The Rich Roll Podcast - The ‘Ordinary’ Man Who Did 105 Iron-Distance Triathlons in 105 Days

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

There’s nothing I love more than tales of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things. But nobody who achieves the extraordinary is ordinary—and while upon first glimpse this real-life Forrest Gump may present as an everyman, he is anything but. Not only did today’s guest dare to best one of the world’s most impressive endurance records, he downright decimated it—and somehow made it all look ‘easy’. In 2021, the Iron Cowboy James Lawrence completed 101 iron-distance triathlons in 101 consecutive days—a record I both witnessed and couldn’t fathom being broken in my lifetime. And yet not too long after, Sean Conway, a dad of two young kids from a small town in Wales by way of Zimbabwe, proceeded to complete 105 consecutive iron-distance triathlons, claims he could have kept going, and believes he could have done 200. In case you don’t quite grasp the enormity of this feat: Sean swam 2.4 miles, then proceeded to ride 112 miles on his bike, then ran a full marathon—26.2 miles, repeating this routine every day without missing a single day, for 105 days in a row. Moreover, Sean didn’t even begin his endurance career until age 30—a career in which he has quietly eclipsed more records than most realize. Today we unpack Sean’s extraordinary accomplishments, his 'terrier mindset', the 'ten pillars of endurance’, why he doesn't celebrate small wins, his unique lens on failure, and his reasoning for never, ever having a backup plan.   Sean is quirky, totally authentic, and chock-full of ludicrous stories lifted from a life that prioritizes adventure over security.  My hope is that his example inspires you to transcend self-imposed limitations and craft a challenge that is meaningful to you. Because we’re all capable of transforming our lives from ordinary to extraordinary. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Momentous: LiveMomentous.com/RICHROLL Peak Design: PeakDesign.com/RICHROLL Timeline Nutrition: TimelineNutrition.com/RICHROLL Roka: Roka.com/RICHROLL AG1: drinkAG1.com/RICHROLL BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com/RICHROLL Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Peace + Plants, Rich

You're a guy who from the outside looking in positions himself as the everyman, the non-athlete, the ordinary dude. But that's really not entirely accurate. I'm quite proud now to actually have gone from this unhappy school portrait photographer to... Sean Conway. An iron distance triathlon every day for 105 days. People have asked me, what do you think is the reason you do these things? And I sort of don't want to know.

It's an unpopular opinion now. Everyone sort of says, oh, it's all about the journey. And I'm like, it's not bad. Sean, so nice to meet you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me. Although it may look a little bit like my home studio, we are in London recording. Yeah.

You made the trip down. You're wearing your kit. So I thought, did you just, did you run here? Did you ride your bike here? I was going to cycle. I was going to cycle yesterday and do an all day. It was 220 mile, which normally for me, I would just do on the spur. But I thought, right, let me, could I do it? it could i do it and then yesterday i just got a bit busy and then the sort of the terrier in me because i'm two characters in life i'm a monkey and a terrier and i've got to feed both animals uh the terrier me saying do something do something because it's been four weeks now and even though everyone's telling me to do nothing and just sit on the sofa and netflix uh i can't i just can't so tomorrow it's not in your nature it's not i just like even so i came down on the train with my mate chris and um you know like without and he's like mate stop fidgeting what are you doing you're looking out the window thinking about why so anyway tomorrow

so i'll get car fest on friday so tomorrow i got the day off so i thought well 60 mile 100k to car fest could i run it and it's it's quite an easy train line there's probably a train station every 10 miles so if i'll just bail if i can't do it so well yeah i just got to do something that's cool so so 60 miles so you would leave what at like four in the morning probably five yeah probably 5 a.m uh it'd probably take me 14 hours 15 hours i think maybe uh as i said i i really should not do this i'm still nursing the hip thing but i thought let me crack out the 105 kit one more time and uh before it lands up on a frame in my in my garage actually um and then uh yeah so that's why i'm in this got my running kit well

i'm getting a ride to car fest so if i'm driving by i'll either wave or or pull over yeah i'll give you a banana you can just throw it out the window are you um that's interesting the terrier and what is the other animal the monkey is that sort of an alter ego type of situation like you you try to channel that energy and transcend yourself in the way that the iron cowboy has the iron cowboy it's a different personality or david goggins has goggins like these are ways to get out of your own mental loop and and do extraordinary things by being somebody else altogether yeah i mean there's definitely there's a part of me that now looks back at everything else i've done and goes is that like

that's not you. Like there's the imposter syndrome part of me and the person, the little kid who was never picked at school for sport. And, you know, I was in the seventh team rugby at my school. I think there was only one other school in the whole of South Africa that had seven teams. So we only had one match a year. And, um, you know, I was terrible at sport growing up. I'm quite short now and I only grew after school. So I was tiny at school in South africa which is very macho and you know if you're not good at rugby or cricket you're a nobody type thing um so really my my belief which is so ingrained in me now that i'm i shouldn't be able to do these things it's i think it's still there somewhere so the person who then goes off and does a hundred full

irons even now i'm sitting here going like is that what like was that like that can't be me like i'm not that guy you know um so the the monkey terrier thing is is more i've i've noticed over the years i've got to feed both those animals in certain ways to make me like my for my mental health mainly just for my well-being and the monkey is what i am mostly and i love being a monkey i'm inquisitive i break things i fix things i have to do things with my hands whether it's gardening fixing things i'm into woodwork knife making yeah you fix old cars old cars yeah i've got old cars that i'm sort of messing around with i've always got one on the go and then i'm just about to sell the one i've just finished now and find another one and um yeah so that's the the monkey but then the monkey gets frustrated if

if if the terrier doesn't get fed and every now and then the terrier just needs to chase something it's one task simple chase it and then what i've worked out is, and that can be little things. So it can be, you know, fixing these projects or learning something new. Or the latest thing I'm chasing is yoga. I've always poo-pooed yoga, but this last week I've got what I did my first yoga thing on YouTube. And I was like, man, I am rubbish at this. And I was all of a sudden, right.

