The Nick Bare Podcast - 171: How Jonny Davies Built Confidence for the G1M Ultra

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

NOTE: This was recorded 4/9/26 prior to the G.1.M UltraIn this episode, I sit down with BPN athlete Jonny Davies 24 hours before the G1M Ultra to talk about ultra running, confidence, self-respect, and the work behind becoming the person you want to be. Jonny shares how running helped him rebuild his relationship with himself, why confidence is earned through action, and how journaling, training, nutrition, and discipline shaped his G1M prep. We also break down the backyard ultra format, fueling for endurance, the power of community, and why the process matters more than the finish line.CHAPTERS:00:00 Intro03:30 Lessons From Last Year’s G1M Ultra07:04 Bad Days Don’t Define The Block12:15 How A Backyard Ultra Works20:56 Life Before Running26:02 Choosing The Hard Thing To Heal28:08 The Full Circle Moment With BPN35:57 Why Ultras Strip You Down39:47 Sharing The Journey With Purpose47:55 Consistency Is The Real Goal01:06:23 Building A Smarter Ultra Prep01:26:51 Redefining Success Before Race DayFOLLOW JONNY:@jonnyrdaviesORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutritionIG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitnessThis podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal [health or profession] advice. Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice.This podcast may not be republished without the written consent of Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)

Okay, today on the podcast, we have Johnny Davies. Welcome, brother. Thank you so much for having me on. We are at this point, wow, at this point we are just 24 hours out from the G1M Ultra that you've been training for for months now. Yeah. How do you feel, I know you're physically prepared mentally. how do you feel? Great question. It's a surreal place to be in because this has been on my mind for the last six months of preparations. And as much as the physical preparation to any race or any

ultra any challenge is so important, that mental preparation, the week or two weeks beforehand, I think is the big differentiator between those that succeed, those that fail, doing anything of this sort of scale. It's been fantastic. I mean, one thing I've implemented this year heavily is right back in my training journal and just writing out thoughts and feelings and how I feel like I'm progressing throughout my training block and then to spend the last sort of week, two weeks looking back

at everything from November when I started training for this onwards, it's been so great to see. That's interesting. Yeah. What key takeaways over these last couple months? I think it's really cool that you've been documenting and journaling this.

Because it's one thing to document on social media, but there's also a performance aspect of documenting on social media. Correct. When you have a journal that is just personal, introspective, I think it's a very unique approach. For sure. What have you in reflection taken away from these last couple months?

Biggest thing, and you're right in saying, you know, when you're talking on social media, it is, you know, you're thinking of how to, not see curated, but like how to make it appeal more to an audience, whereas... You package it up. You package it in a certain way, for sure, and you lose a lot of the nuance. You lose a lot of the levels of, like, introspectiveness to it,

is confidence is an action. not a feeling. That's been the biggest, biggest part of this. You know, you don't feel confident and then go into something, you go in something, and then you gain confidence as a byproduct of consistency of hard work. And no matter how great a week of training has been, being able to put a line underneath it and go, right, once I've put those thoughts, those feelings back onto the page, I'm kind of allowed to sort of separate myself from them. So whether a session was great, whether a session was terrible or average, I'm able to sort of pull myself away from those sessions. And that's been really nice because I think a lot of the time, through previous training blocks for

Ultras for challenges, I've held on to feelings of a training session, or over a great week, or of a terrible week, and then that sort of, like you said, the bad blood bleeds through. And say, I have a bad week of training, or I'm not feeling too great. It's very hard to draw a line underneath that, because I'm still sitting with the emotions or the feelings of it, especially as, you know, the race or the challenge is getting closer. There is often an element of pressure that comes with that. Yeah. And that's self-imposed pressure, right? It's not, nothing external, but unless you're able to sort of take those feelings, and I think the best way to understand the feelings and emotions you often get through sessions is to put it on paper

because you're immediately then getting it out of your body, getting out of your head, separating yourself from them, and understand, you know, I'm a big believer in you aren't your feelings with the person experiencing those feelings. So as soon as you can get them on paper, this allows you to understand them a little bit better. And also they can go, okay, that's there, have the shower, park the feelings, and you can kind of move on with the day and go, right, that session was great, awesome. Let's move on. Or, hey, that session was terrible. I felt awful throughout it, but I got it done. And that sounds to be proud of, and I can solidify that and then move on to the next. job I had. Has that approach been different in this prep from previous preps?

For sure. For the Golden Rocker last year, it was a bit more chaotic. I still had some body issues from previous challenges from the year before that I was battling. And it was also the first time doing this format. So for me, it was much more, let's go with the attitude of this is an experience. Let's see how far I can question myself. But also, like, this is a new experience. And let's take out, let's learn from what goes on here. But I wasn't as dulled with that.

I was carrying a bit more of the sort of the baggage that comes with the training block. Whereas this year, I spoke to my coach after the race last year. And he was like, hey, do you want to give this to go again? Or do you want to kind of move on something else? I was like, there was so much I got out of it. But I really would like a good six-month full training cycle to approach this with. Because I think I can really, it suits me because the nature of the format where you, you know, you don't need to run too fast, run too hard.

It's just a case of durability and, you know, how long can you last for? That suits my nature quite well. So for me, it was like, finished last year, knowing I was like, okay, I believe I can do really, really well on this format and go a lot further than I did last year. Reference was 102 miles last year, which, hey, super proud of. I felt wonderful to push myself in that heat last year to get to that marker. But at the same time, it was a case of going, okay, what do I want to get at this training block? How do I want to see myself change that period? and where I need to get to, what I need to do, what's the work that's required to get there.

And at the same time, just be very introspective of what that work is making me become. So the big believer is, you know, the most important part of any trading block isn't the outcome, isn't the medal at the end of the finish, the marathon finish line. The most important part is who you become in that process. Is that becoming that time where you spend 99% of your time anyway, the habits, the skills, the disciplines, all of the things you're picking up and learning along the way, that's you becoming. That's what stays with you afterwards. You know, you finish a race, a marathon, you know, you wear the medal for maybe the rest of the day. Then you take it off, you put it somewhere, and you're not going to wear it again, right? But what stays with you is who you become through that process.

And that's why I massively go index, especially through social media on the building, the process, how I'm training, how I'm holding myself accountable. And also, like, who I'm becoming. Those hard training blocks, as you, well, know, they change you. Sometimes for better or sometimes for worse. But I think it's a really good case of knowing who you're becoming and where you're going with that training block. and a really great way to keep account of that is with a training diary and a training journal. There's a lot to unpack there.

Yeah. My mind's going like a lot of different places. Sorry, I kind of went on like three different tangents on that one. It's really good. It's sparked a lot of ideas in me personally. If I think about the journey I've been on and you've been on and a lot of people, high achievers, going as well,

I think it's really easy to look at someone and either categorize them as that's a confident individual and that's a unconfident individual. And what determines a level of confidence is trial and effort and failure and success.

And I've gone into a lot of fitness preps, for example, and I've called my shot in the beginning knowing very realistically when I called that shot, I did not have the confidence at that point in time that I could achieve that. Yeah.

And then you spend 12, 16, 18, 20 weeks working and through that time, confidence builds. I remember when I was going for my last marathon where I did CIM in 2023, I ended up running two hours, 39 minutes. Which is a crazy fast pace, by the way. I was really happy with that one. That's incredible.

My goal for that one was sub two. 45. Wow. But three weeks, I think it was three weeks before that race, we were back in Pennsylvania, visiting family. It might have been for Thanksgiving, potentially. And I had a big workout when I was in Pennsylvania. I think it was like a four-mile warm-up, six miles at marathon pace, and like a four-mile cool-down, something like that. And I remember going to that first one mile of the tempo, didn't hit pace. Second mile, got slower.

Third mile, got slower. Fourth mile got slower. Fifth mile stopped. Last mile, I couldn't hit. I was like, oh my gosh. I'm about to go for this marathon goal in three weeks. I can't hold the pace that I need to hold for 26.2 miles for six miles for one mile. And if I would have allowed that to get in my head,

Yeah. There's no way I would have been able to show up come race day and throw down. But what I learned that prep is you got good days, you got bad days. Yeah. Hey, this is a bad day. I got to recognize it. And I have to figure out what went right, what went wrong. But after this day's over, let's just forget about it, move one, get back to the plan.

Yeah. And not allow that to erode some of the confidence that I built in the 13 weeks leading up to that moment. 100%. I mean, that's often the case I see a lot of people is they'll have a bad session or a bad training week or they're not hitting pace and not hitting mileage. And they just let that, it arose all the confidence in goodwill they built in that training block. But again, whereas you know, reflecting on that session, that was a bad session, didn't hit pace. Cool. Line underneath it, leave it there. And then next thing you know, or three weeks later, you went and absolutely destroyed 245. It felt great for the whole 26.2. You got good days, you got bad days. That's what's so unique about this. race tomorrow is everyone's been asked me, who's going to win? How far is it going to go? There's no way to know. You don't know who's going to have a good day, who's going to have a bad day. It's anyone's shot. For sure. Last year for the race, everyone was like, top five are going to be these people. Yeah. The two people who ended up tying Kim and Kendall, no one brought their names up. As we were talking about who was going to be the last person standing.

For sure. Hey, you know what? They both showed up so well. And again, sort of out of nowhere. To be fair, though, what would I give them credit for? When I was running, because you spend the time with the people you're running with during the race. Yeah.

It was, the two guys that ended up going that far, they were so kind to everyone around them. They weren't just focusing on themselves. They were supporting other people going. I remember immediately, I was thinking, that these are both really nice guys. Like, I hope they'll do well. this is awesome. Sometimes you'd be at Ultras

and you've got some guys who are just dialed in. They don't want to speak to anyone. They don't want to be a part of it. They just think about them, their race, their achievements. And whereas both of those two were super helpful. It was the time my head torch went out.

Kendall's team struck me a spare one. Kim was being super helpful talking about his strategy, how he was doing this, how he's done this, how he's done this. And very well support. I always think how you conduct yourself on these things is also just as important as where you come. And how you do that. And how you're able to support other people doing these races

is super important. Yeah, because as much as you're on your own, you have to a point where you need other people to help you get to the next stage. Well, that's why this format is so interesting, because you spend more time with the people you're racing with than you do your own crew who are there to help you. You end up crewing each other on the course because you're all each other's pacemakers.

You're all keeping each other entertained as well. You know, when you're out there for days at a time, you know, you want some sort of entertainment to pass the time away and, you know, chatting away, talking about how you're training, where you're at, especially when you go to those lonely hours in the nighttime where, you know, a lot of raw feelings are coming out doing something so monumental. And you're, you know, you're almost willing other people on to try and do well.

