So that was a key part of it. How much food? So there were six of us, like I said. Pretty much all the compartments were full. There was tiny little compartments, but we basically ate two things.

So we had freeze-dried meals, so like Mountain House freeze-dried meals. We had this little jet boil that we were kind of as crazy as the water. It's like 40-foot waves are bouncing around on this trying to hold a jet boil to try to boil some water it was pretty tough but um some close calls with that but we also um had these bars so last time i think we talked about last time i was on here had these kind of custom nutrition bars that were made um and so that worked really well for me in the antarctica crossing we had done all this kind of blood work explain that again like how you made how those made yeah so um when i was doing my antarctica crossing one of the kind of challenges is basically can you take enough food with you

because what i was doing was called unsupported so no resupplies of food or fuel you know crossing the landmass of antarctica 54 days and so i wanted to get like the most optimized nutrition um and so i work with this company called standard process who's all like a whole food supplement company. And they've got all these sort of doctors, food scientists and this, and I went in their lab for a year, and they did all this kind of custom blood work on my body, trying to figure out, you know, basically my exact sort of physiology. And they created these bars based on all of the research that they did, that basically were these really high calorie bars, because it was the most high calories that i needed to optimize space um and they were kind of they were all they're all plant-based and ended up and then i know there's what's in them again you know coconut oil nuts

seeds you know sort of uh different phytonutrients and a particular macronutrient blend that i needed it was about 45 fat because i needed the high fat um about 40 percent protein, and then 15 percent carbs. And so, excuse me, sorry, I alternated the protein carb quotient there. But yeah, it worked really well for that. And so when I was doing the row, I called up Standard Process again. They've been an amazing partner of mine. They were like, hey, I'm doing this row.

Those bars worked so good last time. And like I just said, with trying to boil water and all this stuff is really challenging on the rowboat the best would be to have this really kind of high optimized nutrition that we could use again for the project like this but the parameters are different you know the humidity is different the temperature is different there's six of us now there's not just one of me you know can we optimize it for that so they kind of made a specialty blend um of the bars again um but they've called the column bars they'd probably come up with a better name, but it worked really well. Can people buy those online anywhere? They're not for sale. We've talked about doing that. So maybe in the future, but you can see

online on their website, like all the different supplements and stuff that went into it. So you can kind of buy the component parts, but yeah, one day we might make them, but they've been kind of just custom for these two projects, but they've worked really, really well, particularly in the rowing. So, I mean, they worked amazing in the they've worked really really well particularly in the rowing so i mean they worked amazing in the antarctic crossing as well but in the rowing it was 90 minutes of rowing on 90 minutes of rowing off continuous 24 hours a day so there's we're kind of in two sets of three six of us total three people rowing three people resting and in that 90 minutes that you're off that's also when you gotta you know eat drink sleep it's your only time to rest basically and so as much time as you can kind of optimize eating and stuff meant more sleeping and so to have these bars get done with

a 90 minute rowing shift be able to eat you know a thousand calorie bar highest you know quality nutrition in your body um i mean standard process nailed it again it was amazing to you know have these bars and have it work really well for all of us to kind of optimize not just the food but also the efficiency of sleep because the sleep got crazy out there like i can imagine yeah yeah so you're you're basically sleeping every 90 minutes for you know one hour or so yeah exactly ish like if you can get it and like when once the swells start cranking up like you're in this tiny compartment like i don't know if you can pull up a picture of the boat for a visual or some on my instagram is it covered at all um not covered like really not covered at all like so well there's covered in the tiny compartment so

the rowing part's not covered at all so when you're rowing waves are splashing up like over top of you i mean you're getting completely soaked like you're getting you know completely soaked the entire time and then the tiny compartment you know it's like it's like lower than this table like you'd be like kind of crouched down like in there um yeah this is the robot right here so that's us so that's the floor is that where all the food is stored underneath yeah underneath there's compartments you can see that tiny little kind of compartment on either side one smaller and one's bigger and that's where you guys would sleep that's where we'd sleep well the bigger one has the waves it's hard to believe that there's 12 people three no six people six people six people

yeah but still um so you got you know three people in the three people rowing and three people in the 12 people. Three, no, six people. Oh, excuse me, six people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But still. So you got, you know, three people in the, three people rowing and three people in the compartments at any time. I think if you kind of scroll up to the top, maybe there's one of them just that shows like the whole boat or like what it looks like maybe there. There's kind of a shot of it. So yeah, so you can see in there, like the back little compartment, that's where I was that I was alternating with this guy, Fionn, who I mentioned, the Icelandic guy who was the captain of the boat and really experienced ocean rower um and we alternated

inside this little cabin and then the other four guys they alternated two people because that one's a little bit bigger in the front that's the bow cabin in the front but they're like you're like head to toe in there or you're crouched into a little ball it's not it's not glamorous at all did you know these guys at all before you did this so uh not really uh not really uh yeah it was a deep dive into the team and after doing something solo i was pretty excited to do something you know as a team and doing something in a completely you know exploring a completely different kind of avenue um of exploration the ocean something i'd never done before and i had actually not only did i not know these guys um a couple of them went to college

with but we like really loosely knew each other like i kind of like maybe like I recognized their face a little bit but it didn't we weren't like good friends or anything like that three of them I'd never met in my entire life and I had also have never rode a boat in my life ever before and so when Fion he called me up and told me about the project he's one of the most world's most renowned ocean rowers he's got you know 30 world records or something like that complete legend he's rode boats across every single ocean this was like the kind of the last you know big ocean that he'd never crossed no one you know no one ever done it just like this before and so he kind of said hey i wanted this idea but the logistics are super complicated like going to antarctica is all this sort of like treaties that you need all this

paperwork getting a boat down to south america importing it through the Panama Canal, et cetera. I mean, it's like a tough thing. And he'd been like kind of thinking about it for a year or so. And he said like, hey, I've seen you pull off some big projects together. Can we kind of team up? And I know, you know, your team has got really good at figuring out these logistics. Would you be interested? And I'd actually looked at ocean rowing a couple of years ago as something that I always wanted to do one day. And so it was kind of a, after I kind of got that first phone call, like I said, like, kind of like, dude, I just got back from Antarctica. I don't want to go back there tomorrow. Uh, but you know, of course the curiosity inside of me got the best of me and I called him back up and I said, Hey, let's do this. What are

you thinking? And kind of dove into it. Um, from there, kind of my, my team kind of wrapped our arms around the sort of like logistic and building out the project. And he was definitely the visionary of, um, something that he dreamed up and it was super cool to team up with him after doing something alone now this thing that you did when you walked across antarctica um very impressive incredible but i'm sure you've seen the national geographic article they wrote about you and they said that there was another man from was it norway that had done it already yes wasn't the first time someone had gone across an article yeah he had gone actually a further distance yeah so something i've been talking about super openly including in my book which is uh

the netgeo article you know it's a little bit unfortunate um i actually just published a 16 page letter um asking net Geo to retract the entire article. And the reason it's 16 pages is unfortunately the entire article they wrote is just so riddled with inaccuracies and kind of misrepresentations and omissions that, you know, we had to kind of ask them, say, hey, look, you know, you kind of got this wrong. I was never properly interviewed for it. But one of the things you're talking about this guy, Borg Ausland, this Norwegian guy, absolute freaking legend. So what this guy did, um, in 1996, so, you know, 20 some years before that I attempted my crossing is he crossed Antarctica, um, from the edge of the coastline, cross the ice shelf all the way across the landmass across

the other ice shelf, um, roughly 1800 miles. And what he used to propel himself was he used a kite for a good portion of the time. And it's an absolute extraordinary project. And what's really weird about sort of this National Geographic article, a number of senses is one of the premises of it was saying, you know, Colin never talked about Borg Auslan. Like he never talked about him in his book. He never mentioned him. He never this. And in my book, which is really bizarre and why we're asking for a retraction because it's just really in ineffectual is that you know here i am on page 49 of my book literally it says the norwegian adventurer borga ausland in many ways defined the terrain of astonishing modern antarctic feats becoming the first person to cross antarctica solo

when he traveled 1800 miles in 63 days from 1996. Not only did he cross the entire landmass of Antarctica, but he also crossed the full Ron and Ross ice shelves from the ocean's edge. Alston's expedition has deeply inspired me and was unsupported, and he hauled all of his food and fuels with no resupplies. So it was weird. It was like the journalist wrote this article but didn't read my book. That's not surprising. And I had done, I don't lot of there's a lot of speculation

um i had did this big project in the film project around the row was with discovery i don't know if nat geo is coming at discovery whatever but it's it's really bizarre i mean we could talk about all the different kind of fine points of that but the big distinction and like i'll say it i've said it shout out from the route rooftops but i'll say it here again borga ausland is absolutely incredible like i am in awe of the guy what he did in 96 is phenomenal that's why i write about it in my book that's why i've written about it on my social the day after i finished my crossing i wrote about it on there as well and i said wow so many people have inspired me i'm standing on the shoulders of giants the only way