I hate being rubbish at something. And I, it doesn a sudden, right, I hate being rubbish at something. And it doesn't dissuade me from trying to do it more. So now I'm all in for yoga. So every morning I'm up at 5.29. I do half an hour of yoga before the kids wake up. And it's changed my world, honestly. Because I've done everything. I've got an ice bath at home, a sauna, tried all the different herbal things for sleep, like, um, theanine and magnesium. Um, and there's the human protocol. Yeah. I've

done all of that. You know, I do the salt in my glass of water in the morning. Um, but certainly the getting up at five 30 and doing half an hour of yoga or Pilates, I haven't done Pilates yet, but it's definitely, I feel has the biggest impact in my life but anyway the terrier for me to satisfy the terrier for the longest period afterwards i try and do these long really long difficult challenges and i find i'm i'm a better husband a better father a better husband, a better father, a better mate. I'm more satisfied in life. I'm healthier, fitter, eat better. So yeah, once I worked out those, I then stopped feeling guilty for being a monkey. Because monkeys are annoying, right?

And I was annoying. I remember as a kid, my parents going, just stick to something, because I'd have a hobby every five minutes. And I started sort of feeling like there was something wrong with me like for having all these different interests every five minutes and and it even extends to you know when i'm doing one of the cars for example i'll do half a job and then run out of screws and then most normal people go to the shop buy more screws come back and fix that i'm like no i'm gonna go on a move you're done with the wheel now and then do half the wheel and then yeah you know, so when we're doing, when we bought our house, we bought it off a 90-year-old guy and it just needed some tarting up. But Caroline was so frustrated because I'd do half the living room and then half the bedroom.

And none of it was finished until all of a sudden it was all finished. And that kind of works for me. That's so interesting because the terrier would not allow something to go uncompleted. Exactly. Right? The terrier latch not allow something to go uncompleted. Exactly. Right? The terrier latches onto something and doesn't let go. Makes no sense. But the complementary nature of these two essences of who you are are very cool.

And to be able to identify that, understand it, and know what needs to get fed and how they kind of interlace with each other is a really kind of beautiful model. The monkey being the guy who's tinkering with the puzzle pieces, especially with these huge projects, right? There's so many variables. There's so many things to think about, pieces moving all over the place. How do they all fit together? That's the problem solving part of your mind. And then the terrier is the tenaciousness and the single-mindedness to attack something and complete it all together yeah absolutely and then the terrier is is once the terrier is engaged it's red mist blinkers on you know honestly like and and it infuriates caroline because every now and then the terrier creeps in in normal life for example you know

there'll be something i'll remember in the veggie plot like halfway through dinner like oh i've not done that thing for the for the pumpkins for halloween and if i don't water them now i'll forget and i'll literally get up halfway through then i'm like i have to do it now you don't understand like i'm like the opposite of a procrastinator it's just if i can't not wait it's just i have to do it. So for doing these long challenges, I found it's just for me that destination is all that matters. It's an unpopular opinion now. Everyone sort of says, oh, it's all about the journey, not about the destination. I'm like, sod that.

I appreciate your candor and honesty around that. No, I'm going for the record. No, I'm going for the record. We can drape it in a charity and all of that, but you know, that thing where you get the email and your friend is going to be running the 10 K or the marathon and it's like, they're raising money and it's like, okay, that's great. And that's important. And there's certainly, you know, something to be honored and all of that, but let's be honest about what we're really doing here. Right? Like you want to go run this thing

and accomplish that. Why are we embarrassed to say that? And for me, it's, I just have to do it. I can't not go for the record. I just get no satisfaction out of it. What's behind that though? Like part of me thinks when you have to get up from the dinner table and go fix that thing, there's some like dysfunction around control operating there yeah maybe growing up in all these different places or feeling like your

life was out of control yeah i went to boarding school quite young when i was seven um would come home on the weekends from seven till nine then nine hours proper boarding school people have asked me what do you think is the reason you do these things and i sort of don't want to know like it's working like i don't want to be fixed actually like there's obviously maybe something wrong yeah and maybe there was a childhood trauma that i'm trying and i'm trying to every high achiever says this they feel like if they really delve into that that they're going to lose their superpower absolutely you know it's a's a lie though. You know that, right? Like that's an illusion. You'll actually be probably more fit

to do the things that you're trying to do. Okay, well, I'm glad you said that actually because it's sort of been at the back of my mind the whole time. Like, oh, should I find out? But what if I find out and it's a horrible story, which I don't remember, and then I find out and then I'm like,

oh no, I found this out. And you know, A, now I've got to deal with that. Right, I mean, you'll have to grapple with that. You're going to have to, you know, reckon with it. But I think ultimately on the other side of that, there's always greater freedom, happiness and sort of liberation for yourself. If there is something there that's being repressed

out of some defense mechanism, there's a survival kind of dynamic operating there. But at some point in your life, it will likely surface or perhaps it's already manifesting in unhealthy ways that you're unaware of. I never hear about people who undergo that process and come out the other side and feel like it wasn't worth it or they're not better for having done it. Yeah. But I understand what you're saying. That's good to know, yeah.

I understand what you're saying. Well, I might look into it, actually. I might look into it. No, it's true. It's true because there's certain things in real life, like I don't sleep well. I've never slept well ever, although since I've been doing the yoga thing, I've been sleeping quite well then. You have to go out and do an Ironman every day so you can sleep at night.