You're almost like, you just want to support each other. I always say this format is not really a race until there's two people left. Yeah. And the whole thing I was there, it didn't feel like a race. It just felt, hey, let's all try to help each other. Everyone kind of said to each other, hey, I'm trying to get to 50 miles. I'm trying to get to 100K. And the amount of times I was with someone, like, there's this guy, I can't remember his name.

But he was running with me and he was like, I just want to get to 50 miles. It's a huge achievement. and I was chatting to him throughout the whole thing and he kept FaceTiming his son who was with him there because they followed me and social media before and he was like FaceTime really together and he's like can you get my dad to 50?

I'm going to get your dad to 50 and for me that was so special I looked back at the race last year as much as maybe would I want to go further yeah for sure but I was like oh there's all these amazing things that are happening at the same time I think when you've got a format like this

where everyone has to spend so much time together there are so many beautiful moments like that that occur and it becomes more than just hey who can run the furthest Yeah, it's true. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the format of this race, do you want to briefly explain what you're going into tomorrow? So tomorrow, the Go and More Ultramarathans, backyard ultramarathon format where on the hour, every hour, you run 4.2 miles or 6.7 kilometers for my European and British listeners. You have an hour to complete the course. You must be at the start line for the next lap at the turn of the next hour. So you can take as long as you want to do that, 4.2 mile loop in, run it fast, and get more rest time. Run it slow.

get less rest time. You have to be at that start line for the turning of the next hour. Otherwise, you are out and the race carries on until only one person remains. Or in case of last year, a biblical storm comes through. Last year it was like, we couldn't even make that up of how crazy that storm was. I want to talk about your strategy of this prep year two, training, nutrition, fueling, recovery, all the things. But before we dive into this prep, let's set the stage. Sure. How you got at this point of your life running these type of distances?

What led you to this evolutionary path and transformation of not just your fitness, but your life as a whole? For sure, for sure. So I didn't come from a running background. I grew up playing rugby, boxing. Running was actually my least favorite form of exercise. I hated it. I was always a big kid. I'm big now.

I'm 6'4 foot 4. What do you weigh right now? 202 pounds. Yeah. For reference, I used to be like 250 pounds when I play rugby. So, like, I was big. You are lean right now, dude. I appreciate, thank you.

You're ripped. I feel dull. It feels good to be this dulled. I worked again with a lot of my coaches to try and get down. an optimal racing weight that we find works for us. If I go too lean, it impacts my recovery. But we want to get to a point, especially from racing hot conditions, where body fat is an insulator and, you know, there's a certain level you want to get to. We've managed to very carefully dial that weight back without being too much of deficit so it doesn't impact my recovery.

So it feels weird being a deficit where I'm eating an ungodly amount of carbohydrates every day and like training really, really hard. It doesn't feel like I'm dropping weight day and day out eating crazy amounts of cereal before, you know, each session. But what do your calories at on average? About 5,000 throughout this block. And I've been dropping weight at that. We had to slowly pull it down. But obviously, as well, some days you're training three times a day.

Yeah. When it's far, you know, we're eating five, six hours of training in some days or doing simulation days. Obviously, we have to crank them right back up again. But it's been good. It's been really disliked in with just keeping track and keeping those scores up today with nutrition, with weight, with body fat metrics. And that's fantastic.

the data side to all this as well because so much of it is in the data. You also have to separate the emotion from the data. Data is just, they're just the numbers associated with it and they're not assigning value to that from a personal perspective. And a lot of people struggle sometimes with tracking calories or tracking their weight. And that's something that for me has been such a useful tool in order to take control of my own nutrition and my own eating. And there's a very often a fine line between eating disorders and structured eating. So I'm quite careful with that. I do like to take a little bit of time away after training blocks where I'm not tracking, I'm eating a bit more intuitively. The problem is when I eat intuitively, I eat everything. If I don't plan out my food properly

and I don't eat like, if I don't eat a decent amount of fiber of vegetables of like lean proteins, I will just eat everything. Like I love food as we've talked about before. So for me, it's like when I've got like a food item on my mind, I'm like, well, I'm going to find that today and I'm going to eat that. So would you say, it's a very important point that you just brought up. Sure. There's certain people who can't lean too heavy into data because of the unhealthy relationship that the data provides. To be honest, I'm one of those people. Sure.

Like when I go into a prep and I have all this data and I'm tracking my macros and all my mileage, my paces and my time, like I know, I'm very aware, I know that I can do that and it's going to get me to a certain goal. Sure. But post-prep, I can't just flip a switch and transition out of it because it creates this unhealthy relationship with the data. For sure. Would you say that you have a very healthy relationship with the data and the numbers so that it doesn't consume you, it doesn't own you? 100%.

I would just say it's scorekeeping. It's not direction whilst there's days where I need to hit certain targets and whatnot, you know, obviously going off. There's elements to feel with it and I'll speak to my coach and my nutritionist. And again, it's just understanding that my value isn't associated with those numbers in that day-to-day. It's just an important guide for me because I struggle intrusive eating. For me, like when I first found tracking and, you know, get onto that sort of journey through, when I found tracking my macros and calories, I didn't find it obsessive.

I found it. I was like, wow, this is a really good way for me to understand what I'm putting in my body. You know, it's not a case of demonizing certain things or trying to starve myself. It's just a case saying, hey, there are certain things I just need to put in my body's day for me to function, to perform, to recover. There's also maybe some of these other things are meeting, probably actually aren't that great for me to be putting my body on a continuous basis, time and place and all that. But when I started getting into, like when I first lost a bunch of weight, like 20, 2020, around those sort of times, that was down to the fact that I was able to track these things and just

be accountable to something. And again, not being cruel to myself, not being mean to myself, it's just saying, hey, I'm just going to hold myself to a standard here. And I didn't have like an emotional feeling towards that. Whereas some people I know do. And again, that's, that's that's not me saying, well, it works for me. It's going to work for everyone. It goes, hey, we're all different. You know, we all have different relationships with food. Sometimes there's a deeper emotional connection to food for whatever reason. And also, some people don't like the idea of a number controlling what goes into their body. And I completely understand that as well. But that's why for me, I think it's all healthy to just have a bit of time away from doing that. I just be careful because if I go back to straight off, straight off intuitive eating, I will very quickly throw back way on.

which isn't the worst in the world. That's why I'm not lean all year round. I'll go through periods of time when I'm building strength back again that I'll gain a bit away and that's completely normal. I quite like the fact that I know, to pass the time and the year

when I'm training for something. I do get a bit leaner. I'm other parts of year. I'm a little bit thicker. I don't mind that too much. It's all right. But you can tell when I'm leaner because there'll be significantly more photos

of me on my top off. I'm on Instagram. Dude, I'm telling you, like, you were lean, lean right now. It reminds me when I was an Iron Man prep. Like, I was lean, lean. You were dialed. An Iron Man Prep.

And, you know, my body doesn't like to sit there. Yeah, okay. It's not comfortable sitting at that light of weight. I think my body probably wants to get up to like 215, 220. Is that what feels like the best for yourself? I'd say I feel the best at 200, 205. Okay. But based off of the foods that I'm drawn to,

now I'd say I'm drawn towards like pizza and burgers, but I'm drawn towards fattier foods. Okay. Eggs, nuts, nut butters, fatty meats. And I find avocados. If I consume a lot of fats, naturally, I increase my weight pretty drastically. So for me to stay leaner, I just to monitor pretty much my fat intake and protein and carbs is pretty consistent.

Yeah, I find that. I've never really been drawn too much to fats. I just kind of keep them quite low normally. I do for recovery periods, like go up a little bit. but for me, it's, you know, carbs are what I'm drawn to. So because of that, we lean into that. Great, well, I need a lot of carbs to feel what I'm doing. And I like carbs.

Yeah. And it's just a case of, like, as long as I don't go too crazy, because even if I have a high carb target with all that training I'm doing, I can still easily, quite easily go over that. So just by knowing where that number sits is great. And then I've never ever had a problem getting enough protein in. I love protein. If it's up to me, like, breakfast food would be eliminated,

because I don't mind having, like, you know, a rotissory chicken for breakfast. I love that. It's fantastic. I haven't got to go straight into a session. The idea of having like meats at breakfast, I really like. I'm the same way. Anyone who ever tells me they have a hard time hitting their protein goals, I'm like, I'm sorry, but I can't relate.

Yeah. I could easily eat 400 grams of protein a day. Fly right over. Absolutely. No problem. Yeah. No problem. I have in my fridge right now sitting left over flat iron steak from last night.

We made tacos. It's so good. And I just want to go home and just like crush 12 ounces of flat iron steak right now. But I digress. Prior to 2020, what did life look like for you? I was in a bit of a tricky spot. So for a lot of that period running up to it, so I graduated college 2014. And I was outworking, I worked in financial tech for a number of years.

Really, 36 years old? 33. Oh, Nick Ba' you're killing me, 36 years old. I don't know how I got this numbers wrong. What did you get about that? I'm 33 years old. I graduated 2013. I'm 35.

So I guess you graduated after me Which wouldn't make you older than me I did a three year undergrad But I took a year gap year Okay So there was time out of that one 33 33

Thank you Yeah so I graduated down then And I Always My work fantastic You know Very successful within my career And financial tech

And so on paper Things were very good The problem I had was I had for the longest period of time And it's something that I've come to understand A lot more As I've gotten older And have better perspective

And things I struggled for the longest time from teenage years into adulthood with liking myself. And that's something that it took me a lot of time to really understand that, because from the outside looking in, I was a very fun person. It was too fun because I would go out most weekends and just throw it down, work hard, party hard. And it was only looking back retrospectively that I'd realize that a lot of the time I would drink in our party was because I was trying to distract. myself and how I felt about myself. And I had disciplined parts of my life with my career, my work, but very undisciplined in other areas. That's still great at the gym. I still

play a bit of rugby. I stopped playing properly at the end of college. But for me, the biggest challenge was liking myself. And this is something that I know a lot of people resonate with because I talk a lot about it on social media, how the most important relationship you're going to have in your life is with yourself. And if that's not a positive one, life can be really challenging. And a lot of self-belief, a confidence is built upon that, a relationship you have with yourself where, you know, starts with self-respect and then downwind of that is liking yourself. And I was this very interesting good at a time where two of my closest friends went to rehab. And it caught me out of the blue the fact that they went. And, you know, I was obviously really

happy for them to deal with these reasons. But I didn't realize they were struggling with something like that. And it took them both going through that for me to then realize thinking, okay, wow, like, they recognize there was some challenges in their life that they're dealing with. And he was my best mate, George, he said it, he said it best because he was drinking, do a lot of drugs. And he was just a fun guy. Like, he was just, he was always just enjoying himself, and I spend a lot of time with him. But he always said, you know, he didn't have a drink or a drug problem. He had a liking himself problem. He just did drinks drugs to try and make himself feel better about himself. Yeah. And which works. It's actually a fantastic way,

in the short term, to feel better about yourself when you're in, when you're in, like, an uncomfortable to a period of life. And that really resonate with me. Because I've never felt the urge in the middle of a day to be like, I know what I really want? Like five pints of beer. No, but it's more of a case of if ever I felt I got catch myself and my own feelings about myself, I would want to go out and I want to be social and want to go drink and I want to be like, right, I don't know how I'm feeling. Rather than sitting with it and confronting you and understanding those feelings, so I didn't really understand them, I would just go out and socialize and drink and distract myself through that way. I did that because in the UK, we have quite a big drinking culture. And that's something that's

pretty well normalized. But I think if you're, and again, there's positives and negatives with that. You know, the pub is a big part of our, you know, society. And that's a real big society. I love spending time at the pub. It's like our society's meeting place in the UK. But I think if you're in a difficult place and you're struggling with a lot of things, it's probably not the best thing to be doing because it is a big distraction. And it took my friends going through that period of time and then really honestly talking with me about their struggles and their challenges to why they felt this way for me to start reflecting on things that had happened in my life, my early life. I left home when I was like 15 years old.