i was able to do this right but this says impossible first right so he did it first right so the difference is is there's kind of two really specific distinctions in the world of polar travel there's unsupported which means not using um not using uh not getting sorry not getting resupplied with food or fuel like i was talking about with the food and then there's unassisted which means not using anything to propel you other than your own body so that's called human powered alone so what he did is considered assisted um in that he used a kite but he was able to go twice the distance of me which is amazing so he crossed and did he use the kite

because what i'd read that he had only used the kite in a few instances where the wind was right so that's another one of the things that the national geographic article um unfortunately got wrong and in my 16 page uh letter that anyone can read it's on my website colinabreida.com slash blog letter to nat geo where it's linked to my instagram um it's not like a he said he said thing where i'm like oh hey this got wrong it's just actually a really kind of documented and sourced document that has links to everything um and one of the links it shows is actually his entire kind of project afterwards in the aftermath of him talking about it, including talking about, um, with Parawing, which was the, one of his sponsors, the guys who actually built and

manufactured the kite. And they're talking about how he used it for about at least a third of his journey, six, 600 or so miles. Um, as well as, you know, he was able to use the kite going 125 miles in a single day, which is, like I said, it's amazing. It's really incredible what he did in the time that he did it. It's just really kind of an apples and oranges comparison when it comes to polar travel and the distinctions of that. So he traveled further, but he used some assistance.

Yeah, so there's basically these different distinctions in the world of polar travel, and that's another one of the things, again um i'm not sure how they got this wrong i uh and in the link on the 16 page thing i show the text message when the journalist asked me well tell me about these definitions of unsupported and unassisted um and i sent him the link and there's these links it's it's kind of published thing on this website called antarctica logistics um and expeditions the main sort of expedition facilitator the person who like runs logistics down there it's very clear unsupported means no use of resupplies unassisted means no use of kites or dogs and so the thing that i did solo um that people i guess have gotten

somewhat confused about or at first was i was the first person across the landmass of antarctica solo unsupported no resupplies and and unassisted, no kites. What Borga Alisland did is he was the first person to cross Antarctica, not just the landmass, but also the ice shelves. So there's frozen ocean on these ice shelves. So from the coast, cross the ice shelf, across the landmass, and across the other ice shelf and no one yet including myself has ever done a solo unsupported unassisted crossing of both the landmass and the ice shelves i hope someone does it man it'd be amazing i had 375 pound sled and i almost ran out of food at the end crossing the landmass um and uh if you'd need maybe a 600 pound sled or something like that

or maybe a more optimized food solution that no one's thought of yet, but it hasn't been done yet. How big was Auslan's sled? Similar size to me. So he was out there for 63 days, roughly. I was out there for 54 days. So we were not out there a lot different in duration of time. Oh, okay.

So the sled really did make a big difference that if he's going that much further than you. Exactly, exactly. you. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. So one more time, you were out there how many days? I was out there 54 days.

And he was out there 63 days. Okay. That's not that different. Right. And so he, like I said, on some of the days he talks about it openly that he went, he does it in kilometers, but if you calculate back to miles, like 125 miles in a 15 hour period of time, that's unfathomable. Just walking walking pulling a

sled they're just two different things it's like the difference between sailing across an ocean and rowing a boat across the ocean why do you think national geographic got that wrong then because the way they wrote it it was you know is they made it look like you're just a fame whore and that you know there was a bunch of other explorers and outdoors people that were in support of the fact that Auslan was the only one, the first one to do it. They didn't make this distinction. And they actually made it seem as if the sled was an ingenious solution. But it seems like that was a planned thing and that was an engineered thing. And that it wasn't something that he built up on the fly.

This was the method that they used to help him get across the snow. Totally. And like I said, if you look in the pet letter that I wrote, it's got links to actually the manufacturer. They kind of talk about it as being this elegant solution. It's like you put a kite up randomly. You figured it out. Hey, I got an idea.

But it's like a fully manufactured thing. It's a legit kite. And like I said, this is not me knocking on that. I actually think that project, it's one of the projects that inspired me the most to do what I did. It is amazing. It sounds amazing. Can we see what Auslan, is there any photograph of Auslan's kite?

I want to see what it looks like. Yeah. It's, whenever someone does something extraordinary, like there's no doubt, just what you did. 50, how many days again? 54 days. 54 days alone. It's fucking crazy. It's crazy.

And for anybody to shit on that is nuts so and you're the first one that's ever done it just pulling that thing and you showed us what it was like last time you were here totally and some of the areas where you had to pull it it seems like an insane physical undertaking totally i mean so yeah it was uh it definitely tested me to the edges of my potential. There was many times that it felt impossible. I think we talked about it last time, but the second chapter of my book is called Frozen Tears because on the first hour of trying to pull my sled, 375 pounds, fully loaded of food and fuel, I started crying.

I literally started crying. The tears are freezing in my face. It's an all-time pathetic feeling. I mean, it was really, really brutal and really challenging. And one of the things for sure in the National Geographic they're not they're not disputing that i did this it's not like they're saying you didn't walk 932 miles by yourself across antarctica they kind of like grudgingly gave you credit for doing something really freaky yeah they also didn't mention the difference between the time it took you to travel that and the time it took auslan to travel

a far greater distance or that he used that kite to go more than 100 miles in a day yeah those are pretty big important things totally and I think that yeah hopefully you can pull up a picture of the Auslinn cut with the kite um it's it's linked in there not finding his specifically I'm finding kites yeah but not with him yeah if it's out there you'll find yeah we'll find it in a second but you know it's uh like i said it's unfortunate thing um you know i wrote this letter the editor of national geographic actually responded and said they're reviewing it you know i think they're gonna hopefully do the right thing the facts are pretty clear on this one hopefully we can pressure them by just explaining it here here it is here's this okay yeah that's a big difference that's a

big ass fucking kite yeah i'm sure that has a lot of power behind it too and i bet that really helped him totally and you can ski with those things like the fact that he's got skis on and he's getting pulled by that kite i mean you're gliding yeah you're not propelling yourself they're both really cool things are just different jamie go back to that look he doesn't have poles in his hands no he's just holding on to the kite being pulled along by it. So he's probably strapped to that kite. Yeah, it's like if you imagine a kite board, like a kite boarding on the water or something like that. He's strapped at the waist. He's holding on to that kite, but it's pulling him while he's on skis.

Yes. Whereas what you did was pole with trekking poles. Yeah, trekking poles and uh you know cross country skis with skins but just to give me traction so i didn't sink too deep in the snow but i'm just walking basically just pulling it with my own body fully he's not doing that it's a different thing they're just two different things i'm sure there was times where he had to walk right yeah yeah he man hauled for parts of it as well like a significant distance but a lot of it when the wind was with him you, he put up his kite and pulled along.

The fact that he was able to go more than 100 miles in a day makes me go, wait a minute. What? Yeah. Come on. That's a different thing. Totally different thing. That's a different thing. National Geographic did not recognize that, that that's a different thing, that he can

go on the snow pulling 300 pounds more than 100 miles. How many? He went 125 one time in 15 hours fucking ridiculous yeah that's a totally different thing completely completely national geographic jesus christ yeah i mean they should they should have been really clear about that because they were trying to make it out like some elegant solution that he occasionally used not big deal but what he really did was amazing what he did was fucking amazing there's no doubt no doubt that what we just saw in that image of him getting pulled

by that giant ass fucking kite on skis strapped to this harness with all the weight behind him also being pulled by that giant ass kite that's a different thing 124 miles in a day pulling 300 plus pounds get the fuck out of here yeah it's hard to walk 124 miles in a day let alone with nothing on your back zach bitter who holds the american world record for the fastest 24 hours ever run ran it full clip at 11 hours he ran 100 miles wow so 124 miles in 15 minutes while dragging hours yeah hundreds of pounds or 15 minutes i say 15 minutes 15 hours 124 miles while dragging hundreds of pounds of gear all in 15 hours is insane that Yes. If Zach Bitter can run 100 miles

in 11 hours and break a world record or an American is it a world record or American record? American record. American record. Yeah,

that's a crazy record. Yeah. 100 fucking miles in 11 hours is crazy running and that guy did 124 with hundreds of pounds

of gear and a sled in 15 hours. Exactly. That's a different thing just two different things man different things and so world record correction exactly yeah zach won the world record he had the american record first and then he broke the world record in his latest attempt zach bitter is a monster yeah shout out to zach um but him being able to do that running is incredible. That guy being able to go further in just four hours longer,

pulling hundreds of pounds of gear. Come on, National Geographic. They're just two different things. That's a different, and it's not unimpressive. It's incredibly impressive. That guy has fucking steel resolve to be able to do that and get all the way across the ice shelves and all that shit that he had to do absolutely and i mean the biggest thing for me is uh unfortunately that was you know portrayed in a certain way i don't know if it wasn't fact-checked or what that but

like for me the whole purpose of any of this the whole purpose of writing the book and sharing it with the world and being on you know talking to people you know via your podcast or whatever like my whole goal is to inspire other people to step outside of their comfort zones do things in their life challenge themselves. This is not about me. It's not about notches in the belt. It's got to be a little bit about you. You wrote a book.