Yeah, well, weirdly, I did sleep well quite a bit at the beginning. The first month was horrendous. I had hot sweats. And my average heart rate in the first week, sleeping heart rate, was 89. That was my average for sleeping time. I wore a whoop for the first week and then threw it away. I was like, I don't want to know. My recovery is 1% every day. I don't want to every day. You're starting out at 1% every single day. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you had to go through, I mean, James said the same thing. There's that adaptation phase until your body kind of settles into what it's doing and understands it. Um, so let's get into that. I mean, first of all, like how like how long has it it's been like two months now so four weeks last sunday only four weeks four and a half weeks wow yeah so how are you feeling how is the body doing the first couple of days after i felt amazing and i was like damn it i knew i shouldn't have stopped um and then and then the third day i just crashed and then and then the third day oh i just crashed and then but it wasn't a bad crash i was just like obviously my body had gone right well we're not doing this again you can just relax um and then i thought that was the bottom i thought it would be a sharp drop off i'm at the bottom and i'm

going to slowly get better over however long a month two months six months a year but actually i then got worse the next week and then the third week was really bad like just i was sleeping a lot but i had zero it was like a permanent bonk like walking up the stairs at home i was like wow this is tough even though i went on a few bike rides and my figures were okay um the power was okay, and the heart rate was okay, but I just felt awful. I just couldn't. And the motivation was there. That's the other good thing that I've been surprised by. I've been motivated to keep the fitness, but I just had nothing in the tank.

No matter if food wouldn't do it, sleep didn't do it, stretching, doing the yoga. And this week… That shouldn't come as a surprise though no i know but the terrier and the monkey they're throwing thoughts in my head and like you know i have this amazing base i can't squander it i've done 90 hours i've done 90 hours a week of zone one and two training right three and a half months i'm like that's got to be worth something i don't want to lose that like i'm never gonna do that again so yeah i'm yeah i'm want to keep the fitness so which is why i'm now going to try and do a run tomorrow and but i'm good enough at micro analyzing everything yeah there's and we can go over this is 10 pillars of endurance

that i and every day on everything i do that's a multi-day you've got to tick every single box so it's planning experience fitness health nutrition hydration sleep muscle management mindset or motivation and community so if you nail all 10 of those every single day you're going to be able to nail multi-day endurance challenges and and you know it's i did that every single day doing 105 um and i sort of want to get back to a place where i'm now you know if i did that now surely i'm just gonna get you know get over this fatigue but i know it doesn't work like that yeah it doesn't and in the past you realize of course intellectually that uh that you can't persist in hitting it hard like that every single day that you have to give yourself this break and the sense that i'm getting

from you is it's actually easier for you to get up and do an iron man every day than it is for you to sit down and be with yourself and and and allow yourself to heal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just thank goodness I have kids and an amazing wife and that has kept me busy. I think in the old days, all the other things I've done other than the Europe record where I was with Caroline, um, I've been single really. And that's then my, yeah, I dunno. I've, I struggled a little bit cause I didn't have my mind to focus on them. And you know, there's a part of me, you say, well, why do you do this? I have, I have this sort of picture in my head of my kids as teenagers trying to learn

the guitar and moaning about having sore fingers. I was like, you don't know pain boys. Yeah. You don't want to be that guy. Yeah. The 105 is actually the third longest thing I've done. It's not even the longest. And the other third longest thing i've done it's not even the longest and the other one so i cycle around the world 150 something days my length of britain

swim was 135 days and then my longest continuous triathlon which is 3500 mile that was 85 days so i've hovered around this long stuff for a while um but definitely this one's been way harder to recover from. But I think you're doing pretty good. All I can do is compare and contrast your experience with that of James's. And I know that James in the wake, there's a lot of differences in the way that you guys kind of approach this and how it went for you guys. But James famously had a very difficult time. And then in the aftermath, his healing process was very protracted. And it included not just fatigue and depression,

but cognitive issues. Like he went and had to do like brain exercises. Like he couldn't think straight. I know you've said a few things around memory, but that was like during the Ironmans. But mentally, you seem very clear. You seem present and your energy feels pretty solid. Whereas James was really kind of having a hard time and it took him a very long time to kind of crawl out of that hole. lot because I knew people would be comparing the two of us and I think there's a couple of things that I did different that suited me better one is well I didn't get injured I didn't get a severe injury like he did so you know knowing that he had to do that marathon with the brace with the poles fast walk like walking a marathon is way harder than running it with a good technique

um you know his probably cortisol levels were really high because he knew that that was at the end of the day he was i think about two hours slower than me each day which meant he was getting less rest and and also i i read and i don't know how much of this is accurate on a daily basis but he said he was doing three hours of physio a day, which was just taking away from sleep. And for me, of those 10 pistons, sleep is one of them. And it's almost number one priority for me. Like I knew I had to get fast enough to do a full distance in zone one or two for one, because I couldn't be, I needed to be at 110 heart rate all day.

And if that made me fast enough to then still get eight hours sleep, that was the goal. And that happened at around day 30 something. And that came as a result of experimenting with physio and sleep to find that ratio that would work. And I think you're correct.

I think James had a massive team and he had people who were working on his body and he needed that, but it did eat into his sleep. And you discovered that you were better off if you prioritize the sleep and then worked in the physio when you had a little buffer of time. Exactly that. So the first month, I think I can't remember the exact day I stopped doing daily physio, but it was around day 30, let's say say i was doing about 20 minutes of physio between the bike and the run and then i was doing half an hour physio in the evening but there's a bit of faff time around each side of that so i was losing an hour a day of potential sleep and i was slower

so for example on day two i nearly missed the 17 hour cutoff i did 16 hours 55 i think day three 16 hours 45 because i picked up a knee niggle, uh, on the bike from day one. Um, completely my own fault. I, so the new bike I had built, I chose shorter cranks. Um, and I totally forgot. So when I, I'd done my, my bike fit on the old bike, which had longer cranks and I put the short cranks on and just totally forgot.