I had quite a bad following out of my mum, this period of time. And from the age of 15 onwards, I just kind of grew up straight away off that point. And that was something that at the time, I didn't realize how much of an impact that made on me. And I went from like literally being a child to just turn 15. I felt like I went from like being a child to literally being a full-blown adult. I had to then commute from where my dad lived, like two cities over to get to my school still to deal with all this stuff. And that always sat with me as something like, oh, okay, like, it made me feel almost like a level of like not wanted. But at the time, I didn't realize that

because I was 15 years old. You know, when you're 15, you're not really equipped to understand deep things like this. So that ultimately led me to, you know, 2018, 2019 period where I was like started speaking to people about getting some help around that and look at my behaviors. And whilst again, one part of my life with work was super successful, I was in so many other areas, especially in my fitness or my discipline or how I would manage the relationships in my life with girlfriends or with my family or whatnot, I noticed that it was really poor on my side. And a lot of that was just down to the deeper relationship with myself that came from a lack of respect for myself. And I basically went to seek some help around that.

And I was in a very privileged position where I could go and do that. Obviously, a lot of people out there on that sort of position, but had great friends around me who had been through that process and were very supportive. And again, it just came down to a point of, okay, we need to do something every day where you can respect yourself. And ironically, I picked running because I hated it. When you were playing rugby, running is like the punishment in the sport. If you miss a tackle, if you drop the ball in training, you have to go run to the post and back as fast you can.

So for me, I was always like, I hate running. So I picked the thing I hated the most. And for me, that was running. There was distance running, something that I was naturally never good at, being six foot four and big. You know, so I thought, you know what, why don't I do something that is the one thing I can't stand doing and challenge myself with that? Because for me, that was the ultimate, like, almost like a bit of a, can't over a version of myself. Yeah. Almost like a bit of a fuck you to like an older version of myself, being like, oh, you hate running, fuck you, we're going to do some running. And there's a certain irony in that that that makes me smile. So I just sort of going out every day. And no matter how I felt about myself that day, if I was ever in my feelings where I was feeling a bit, whatever, not great about myself. Instead of trying to go and distract myself with going out drinking, going out, distracting myself, I would put my shoes on and I'll go out and be like, right, time is set for 30 minutes. I'm going to run the entire 30 minutes, but I've got to be outside for 30 minutes. Once I'm outside, I'm like, well, I'm not trying to run. I used to do this at night because I was embarrassed about how I look when I ran. And that's like, people talk about getting

into running now, and they're a bit like, oh, I'm worried about people who think, like, I used to do this at 10 o'clock at night in the pitch dark so no one could see me running because no one told me how to run. I was just a big dude running. I thought people would be, I don't know, I thought people would judge me for it. This is, this sounds completely bizarre now, but that's my thought process at the time. And I would do this every day. And no matter how bad I felt by myself each day, I always had the evidence there that I did something kind to myself, that I took myself outside, I moved my body, I ran, even if I could bed, even if I could run for two minutes, walk for one minute. And that was the basis of respect that I gave for

myself. And from that, it built forward. Something I never told you this, by the way. During that period of time, I started, like, because I didn't have any friends running, well, who were in the running world, I had to, like, make do with books or with YouTube videos. And I was going through my saves the other day on my notes of, or videos that have always stuck with me. And there was something I came across. You recognize this video. Sub six minute mile at two 25 pounds. Oh yeah. That was in my saves. I can tell you right now what the thumbnail looked like. Yeah, can you remember that one? Yeah. So this has been in my saves ever since then.

So this is at the period of time, those you can't see this. I put it to the camera here. This is a video from, I believe, 2019, where you were running around a track. I remember filming that one. Yeah, seven years ago. Yeah. That video sucked with me. I remember watching that for the first time when it came out.

Why do you think? Why that one? 225, you're big. It was the first time I'd seen someone who was looked more like my size, more my stature, and what was pushing themselves and running. I remember thinking six minute a mile, and obviously I worked in, kilometers. So I was like, at the time, I ran a six-minute kilometer. I was like, oh, I can do that. I obviously in real. It's like mile pace and a kilometer pace are very different. But I remember seeing

that. And that's why it's really special being here now and being a part of BPN and being part of the team, being part of the ultra, being on your podcast, because a huge part of that journey for me was the videos that you were putting out back then. And they sat with me and they stuck with me. And so I just want to say, like, that's why it's like, it's a really meaningful thing for me to be here. And like, it's a genuine pleasure not to be on the podcast, but to be involved with BPN. Like that, when that came through, that was a really special thing for me because it was like such a full circle moment from when I was going through that tough time and I wanted to make a change. And I didn't have, I had great friends around me, but none of them ran.

I was like, hey, I'm trying to do this thing of running. I want to try and push myself here. And one of the biggest sources from that was yourself. I appreciate that. It's really easy from like a crater's perspective to forget that there's people. people on the other side of these videos. Yeah. That, you know, you spend so much time talking to a camera and filming and editing and working on and you see the views, you see the comments, but when you actually

then experience the impact that those videos created and change a trajectory of people's life, that responsibility is heavy. Yeah. And it means a lot. So I appreciate you sharing that. No, of course, of course. I just, I was going through, like, I keep journals and notes of everything. So I was going through this program of the podcast. And I remember, there was a video in there on one of my notes and I pulled that up there. But I remember that. I remember where I I remember the run I tried to do after I watched

that video and how I was very slow. I did manage to run a sub-six minute mile for reference. But no, that was good. And that's what it started from. So, 2019 was where I really started to consistently run. I was going to ask, what was the running culture like in the UK

at that point? It was existed. It was more fringe. It was, you know, The UK's got a strong history of running and runners, especially from an elite standpoint. A lot of run clubs that are club runners. And so these are guys who are running, you know, insanely fast 5Ks. We've always had a really good standard of elite running

because cross-country is a big thing in the UK. And they look like runners. They look like runners. Yeah, there wasn't many people, 6'4 and like 240 pounds running around. I can say that much of sure. But during that period of time, I was progressing and getting better. And that was really excited to see. Seeing that progress was a really wonderful thing for me to see.

Because again, I'd go out every day, whether it is five minutes, for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it was. And then it started building up and then COVID happened. And the really beautiful thing was, I never done a race before COVID. Because I was just running, I didn't care, I didn't particularly care about a marathon or a distance or a race. I was just trying to do something to show myself a level of self-love and self-respect. So that's what was in it for me.

It was never about an outcome. It's never about saying, you know what? I want to go run a marathon. but I didn't really care too much. I also felt like I wasn't included in the running space because of how I looked at my size. So it was just something I did for myself. And then COVID happened.

At this point, you're not documenting your life on social media. I started documenting my life for social media in like 2022. Like this is, there was like years of working before I got to the point where I was calm enough to start sharing this. And I was obviously still working full time as well at this period. And it was. COVID happened. All races were cancelled anyway.

So there was even less pressure to try and do anything from that standpoint. And so I would just start going a bit further. I wonder what like 20K feels like on the body. I remember the first one around 20K. And I remember how bad I felt the next day. Because again, my understanding nutrition around running was pretty poor. The point. So I was just not eating enough to recover these sessions.

But my weight was incrementally dropping down. I was also playing rugby at this period of time. I joined a new club in London. And I noticed that my fitness was just improving constantly. because I was running on the side, my ability to run through the games was so much better. I was still strength training significantly, but my weight was down from like 250 at peak, down to towards like 2.30 now. But I was just able to move over the pitch so much faster. And it was great. I was like, wow, this is special. And it got to a point where I was running in the mornings and a rugby train the evening,

then I have games and weekends. And the rugby was something to get a little bit in the way because, you know, you're taking hits constantly. One's a very intense set of running. The other one is obviously distance. And they weren't really sort of fitting together. And it got through COVID. And during that period, I started reading about ultramarathans.

And there was something about it that spoke to me. There's something about it that when I was, I remember when I was 17, I read a book by guy called Mark Beaumont, if you ever know who he is? I don't think so. Ultra cyclist. He solo, I think age like 19, he solo cycled around the world and like 200-something days.

and he'd record it on a camcorder. And the BBC picked it up and turned into an eight-part documentary series. I remember watching that. I remember reading his book first, then watching the documentary. And I was amazed at not only the feat of endurance, but how he was able to communicate his own feelings, his own development, traveling. At the time, he had to go through, I believe he had to go through like Afghanistan, Iran,

place like this, and he's just him on a bike. Oh, wow. And he's self-filming it all there, you know, cycling across the entire outback of Australia, cycle across America. like it was Paris to Paris was the entire route. And I remember watching and thinking, wow, like, the upper limit of human possibilities are incredible. And people are, you know, people can do some really crazy things out there, but also his ability to share that experience through the camera and through his book. That always stuck with me as well. And so I was always fascinated by ultra

endurance events where cycling running, like not to do them, but just like the sheer like, you know, the spirit of the human, what people can do and achieve when they put their mind to something. And I was going to that period, and there's lots of, I started reading more books about people who can meet ultramarathon, these crazy races. And I thought, you know what, why don't I now, now that COVID sort of comes in there and then race to come back on, what's the nearest ultramarathon I can find? And there's 100K, the Thames path 100K from Putney in London, which is like, at the time, I lived like a mile from Putney, which is really convenient, to all the way to Henley on Thames. So 100 kilometres of the river Thames, all the way up. It was super flat as well. So it's quite a nice 100K to go into.