I like it. Have you written a book? No, I have not. Really? No. That surprises me. I started writing a book at one point in time, but I had a deal with a book publisher, and the notes were so brutal, I gave them the money back.

Really? Yeah. They were like, they didn't like it? They wanted me to write essentially the way I write stand-up. They wanted me to be like, set up punchline, set up punchline. I was like, this is not how you write things, guys. Like, they wanted it. Different without the intonation of the voice and the.

Yeah. They actually wanted to take my stand-up. They offered to just take my stand-up and transcribe it into a book. And I said, I'd never do that. And they're like, well, George Carlin did it. I go, it's because he owed the fucking IRS a billion dollars. Come on, man. If you asked George, it was a good idea.

I bet he would say no. Yeah. He needed money. George Carlin was like deep in the hole with the IRS. He did a lot of things I'm sure he didn't want to do. Yeah. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to write a book that way. Well, I'll tell you, I have walked across the landmass of Antarctica by myself.

I've rowed a boat. I've done some other crazy shit in my life. But the hardest thing I've ever done is write a book. Really? Yes, man. No shit. Is that hard? It really was.

I'm proud of the outcome. I really poured my heart and soul into it. But it was challenging. I've been journaling since I was a little kid, since I was 12 years old. So going back through all my journals and thinking about, you know, there's the Antarctica piece of this. But the subtitle is From Fire to Ice. So I talk about, you know, being burned in this fire in Thailand, being told I would never walk again normally, going through all these pieces of my life. But one of the things that happened when I was in Antarctica, which it was interesting to me, maybe you'll find it interesting, is as I was out there by myself in this empty white landscape, 24 hours of daylight, endless white white nothingness my mind started filling in with

all of these memories so i deleted almost all my music i'm in silence i'm a full solitude like if i said to you hey joe remember the day you graduated from high school and like something's gonna pop in your mind right now we're gonna keep talking and you're gonna move on from that but when i was walking out there by myself if someone would pop my head like hey colin remember that your first swim race when you were a little kid and all of a sudden like i'd be back there like i could like dive in and i could see my mom on the edge of the pool deck and the you know the winds blowing across my face and I can see the kid next to me and I can taste the chlorine in my mouth I mean visceral memories like a lucid dream were coming

back to me throughout for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time so the book itself it reads about Antarctica but it intersperses the way my experience was in Antarctica, which was actually going back in through my life and this kind of tapestry of sort of visceral memories and flashbacks of other expeditions and childhood and the ups and downs in my personal life and kind of all of these things kind of conspiring into one. But it was wild to go deep into the brain like that. I'm sure. We should probably point out, we've had a podcast before, and this podcast that we did before was right after you got back from this journey in Antarctica, and you described the

whole thing in Thailand. You described getting burned and how you never thought you were going to walk again and all that stuff. So we should tell people. So stop, right? Pause. Go back the other one. And then come back here again.

Did it upset you when the national geographical article came out like what did you feel like well they just got it wrong let me let me straighten them out you know it's one of those things um i'd be curious to hear your perspective on kind of media and stuff like this you've been around you know doing type of stuff like me more longer than me but it you know it hurt my feelings obviously and i was kind of just it was bizarre because it was so factually inaccurate and national geographic is a you know it hurt my feelings obviously and i was kind of just it was bizarre because it was so factually inaccurate and national geographic is a you know a magazine or an outlet that i've looked up to throughout my entire life it's just like a really beautiful um you know platform and so i was

just surprised i was surprised that i was never asked for a proper long-form interview of this i was surprised that i was never contacted by a proper fact checker there was just some things that were just like weird and out of place and you know i guess it was a freelancer i don't again i don't know the whole story behind it that's probably what it is um but uh if i had a guess look there's very little in like praising people there's a whole lot in taking people down yeah if they could find that you did something that you uh did something incorrect or you lied about something or exaggerated about something. I mean, they made you out to be a liar.

Yeah. I mean, I read it and I was like, wow, like they're saying he's a liar. Yeah. They're saying how much of it is fiction. Yeah. They literally said fiction. But how much of it could be fiction

if you fucking really did walk 54 goddamn days across Antarctica? Not only that, the kind of weird parts about it is not only that, but I also had a GPS on me me the entire time it was completely transparent every 10 10 minutes the entire journey were live for the sea the new york times covered it they had my gps tracker up live the map of my route is in the first page of my book let alone online 24 7 there's been hundreds

of articles written about this by outlets who have fact-checked and researched or whatever. So, if we're not able to make all those claims, it's like saying, like, Collins somehow tricked every person ever from every news outlet that's covered this and fact-checked it and reported on it. And his editors of the book and this, some hacked his Jeep. I mean, it's like a crazy conspiracy, weird, like, kind of stance on it. Do you think it's because everyone, how do you say his name? Ausland? Ausland, yeah. That Ausland had done it ausland yeah that ausland had

done it everybody knew that ausland had done it maybe they just didn't understand the details of it so they started complaining hey he didn't do it first ausland did it first and this guy's like i got a story so he goes to try to go after you but then realizes like oh it's kind of he kind of did it first but the other guy did it well let's just say that the kite was cool right he had a cool kite but i mean he did even weirder things like in the first paragraph or second paragraph of the entire article he takes a quote from page 50 of my book and a quote from page 214 of my book and puts them and parses them together as if they're a single statement and i'm like they're about two completely different things that i'm talking about and you're like dude that's what people do man they want to sell dirt you know or he says like

colin made up this thing about no rescue zones no one's ever written about the fact of in an anarchy and he talks about me getting picked up in antarctica like i can call an uber he literally says in there uses somebody else's quote he says i mean getting picked up in antarctica is like calling an uber which is by itself just really says that in the article which is just crazy that's hilarious bitch try getting an uber in the woods in montana okay i'm like i'm like an uber and then the craziest thing and again that is so crazy my response to this is just factual it's it's not you know it's it's i just try to not be too defensive or anything about it but it's just well the good news is this will reach way more people than that article.

Yeah. But I'll say one last thing about it. The irony of this is if you Google Borga Auslan, in 2019, right after I finished my crossing, he's interviewed about all this. And in a quote, and I link to this in my letter, him saying, There are parts of Antarctica, particularly in the large Sastrugi zones, which is exactly what I was talking about, where rescue is impossible. Like he, the guy who's against me is also quoted saying the other thing, but then he says,

it's like the whole thing is just, you know, it's crazy, man. There's so much money and shitting on someone. That's, that's what it is. I'm sure.

And I'm sure this guy, well, I'm sure this guy wrote that article is probably a little bit of a hater. Yeah. You know, probably saw you and like the fuck this guy, you know, the world we live in unfortunately i try to you know keep my head up like i said i wrote this book to inspire other people to step outside their comfort zones

i got paid for it as well yeah it's also like is that is there so wrong no you definitely should get paid you should get paid for the whole thing But the fact that they're trying to diminish what you did and what you really did do was walk by yourself for 54 days through Antarctica. And one of the things he was even saying something about it was on a road. Yeah. And I'm like, hey, bitch, why don't you walk dragging 300 pounds on a road? Like, does that matter? Everything's covered in snow and ice. Like, what fucking road is this yeah so there's basically this uh 300 mile stretch was the

last third of my part of my journey which by the way was on my gps which by the way i talk about in my book which by the way i widely acknowledge and it's called the south pole overland traverse and so the um south pole station the u.s mill or sorry the u.s uh research station that's at the south pole was resupplied um throughout the summer season from the coast and they drive this So the South Pole Station, the U.S. Research Station that's at the South Pole was resupplied throughout the summer season from the coast. And they drive this kind of bunch of tractors basically up this area called the Leverett Glacier. And it's not like a paved road. This is them driving over ice and snow and like filling in crevasses along the way, etc.

And there's some tire tracks and some flagging that are out there. So first of all, I've already traveled almost 600 miles without any of that and then as i get there and we know this is part of it and i've talked about widely with all the polar experts all of the people that make the classifications and unassisted refers specifically to kites and dogs and they're trying to make this claim that the road somehow quote-unquote air big air quotes road basically some rutted up tracks in the snow um you know i'm i'm not a paved road no there's not a paved road out there and the thing is antarctica is so brutal we showed some clips last time he's sitting at my tent and 50 60 mile per

hour winds that it was like yeah when that blows over imagine driving a tractor over snow and then 50 60 mile per hour winds come in what do you think happens it's blown over immediately so i never saw these tractors never saw these vehicles i vehicles. I never saw this. I saw some flags, of course. I saw some rutted tracks, but I linked to it on my letter. So it's really not much difference than walking on flat ground. No, not at all. And still, there's still this astrugia. So there's still huge bumps of snow. And a lot of the time it was whited. I was completely whited out. I couldn't see five or 10 feet in front of me. So it's not like I could, a lot of times these flags are every 100, 400 meters. It's not like I'd even see those.