So I just measured from bottom bracket up to seat post i'm like well it's millimeter perfect i'll be good and then forgot i was like 10 mil off or something crazy and then in the in the chaos of day one you just never i just didn't pick it up right so i was super slow then i was having the physio so i was only getting you know six five hours sleep maybe six hours sleep and then this it sort of hovered around you know seven hours up until 30 and then i i remember once the knee thing was manageable because i was taping it and wearing the patella bands and then the ankle the right sort of ankle shin that had sort of calmed down a little bit and uh i thought right i wonder if i could let's try going for sleepover physio let's just see because i can always just call them if i need the physio and

it's not working and i did that and it was a game changer if you look at all my splits on my website like as soon as that happened i was you know i was a a little bit quicker but b my mood was better i felt like i could push it a little bit harder and i could sustain a faster pace which would then result in me being able to do you know have more sleep again right and then you're on the front of the way yeah yeah you land up on the front compounding that interest exactly whereas james would have a had the injury to deal with so the cortisol levels and the pain and all that stress uh and he was a bit slower and then he was having to do the physio so of course he came out of that feeling like completely ruined um because i knew i knew it was doable without a major injury you know i've i've done my marathon a day for

44 days the longest time i've done a marathon a day for pretty much you know i've done when i was cycling around the world going for that record was 200 miles a day 180 to 200 miles a day every day when i swam the length of britain i was doing four and four and a half hours on seven hours off four and a half hours on seven hours off with the tide so and that again was day after day so at least in my head i was naive naive enough to go, well, actually, I think this is doable without getting a serious injury. And the run really is the one that will DNF you, absolutely. Right, unless you have some kind of devastating crash. Exactly.

And that's the other thing. I look at what will DNF me, getting run over on the bike, getting a serious injury, which is most likely going to happen on the run as in a repetitive strain injury, like a compression fracture or tendon tear or things like that. Getting really ill, COVID or something worse. And the last one was, you didn't want to think about, but a family member tragedy type thing. So I had those awkward conversations with my parents and my sister because I was like, where's the line? Right.

What would have to happen for you to pull the plug where the terrier would have to heal? Yeah. I think, well, I did have to pull the plug, didn't I? On the previous attempt. Sure. Yeah. I'd love to talk about that disaster. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, let's just, we're well into it, it, and I'm sure I'll say this in the introduction, but for clarity purposes, Sean completed 105 iron distance triathlons in 105 consecutive days. At the outset, the goal was to eclipse James's record of doing 101 by doing 102.

And there's so many kind of interesting similarities, points of overlap with James's experience, but also many departures, right? On the one hand, you're a guy who from the outside looking in sort of positions himself as the everyman, the non-athlete guy, the kind of ordinary dude who's going to go out and do something extraordinary. But that's really not entirely accurate. We can go into the backstory and how you got into this stuff. I think there's some super interesting stuff there. But the other perspective is that you actually had a lot more experience than James did with these extended multi-day adventures that gave you not only a level of confidence going into

such an audacious goal, but also, you know, a sort of a library, a copious amount of experience to rely upon knowing that you could get through difficulties and how to kind of navigate the training leading up to the experience, but also the day in day out kind of grind and, and, and determining, you know, in the monkey part of you, what's important, what's not, and how those puzzle pieces fit together. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and you're right. I sort of, I am, I was the everyman because I just came, I was a school portrait photographer until I was 30. Yeah. We're going to get into all that. Cause that's nutty. Some crazy stuff. So,

but you're right. You know, there's, there's two parts of me as well that go one, you know, you're, you're the every man show. And how could you be doing 105?

Who's this guy? He's not going to break James's record. Like this guy, he's got a little paunch belly. He's got a beard. He lives in the countryside. He thinks it's just going to go out and like beat the iron Cowboys record. Exactly.

And then a part of me is going like, have you even looked to my website? Like, honestly, I can do this. Look, He lives in the countryside. He thinks he's just going to go out and beat the Iron Cowboys record. And then part of me is going like, have you even looked to my website? Like, honestly, I can do this. Look. I didn't know. You know, when I first started paying attention to you, I mean, I kind of knew who you were and I knew you had done some other stuff, but I didn't know the extent of your resume when it came to adventure endurance. No, exactly. And then so part of me is like, honestly, guys, I can do it.

Please believe me. Look, this is what I've done you know um and and you're right you know i'm quite proud now to actually have gone from this unhappy school portrait photographer to you know someone who's got quite a long cv of doing multi-day stuff and and you know if it's under two if it's under seven days i sort of don't even count it as an event now i've probably forgotten about it on my website other than the cheese rolling which was 23 seconds or whatever but um yeah and and and yeah you're right it's it's is that juxtaposition but i don't want to stop people thinking i'm the everyman because i am and i've been tested i went to a human performance lab

you know the one that the brownlee brothers go to and everything and i remember secretly going there thinking yeah there's something about me right i got some crazy they're gonna write papers on me forever and they did i did all the tests i did the same test that jensen button does with all the cognition and the and your reaction speed all the tests in the heat lab, sweat, power, VO2, like everything, threshold, lactate threshold. And it was a couple of weeks later and I go back and then a different person who did the test looked at the papers and there was, you know, they printed it all out. There's about 20 pages and we sit down, he's all excited. He's going through and I could just see his expression drop and right. And he's like, mate, you're actually pretty average.

just see his expression drop and right he's like hey actually pretty average and in fact you've got a disadvantage because i lose 3.4 grams of salt per liter of sweat which is almost twice as much as most people so i really have a salt deficiency so i have to really work on that as well in the hydration pie chart of this so uh yeah no one's writing papers on me for a while right yeah but actually it makes it more aspirational. I hope so. To know that you're not some kind of physiological outlier. Yeah. Yeah. Well, exactly. And I think so too, because you're right. I mean, you've talked about outliers in the past. A lot of people will look at you and if they presume you're an outlier, they think, wow, well, I can't do that because he's this, he's got loads of money. He's a millionaire, which I'm not, or he's always got biological advantage which i don't um and that's why i put on my website the hiccups bit because

i yeah you have a whole section of all your failures things i've messed up i almost failed the first time i do everything because actually i have no i really don't care about failing i don't i don't feel guilty i don't feel like i've let people down i'm just like oh that didn't work i'll try again you know and and that's just my nature. I don't know why I've not had to train myself to do it, I guess.

Maybe that's your greatest gift. Maybe, yeah. That's what makes you an outlier. Well, we were joking. Well, it's true. Like, you can't succeed

if you're not pushing the envelope of your capability, which means you're going to fail. Yeah. That's the only way that you grow. Yeah, exactly.