And I just started training for that. And I just started going a bit further distances. I ran like a marathon in training. That was a really cool moment. That was five years ago last week. I got the, my friend of mine who I ran it with, she just mess with me like,

happy fifth marathon anniversary because it's her first marathon too. Which is so nice to, so nice to be able to do than she has together. And it just progressed some from there. And I started dialing my nutrition in having a much better understanding of nutrition, what I need to eat, what I need to not eat,

how to manage my calories, how my strength training is going to change this now. and I remember doing that 100K and I remember it was the first time I'd done a run that I had stripped so much emotion back during these things and you know it's like running ultra you get so fatiguing so tired

that the walls we often put up day to day to kind of protect ourselves or protect our inner voice sometimes it kind of all fall down and I would feel it's like you're basically putting yourself in such a vulnerable place physically and emotionally

you often will explore certain thoughts and certain feelings that we often sometimes just trying to distract ourselves from. Especially as men, I've found it's a lot, a lot, this resonates more with men, but it's like we do kind of bottle a lot, a lot of things up more so than women. A bit of generalisation there,

but for the sake of it, and that's something I feel really true about myself. Like, I'm not always the best day today. It's talking about how I'm feeling, I'm expressing, I'll journal it down, but I don't often put it out there to people around me. I actually just listen to a podcast talking about this. Yeah.

And I had Bailey O'Brien on the podcast yesterday and I had this in my notes but we just didn't get to it so that would be a great way to just add this in now but I'll listen to this podcast it was called

Intentional Fatherhood and it was talking about how we as men feel this responsibility to bear a large burden in life so things that we are feeling things we are experiencing we feel this responsibility not to put ourselves in the victim position.

Yeah. And just like bear it and hold it. And just like keep it in and just like keep moving forward. And I think that is like a responsibility that we as men were actually provided and created to bear. But we need the appropriate outlet for sure to have the conversations with guys to release it. Absolutely. And again, I'm very fortunate in the sense I have some very, very close male friends. I'm super close to my dad. And I will talk about a lot of these deep things at the right time and at the right moment. However, sometimes I find it hard to even understand those feelings myself.

I'll be so bold about them that I won't even think about them all that much. But when I'm doing ultras, the layers come back. And I'll be sitting there. And I remember that 100 care, the last 20K of that 100. Because the whole first 80, I was like, this is fantastic. I had a great time. It was a gorgeous, it was a gorgeous, like, sunny September day, beautiful weather. You go through some of those beautiful parts of England as well. I had the best time, and that last 20, it all really hit home. And I had so much been stripped back, and I was like, oh, wow, like I was, at the time as well, my cousin was, terminally ill with cancer.

And that was, that was really, that was really weighing in my mind. I felt really, I'd really understand how to, how to deal that and feel that. And so that was all going on at the same time. And I remember that last 20, I started really feeling it properly. And not also, not trying to. understand my feelings. I think sometimes we can try and over, you can't outsmart feelings, is what I often get told. And I'm trying to, like, I try and think, I out think them, I understand them. And sometimes you've just got to feel them. I remember that. And it's like,

first time in years, I started, like, ball of my eyes out and run. I remember the guy I've been running with most of the time, who'd been, like, getting a house and fire, and he's like, everything okay. It's a giant bloat just running, like, tears come down, like, and five, maybe. But it's a really, that's why there's almost beauty in these altrues, because it strips you back. It doesn't matter how big, a tough and strong you are, running for that far of a distance it forces you to be vulnerable because you physically are vulnerable

and I remember crossing the finish line of that and I was like wow that was a release like I got a lot of that off my own chest I wasn't talking about it I just sat with those feelings and emotions and I remember finishing that thing and like okay if I can run 100K

I know I know I can run a lot further than that because I finished it and wasn't destroyed it was a first time I hit in that distance but I was like a few years went past a few weeks from past I was like okay I'm excited for this And that's when I started really sharing content. Because I was like, I didn't want to just make content about running because

there's a lot of people who make great content about running, who are way more qualified than I'm talking about running or coaching, all this kind of stuff there. And I didn't want to become a running coach. You know, I was more interested in how I've used running as a tool for self-respect and, you know, which ultimately led to, you know, becoming someone that I really like and I respect. And I think there's a much more deeper use of it.

And that's kind of what I wanted to show through my journey. And that's when I started getting into going like, okay, well, I'll start around that period of time making content. start on TikTok because I don't want to show on Instagram because my friends are on there. But then once that started generating Steam, my first brand partnership came along, Lou Lemon, who being fantastic partners, you know, I'm three years into that relationship and about to carry on with that relationship. What a great first partnership.

First one, yeah, no, first one was a full of master's up. I had a few offers coming through, but they weren't, they weren't massively aligned in lots of things. They were just trying to say, hey, we'll pay this, and promote this. And I was like, also, again, previously I was coming from working in a very good job. So it wasn't as if I was, I was, you know, needed the money. But like, at the same time, I was like, I only want to sign with partnerships that I care about, that want to support me what I'm doing, that understand who I am and what I'm trying to achieve and understand that for me, the biggest impact isn't about how much I can make from this,

is about how many people I can help. Who can I help along the way of me doing these big things, these big goals? You know, that for me is important, is who you can bring along the way, inspire, who you can lift up. That for me is really important. Because all want to give me trying to go and achieve big things, if I don't help other people up with me on the way, then it's not about that. It's not worth it for me. And they were the ones who understood that. And they said, okay, we believe in you. Here's a year contract. We believe in

you. And they said, what do you want to do? And I was like, you got a great idea. I've always had this idea since COVID. During COVID, I've often cycled to my cousin's place. He lived north, I live south. And during COVID, London was completely like shut down. So I would cycle the tube lines to get from where I lived at the time place called Ballam in South London. He lived up in high gate north. And the northern line, which goes right the way through. I would cycle along the northern line. London is, by the way, is massive. So you're trying to understand London. You understand it on the underground because you just appear in these different places, but above ground to contextualize there. It was a quite nice way for me to learn

where actually everything was in London. And I remember going this thinking like, it's kind of cool to run between all these stations at one point. I just kind of had that sitting in the back of my mind. And when they said, do you have any ideas for a project station? I go, yeah, I got this really cool idea. I want to run the entire length of London Underground. it's like 572 kilometres at the total distance. So about 350 miles. I would say, sorry about my conversions. I'm aware.

Most of the distance here American and probably don't understand what I don't know what the kilometers, everything's in miles. So when I'm in America, I try and use miles as much as I can. I appreciate that. No, no, of course, of course. It's a yeah, so about 350 miles. And I said, hey, listen, I'm going to do a different tube line each day. And they're going to do it for, there's a mental health charity called Calm,

the campaign against living miserably. one of an organization in the UK, they are sort of leading the fight against suicide and helping people living in crisis. Because for me, I was able to get the support I needed because I had a very close network of friends around me, support him and cared for me. I had the financial resources to seek help when I needed it. A lot of people aren't in that position. And I think it's well-and-good me to say, hey, I pulled myself by my bootstrap and got myself out of the situation. I relied on support from other people. And not everyone has that same support system.

So I wanted to find a charity partner who could, who provides that support and raise not only money for them, but for awareness around their services for people who needed it. And that's what I said. That was the goal. And I wanted to raise, I think 40,000 for them in that first challenge. And we went out with that being the goal. And I just had a document to the journey of, hey, I'm going to trade this thing. It's a wild distance and it's day and day out.

It's 11 tube lines of London, 11 days in a row. And I wanted to do it and get as many people out running with me as possible. So we had a campaign alongside of it with Lou Lemon where anyone who ran their commute to work that week, they would get like entered into competition and into a draw. And we got 10,000 of people to do that over the course of the week. That's incredible. And then I had a live tracking device on me. So the entire 11-day process, I was never running it alone.

There was always people with me because they had a map of London and wherever I was that day, people could just come and find me. The best matter was they could just go to the next tube station and get the train there. And I would run past them. They'd join in. So that for me was really special because it was less about me trying to achieve a big endurance. goal. It was, hey, if I can do this, you guys can do this, I want more people involved. And it was one of the most special, deep, meaningful moments of my life completing that because, you know, we had

the last day, hundreds of people coming running with me and finishing up in the center of London, the middle of the central line. And the same crew of guys I've got who are me in that challenge, my physio Adrian, Tommy, my coach, and Nick, my buddy, they're coming out for this race too. Incredible. They've been within every single challenge still. And it's so, like, so special to have those guys with me. And that's why they weren't with me last year because the timing's a bit different. I was just feeling this format.

But now this year I said, hey guys, I'm going to go for it this year. I really love if you guys could be there. And so that was it. So that was the first progression into these multi-day big challenges. And I think with a big challenge, there's got to be more to it than,

hey, I want to go set this record. Hey, I want to go see if I can do that. That's great. And that's no one. I love that. But I think there has to be a deeper meaning or reason why you want to go put yourself through something. And again, this is just my own take on these things.

I love seeing it when people are doing a big challenge to raise money for charity. Something that's meaningful for them, something that matters to them. And they want to try and do it in a way that lifts other people up. You know, you don't climb the mountain for the world to see. You climb the mountain to see the well. It's really important that, you know, the reasons behind doing something. Just important is the achievement itself, in my opinion. So for me, it was when I want to do a big challenge, like that a multi-day ultra or a big event,

almost like an adventure for me, there has to be more to it than saying, hey, I want to do it self-set up that and I want to do it because two things. One, what will make of me to do it? I know that training for this is going to be crazy. It's going to be wild and it's going to force me to be better in lots of different ways. It's going to force me to have, you know, improve my discipline, improve my attitude towards training. Make me more organized. There's one of the other things as well. I must have you noticed, it's that the more organized you have to be. Absolutely. It's not a case of going like, I know, I've got this session tomorrow. It's, I have this session tomorrow. I start at 6 a.m. It has to get down at 6 a.m. There's no other way. There's no

bandwidth the rest of the day for me to do this in. Otherwise, it's going to fuck up a whole day, you then starts holding yourself to a standard. I think that's what, you know, when you talk about set the standard, hold the standard, that's what it resonates with me. It's like, hey, I said I'm going to do something. I got to go and do it. And then you build that trust within yourself. And that's a huge, huge way to build self-trust, self-respect and self-belief as well. And that's, that's huge. And that's one of the big things running teach you and training teaches you is that building of self-esteem doesn't just magically happen. It happens through repetitive evidence building.

and over the course of now for me years, it's got to the point where I can, you know, be really confident about myself. I can, you know, have a high level of self-belief when I say, hey, I'm going to go do this thing. Hey, I'm going to go start this channel. Hey, I'm going to start training for this thing. I know if I said I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it.