So it's just a shame. And I've been very transparent about the fact that I used that route. It was the safest route. It was the only route the logistic company wanted to support. And it fell completely in the distinctions of what is known as unassisted. And he kind of makes this claim about that's not true

where people are rethinking that. And one of the weird things is rethinking it right so they're they're now because of some of this the polar community have gotten together after my project so my project squarely falls in the definitions as they were followed all the rules and all of this now now they're sitting together and they're saying you know maybe we should rewrite some of these rules or make certain definitions different which by the way if they want to change rules, that's totally fine. The problem is it would be like this. This is like what them calling me sort of like a liar or something would be equivalent of this. Major League Baseball got together and said, you know

what? All games in baseball are going to be 10 innings now instead of nine innings. And all of those guys over the last hundred years that played 200,000 games or whatever, who played nine innings and all of those guys over the last hundred years that played 200 in the thousand games or whatever who played nine innings they cheated they lied they didn't play the full game like they you know they just like you know they're if they want to change whatever distinctions or classifications or stuff forward looking great and what would the distinctions be that they would change that you can't do it on a road so i think they're trying to make it finer grained which is like there would be like a kite distinction there would be um a no supported distinction there would be a distinction for using you know partial of a if there was a flagging or or this like you know road which by the way is not a road to be clear it's snow and ice just like the rest of it um i don't i don't

there's uh there might be if you but none of it at no point in time was it like flat ground no it's ice and snow where a tractor, where you might see like some wheels. And in fact, Lou Rudd, who's the other guy who I was racing out there in Antarctica, he wrote a whole blog post about that's linked to in my letter. And, you know, of course, he did the exact same thing as me, by the way,

the exact same thing, same distinction. And, you know, I finished a couple of days ahead of him, but what he did was absolutely incredible is this race. And we talk a lot about it in the book and a ton of respect for that guy as well. He's a friend of mine. And, you know, I finished a couple days ahead of him. But what he did was absolutely incredible is this race. And we talk a lot about it in the book. And a ton of respect for that guy as well. He's a friend of mine. And, you know, he, you know, writes about this, you know, quote, unquote, road or the South Pole Overland Traverse as it's actually known. And he's like, it's rutted up tracks.

Like you couldn't, even in the parts where I saw tire tracks, it's like actually worse than. Because you don't slide across it. Because you don't slide across it. The snow is all rutted up. It's chunked up. It's actually like tripping you. It like even worse like skiing on broken ice versus powder yeah so this journalist and there's other people who are saying this this is not like they've like been out there before it's like you know it's a it's an attractive thing to say part of

his journey was actually on a road you're like oh fuck that there's a road in antarctica yeah but that's how it sounds it's when you say part of it was on a road, it sounds like, oh, Christ, that's it? That's the road. That ain't not really a fucking road, man. That's just flat snow. Exactly. And that would be like the best case. Most of the time it's wind blowing across it.

That's on the perfect conditions, perfect sunny day. But look to the left and look to the right. It doesn't make a difference. It's the same., perfect sunny day. But look to the left and look to the right. It doesn't make a difference. It's the same. It's the same. That's really deceptive that they wrote that. That's really deceptive. Because they made it seem like, oh, and then he gets to the highway and he's just walking.

It's like hitchhiking, put my thumb out, pick up a bus. Come on, man. He still went 54 fucking days across Antarctica. And I know they acknowledge that in a small way in the article, but they really, like, just that, just the description calling that a road, like that is, I mean, sort of technically a road. There's no fucking ground, man. It's just all ice and snow.

Yeah, exactly. You don't see the ground. Exactly. And like I said, I was transparent about it. That was my route. Asked all the people. They're like, yep, you're within the rules. You're doing the right thing.

No one's ever done this before. And then, you know. Damn, everybody's a fucking hater. Yeah. That was my route. Asked all the people. They're like, yep, you're within the rules. You're doing the right thing. No one's ever done this before. And then, you know. Damn, everybody's a fucking hater. Yeah. That's the world we live in, unfortunately. You know that expression? No, tell me that. Throw crabs in a bucket.

None of them ever get out. Because when they try to get out, the other ones grab them and drag them down. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. They're piling on top of each other. The other crabs. Just get out of here with me.

Fuck. I can't walk 54 days. You can't either, bitch. Just drag you. Onward. Onward, onward. Onward is nice, but man, it's really disturbing. Have you thought about suing them?

You know. Drop the hammer, son. Call the Jews. Yeah, yeah. Do you know any good Jews? Their attorneys? Is that racist to say? I don't think it is because they're positive.

They're really good at it. Some would say they're not uh that it is racist or um anti-semitic yeah do you have a jewish attorney i do not have a jewish attorney you do yeah you get one all right awesome i'm sure there's some irish attorneys that are awesome too that's a weird one right like racism when it's. Like if you say black guys have big dicks, people get mad at you. I'm just saying they're awesome. That's true. That's a weird one. Like it's not really racist.

Just saying someone's really – like Italians make really good pizza. Is that racist? I love pizza. I do too. Sorry. We got way off track. So put this stuff aside. Have you considered legal action or you you know

like i said i published this 16 page or this pitching page document that's on my website i sent it to the editor of national geographic um they have acknowledged that they've received it and like i said it's been a holiday weekend so they've had a few days to have it and hopefully they do the right thing you know it is, you know, ultimately it's defaming. It's ultimately painting the wrong picture. And like I said, it's online. Their version is in print as well as online or just online? Oh, their article is just online.

I hope they take it down. Yeah. Yeah. But the problem is then someone's already seen it. Exactly. And then, you know, people, I mean, people like writing on my Instagram, like, you liar. I fucking hate you. I hope you die. And you're like, whoa, man, like that, you know, and that hurts mean, people like writing on my Instagram, like, you liar. I fucking hate you. I hope you die. And you're like, whoa, man, like that, you know, and that hurts, man.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm a human being. Like, it hurts my feelings to see that, particularly when it's about something that's completely not true. Like people saying like, I heard you took a fucking Uber out there and you like just walk on this road or something. You're like, like, you know. That's hilarious.

Yeah. But, you know. That is the problem with those kind of articles. That right there in a nutshell is that especially people that sort of peripherally look at them exactly you don't really go through it extensively and examine what this guy's saying yeah so hopefully it doesn't come to legal action hopefully they do the right thing here they've reviewed the facts and we can move on dude yeah call a lawyer yeah make it happen um so now you get through this right you write your book and you get in this this rowboat journey had the rowboat journey been done before so the rowboat before um there's a

storied history of ocean rowing so ocean rowing um you know uh sure the polynesians yeah i mean it goes way back but even kind of as a sport and, you know, maybe the polar community wants to do this more formally, but there's something called the Ocean Rowing Society that has, you know, the records of different rows going back over time. There's this race across the Atlantic that happens called the Talisker Whiskey Ocean Race across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the caribbean every uh winter that happens so ocean rowing i mean it's a subculture it's a small subculture don't get me wrong but it happens like it's a thing you know there's there's boats there's

races there's competitions anybody gone through that path yeah so drake passage had never been rowed fully and completely before there was a guy um who's fucking legend as well um i wish i wish he was still alive because i'd love to sit down more than anything with this guy his name is ned gillette um a true true like explorer i mean actually got um killed uh in the late 90s i believe when he was climbing in the himalayas or in pakistan um he got shot um by someone who came through the camp i don't know the whole story super sad story but he's done all of these projects you know before social media and stuff like this this guy was out there doing these badass things and he made this boat uh called the sea tomato and he took it down to chile um to try to kind of do a what was like kind of a hybrid row and sail and

so he has a sailing mast on there he's got oars he's got four guys with him they try it the first season they actually can't even launch their boat off of cape horn so they wait a whole other year and then the second year they launch the sea tomato um under sail why do they have to wait a year because the weather i mean drake passage is not we'll get to that but it is gnarly bro like it is like i mean people you know as you say going around the horn people say that in sailing like cape horn is known to just be like just treacherous brutal water as the two these oceans kind of collide and these huge standing waves come up so a whole season they sat down there with the rowboat and didn't even launch it then the next year came back him and four guys how small is the window where you can make it across so uh basically the best time of year to do it would be december january because that's the

southern hemisphere summer um and so the temperature is a little bit warmer you've got longer days we purposefully did it over the um summer or the summer solstice so december 21st you know that'd be june 21st for us in the northern hemisphere um the longest day of the year we still had night um you know a few days a few hours of darkness every single night but we at least had the longer days because once it gets dark and there's waves coming at you from every single direction i mean it is fucking scary man yeah this is it this is drake passage obviously i've seen from a bigger boat than mine but oh fuck that can i see what it was like in your boat yeah video yeah if you if you pull up my instagram if you pull up my instagram uh how many people die

out there i mean i don't know the numbers but um well a plane crash happened the day we were leaving and 38 people died in a plane crash in Drake Passage as we were about to depart on our road. That's a whole other crazy story. But, you know, there's shipwrecks out there. There's boats that have gone down. There was a cruise ship, I think, that went down in the 2000s. In Drake Passage?