I also have a very short-term memory. It's brilliant's brilliant you know like all those miserable days and all this when it didn't work the last time i'm like yeah whatever to the point of actually there's some things that i sort of did on the irons now where i'm like i worked this out 10 years ago why have i forgotten it you know like little food hacks, like drinking the cream, for example, and to keep the weight on. Cause I only lost three kgs over the whole time. Uh, and I lost that a kg a month, um, which I was pretty happy. I was expecting to lose more, hoping to lose less started at 70, which I didn't want to put on weight, uh, cause I didn't want to run heavy. I wanted to run at a, at a good weight to start with. Um, and I thought, well, let me just nail my nutrition and calories at the start.

So yeah, it's sort of trying to get on top of all of that, which again comes with the 12 years of experience and all the different things I've done. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care.

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is that there's a much greater granular attention to detail preparation and the daily schedule than one might imagine. Because if you go to your Instagram, like you have that before and after photo. Yeah. And the before photo, it looks like, well, you were out of shape and you just trained your way into this thing.

But that's not the truth. And I heard you talk about the endurance science aspect of this in a very intelligent way, which is this notion that people have mistakenly that, look, there's only so much training you can do. So you're gonna have to kind of go into this fresh and get fit as you go.

And I think that was in part, some of James's mindset going into what he was doing. And your point, which I agree with entirely is, that's a huge mistake because then you're creating that downward spiral, right? If you're not fit enough where you can't, you're not able to go out and do an Ironman, an Iron Distance Triathlon in zone one

and finish in time to get an adequate enough of sleep, then you're gonna dig into your ability to recover and you're gonna just precipitously decline every day. If you're able to do that zone one and do it in an adequate time period, then you can recover and you can get more fit from that, but you've gotta be able to do that every single day without your heart rate exceeding like 110.

Yeah, exactly. And there aren't very many people that can do that, right? So you have to have the endurance base, the restraint, the efficiency, the mitochondrial density, all of that going into it such that you're putting yourself in a position to succeed from the gate. Yeah. No, absolutely. And James says you've got to be, it's 100% mental and 100% physical. Right.

And I went in probably 75% physical. So I started in April 75% physical. So I started in April. I was plagued with illness. All of January I had off because I had three or four different chest infections. I had a good couple of weeks in February. Then the end of February we went on holiday. And I did a bit of training on holiday but not enough.

And then beginning of March I did a bit and then it was taper. So I really dropped because what i should have done uh is i did three sessions of everything a week um and bearing in mind i'd failed last june yeah you started in june and you only got like what six and so seven so i got well yeah let's talk about the failure there. So on day, well, firstly, my route was terrible. I was doing an open water swim, which forget the cold because it was a bit cold. I was losing 45 minutes in admin because we'd have to get to the gate, unlock the gate, drive on this bumpy track through a Ford, through a river, you know, do the swim. And then halfway through the swim, I needed the loo. I'd have to come out, wetsuit, port-a-loo, cold wetsuit back on. And it was just,

it was a terrible decision. And actually I had moved to a pool by day five anyway so i would have i made that that transition and then the same with the bike and the run the the bike was too hilly the run was too hilly um and then on day five i was cycling a bit up a real steep uh gradual gradient and i was like oh well i'll have some food now. Cause I'm going slow. I put my left hand in my Jersey back pocket and I, my front wheel went in a long, thin pothole. And then I was holding on the, the elbow pad for your elbows go on the tri bars. And then in that sort of, I tried to overcorrect and I just steered left right into the bush, went over the handlebars hoods bent completely.

And so it was a proper stack. Uh, but the, the biggest issue is my left so it was a proper stack uh but the biggest issue is my left leg stayed clipped in uh and i got up and i shook it off and i actually thought my left knee was was done in and i was like oh that's a bit but i'll be fine and actually the rest of the bike was okay the run i felt it so it was the tendon that goes from the top of your that your shin down to the top of your foot the one that used to lift your foot up and the run was like okay this is dodgy but let's see so day six i woke up and i actually felt okay swim was okay bike was okay run disaster i mean i think i did an eight hour run that day it's like

oh this is not looking good i'd already i'd already gone over the 17 hour cutoff which is an unofficial one by the way the the it's midnight to midnight that you actually have but the internet wants it and i think it's i think 17 hours shouldn't be the goal anyway so i've gone over that um uh then day seven came and i nearly missed the midnight cutoff i got in at 11 52 or something and then i just i knew it was over but are you thinking well this is kind of what happened to james because he was about six in or so when he had his. Yeah, he was like three in, I think. Yeah. And he figured it out.

So I just have to stay in it or I'm, you know, wimping out in comparison. No, there was a little bit of that. Is that renting space in your mind? Sort of. The way I saw it was there was two analogies in my head. There's one, you know, I'm on the ship and i've not even left harbor and we've got a hole in the ship like do you cross the atlantic when you're still in the harbor or you've just left the harbor or do you go back and fix the hole um and so in my head i was like i know i can do this

and not get injured i know it i just believe it inherently that i can own this and i felt like i was doing myself a disservice limping it and and i because i just knew i could do it and like thrive on it not thrive because you're never gonna thrive because it's miserable um and also i was just so slow that i probably couldn't have i'd already gone over the 17 hour cutoff anyway so that was it was only gonna get worse and it was and it definitely got worse like i couldn't walk i was in a brace for a while but the main thing is i i have this i had this oil painting version of how iron 102 was gonna look and you know on day five someone cut a hole in the canvas and i'm like oh let me just go home get a new canvas and start again and work out what i

did wrong and as i said i have i really don't care for failure and i really wanted to do it the way i had it pictured in my mind which was going to be difficult yes it was going to be a slog getting up at 4 29 every morning um going all day like all that stuff i was prepared for i i didn't want to just limp through and just scrape by because I felt like I was doing myself a disservice um that said though had it happened on day like 80 I probably would have sucked it right sucked it up but so early on I was like you know what it just wasn't in the car and there was a couple other issues with with crew I sort of had crew rebellion really early on as well, which I haven't really talked about. You know, Caroline caught one of the crew guys looking for a job on day four, like on his phone, like at home on the laptop. Like, oh, what are you doing?