And that matters a lot to me. I love that you commented on the organization. Because I don't think a lot of people give credit to these preps and these challenges. I think a lot of people are actually confused why they actually do a lot of these challenges, or they don't even know why they're pursuing these challenges outside of vanity. Yeah. But if I think about what I've learned the most from a lot of these preps,

not anything just preps, but goals that I've gone after, I've learned how to be very organized, very efficient, very committed, especially as life responsibilities have increased. Tomorrow morning, just like you said, I have to start my run at 4.30 a.m. Because if I don't, I'm going to cut into my kids waking up. I'm going to cut into getting Charlie to school. I'm going to cut into my first meeting.

It's either I run at 4.30 a.m. Or I run late at night when the kids go down. And it teaches you. I say, I'm going to do this one thing. I'm going to do it. There's no if and or but I'm going to do it. So what is the purpose of this year's G1M Ultra for you? What is the deeper meaning?

Deep meaning for me was consistency. I wanted to really level up my consistency. That's not just consistency of training. It's consistent of everything of how I was showing up for my work, for content, for the business I'm involved with it. Like all that, I wanted to be, I've often felt like I'm a bit peaks and trough kind of guy. I'm all in for a period.

then I got a pullback. Then, you know, up and out, I want to say, hey, you know what, I would like to, in order to have a great sustained output on most things in my life, you've got to be consistent. You want to have great relationship, you have to show up consistently. You can't show up massively and, you know, for a period of time and then have a massive pullback. Fortunately not our life works. So for me, it's consistency.

So I made a deal with, you know, for the train block. I run every day. It's just, that's the rule. And there's no negotiating that. And to be fair, as soon as I agree that with myself, it felt like the easiest thing in the world. I just wake every day, goes, cool, I've got to run. And that's it. Whatever time I go.

whatever time the alarm goes off, great, 30 minutes later, I'm running. That's just been a rule I've set myself this year. Even to the point this week when my coach's like, you don't really need to run this week, you're about to run there. I was like, I'll go out for 10 minutes or what it is, this morning was 15 minutes, just a 3K, just something so I can say, hey, I've done it, I made myself a promise. It's ironic because I'm not a big fan of people who do run streaks all the time. At the same time, I know, I've now become that person. I'm like, damn it. For me, it was just to really hone in on that level of consistency. It shows you what you can do. It shows you, it's so weird that so many times we create excuses in our own lives for certain

things we do. And, you know, a lot of the time it's just our self-negotiating. And we justify certain things in our life to say, oh, you know, this is this. But you just said tomorrow, what's times you're on? What time is you're on? At the moment? I'm aware. Like, you've got family, kids, responsibilities. The race is on tomorrow, starting in midday, work meetings. Like, that's, you could very, you know, you could very easy make the argument of yourself. Hang on, Nick, I got a pretty serious day here. I should probably, you know, maybe just not worry about that run and just focus on family, then focus on this, focus on this.

But a few years, like, no, no, I'm consistency. Yeah. I'm up. There's no negotiating. And I know what that's going to do for my day. Yeah. It's going to set my day up for success. I'm not going to have to try to squeeze it in later.

Yep. I got a question for you. Go for it. A lot of people say they pursue a lot of goals in challenges and pursuits, races, preps, because they want to reach their full potential. what are your thoughts on that? Do you think they actually want to reach their full potential

or is it something a lot of people will just say? And I share that to say that I've said it before. Yeah. And I don't know if I actually believed when I said that.

I think that I used to say I would do these things to reach my full potential maybe to justify why I was doing these things. I'm not saying there's a right or wrong but I'm just curious your thoughts.

I think, and easy out, I think saying to reach my full potential is a bit of a, I think there's always there's always more to it than that, right? There's always more potential than what? Are you willing to reach your full athletic potential? Your full life potential? What potential we're talking about here? No, potential is just, you know, we all have potential. It's to doing it that makes a difference. If I had this, if I did this, it doesn't matter. You either do it, you don't do it. To reach my full potential, I don't think I've ever really said that, but I can imagine, I've heard a lot of times. And hey, you know what, I think sometimes it can be a bit of a shield for someone to say

as a way of, they maybe have a real genuine reason behind something, but maybe they're just, they want to try and protect that a little bit. And I think it's an easy way to do it. And I don't, I'm not want to criticize or judge anyone for when they say their reasons behind doing it, because a lot of the time, these things have very deep meanings of people, and they may not want to just put that out there. And so I do appreciate and respect that. But I think full potential looks different to everyone as well. You know, I think what, what some people want to just to have a life that's not too stressful and they're happy. And for them, that's for living full potential.

Some people want the stress, they want the responsibility, they want the pressure. And for them, that's living full, fully, with their full potential because they know, hey, I think I can operate at that level. I think I can, I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this. And I want to find out if I can. And that's true as well. They're all true statements, you know. Yeah.

I think we go through different. And again, I will really, enforce what you just said, like, there's not a right or wrong. For sure. But as I've moved through different seasons of life, and I believe I've matured and gained some wisdom, because I was someone that once said, like,

I do these things to reach my full potential. Yeah. And now as my life looks different in terms of leadership and family and being a father and a husband and the man that I want to be, I can't imagine being on my deathbed being like, yeah, Nick, you did it.

You ran the 239 marathon. You did it. You ran the 100 miles. You're just, their families over there. You're looking at the medals. Be like, we did it. We did it. And like, I was thinking about that on a run a while back.

Yeah. Yeah, it does feel a little silly. Yeah. At this point. But I think that's part of growing and just maturing and wisdom. Sure. I just wanted to get your take on it because I can tell by this conversation, like there is, you have.

much intention. I've always respected the way that you approach these preps. There's so much intention and strategy. And I'm seeing this healthy emotional relationship to the prep, which is

it's very unique. It's very rare. Thank you. Very rare. And I can tell the reason and the meaning behind these preps is very personal. For sure. And it's very unique. And to be honest, in the space that we're in the fitness industry,

I think you'd probably be surprised how rare it is for someone to have that mindset and approach, a very healthy, mature approach to what you're doing. I really respect that. I really appreciate that, thank you. I really respect that. No, I think it's important. I think, as you point about earlier,

when you have a following, when you have a level of responsibility to an audience, you are, I think you should be very, conscious about the wise behind doing things. I don't want to, you know, if I'm being an example to people, especially younger people, because that's one thing I really do, I really do focus on is like, who is that 15 year old that I was watching my content, who's making the decisions in life, and maybe isn't too happy with whether they're out in life, like, what, how should I approach this from the perspective of showing that to them? If I'm out there being like, yeah,

run a marathon every day and do this, this, you know, I don't think that's the wisest thing for me to influence someone to do there. I think the important thing is to improve you. Obviously, fitness is a fantastic tool and a way of improving your relationship with yourself with those around you, your friends, your family. It's a wonderful thing, but I think sometimes also people can misuse fitness.

People can use, it's like they say discipline without self-love is a form of self-harm. And that's really stuck with me because there's been times when I felt maybe I've gone a bit too hard in my training and I'm really pushing it because I'm maybe distracting myself from feeling as opposed to understanding my feelings and emotions.

And opposed to doing something because it's a healthy way of showing up for myself and as a sign of self-respect and self-love, it can almost be a sign of self-punishment. Yep. I'm very careful about that because I think there is a toxic side of fitness that often isn't overlooked because the toxic side can often lead to incredible outcomes for people and incredible results for people. And especially when, you know, people go from race to race to race to challenge, challenge, you know, from event to tournament to this, it can be, whilst it's really cool and good for

engagement for lots of people on social media. it can create a bit of a trap for lots of people. And I do, I do worry that that sets a bad example sometimes. That's why I have a massive emphasis on taking time off afterwards. I've got a month where I've got no formal training after this race. I'm just going to let my body sit, let my body rest. I'll casually train for a month before I, you know, go and have, again, make sure everything's checked out, make sure things are good, make sure I'm healthy, make sure I'm sleeping well, make sure that, you know, I feel good. We'll do some baseline testing with my, with my coaches to see where we're at. But the last thing I want to do is finish a backyard ultramarathon.

I intend to go to my absolute limit. And then, you know, a week after start hammering hard sessions again. I say, no, could I do it? Maybe. Should I? No. I think it would be irresponsible of me to be doing that kind of stuff as well. Because I think, you know, at the day, when you are in a position where people respect

you, you know, you're a part of a, you know, I'm representative of not just myself, but BPN for Lula Lemon for other brands I work with. I have responsibility to my audience to do things right and do things sensibly and not be a poor influence on them. I think that's really important for me to hold myself to that standard because I, don't even wrong,

when you achieve something big, a party is like, let's rip another one, let's do another one, you have to hold yourself back. That's also where I have a very good team of, you know, my agent or my coach who's like, there are times when I'm going to have to tell you to stop

and pull yourself back. Same way, my physio, Adrian, fantastic guys, currently flying. out landing in a couple of hours. The only, when we do these big challenges, we did a really big challenge in 2024 that didn't, I was successful at it, but it was with a lot of issues on that challenge. The only way that ended was when he pulls a plug on it,

because he's responsible for my health. And if he was to say, hey, Johnny, you're now doing something that could potentially hurt yourself in the long run. I say, cool, then we'll finish that. And I think it's really good to have someone who has that control over you. because I know what I'm like when I'm trying to run and do these things. I'm probably not the best judge of my own decisions because I'm probably looking at it from an angle of,

but I invest all this time, this effort, it's energy, I want to keep going, I want to push here. I don't care if I get out. Obviously, I do care of it. But when you're in that moment, it's a lot harder to make those calls. So having someone like Adrian for me who has that, who can supersede whatever I'm saying, and he's got my best interests at heart.

He's there to take care of me, because sometimes I'm not going to always take the best care of me. thing about ultra running, which is uniquely difficult where you are ultimately pushing through a lot of pain and a lot of, you know, where most people, a lot of people would stop running going, well, my legs are in agony now. So you're 100 miles deep. It takes a very strange person to go, great, now let's keep going. But to know the difference between I'm in pain or I'm injured. Yeah. There is a line between that, one that I'm probably not best to make that decision on. So that's why I have him there to really be like, hey, you could be fucking yourself up here. I remember watching your post G1M Ultra last year. Yeah. And it really like struck a nerve with me. Yeah.

So I remember you went to New York City, but I believe it was after the G1M Ultra. No, that was after the 50-miler? 50-mile. Yeah. That was the 50-mile. I was going to say, it didn't feel like it was a year ago. Yeah, that was in October. Yeah.

It was after the 50-mileer. I remember watching you go to New York City and, you enjoyed all this food. Yeah. And you relaxed. And then you took time off from running. And then you documented yourself starting to run again. Yeah.