In Drake Passage, yeah, on a cruise ship. Oh, Jesus Christ. I hope I don't get that story completely wrong, but I'm pretty sure a big boat went down in the last 10 years or so. What the fuck'm a cruise ship um i hope i don't get that story completely wrong but i'm pretty sure a big boat went down in the last 10 years or so what the fuck is a cruise ship doing there they go to antarctica see that they do the and they go to the peninsula of antarctica so actually there's quite a few uh cruise ships um yeah so here here's me uh so it's actually fairly calm sometimes so i mean some of the times if you see you got some swells but i mean you'll see this next part so this is me in the tiny little cabin um i mean waves coming over they're crashing so where's

the cabin and the where closest to us yeah closest to us this little cabin i was in there was just one of us in there and this is uh so this is us putting out something called the sea anchor um that's when the waves got so big or the wind and swell was against us so much that we couldn't row anymore and it's like throwing a parachute that basically like kind of tries to hold you in place um i mean you look at this how does this work what is it so it's like a huge parachute basically it's in the water and you put it in the water and it fills with water and it holds the boat into place i mean not very well even in this if we had the volume up it's me basically uh talking about how we're getting pushed back in the wrong direction but we can't even we don't have the strength to row against it anymore um just getting hammered um but how far did it push you back i think that time it pushed us back

like uh 15 or 20 miles um whoa yeah you lose 15 or 20 miles of progress yeah and that one that was the longest anchor i believe we're on it for 26 hours and so what happens is like i said you saw on the boat there's three people rowing three people in the cabins at any given time. And the cabins are tiny when you're even with the, you know, one person on one side, like I was two on the other side, like you're like smashing there like a sardine. But then when you put the sea anchor out, no one's rowing anymore. And that, you know, open decking, it's like really dangerous to just be sitting out there. So we all try to get in the cabins, but like this Icelandic dude, who's the captain Fionn paul i mean he's like amazing row you know six foot two broad shoulders whatever all of a sudden the two of us

are jammed inside of like the smallest little compartments like two feet around three feet wide by three feet tall we're like spooning each other we're wet we're cold we're in there for 26 hours that time like how did you guys poop uh so if you look that's me yeah that this one shows kind of the way of the big swell i'm the i'm the one in the back there um and uh i'm sitting right next to a really fancy toilet a little something called a five gallon bucket oh that's what you did you pooped in a bucket pooped in a bucket not too fancy yeah um and uh and then then the fish can snack on that but you know you obviously get not only were we spooning under sea anchors, smashing these little things,

and oftentimes those other guys in the other compartment, either three of them were inside the compartment at a time, and one would be sitting out and taking shifts, or they sometimes smashed four in there. But, I mean, they're like literally on top of each other. So we got close. But then also, obviously, there's no space on the deck. So it's like, hey, man, just turn your head away.

I'm going to be, you know, pooping basically a foot away from you while you row into this bucket. Don't mind me. Those mountain houses will create some horrible smells on your body. I've had those mountain houses while hunting. They're rough, especially for me because I don't eat a lot of carbs. It's all like, you know. They taste good, though.

They do taste good, yeah. Especially when you're in the middle of the ocean. I bet they're delicious. I loved them, yeah. They're really good that that and the bars i was happy with what they eaten was good but uh when you're halfway out there was any point in time where you're like what the fuck is wrong with me why am i doing this yes 100 percent so one of the things like you know people have asked me was you know solo antarctica crossing harder in the row whatever and it's like they're very different but one of the things that was so brutal about this antarctica and the crossing was was a lot

colder than the drake passage row it was about average temperature when we were out there was probably like in the low 30s you know dipped below a few times but the ocean temperature like i said it's 32 you know 33 you know just above freezing there's icebergs in the water we're getting close to it and you're just getting splashed the entire time so from like minute one hour one leaving cape horn we are soaking wet and what kind of equipment are you wearing what kind of gear are you wearing that keeps you from so getting really cold so we we started out um in just this cortex as this thick like saline cortex basically and that worked pretty well for the first few days but one of the other cool innovations um that fion thought of having done so much ocean rowing is he was like, dude, the only way this is going to work is if we have some sort of dry suit.

It's just too cold. But you start looking at dry suits and you're like, you could never row. You can't be functional like wearing like this like crazy dry suit, right? And so he basically says he he spends the year one of the things that he did is he found this like polish manufacturer and we all got our bodies measured you know 25 six different measurements and all this and basically created these custom dry suits that were a lot thinner than a typical dry suit but kept us dry but also allowed us to have the mobility on the oars and it was really actually built for the sitting position and the leg you know the leg press and

the arm motion and all that of rowing um so it was awesome innovation. And we got just, I mean, thank God we had those because we were getting soaked. I mean, we were getting so, so, so soaked out there. And in the 90 minutes you would think like, oh, in the 90 minutes, quote unquote rest phase, you would get in there, you know, maybe change clothes or something like that. No, absolutely not. Like we had these suits on, we're soaking wet. We we'd get in the cabin we were all sharing like one sleeping bag like i had just one sleeping bag that fionn and i were alternating it's soaking wet after the first day there's just like it's basically like if i showed you what it looked like on the last day you'd be like i wouldn't sit in there for one minute let alone like try to sleep there's like no pillars like

water like the brown water on the bottom like and you're just like you know it's the smells from us living in and out of there for this i mean it, it was grimy and wet and cold, but these suits suited us pretty well. The one thing that was great, you know, obviously we were clipped in for safety. So we were clipped into basically these ropes that you saw on the edge of there. So if we were going to get knocked off the boat, hopefully we would, you know, be able to clipped in or the boat itself actually fully self-right. So, if it rolls over, it hypothetically rolls back over the top. We had some close calls, but we never fully rolled it. And thank God, but we did test that. But one of the things about the suits is the suits basically have like neoprene booties. It's all like one kind of one piece, like you would have

in a dry suit, which was awesome for keeping us, you know, safe and dry. But I didn't take the suit off for the last six or seven days at all. And so when I finally took the suit off, my feet, like you think about your fingers getting like pruney, maybe like, you know, in a swimming pool for a couple hours or hot tub or something like that. Like imagine seven days of wet and cold and sweat and like all the things. Like when I took the suit off, like I almost threw up on the ground because it was just like gnarly festering skin and like like skin was ripping off of my feet like it was nasty how long did it take you to recover from that um i don't know exactly it's hard to put the point on like oh i'm recovered but definitely took a few weeks to just kind of get everything

back you know that's the stability back in the body mind all of that so yeah yeah it was uh it was interesting for sure what are you gonna do next because i know you you're one of those dudes you have to keep doing these things i don't know once you've done two of these things you're gonna keep doing these things yeah i did a couple before that too yeah um but uh i think last time your advice to me was stop stop stop. Yeah. Um, but you didn't listen. Just keep doing what you gotta do. Um, you know, look like I'm passionate about these things. It's, it's super fun. Um, I do them because I like testing the edges of my potential. I like exploring different places. Like I'd never, like I said, I'd never rode a boat before. And that's kind of take this project on and say, you know, I've done expeditions before. I've pushed

my body in, you know, deep and interesting ways. But one of my biggest curiosities is certainly about the mind, but, you know, particularly like growth mindset. Can I say like, I'm not a rower, but in the course of a year of training, I'm going to train myself up, get on a team with some amazingly, you know, accomplished watermen and learn the skills required to make this crossing. And it was cool to kind of prove that out this year because I think that that really applies across so many things. And I'm just a generally curious person. And I think I'll keep pushing myself and pushing my body because that's one of the

things that I love to do. But I think that curiosity throughout my life is going to be a lifelong path of diving into sort of different things and taking them on. I think that to me, one of my biggest sadnesses and one of the things I like to say to people is like, you know, people come to a certain point in their life and they're like, you know, I'm a lawyer, or I'm good at math, or I'm terrible at art, or like, I could never do comedy because I'm not the funny one. Or I'm like, you know know these limiting beliefs inside of us it's like i could be like dude i've never rode ever in my life i'm you know 34 years old you know i've never rode a boat but actually like but like doesn't mean i can't learn now to row a boat seems pretty straightforward yeah exactly how hard could it be