Oh, I'm looking for jobs. So like they didn't believe in me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so yeah. That's a problem. It was a problem. Whereas James has his really good buddies that those guys were never going to leave his side. I've said many times, and I still believe this to be true, that what James accomplished with his 50 in 50 states in 50 days and then the 101, I think those are two of the most extraordinary examples of voluntary human endurance. And I feel like they

still to this day have not gotten enough attention or credit for what he achieved. And then I see you go out and do it. And listen, I was with James on the 50th day of the 50, and I showed up at the 100th day. I mean, I saw the whole thing and like I was right there when he started to fall apart, like literally less than, I don't know, maybe a mile or a mile and a half from finishing that 100th day and the strain that it had put on his body and what he was kind of enduring. And I was mesmerized and just really impressed with how he completed all of that. And then I'm watching this unfold with you. And I couldn't help but think,

this guy's making it look easy. And I'm not saying that it was easy or that that was your experience, but there was a difference in tone in the way that you were holding all of this. Like it seemed not effortless, but, um,

there was a sense of ease around it. Um, whereas with James and what he was doing, there was, uh, I, I, the word I would use,

I guess would be intensity. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I wonder if it's a British thing. Like there's definitely the keep calm and carry on attitude in britain where we don't sort of we just you've chosen to do this mate like crack on what don't moan right yeah i guess well i'm thinking of ross edgley like always cracking jokes no matter what there's banter and there's a there's a lightness yeah and then there's

also that this tall poppy syndrome is quite big in britain where if you get a bit above yourself and, you know, come back, come back down to it. And, you know, all the people that came and joined me who were just randomers, you know, I didn't have anyone as part of my crew who, who came and paced me on the bike or joined me on the run. I was just relying on people. Whoever showed up. Falling on six every day at the pool. on six every day at the pool. And it all was quite contained. I mean, with James, it just became metastasized. And like every day there was more people until you get to the final day or two. And there's thousands of people there

and you're ending up in a high school stadium and there's like pomp and circumstance. And part of that's fantastic because it was all these people who came from all over the place to celebrate and to also share how much that had impacted them. fantastic because it was all these people who came from all over the place to celebrate and to also share how much that had impacted them. Like I was running alongside people who were sharing their story of how they were so inspired and lost this weight and started running, you

know, like that's an amazing aspect of the social media world in which we live. Whereas with you, it was just like a ragtag group of a couple people every single day. And it kind of felt like it stayed in that consistent zone. Was that by design or was that just the way that it unfolded? So it sort of unfolded that way. But I was also very aware that we couldn't have too many people join me, especially on the bike. You had a very narrow lane in which you were riding. It was super busy public roads british you know roads um we had 89 junctions on the course 75 of which i could

have stopped to zero like so it was a lot of stop start you know on the days where i was maybe 10 i think the most i ever had excluding the the 102 day was maybe 20 riders and even that was too many cars were getting annoyed um there's a couple of close calls with people passing trucks big trucks when they would take one of the corners would you know automatically cut the corner and then you're trying to look over the hedge to see if anyone's coming and we were very nervous that if it got too big something was going to happen and we had three crashes and one of them a guy went under a car in the wet but luckily the car had stopped in time uh and the other two were in front of me just

overlapped wheels you know people that weren't fit enough to actually do the course quickly because we were doing a good pace you know we, we were doing a six, six and a half hours really, which, you know, unless you've a good rider, I mean, that's, that's a decent pace. And some people would take the chance to go, oh yeah, I can do that. And then they would just head down, not looking where they're going, hit a pothole, overlap a wheel, and then I'd be behind them and I'd have to swerve around two of the crashes. And luckily, you know i was unscathed but there was certainly an element of nervousness to let it get too big so actually i

think even in the 90s i took down all the information of how you could join um and figured that actually if people wanted to join it means they would they were super keen and they were would go and look at my straw they're sort're sort of passing a test just to get there. And I think at one point, didn't you, you rode like a five something and it scared off a bunch of people. I remember this actually. This was, so I remember James saying, yeah, the first 10 days are going to be horrible, but day 10, it's all going to get better. And on day nine, a couple of riders came, um, Adam and Ben and we blitzed it and i was hanging on for dear life and uh yeah we did like a 5 58 ride time and um i remember going yeah took me nine days james you

know it took you 10 yes i'm one day up and then for the next week i was ruined but yeah i had to sort of say to people like please come you know come and join me on the bike because that's not our normal pace and um in the whole 12 000 miles or whatever i rode i think i only did about 200 on my own you know the longest time i did on my own was day two i did 120k so 80 by 80 miles of it on my own and then someone joined and then i had a few other sections where i did about 30 or 40 miles on my own before someone would just turn up on their lunch break and do a stint and that was the benefit of doing a lapped course so it was sort of 10 mile down a couple of 30 mile loops and then a 10 mile back each roughly uh which meant people could do just the morning bit before work or one lap or two laps or come at the end and it sort of encouraged whereas if i did a long out and back he sort of committed to the whole ride

yeah yeah what was your communication with james like yeah this was unfolding oh it was great so the first attempt he was like oh where are you i want to come and join you and it was amazing you know like because he inspired me so that there is what would james do oh wwjd yeah i was like because what would he do man you know like he's super on day six when you you know when you had your thing you would have kept going well exactly i didn't have this printed on that kit um so because the backstory about me attempting the hundred is i when he did the 50 i was just blown away. I was like, whoa, this is amazing.