And I don't know why this sticks in my head. But I remember you going for a run and you were talking about how you could do a run walk. Your heart was jacked up. Yeah. And that was so relatable. Yeah. Where typically after I do a prep, I, three days after the race, I start running again. Or I'm back into it.

I don't allow myself to rest. Yeah. But something about that video just struck a nerve in me where post Iron Man, I took three weeks completely off from running because of that video. Oh, yes, okay.

I've had a positive influence of Nick Baer. That's brilliant. And there's something about that one. I was like, yeah, dude, Johnny's doing this. I'm going to do this. I appreciate that. Yeah, man.

It feels great, though. I mean, I'm a big believer in you have to have that time off because it can't be, if you want to go, all out for something. If you are 100% committed to that goal, to that block, to that journey, that progress, that is, that takes a lot out of you. And I think you owe yourself the grace to have the time off afterwards. And I think as well to have that time as deep reflection. I think

when I've had it before where I've had events stacked together and I finished the event. And it's almost like it doesn't mean that much because my mind's on the next thing. I'm all to think about the next thing. Whereas, you know, it should training for something so hard, and achieving whatever you want to achieve, maybe not achieving it, you've got to give yourself the moment to break it down, to understand it. And before you can move on to the next thing, I think having a few weeks where you just say, hey, I'm just going to chill, the problem I got, I got so ill after that race.

I actually had a stomach ulcer, I found out during the 50, so I went back to the UK, had a great weekend in New York. I noticed my stomach was still really painful. Got back home, had an ulcers there, like, hey, you actually need to have like a couple weeks in bed and really like rest, some medication. When I came back, I had this godawful cold. It was getting really cold in London. So I had a bit cold, a bit fluy. And I remember I went for this walk run. And I was thinking, oh my God, my heart rate was jumping up to like 15, 160 on the super slow pace. And it felt like I'd lost on my fitness. And it was a very, it was a humble thing.

I'd better put my phone up being like, I'm just going to rip this video. Just to say, hey, I might be able to run crazy distance altrues and do these big challenges and all this sort of stuff there, but you know what? How great is it we get to start from square one again? What feels like square one? Because about a week or so later, I was back. All of a sudden, my pace was back there. Just that first week back is humbling. I think it's good. It's good to humble yourself every now. Then I remember hitting that thinking, I hadn't ran in four weeks at that point. And I remember literally, I had to walk run it to try and keep my heart rate down. And I remember going around, and it's in my city, so lots of people who run, just know and recognize me. And people put up,

being like, you're okay there, man, because I'm just walking on my runs. I'm like, yeah, well, good, just casually having a casual walk run. I think it's absolutely fine. I have no, no issue doing that. I remember that, but I remember that point. I'm glad you mentioned that, because that video did stick with me. Because much I want to be like, you know, with social media, there is an element of performance and formativeness to it where you want to put a great version of yourself out. You want to put the best out. It's sometimes can be a lot harder to shine a light on the more negative things or things you're struggling with because that requires a little vulnerability. It's very easy for me to hide behind a camera and talk about

It's great things happening here. I'm looking good at the moment here. It's a lot harder to talk about, hey, I suck at this right now. This is actually, this isn't the easiest thing for me to do. Because, yeah, it requires you to be a little bit more. But also, that's the sort of stuff that has a lot of impact on people. I agree. So you just said that, like, whenever I've seen creators that I love and I got up to talk

about things from a more deeper perspective or something maybe they're struggling with, you know, it humanizes. It humanizes. And at the end of the day, we're all human beings. We all have feelings. We'll have fears, doubts, worries, concerns. you know, we're not all superman all times where we're trying to be, you know, great and trying to just go crush this and miss the confidence, hey, we, you know,

we all have our own doubts and I think it's okay to sometimes put that out there. And if anything, that, you know, makes, I think it makes you more brave to be able to do that, you know, to be able to say, hey, you know what, maybe this is the thing I'm struggling with here. That's why with social, I'll always talk about it. If I'm, if I'm not feeling great about something or I'm struggling with something, one thing I'm really trying to do now is be a bit more communicative with that, not just with people on social media, but with people in my life as well. I think that's something that

not to say that every time I speak something to be moaning about my situation but more a case of just knowing how to understand that myself and knowing how to communicate that. I think it's key if any good relationship is based on communication and I think that's an important factor to it. Vulnerability is a very easy and quick way

to connect with other people and allows others to be vulnerable as well. That's the other side to it right because it gives permission to those around you to share with their invulnerabilities as well. And that's why when my friends went to rehab a few years ago, I didn't know I could talk to them about that until they went and then they came out

and they were talking to me about how they had felt and how they were what they were going through. I felt sad, but at first, because I was actually like, Dan, like, they never talked to me about this beforehand. They didn't speak to about the things they were struggling with beforehand. Maybe as a friend, and I know,

I would feel terrible as a friend if my friends couldn't come to me and talk to me about their challenge of the problems because they didn't think that I would care enough about it or I wouldn't want to listen to it. And then it goes, okay, well, what can I do to change that? Well, maybe I can be a little bit more vulnerable with things I'm struggling with with them. And maybe I can be a bit open with them about that.

And that definitely helps. You know, I'm going to keep me quick ground in my best mate, George, when one of the guys, they called me when I was, he called me on the phone and when I was on the way up to the studio here. Give me a little pep talk for tomorrow. But also, you know, he was a real, real lovely chat. And he was, he was, took the piss out of me completely as well. You know, you know, it keeps me very humble and grounded.

But again, it's a saying, I know, I know that means. a lot, but come from him because he talks in the heart about it. And if you want to, you know, the best way to have to deepen those relationships in your life for the people you care about is to be a little more fond about things. If you're willing to share about your struggles, your worries, your concerns, gives other people in your life permission to talk about their worries, struggles, concerns. And whether or not you can solve those problems for them, sometimes you can't, but sometimes people just want some to listen.

I think that's a really important thing to do for those around you is to just be there to be able to listen, you know, and know that, allow them to know that they're not being judged for their feelings. Yeah, one of the best pieces of advice that the stuff ever gave me because, you know, on a marriage, it's all about communication. For sure, right? And I'm naturally, like a problem solver. Yeah.

If someone puts a problem in front of me, like, all right, well, here's like, let's lay it out. Here's how we solve it. Here's the plan. Let's go attack this. Yeah. She's like, hey, sometimes I don't want to solve these problems. I just want you to listen to them. Oh, wow, that's like completely against the way that I approach most of my life.

It's not very pragmatic, is it? Yeah, it's a... But I hear you. I understand it, yeah. But I hear you. Like, that's what you're asking for. You just, you want to be heard and listen to. You don't necessarily want a solution.

I can do that for you. Yeah. So let's talk about this year's prep for the G1M Ultra. What are some of the biggest? changes you made compared to last year from things that you learned through that experience? Heat training, really important. Obviously, this year is not as hot as last year's race. Touchwood still. One day left still could change. But even still, training from the UK where January, February time, you know, it's just above zero. It doesn't get very warm at all.

And coming to Texas where it's pretty warm here still compared to the UK, even though it's not, the last few days, it's been like really nice weather. it's still the average temperature is a lot higher in the UK. So my heat training acclamation block started six weeks ago for that. Then it was also really dialing in form under fatigue. So I'll go out and do these 30, 40K runs, and then I'll go see my physio, get on the treadmill, and we'd start filming my form, seeing how it's looking.

Where's the weakest point in the chain of my legs? What's going first? Where's that weakness? we notice there's a slight overpronation on the, but to be fair, both right and left, my tip post seems to that last little, as you step down the heel, that last little area there, super weak point.

We've just put a massive emphasis and building that up and really, and training it and testing it and seeing how we're developing it. That's been a huge one. Building that hell. Oh God, this awful series of exercises. It's actually the most humbling thing, because all I'm doing is moving my heel,

like an inch off the ground, and then very slowly dropping it down, like a Smith machine. in single leg, calf raised, but the heel just goes like one or two inches of the ground. Would that be considered like plios? Kind of really. I mean, it's much more tendon work.

And again, it's to a degree isometric work because you're putting it into a hold. But again, it's just trying to fix that the weak part of my range of motion within that area. And we notice that when I go for a three-hour run

and then I jump on the treadmill, he's looking at my form compared to a fresh form. And he's like, yeah, when you're dropping in the pace you're going to run an ultraat and your form and your technique there, there's a little bit of instability in that area we got to work on and just finding weaknesses. And I like that. I like, we'll go test things out.

He's like, right, I need you to be really fatigued. Go for a four-hour run, come back, and then we're going to test you out. And I'm like, okay, great, let's see. Let's see, let's see you. Let's find the weakness, weak point. That is the main one. Second is being nutrition. So last year, I found it really hard to eat last year because the heat.

Often it's going to be a byproduct of heat on us, but I found it really hard to get the food in me last year. So I swapped over to a lot of liquids, a lot of G-W&M sport. and gels. But this year, every time I've done a simulation, we've been testing out a whole variety of foods, not relying on foods in America. I love food in America. But if I'm living in the UK, I'm used to British food that I have in training. So I think half of one of my suitcase was just British food. What kind of stuff? Pot noodle. It's like a noodle brand we have in the UK. They're coming a big pot. They are one of the most, like, unhealthyest foods, but they're fantastic

for ultramarathons. I've had them on different challenges before. And I know that they sit really well with me. I did a 10-hour simulation a few weeks back, and every other round I had one. And I felt fantastic. No issues. No issues whatsoever. Combination of gels, pot noodles, and then there's a candy or sweets we call them in the UK called wine gums. They're not actually got wine in them, but they can't taste that. I can chuck down like three or four rolls of these an hour, and they're fantastic. So they're a little bit more solid. I can get a bit, Ultra is like fatigue on powders and just gels. It's nice to have something a bit I can chew into as well. So they're phenomenal. I absolutely love those. I've got like a box of like 60 of them for the

ultra so I'll make sure I'll say a couple. They're really really good. So I'm just just used to the things I'm, I can have access to in the UK. As much as I do love food in America, I'm about to go to the grocery store after this to pick up my last bits of food. And I'm like American food, I'd say is actually is delicious. I usually do get a few pounds I come to America because the food is so good. but I have just been sick into those basic ones here. I brought a lot of food over, I've had the last week. Just make sure I've got no digestion issues.

Your stomach can really ruin ultras. Same with like an Iron Man or a marathon. If you go into it and your stomach's in bits in the day, it really, it can really make it suck. Yeah. I mean, I found in any ultra-distance race, the hardest part for me is always gut issues. Like at some point, the stomach turns.

Yeah. thinking back to take my last, the last man standing I did in 2023. Yeah. Everything was dialed and then you get to a point where you have fatigue of powders, gels, bars, candy. Yep. So you come in from a loop and it's like, what can I eat right now? And people were handing me pieces of pizza and sandwiches and then everything went downhill from there. Yeah.