you get a little leg action too what did you uh do to prepare for physically so um the physical So the physical prep was pretty cool. I don't know if you remember from last time, but I have this coach, his name is Mike McCaskell. And he's just this legendary guy. He's done 5,800 pull-ups in 24 hours. He's pulled a truck across Death Valley. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, he's a total legend. And he trained me up for Antarctica. I mean, I came to him and I said, hey, look, like I'm not the most experienced polar explorer. I got to pull this 375 pounds sled. Like, what do you think? How can you train me up? And he came up with such cool training methodologies for that. Like he had one of the things he had me doing for Antarctica was he had me, you know, I was doing planks with my hands in ice buckets. And you know,

as my heart rate's getting jacked up, he's having me hold that. And all of a sudden he's like, all right, get out. And I do in a wall sit, but now my feet are in the ice buckets and he puts a weight plate on top of my legs. And he's like, okay. And then he hands me these Legos and he's like, solve these Lego problems. And until you don't solve this Lego and build this little like, you know, aircraft, little Lego man or whatever, you know, you can't get your feet out of the ice bucket. What the hell is going on? But he's like, look, you're going to be in Antarctica. Your life is going to depend on you, you know, securing your tent, right. Or tying down the ropes properly or this and that and the other thing, you're going to be cold. Your hands are going to be frozen. You're

going to be tired, but you're going to need your mind, your dexterity to be there. Um, yeah, there's the, there's a picture of that, of, of Mike bringing me through that. And so with the row, it was super cool to come to him again and say like, hey man, like there's no blueprint for this. Like there's no blueprint for this. There's no one that's done a fully human power crossing of Drake Passage before

to the Antarctic Peninsula. Like there's some ocean rowers, but this is different. Like how should we prepare for this? And Mike, it's not like he's like, well, I know everything about ocean rowing, but that same curiosity, that same growth mindset,

I trust his sort of ability to train me. He's like, I don't know, man, like, let's start thinking through this. And so in the gym, I mean, we did all sorts of creative things. He brought the ice back. He started putting a rowing machine on Bosu balls, like half Bosu balls, basically. And I'd start rowing, you know, do the normal rowing motion, but he'd start shaking it around because basically the ocean is going to be moving me around so much. So just the rowing motion, isn't going to prepare me for the lateral movements, you know, the, the, the lats, the obliques, you know, the, all the kind of side to side stability stuff. Then he took it one step further, which is he actually shows up at my house, knocks on my door at two o'clock in the morning. I think he had prearranged it with my wife, um, knocks on the door and he's like, get up. And I'm like,

what, what's happening? And he's like, we're going. We're training right now. And he gets me. He's got those BOSU balls, but now it's the middle of the night, so I'm sleep deprived, or I'm kind of disoriented. Now he's got me on the BOSU balls, and he had brought these buckets of ice water. So I'm rowing this thing. It's shaking around.

It's the middle of the night, and he starts throwing ice water on me, and we're doing these laps. Yeah, here I am getting into this. Yeah, you can check these out the discovery channel did back it says training for the drake the impossible row episode three you could find it online jamie it's on the discovery channel youtube page youtube they have a whole uh playlist with all okay yeah so there's 14 of these videos uh training all the way through the whole project discovery put them online they're actually doing a feature-length documentary this spring but what did you do for rowing for the specific muscles of

rowing yourself did you lift weights did you do rows did you use a rowing machine would you use yeah so the rowing machine on the bose balls that's like in the gym um also a lot of deadlift was really useful um and then a lot of stability stuff so mike would have me do certain things like we'd have you know like a seated row or something like that or monothons. I thought that was the most interesting because it was going to be disabled. So the waves are usually coming from, they change directions, but at any given time they're coming generally from one direction. So you're either leaning in really hard to your left side or you're leaning in really hard to your right side. That's different to the ocean rowing than just like a pure river rowing.

And, you know, he would have me basically like holding, imagine like a deadlift bar. And then I would have my eyes closed. I'd be holding it there in kind of an isometric motion. And then he would pull the plate, a light plate off one of the sides. And so I'd have to stabilize and catch, you know, either my left side or my right side. So a lot of stabilization and balance stuff. And then the other piece that was huge, you know, Mike, you know, admittedly doesn't know a lot about rowing specifically in terms of the technique of rowing and the technique of rowing is actually very specific. And so, um, a friend of mine,

a guy named Chris Wojda, um, from Portland, um, uh, he, I called him up and he's like this champion rower, collegiate rower, um, rowing coach. And he took me out on the Willamette river in Portland in a single man, like rowing school. So very different than an ocean rowboat, you know, ocean robots, a lot bigger, different, different waves. But he taught me on the Willamette River in Portland in a single man like rowing skull so very different than an ocean rowboat you know ocean rowboats a lot bigger different different waves but he taught me on the river the actual purity of the rowing motion so a lot of the training and the physical aspects I'm getting stronger was with Mike and the mindset and the ice and all the things we did there but certainly the stuff that we did um on the row on the river uh in uh in the Willamette with Chris was was huge for me to actually understand the motion because i just like you when you're like how hard can it be

just kind of push your arms you know back and forth um it's a pretty complicated motion it's a full body thing it's a it's a very coordinated thing you know you're powering out of different things and certainly on river rowing you're having to um you know square it's called squaring uh the blades and um you know you've got to take the blades out of the water and, you know, turning them so they can glide across the top and get back in and glide and all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot, there's a lot to the motion. And so it was a short period of time. I didn't take my first stroke in a rowboat until July in the river and then August in the ocean rowboat when we came together as a team for the first time to train in Scotland. And then I was rowing across the Drake in December. So it was a pretty

short period of time to kind of learn, learn about rowing and get stronger, but it was a fun process to dive into something completely new. So all from August, September, October, November into December, did you train and row all the time? Um, you know, quite a lot, but there was other things going on. I was writing this, I was writing a book. Oh, you were writing the book at the same time? Yeah, I was writing the book at the same time, you know, traveling lot but there was other things going on i was writing this i was writing a book i was writing the book at the same time yeah i'm writing the book at the same time you know i was traveling doing different things um but yeah i mean obviously the training was the core focus um but uh it wasn't like i was like every day i was always doing is rowing 10 hours a day or something like that there was uh you know other things going on i'd imagine you would need some pretty spectacular endurance to do that 90 minutes on the hour every 90 minutes yeah so you got 90

minutes on 90 minutes off 90 minutes on that strategy for doing it that way just like to not burn yourselves out too much but yeah so like i said fion you know has you know a lot of ocean rowing experience and from his other expeditions we kind of collectively talked about it as a team and he was just like okay you know this is what he felt has worked the best for people to you know do a long stretch get enough rest but you know obviously maybe the first day or two you think oh I could row for four hours at a time or something like that and you get longer stretch of rest but over time like your body really starts to wear it down and so he kind of you know felt that was the happy balance and it definitely like I mean I was delirious we were all delirious and

sleep deprived and it got weird out there for sure but i think it was the best my body actually held up pretty well and i felt like it all it was yeah it was a wild like the things going on in my mind the the night time like the night shift was really crazy so at the night the light nights weren't super long you got about three hours of darkness every single night but that meant at least one 90 minute shift was complete darkness and so i know where you're going that that part is like i mean it's weird enough to be out in this tiny little boat bobbing around in the middle of the ocean knocking back and forth um but all of a sudden it gets completely dark and like you can see nothing and so waves kind of come out out of nowhere it's very very disorienting i was rowing so on my shift it was myself a guy named jamie who's from scotland and a guy named cam bellamy a south african guy who

i got a funny story about him he's an absolute legend um so there's three of us out there rowing on our shift and the other shift was uh andrew john and fionn um and on our shift in the middle of the night i don't know how it started it was on the first night so we were out there it's kind of like you've been rowing all day and then all of a sudden now you're wet and cold and it's dark like it's just like it's just like this sucks like those are those moments when you're like having your lowest moments and we uh you might make fun of me but we started singing man we just started singing out there i don't know i didn't make funny for rolling across yeah there you go um you know we started singing like i uh i think i just started belting out one day uh you know i was i was actually born on a hippie commune my mom played bob marley redemption song throughout

my entire birth there's like you know people watch my birth on my futon so i started oh pirates yes they rob i sold i to the merchant ships we're just belting it out no i mean my voice is terrible but did you hate these guys by the end of the trip? You know, no. It was intense. I mean, working- Did anybody hate you? I don't know. You have to ask them, I guess. No, no.