I wonder if I could do 100 because it seemed the next step in my CV of triathlon. So I'm the only person still today who swum, cycled and run Land's End to John O'Groats, which is the length of Britain. I also then had the record for the world's longest triathlon, 4,200 miles, which is sort of like a quad decker continuous, but the bike leg was shorter. And so this was sort of the next thing. And also of the four types of world records you can do, which is world's first, furthest or longest, fastest and the most of, it's the one I didn't have a record in. Yeah, you didn't have a most of. I didn't have a most of. I had a record in the others, but I didn't have a most of it's the one i didn't have a record in yeah you didn't have a most i didn't have a most of i had a record in the others but i didn't have a most of so in 2018 i thought actually i'm going to have a crack at 100 and i thought of a route so i was living in the lake

district i was going to swim in coniston where i lived and then i worked out a bike leg down to sort of barrow and furnace and ulverston and that um and then you could run up the quieter side of the lake twice and it was exactly a marathon and then high side it was all would have been terrible all of it but i'd thought of it anyway and then i got married and kids and covid and so i just parked the idea and then when james did the 101 i was like oh yeah it is doable right let me revisit that um and then that's when i revisited it last year and then obviously it went It's like, oh, yeah, it is doable. Right. Let me revisit that. And then that's when I revisited it last year. And then obviously it went tits up.

But yeah. But you're doing it. You're making it look easy, at least to an outsider looking in. And you're creeping up on the record. You meet the record. You surpass the record. And you decide to keep going. James sneakily snuck in the 101 and didn't tell anyone which was great uh which meant you had to do 102 and then after that

feeling good you're like well do i keep going yeah yeah so i part of my process is to go into it I, part of my process is to go into it, believing wholeheartedly it's a done deal. Like if I just turn up, I'm going to do the 102, like that's it. And I have to believe that. The terrier. Yeah. And, and I do things in, I put things in place to, to make myself believe it. So for example, I printed numbers up to 123. So I printed caps and, and race numbers up to 123 so i printed caps and and race numbers up

to 123 because in my head i was manifesting this concept that not only am i going to beat it i'm going to go way past it and it's just part of my process to go well it's a done deal i just have to turn up and do it um and so i knew i was always going to go longer i knew i was always going to do 103 because i wanted to see what it was like doing it not having to do it like i just wanted to see would my body just go whoa what are you doing i'm giving up and i don't make the cut off or would i thrive would be like oh the pressure's off am i going to enjoy this uh i had spoken to caroline a week before and i was like i feel like i can go on like i genuinely i really do it's horrible and it's hard but like i feel like if i just turn up i could i could roll this out i really think i could

and just i remember the look on her face like the words that came out of her mouth were very supportive but the look at her face was like don't do this to me man like i'm solo parenting here or like yeah yeah they told me this was the guy that i was getting married yeah exactly and and we sort of had a conversation. She's like, right, well, if you need to go more, you're never going to have another shot at this. Just go more. And for context, your wife is self-employed. She's self-employed.

And you have like a four-year-old and like a two-year-old. Yeah, just under two. So life was hard. And she's doing it all. She's amazing. Yeah, she was amazing and she was coming running a marathon every sunday with me as well first time she'd run a marathon since having kids so yeah she's i won the wife lottery definitely and uh so then i'm thinking

right well i can carry on but then there's other things to consider like i'd be moving christmas day you know and like the crew the riders who joined me everyone's like so focused on 102 and that's what i've told everyone and if all of a sudden you go oh actually no that's not the end the end's like two weeks later everyone's like so invested in this day it'd be like moving christmas day and i was like well i can't do that but i tell you what i don't want to quit either the terror in me doesn't want to be the one that gives up so i definitely will do 103 and then i'm gonna let the internet decide 104 so i did 103 and actually it was such a good day i felt really good the pressure was off um my times were a bit slower but i sort of didn't didn't mind um and then i

thought right let the internet so i went on instagram and did a poll and then obviously 71 of the internet hates me yeah and they said carry on of course and because i thought i've maybe just got getting the internet to decide but then after it was 71 well they're always going to keep going exactly yeah i sort of didn't really think about that and i thought right well from now on i'm just going to flip a coin because then if the coin says stop it's not me telling myself to stop it's me just the coin says stop so that's good so for to do day 105 i flipped a coin and the coin said carry on uh and then on 105 i flipped it again and i would have done 106 but the coin said stop and um yeah that was emotional actually yeah i remember flipping that coin was it harder

to not do it that day yeah the harder the way I can think about it is imagine having a job that no one else in the world has and no one else gets to have and I have it and it's blimmin' hard and it's difficult, but it's so rewarding. I'm getting goosebumps actually, goosebumps thinking about it. It's so rewarding and the community that's being created around it is... Sorry, that's got me there. Yeah, I just... Would you give it up? Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, I just didn't want to give it up. Because everyone that came and joined me, i think that's the thing you know all these people that took time off work and everything i didn't think this would happen um you know it was so amazing and uh yeah i just i didn't want to let go of it yeah yeah so um and that's why i just i knew as soon as i gave up gave up i just I just would be getting, you know, I wouldn't be doing something that no one else in the world is doing right now or gets to do. And yeah, that was, um, yeah, that was, uh, that was hard, but also it was time to give up because I remember Monty, my eldest, going, Daddy, Daddy, is your challenge finished? Can you play with me now? And that just cut to me, you know. So, excuse me.

No, it's great. I mean, I think there's two competing things here. One is this sense of specialness and this honor of carrying this mantle forward. Like you were very present and aware of the fact that this is a special set of circumstances. And for whatever reason, you're in this position, you've been chosen or you chose yourself to do this thing. And there's a responsibility to show up for that.

But I think if I had to guess what provoked you emotionally for that. But I think if I had to guess what provoked you emotionally is the fact that it was meaningful for other people and that it cultivated community. And in that, I hear and see somebody who understands the power of what these challenges can represent in terms of it being about more than yourself. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And that's the true, like, vein of energy to tap into. Like, if you want to keep going, right?