Stomach is turned. It's really tricky to, I think the best thing to have is options, because I don't know what, I'm not sure when I won. I did a challenge in 2024. It was called Run the Capitals, Ranta, all the Capital Cities in the UK and Ireland. This is miles. It was 600 miles in 11 days, 12 hours.

And we had an RV. We had all this food. And I remember I was eating the same thing for dinner every night. So my last five miles, the lads would pass me a bowl of like big giant, like a family-sized portion of like chicken pasta, like a tomato and marscaponi sauce. And it's fantastic, my favourite, pasta sauces. They passed out the wind of the RV and I just run with this giant bowl,

just getting my last bit of calories before going to bed. And I think on day three, they passed it to me. I had one bite. I spat it out. I was like, what the hell is this? How have you made this differently? And the lads are like, we've made it exactly the same. It's like, we've made it every other night. I was like, no, you've done something to it. You've changed this. You've changed. They're like, it's literally like five ingredients. We've not done anything to it. And my body's reaction to it was like, I couldn't even swallow it. It was, it tasted so bad. And I think when you're doing these, crazy endurance things, one slight, like, like flavor fatigue and something, when that goes,

you don't, doesn't matter how hungry you are, you don't want it near you. It almost makes you want to throw up. And I was thinking, at first I thought, they've done something to this. They've changed the sauce. They've done something differently. But no, they trade up mainly exactly the same as every other day. It's just a flavor fatigue had kicked in. Thankfully, we've obviously had an RV full of like different foods and whatnot. But I think sometimes, like every now and then just having something like fruit, even though there's fiber in it, it's not the most optimal thing to have during an ultra, just something fresh and something that is like,

something that's been growing in the ground is quite nice. It's like not a processed bar or bowl of noodles, something like that. 100%. Something that is just very simple. Like, I found last year like cold watermelon was really nice in the course. Again, watermelon is like super calorie dense at all. It's, you know, it's actually what I like to eat when I'm trying to cut some weight. But like, it was just so nice to have something that was like had been grown and was fresh

as opposed to just like hammering gels and powders and all the sort of stuff there and sodas and it definitely is nice to change up a little bit over these things and that's the thing you'd never know you want I had, I think last year like we've made loads of like PB&J sandwiches we had our cool box was full of so much stuff and

I didn't fancy any of it at all last year was interesting before the race got started walking through the campsites and looking at what people had in their campsites for food I mean like Oreos cookies, cake, everything. I'm like, I can almost promise you, you don't want to start with that stuff. No. Like, that is going to turn very, very quickly. Yeah. I've told this story before,

but in 2003, when I did Last Man Standing, there was a guy there that was running with me, his first ultra ever. Wow. And you can tell he came from a strength background, like a bodybuilder. I was like, hey, man, what's your, what's your fueling strategy today? It's like chicken rice, broccoli after every loop. It's just just, I'm like, brother, I highly advise against that, like, come eat some of our food. Yeah. That is, that is going to be a bad, bad day out there for you. Something I was thinking about as you're talking about monitoring the form of your running.

Yeah. Post long runs. How do you think about, you know, when we, when I go out for my average run on a morning, I'm running like a 730, 745 minute per mile pace. My gate's different. My stride is different. When I go into these ultras, if I was going to go run the G&M Ultra tomorrow,

I'd be running a lot slower. My gate's going to change. My foot strike is going to change. How do you approach your daily running, pace, stride, gate, all of that, knowing that come ultra, you're running slower. Great point. I intentionally do some really slow runs each week.

You do. So, yeah, I often do it in the treadmill. So that way I just, because I think if I'm outside running, I'll naturally want to speed up a bit. Or especially around London, you're constantly navigating people and places. And also, there's something about when you're running with lots of the people around, you kind of don't want to. You feel, I feel like, I feel like, I feel like,

I feel an overwhelming urge to not run that slow, especially like. Oh, definitely. Yeah, I don't want it to take so over me, especially when I run around London, you know, I don't want to be, you know, going basically a little bit fast than a walking pace. So I just treadmill it. those runs, I often don't record them as well, because for me, I'm just like, I just got to do an hour, G1M, multi-paced. And so I'll stick the, the speed be like 630 commas of pace.

I apologize to everyone I don't know, it is a miles. Very, very slow. That's like, there's like a five and a half hour marathon pace. Okay. So maybe six-hour marathon pace, really super control, like 110 heart rate sort of effort. And it just is super tight gate. I just want to know what that feels like. Where am I landing? How does that landing each step feel? super tight gate because again I've been on these big challenges before like you're forced to run of that but you may not want to start out of that pace

but come day eight or nine running 50 plus miles a day like you are going to have to run at that pace like you don't have the capacity to move everything so stiff that that's basically all you've got to work with and just get really comfortable in that position how do I feel what's my where's my head out where's my angle are just get used to

I did some on the treadmill this week not in here because I think when you're at BP and HQ I have a real big urge to kind of run and fast on the treadmill. Yeah, I thought you cooking. There's cooking away there. And then, so the, the, my Airbnb has got a nice gym to it. So I just sat there.

My buddy Max, who's over from Dubai as well, was running this. He managed in the race. I asked him, because he did a 24-hour simulation a few weeks ago. And even then, he actually ran reasonably, reasonably fast pace. I said, you are well, like, because he wants to go, like, he wants to be well into day two into this. And I was like, you are aware, like, what that pace is going to feel like a six-a-cline pace.

And we supposed out of treadmill was to it. And it was almost like, he was like, he was like, this is so weird. For him, it almost felt like it took more effort to run at that slower pace than it did his natural, organic sort of...

So I think you gotta train it. You have to get used to that pace because, again, it's a different gait. It's a different angle. It's a different... There's less forward lean. It's almost feeling like you're just, you know, you're still lifting the foot,

but you're not propelling yourself off there. It's much more case of perpetually falling and catching slightly and, like, still having a low ground contact time, but your cadence is going to change it almost feels like a bit more of a shuffle. How you land is a little bit more, I find a little bit more flat-footed.

And again, it's also about like, how does that feel doing an hour on that? Where's sore, where hurts. Often find that's when you start getting into things like your core and your stability and your ability to hold yourself still standing up upright. It's really important because if you're doing it for an hour, one thing, doing it for 20 hours, 40 hours.

Like, that's where often your legs are the things actually don't, they keep going because you train them so well. But, you know, how are you able to support your upper body? How's that feeling? How's that upper back? You're leaning forward too much. Really focusing on those form cues are so important. I look through footage a lot of the time of different challenges and just see how I'm moving. Day seven, day eight, day nine of these challenges where I'm four or five hundred miles into something. And I'm like, that's really interesting to see because you can always change up your form a little bit.

And for me, it's like if I know my hamstrings get tight, I'll change to this sort of form. I know my cords are tight. I'm going to be feeling like I'm striking a match under my foot when I run. So every time something gets tight, You kind of have to push the load off different muscle groups on the body. Same way, I'll change out, like, I've got heel risers for my shoes. So I know that when my quads get tight, I want to try and drop those heel risers down. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, yeah. So I really, like, we're honing, I hone that kind of stuff there. And I pick that up from doing, like, all these, like, the London Underground or the capital challenges where, again, you're doing 50, 60 miles a day. Like, you need to, you have to get every four-so hours, I change the profile. Keep the same shoe. Or maybe the same shoe, but a different, different, different. like a fresher version of it,

but with like an extra four or five mil heel on it. That makes a big difference. Huge because what it does is it takes a lot of the pressure. On the soles of your feet, it just slightly changes where the most concentrated pressure is. But also what it does is one, you know, a couple millimeter difference on that heel, all of a sudden the chain of muscles is going through you,

it's slightly changed the load across that from glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves. There's a slight change. If it leads you for a little bit, you know, one degree at the bottom, it's a bit, that just changed that lean slightly. And all of a sudden, it just takes pressure off certain points. And I find also keeps your mind of being more occupied.

I know that, oh, sweet, that's a noticeable difference. My feet feel fresher in these shoes. Could be the same shoe, but just by putting a heel riser in, we kind of go between 2 and 6 mil on heel risers. And then also just changing a shoe profile. Sometimes you want something that's a bit more responsive at certain points. Sometimes you want to go back to something that's actually a bit more, you know, comfortable and a bit more stable.

Always having an option to change. I think it's really important because it keeps you, I think the biggest trick with Ultras is not to spiral, not to go, oh God, this is actually, this is getting worse, getting worse. Because again, you're actually feeling worse as time goes on, but you need to be constantly problem solving or trying to get ahead of a problem. So when your leg starts to get tired or your hamptons are sore, whatever it is, they go, right, they're starting to get a bit sore, let's just change it up now. And then all of a sudden it takes your mind off the problem because you're on the focus of the solution. And so for me, having that constant change out

is a really nice thing to do. And again, like, you know, all the time it's just, sometimes it's a guessing game, but most of the time it's just being a bit pragmatic in in those situations. I always find like being pragmatic in high stress situations when you're just trying to focus on continuously moving is really important because you're focusing much more on solutions and problems. That's smart. I've actually never heard of someone changing out the heel pitch and their shield. It literally just, you pop it underneath your insult and just pop up like a little heel riser on there. It's really good. My physio, they're from the running room. So they based out of Sydney, Australia. They help Ned Brockman on his run across

Australia and his 1,000 miles around the running track. They're fantastic, super specialists at running. They've got a few clinics out in London. And so my physio Adrian's from that clinic, he's come over. And they're brilliant. They have the deep, deep understanding of getting people through incredibly long endurance challenges, as well as helping people run for training for a 10K or a half-marathon a marathon. They take a very, very much a data-first approach to all of this stuff. And they've got data from me for five years from five years of running every time I do a gate analysis every time we wear a different pair of shoes they've got treadmills with these sentences on it that are just picking up all that data then we can see maybe changing of landing forces

you know when I if I go off a four-hour run I come in jump on the treadmill they'll then recall that data and then we've got you know another set of set of data's in there we can see that's incredible really good I like it because it keeps it always gives me something to focus on work on you know I always think with running it's one of those things it's never there's no finish time you never you never achieved everything there's always something to try and work on and try and fix. I think especially with Ultras, there's only the first few hours are the only time you feel fresh and feel good. So I don't want to constantly do stuff with him when I'm fresh and good. It's nice to do like at the end of a big week and then go out and do

a two, three, four hour session and then go and see him. And then he's going to look through and see, right, let's see how you're moving with a treadmill now. Let's see that this makes a big difference. Looking at even shoe choices, different options on there. And I find that to be fascinating. I don't mind geeking out the data around that sort of stuff because he's looking to make changes to my form or to how I'm moving and even things like, you know, different body positions. It's all up on the camera and you can see like how that impacts landing forces. And again, all you try to do is minimize landing force when it comes to running. The pain you feel is mostly just from your ability to absorb force or how that dissipates

across your body. How can we reduce that further? Or how can we make you more efficient absorbing force, which ultimately leads you to have a great capacity to go further. Yeah. And I think I was putting a lot more of effort on that side of things is really important. He's also not like, you know, he works really close to my run coach. They don't want me doing constant massive weeks of mileage.