We honestly, it was a crazy social experiment. We've got guys from four different countries, three different continents. No one knows each other super well. Few of them had done a project before in the past, so they know each other a bit better. But in general, we weren't, you know, it's not like it was six guys were like oh we've done a bunch of stuff together we're bros we've all hang out um and it really you know required some really diligent um

kind of human dynamics to bring it all together one of the things we came together in scotland in august and we rode for the first time that's the first time we all met each other we came together that's where our robot was we were getting it custom built and built out um and then uh then that was the only time we saw each other in person we got these skype calls and stuff and then we got down to punta renas which is where we staged it out of um uh in chile in southern chile there that's kind of we got our robot we imported it we're getting everything going and those 10 days were in preparation were some of the absolute hardest of the entire project getting to the start line. Right. And, you know, there's gear everywhere. We're trying

to figure out how it all fits. Like, you know, how are we going to fit all this food in here and our personal gear and there's nowhere this we're trying to pack the boat and like, you know, tensions are elevated. Everyone's just kind of like nervous. Like the reality of what we're about to do is setting in. And, you know, there was kind of some breaking points. And to credit where credit's due, one of the guys named Andrew Town, absolute amazing guy. He's actually a management consultant. So, he's like a lawyer, businessman, management consultant. And he's like, he's like facilitates all these conversations in his work. And he sits us down, he goes, hey, guys, like, we need to have like a real conversation about like teamwork and what's

going on. Because there's six of us in this tiny little boat, life on guys, like we need to have like a real conversation about like teamwork and what's going on. Because there's six of us in this tiny little boat, life on the lines. We come from different cultures, different backgrounds, different things. Like let's set some intentions. And, you know, at first I think we were maybe a little bit skeptical, but he sits us down and we have this conversation about like, you know, let's talk. Let's talk. Let's talk real. Like what are our real fears going into this? Like what are our vulnerabilities?

What are our weaknesses? How can we trust one another? And you know, we all, we're very honest with one another. And I think it really set the tone for the entire thing. One of the guys is a school principal. He's got a two-year-old daughter at home and he's like, Hey guys, like I want to do this. Like I want to be a part of this project, but like, here's some of my fears, you know? And for me, I'm like, look, like we got to have a communication. We got to be able to say to each other, if we're having a bad day, we got to just be honest. Like, Hey, I'm not having a good day, but it's not because like, I'm a got to have a communication. We got to be able to say to each other, if we're having a bad day, we got to just be honest. Like, hey, I'm not having a good day, but it's not because I'm a bad person.

We got to support one another. And really having that facilitated conversation as a team early on, before we were out in the water and the intensity, I think carried us through. And I'm so, so, so grateful that Andrew facilitated that conversation because that was a really turning point in the group dynamics.

And so the Discovery Channel, was their idea for this thing? Did they come to you guys? Yeah, so the whole discovery thing is is really cool part of this um so uh basically what happens fion fion had the idea for it this you know legendary you know ocean rower and um but the component parts of pulling it all together really complicated one of the reasons is because the anna so say you owned a yacht or something like that and you're like you know what colin i want to take my yacht to antarctica like that's not really something that you can just do there's a whole bunch of environmental protections and laws and things

like that there's like specific boats that have like permitting that's called this called the iato treaty um and it's basically what governs like tourism in antarctica and the reason they do that is because of sort of environmental concerns in Antarctica. And it's a really good thing, but turns out like my ocean rowboat is not like part of like the full treaty of Antarctica. And so the only way to do it and be like well within the rules and like above board within everything that's going on in Antarctica, all the environmental protection is to have one of the IATO certified boats there and a part of this. And so what we realized is we needed what was called a supervising vessel, not a vessel that would give us support in the middle and hang out with us.

We could jump off and take a hot shower, but a boat that's basically overseeing the totality of the project and also has us being fully permitted throughout that. And so we're like, okay, that's interesting. There's going to be this other boat out there. We got to figure out who this is. It's super expensive. So we got to raise the money to make sure we can have that, all these types's interesting. There's going to be this other boat out there. We got to figure out who this is. It's super expensive. So we got to raise the money to make sure we can have that,

you know, all these types of things. The only way it can work. We kind of got set to work on doing that. Myself, my wife, Jenna, she builds these projects with me, Blake, who works with me, and a bunch of people kind of working on kind of the details of it. And we quickly realized like, wow, what an amazing opportunity. If we have this other boat out there, we can film this thing.

And I've wanted to film some of my projects and share them really widely before but when you're walking across antarctica dragging a 375 pound sled and the whole purpose of the goal was to be solo it's not like you can have like a cameraman just like hanging out there like shooting you you know i mean although there's just a road so there's just people hanging out there lol lol um but uh basically um that's when we said hey like let's see if someone will be interested in coming on as a media partner of this and really filming this and sharing this um in a big in a big way and so um we got to talking with discovery um they got on board of it and it was a really cool vision it was kind of a combined vision of theirs and ours through all my other projects i mentioned the gps through my last, you know, Antarctica crossing and my other previous world

records before that. I always carry this GPS and share it in real time. I have this nonprofit where, you know, during the row, there were 600,000 school kids and school curriculums we built around like ocean and environmental learning and stuff like that, all incorporated into the kind of daily following along with the science and curriculum. And so I always wanted to share the projects in real time. And so we talked to Discovery and they're like, this is super cool. Let's do three different things at once here. So we invest in all this satellite technology

with Iridium, the Iridium satellites. And they were able to basically allow us to do social media during the time. So if you're like sitting at home on Christmas day as we're arriving in Antarctica, like you watching me bouncing around on this, you know, rowboat, you can follow the whole thing. And then-

And who's doing this, the other boat? So i yeah they have the satellites on the other boat but um we have i'm shooting the social media content and the other boat is powered how it's a proper it's like a normal it's like 120 foot like boat with like a proper engine and well that's nice that they were with you too yes so shit goes sideways absolutely absolutely so um definitely had that as the they never didn't tell them to carry the food too because so the unsupported part of the project like means the second we launched like they couldn't touch it if they touched us in you know catastrophic it's over that's the end of the thing um and so uh my wife my wife was on board that she runs all the best

projects for me in the background names that she was actually so she crossed the drake in this larger boat which by for drake passage standards is still a much smaller boat. Um, there was six guys, you know, who were five guys who ran the boat and then five guys on the discovery film crew, but they rigged our ocean row boat up with all these GoPros and batteries and all this kind of stuff. So we were completely self-sufficient on the boat itself. Um, and just had to like switch out memory cards and stuff for ourself. But what ended up happening is there was a social media component happening live. And then what Jamie just pulled up in the video of me training, there's these 14 episodes on Discovery Go that are online right now. And they're all like five to 10 minutes long

that kind of tell the story in mid form episodes, which is cool because that was coming out concurrently. So while we were out there, they were putting these pieces of content sent out by the satellites that people could see. And then this spring, a couple months from now, they're going to have a long form documentary that comes out about the entire thing and there's definitely been some really cool footage of ocean rowing expeditions in the past but to have a boat out there and to be able to shoot it from the perspective of not on the rowboat sometimes on the rowboat it's weird like you've seen boats in really big swells but because the perspective on the rowboat it's kind of moving with it you can't kind of tell how big it is but i think there's a video i'm like actually the last

video maybe i posted on my instagram where you can see the boat or my boat just completely disappearing and going up and down and completely disappearing in the waves. And they're able to shoot back and get drone footage and all this sort of stuff. So the, the feature length documentaries to come out in a couple months, um, will be really cool on discovery. That's awesome. Um, it's just a crazy thing that you've done? And it begs the question, when you do crazy things, does this change you as a person? Walking across Antarctica is one, rowing across the Drake stretch, as it was called, Drake Passage is another. Is this changing you as a person?

What are these? Because these are experiences where you told someone hey you're gonna sleep 90 minutes um at a at a clip then you're gonna row for 90 minutes and you're gonna poop into a bucket and you're gonna sleep like a sardine with a bunch of other dudes on this boat you're not gonna sleep much you're probably gonna hallucinate sometimes you're gonna row in the dark sing songs yeah you'll get through it, though. A couple weeks later, you'll be done. Yeah. Like, these are weird things that you're doing that's sort of changing.

Your personal life experiences are so much more extreme than the average person's. Yeah, 100%. I mean, you know, one of my reasons for doing this, for sure, is to test the limits of my own potential and grow. I'm not doing them just so that I can be the exact same person on the other side of antarctica the other side of drake passage it's to take that learning and you know i've been asked a similar question i guess before when my answer or the way that i kind of think about it is i've started to think about life like the i mean i've started thinking about life and the totality of life experience between like, say a numerical one in 10, like one being the worst day of your life and 10 being the best day of your life.