We obviously have simulations, a decent level of consistency and reasonably high mileage. But sometimes you can, you know, we want to get the most return for the effort we're putting into it. So we find for me it's like a lot of work on the bike alongside of the running as well. And notice that. Yeah. Bikes are brille. The biggest jumps I've seen in my fitness has been as a result of that. Still running every day.

very specific S&C work for lower body training, which has been fantastic. And again, really putting a massive emphasis on ability to absorb force with the legs. But the bike's been a wonderful, wonderful tool. That's what I love about Iron Man training, actually. You're able to get so fit. I was like mainly because of the bike and the run. Yeah.

I hate the swim. Okay. So I can't give any credit to swim. No, do I want to give credit to the swim? because it's like the bare minimum of what I had to swim. But I could run nine miles in the morning and then go spend three hours, four hours in the bike in the afternoon. And it's not going to tax the muscular system of my lower body.

But I'm going to get the cardiovascular aerobic benefits of those three to four hours. I built so much fitness in my Iron Man prep because I spent so much time on the bike. I think the bike is an incredible cross-stimbing. training tool that is underutilized by people outside of the triathlon space. 100%. If you look at who the fittest athletes in the world are now,

it's all the triathletes. But the highest VATU max score ever recorded. Is it Christian Bloomfell? 102. Oh, wow. Yeah, triathlete. Like Alex Alex Yee, British triathlete, he'd never run a marathon. He just ran

206 last year at London. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And he's like, he won He won the T100 last year as well. Like, he's Olympic gold medalist as well. Shout out Alex Yee. Shout out Alex Yee, South London. Wow. No, no, two or six for your first marathon is crazy.

Crazy. Yeah, these guys are so fit and so fast. And I think it's incredible. And that's why for us is like, there is a, at certain points, there is like a, the ROI on more miles. It doesn't make sense. I agree. And it gets to a point where sometimes it's the ego.

talking. I know wrong, I've done like 200 mile training before. Like to see what it's like to see how far I can go. I've had to do simulation weeks for challenges where I've got to run 25, 30 miles in a day, back to back to back to back to back. And it's like, okay, let's see what that feels like and looks like. And again, even if you've got a great amount

of capacity to do that and to absorb that, what fitness, you know, how much benefit you're getting from that stimulus? There's plenty of diminishing return. Massive diminishing returns there. So but the bike is for us, we go, okay, well, we can still kick out. Again, we're not taxing the legs from a muscular standpoint,

but we are still working the engine, training the system. And that's, that's been great. I absolutely love the bike. And especially now I've got, I use a watt bike, I've got my new place.

I just set up in there. I just crack on some YouTube, get flying. And the time just flies by when you're in the bike. Because again, if you're not doing a hard session, if you're just sitting like an accident

two, it doesn't, you know, for me, I always feel like, I don't really feel like I'm doing much of a workout. But hey, you know, just time, time's going to pass by, keep putting fuel in, keep moving the legs forward. And I say, I don't feel like I'm working out, but then after like an hour run and then like a two and a half hour bike ride, I get to like go to bed that night and I just head hits the pillow.

I'm out. So I'm like, okay, I must be doing something because I'm crashing hard. During Iron Man prep, I was like a zombie at night, all the training. So last year you went 102 miles, 10th place. You made a lot of changes to your training going to this year. How far do you want to go? for you, what is, what does success look like outside of winning, obviously? Of course, no, success.

Hey, success is multiple different things. There's obviously my own personal success within the race and distances, and I would love to get past where the guys came last year. 235 miles. Yeah, that for me is like, that's been on my mind. I obviously am aware that the chance of this race is going to go significantly further than that, looking at the field of athletes who are here. But success to me is a combination of things.

It's doing my absolute best. And that's sometimes on the day conditions, whatever it is. What if this rain hits and it's super muddy and boggy and no one's getting that far. Hey, well, I'll do my absolute best. I want to do an effort when I finish and I go to bed, whatever that is, I can be proud of. I do my team proud. I represent BPN on course, make sure I support other runners who are there. there'll be lots of people who got into this raffle.

We talk about guys who are trying to go for two, three, four days running here. There's also lots of people in this race who would have gone in the raffle who've never ran 50 miles before. I want to make sure I can support those guys as well. I want to make sure that, you know, as well as I'm being here as a competitor, I'm also here representing BPN as an athlete. There's a, you know, it's multiple different roles to play within that as well. And so supporting those around me, keeping spirits high on course now.

My friend Max, who got into running around the same sort of times I did, he's in this race too. He's talking about wanting to go 200 miles. I'm like, okay, great. Like, hey, let's help each other out with this one. Executing on what we've been training on. So the micro-sleeps, I work with the sleep specialists to try and learn how to do these little micro-sleeves in nighttime. I want to be able to nail a few sleeps.

That for me is like, I feel like after all the work I've put into it, being able to sleep for like five minutes a lap at nighttime would be amazing. You dialed, dude. No, I wanted to leave no rock out. I don't want to turn up this race being like, oh, I don't know how this works. Like, no, I know how this works. We practice this. We've studied this. I don't want to be turning up.

I meant largely there's a point when I looked over to Kendall's seam. I was wide awake on my chair, sweat, pouring up every hollow hole. But I'm thinking like, oh my God, look over to him and he's sound asleep, getting fanned off there. I'm looking at him and like, how is this guy sleeping? I'm sweating everywhere, just trying to hold on the dear life. And this kid's just like conned out sleeping. I'm like, oh, that's why he's so fresh at the moment still.

So I was no one who did so well. And also to make sure it's a great event. I want to make sure that, you know, if anyone gets into trouble on the course, you know, we will support each other. I think there's always more to these races than who wins and who, you know, does what out of it. Safety is always the most paramount of things, these things. Anytime anyone's pushing their body to extreme levels, there's always a case to that. So make sure that everyone's safe, everyone finishes well, everyone does their best.

And I make sure that, you know, I get to lead that course head held high, giving absolutely everything. And putting a number on that, I'd love to be able to hit those distances 250. that's kind of stuck in my mind a little bit. But again, the only thing I can control, two things in my control on my effort and my attitude. Yep. And that's it. Everything else, the weather, the competition,

none of that is up to me. And that's something that I've just held as a constant throughout this. They're the two things I've got at the top of my notebook, effort and attitude. And I just, you know, I've had a fantastic attitude towards my training, my, this process of improvement, how I come about things every day,

the excitement I have for training, the joy I found in training this year. And then the other side I do it is effort. but am I trying the most, am I trying as hard as I could do? And again, that's been, that's been 10 out 10 this year. I put the most FAA in. I've not missed a single session. I've done everything I need to do from that perspective. And then just doing it with a great attitude as well, I think so important because that's, it's the attitude that's a different difference maker, right? I could do every session miserably and drag myself to every session and I got to do that. I got to do this today. I've got to do this

session today. Or I could be like, wow, how great is this? I get to go do this session today. I get to go push myself today. I get to go to go train today. I get to do it with people who are low. I get to go to go see my friends. I get to train my friends today. I've got my run club in London. I get to go, this Saturday. I get to do my long run with 200 other people. Awesome. That's how great great is that. And that attitude of how beautiful is this. I get to push myself to my limit. I get to try really hard of something. And I get to improve at my sport as a result of that. How amazing is that. What a great life I've got. What a great opportunity I've got. How lucky I am. to have that. And that's been my attitude throughout this whole thing. How lucky am I that I get to

compete in the Go on More Ultra for a second time. Like that for me, I, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'll sometimes catch myself being like, oh, fuck, God, got a long-arst day today or tomorrow. I look at the schedule for the next day, it's like a triple training day and I'm tired, I'm fatigued. And it's like, how lucky am I that I get to go do this and as do it as a part of the BPN team? That's really special. And so for me, that perspective of having that attitude of this is special. This, I'm lucky I get to do this. so I have no right to complain. So I might as well do it with a big smile on my face

and celebrate that work. You know, the work is the win. You know, the work works more than you work on the work. And that for me, that resonates so hard with me because, again, knowing that it's the work that's making me better and my attitude towards it's being brilliant. I get to go to wake up tomorrow and try my hardest again. That's a really special thing to do.

And so that's me, you know, that attitude for me has been a very big different thing this year compared to last year where I was a little bit more wary about the race. I was a bit like, we've done this format. This is kind of new territory for me here. But this year it's like, cool, learn our lessons. Let's go at this attitude. And I've got a great team behind me.

And not just my team of crew, but the team of yourself, the rest of the BPN team here, who also all have that same attitude. That's something that I've noticed ever since I joined VPN is there's a shared attitude across the board from people who work in the warehouse, to be working media, to yourself, to the senior team, to the athletes. There is this attitude of, this is special. we get to do this or don't have to do this and that's a really lovely environment to be around.

I appreciate that. No, of course. It's a culture thing. I remember you send us like, you're saying it's that like sheet at the start of the year with all those like... The manifesto and the brand vision. Brand vision, yeah.

I remember that. You put on the Slack group and I was like, oh, this is really cool. I thank you that. Like, it's nice. It's nice that a lot of the things I care about about how I operate and how I do my day to day. they're not just words for you guys.

They're things that you live by. Yep. And that's like, it's great to be involved in an organization that takes that kind of stuff seriously, like standards, like how you treat other people with respect. Those things are really important.

It's important to me. And it's nice to get to work brands that it's important with that too as well. Absolutely. Well, dude, I'm excited to see how far you go. I'm really impressed with the prep you put in. Thank you. I respected the intention of your training,

nutrition, the sleep specialist, the heat acclamation, all of it, man. You put in a big prep. I'm excited to see you throw down tomorrow. I tell you what, after all this work, I better bloody do well because I've got it if I don't. No, it's, I appreciate. Thank you so much. It's been a really wonderful journey. And the final run of that journey is tomorrow. The final run of training was this morning. And it's so special to be here now, like the day before the race on the verge of it all going. together and it's going to be, I'll tell you what, it's going to be one hell of an experience. About 22 hours out.

That's it. That's it. We're going to make me nervous now. Here we go. All right, brother. I appreciate you. Thank you so much having me on, Nick.