And, you know, one might be, you know, a day that a family member passes away or one might be being wet and cold and freezing in an ocean rowboat, you know, spooning with this other guy and, you know, been shitting a bucket and being exhausted and tired, you know, like just like rough moments in your life. Right. And 10 is this hedonistic joy, the most pleasure-filled day ever, just happy, joyful, maybe you've succeeded in something,

you've accomplished, like all this kind of stuff. And as I've kind of looked around at the world, people say, what are you afraid of? You must not be afraid of being alone or you must not be afraid of these hard challenges or stuff like that. I'm like, maybe not, but what I'm really afraid of is actually living a life range bound between four and six. I think too often people, you know, the typical life experience, unfortunately, because we have some

creaser comforts, particularly in the Western world where, you know, you can live a life and you're stuck between four and six. So maybe the happiest day of your year, your week, it's like the Superbowl and your team wins a Superbowl and you crush a couple of beers with your buddy and you high five him. You're like, oh, that was awesome. Like that was cool. But it's not 10. I mean, it's a six. And then like maybe the worst day of your week, it's like a Monday and your boss yells at you or something like that. And you're just like, you're like, oh man, like that's kind of bummer, but you know what? I don't really give a shit about my job anyways. So like, I'm not really that bummed about it. It just like is, like, I'm just kind of like in this like life of like quiet desperation

in the middle. And I think a lot of that has to do with because we're hedging and we're afraid of the ones. We're just like, I don't want to experience a one. I don't want to experience discomfort. I don't want to experience pain, like anything to do that. But what I've realized, I think of it like kind of a pendulum, like swinging the totality of life experience. Like to get to the tens, you also need to embrace the ones, like the totality

of life and the experience. It's not, I'm not experiencing these high highs or these hedonistic joys or these beautiful flow states or things like that, you know, in spite of the ones, in spite of the challenge, but it's because of them. By pulling my sled, you know, 53 days on my 53rd day of pulling my sled across Antarctica, I get there, my hips are poking out, my ribs are sticking out, I'm exhausted, I can barely pick my duffel bag up to put it in my sled, my body's completely compromised, I'm exhausted. But then I tap into the deepest flow state of my entire life, I find this place in my mind, in my body, in my soul. And you know, I pushed 32 hours without stopping to the finish

line and I wouldn't have gotten there had I not pushed myself, had I not, you know, gone through this difficulty. You know, I like to say that, you know, pain is mandatory. These challenges are painful, straight up. Pain is mandatory. Make no mistake about this. The obvious things I'm doing are painful. They're hard, whatever. But the suffering part is optional. You know, you don't have to be in these moments so when i'm like oh my god this is horrible i'm in this and why did i get myself out there's a terrible blah blah blah and go down this path you're like i'm doing this because when i step outside of my comfort zone i grow and as i grow i can share that with other people and

hopefully have that ripple effect of positivity and inspiration that's lasting in the world for others as well yeah you mentioned one of my favorite quotes ever the thoreau quote most men live lives of quiet desperation Yeah, that's a great fucking quote and so damn true. I think you're right. I think you really need Very difficult things in your life in order to appreciate real comfort and relaxation. Absolutely I don't think you hit it if you just if your whole life is just soft cushions and everything's made out of allure and people are feeding you grapes. I think you live like an asshole. Yeah. I think we don't like that because no one really – suffering is hard.

It's hard. It feels uncomfortable. But you don't realize that unless you suffer, you don't appreciate calm. You don't appreciate peace. I think there's just far too many people out there seeking comfort. I agree with that. And I think that it's funny because people are going towards that. They're hedging against discomfort.

Like, okay, how do I make this as comfortable as possible? And then they sit there and they're like, why am I unsatisfied? Why am I not happy? And it's like because you're hedging against discomfort because you're trying to make, like you said. It's poor education, really. People are not educated on what it takes in order to be fulfilled in life. The idea is that material possessions or some modicum of success is the goal. It's not. You know, difficult tasks is what make you do something that's hard to do, do something that's interesting, do something

that's complicated and intricate, do something that requires you to stretch your boundaries absolutely that's why i'm asking you because you're doing you're stretching your boundaries into some weird life you know death defying sort of thing you know you've done two of these so far like what is next you're gonna do ultra marathons you're gonna try to climb mountains like what are you gonna do so i know you got something going on i uh i i did a big mountaineering project before any of this uh for these last two projects i did um something called the explorers grand slam so i climbed the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents and went to the north and south pole for the last degree of latitude faster than anyone's done that so i was 139 days back in 2016 so everest and all we killman draw etc back to back

um the next actual physical project that I have, it's not some world record breaking thing or anything, but my wife, so one of the things that we do, we have this nonprofit, as I mentioned, and love speaking to young people, kind of opening their minds to the outdoors and being stewards of the land and really inspiring young people to think about doing hard things and testing themselves. It doesn't have to be in the outdoors at all. It could be anything, music, art, culture, whatever it is, but to aim high in their life. And one question we started asking young people was this question, which is what's your Everest? You know, it's a really obvious metaphor for kids. It's like, you know, what's your big

goal? You know, what is your Everest? And kids are amazing. And in gymnasium, I get, you know, kids raise their hand going, you know, my Everest would be the first person in my family to graduate from college or, you know or whatever amazing things kids dream of and help facilitate them towards those goals. But about a year ago now, my wife who's not, didn't grow up climbing mountains, didn't grow up as an avid athlete or anything.

She's been wildly supportive of the work we've done. A lot of the book is really about our love story and building these projects together. But she looks at me and she goes, Colin, my Mount Everest is now to climb Mount Everest. And so we are going back in April. I've climbed Mount Everest once before from the Nepalese side, but we're going to go back and climb Everest. We'll be there in April, May of this year. So in a couple of months to climb Mount Everest from the North side. And really for me, that's to be a support, a facilitator of her goal. So the next thing I'm doing kind of in the athletic or outdoor space is

actually to support Jenna in climbing, literally her Mount Everest, being Mount Everest. And it's really cool to see her, you know, just someone so close to me commit to a goal. It's an audacious goal for her, for her back. I mean, she's amazing. She's strong. She's fit. She's trained. She's ready. But like, just like six months ago, I never rode a boat, you know, a year ago. Yeah. She's climbed some big mountains, but to say, Hey, I want to climb Mount Everest was a massive goal for her. Do you think you're going to do stuff together? Like do some death defying thing together? Are you going to get her addicted to this shit now? You know, I think, uh, we'll see. I think, uh, for her this, this, uh, I don't want to say it's one and done, but I'm, I'm sure that, uh, you know, I didn't'll see. I think for her, I don't want to say it's one and done,

but I'm sure that, you know, I don't think she has the huge desire to keep doing these types of things. I think the next journey for both of us probably after that is a parenthood, having kids. Yeah, that's a journey. That's a whole other journey. Everest seems very commercialized now, right? I watched some of the footage of the giant line of people trying to summit. It's trying to summit it's it's a weird thing now right yeah so that's from the south side that's

the side that i climbed in 2016 from nepal that was that photograph was taken from that what a wild and bizarre thing that was um to say the least traffic jam yeah so on the north side um there's less crowds what we'll be climbing from um but also that day i mean look that i don't have the answer to the problem that certainly was a problematic thing that happened up there it's kind of a weird perfect storm a little bit where it was actually really stormy for a while and then people got delayed and the ropes were delayed getting in and all of a sudden there's one good day and everyone goes at the same time so again i don't know what the solution is but everyone going up at the same time on the same day on one day in may it's obviously clearly based on that picture like not the answer yeah people did die that day um i don't know the exact

count but people did die that day because they got you know stuck out there and couldn't move one way or the other yeah when i was climbing in 2016 um it was actually a a somewhat crowded day nothing like that photo but it was a more crowded day. And I was climbing with a Sherpa by the name of Pasang Bodhi, incredibly strong guy. When we summited together, it was his seventh time on the summit, just an absolute legend. And him and I talked about it and we were behind all these people and we actually made the decision. He said, we got to weigh the kind of pros and cons here. If we stay behind people, you're moving as slow as the slowest person in this line. And it's just like you've seen those photos. It's just not a great situation. It's cold, you can get frostbite and all that

kind of stuff. And so we actually made the choice to unclip from the ropes, the fixed rope there on the first half of the summit day, all the way up to a section called the balcony. We actually climbed unroped, but beside the people, because we actually made the call that we said, you know, actually climbing unroped of this section felt safer you know risking a slip or a bad fall with no ropes felt safer than being stuck behind some other people and then eventually it did get too stape and too falling off um yeah that's the photo that nim's die took that's a crazy picture i never saw anything like that and that's i mean that's definitely the exception not the rule um on ever. But the fact that exists is just horrible.

I mean, there's horrible. You know, there's nothing good to say about that other than it's just, it's tragic for sure. So, you know, I think that, again, I don't know what the solution is. I'm proud of Jenna for setting this goal. And, you know, I think that people should, you know, set that goal. I think people, if that's what they want to do, great. If they want to climb mountains, if they want to do anything, I don't want to stop people from doing that but certainly a situation

like that where people are stuck on ropes and dying in a situation where that shouldn't happen like that is a terrible thing so um this book the impossible first it's out now people can go get it right yeah it's out now it came out a month ago are you gonna write a book about your rowboat experience as well do you think i should why not fuck it the book it's also an audio book so if you don't like reading and you're like listening instead you got the audio book i narrated it myself yeah yeah i narrated it myself uh it's out it came out a month ago just hit the new york times bestsellers list so um yeah yeah well congratulations um don't die come back again next time you do something else crazy yeah you got it man't talked about

good, no? Jamie looked over at me like something's going on. So, The Impossible First, it's out right now. Go get it, folks. Thanks, Colin. Yeah, appreciate it.

Thanks very much, man. Thank you. Thank you.