That's the energy fuel, the source that will always give more and more and more because it's a benefit to something that's so much broader than you and your goal and like the terrier yeah no absolutely and it took me ages to work out why these guys were waking up at like five in the morning and coming and riding with me and but then slowly you're right i heard about each one had their own little challenge one guy wants to cycle 12 500 miles this year you know clive wanted to get white shoes and you only get to get white shoes if you do 100 miles averaging 20 mile an hour then you can buy your white cycling shoes and he did that with me and and and everyone some you know one guy lost two stone which is what

was that in 40 pounds you know coming to cycle with me every day james he called him because he came almost every single day either on the bike or the run because he did shift that allowed it at work and uh yeah it was just it blew me away that that camaraderie and we still have a whatsapp group now of everyone and one of the regulars actually did a 24-hour bike ride on my course just this last weekend so I went and I did a shift from 1 30 in the morning till 8 a.m um as he finished that. And everyone's got, another one of the guys did 300 miles on Zwift as well. So it was, yeah, it was really, really amazing. And I just didn't want to give that up because I was feeling okay. Don't get me wrong.

It was tiring getting up every day, doing those 14 hours a day, not seeing my kids, coming home and Caroline, even though she was super supportive, it's hard, solo parenting. Shout out to all the solo parents there in the world. It's really tough. But I knew I could just turn up and do it because this is what I'm good at and I like being good at it and I like the reward it, and the money coming in for charity was great, and just everything about this unique experience

that no one else in the world could ever do. It was hard to let that go, really. I'm sure you get asked a lot, how many do you think you could have done? And I did hear you say on another podcast that you felt like you could do 200 yeah yeah yeah i could have in on the route i had in this country 200 is probably probably doable with the weather i think once you start so i started in april and that was the earliest i could start it was snowing like two weeks before and the weather was terrible in april it just the wind was horrible like it was the mud

the conditions you know you've you've going across loads of farmers tracks with like muck and cow shit why didn't you just go to like abitha or something like that where the weather's great the most the flattest most temperate climate like i don't know phoenix or like you know dubai or something no well there was thought of doing it in america so i've cycled as part of my round the world bike ride i did miami up to to missouri down to arkansas texas up kansas down oklahoma um where did i finish then then new mexico arizona to phoenix and then it stopped at phoenix because i was i i got run over in in arkansas so i was a bit delayed on my flights and then i've also done i did the route 66 bike race in 2016 um and i love cycling in america and and i think if you were

going to do longer in america and you also wanted to play the tailwind game you could find a town which just had a spider web of roads do the swim in there do the tailwind game run at the end go back each night and i think that would be sustainable to do this more and more and actually because there's two things that people will do now someone will possibly do do 106 solo with no outriders um or or they'll go longer much longer so 200 or maybe a year because in america you if you wanted to do a year you have to get very lucky with a lot of things like injury and illness and and that sort of thing but you could do two locations so one in the south in the winter one in the north in the summer oh that's interesting it's doable yeah and in fact a part of me is like this is like the monkey i'm the guy to do it like i'm definitely

the guy to do it but it's just the wrong time in my life it just wouldn't be fair um but if no one's done it like in ten years time i'll have revisit it but um no i think i think you could i think once you get to a stage and you know if you look at all the people who do deckers and double deckers you know the real the really good people are doing 10 hours you know so if you look at so i've done 105 james done 101 there's a latvian guy's done 60 and he was doing 10 hours 11 hours i don't know why he stopped at 60 like if you go online you can see his data then there's a French guy who's done 41. There's a bunch of Italians who've done 30.

And then all the double-decker crowd. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's an interesting thing to explore from a scientific perspective because it sort of puts to the lie the idea that the people who are good at this are just the real slow, force-gumpy plotters, you know, the 14, 15-minute mile guys. But if you're really fast and you're incredibly fit and efficient, you're actually in a better position because you're going to get, like, hours extra every single day.

And the compounding interest of that is incalcul when you did when you did your five around hawaii remember the sec the before the last one you said you had 11 hours sleep or something right because you felt amazing yeah we got a little day off and then i mean i felt better on that day than i did on the first day yeah because you've had the other things with the flights and the we were i mean we didn't know it was like we were getting i got like no sleep at all so you it felt like we were just pulling all-nighters and doing this stuff. Well, exactly. And so that's my point. When you don't have the sleep and you don't have the recovery, you're having a rough time.

Right. Because if you say, as you fast, you get more sleep and recovery, you're on the front of the wave. Let's say slower people choose a continuous decker or double decker because the cutoffs are a bit more lenient and you can sleep whenever you want. decker or double decker because the cutoffs are a bit more lenient and you can sleep whenever you want whereas if you're really slow and you try a decker you know you've got to be at the swim at 6 a.m you might you know you might only get in at 3 a.m right once you start and then you've only got three hours sleep and then yeah eventually you may just not even make the swim so you're right that you want to get to a point where you can do uh for me with because i had 40 minutes in a car every day i had 10

minutes to the pool and 30 minutes back home from the run i know there's lots of room for improvement there yeah yeah except i live in the hills so i had to go down to the flat bits um but if you if you if you lived right near the pool and you finished your run near the pool i think 15 hours is your bare minimum each day for me it was 14 hours 14 and a half but call it 14 so as long as i could do 14 hours in zone one then it was it was sustainable and i didn't crash on the bike and and didn't do anything stupid and i managed all the little niggles so you know of those 10 10 pillars of endurance muscle management is one of them and and i'm very good at that you know this the smallest

thing that's happening you know i've got a grain of sand in between my toes i take my shoe off straight away immediately rather than just oh it'll be fine absolutely and i'm really good at that and and if i feel like a little thing in my hip i'm like right go back into my memory has this happened before yes right what did i do that time right tennis ball here stretch this do that tape that if it's not happened before right physio what's going on and i had a couple of new ones where i was like well what's going on here so we we did some stretching and physio and that sort of fixed it but i get on it super early i don't let it get to a point anywhere near tendinitis anywhere near

stress fracture you know i try and nip it in the bud um i'm always looking at my technique in my head like where am i landing on the run how's am i stomping on the pedals on the bike what am i doing with my shoulders on the bike you know on the hoods try and vary between the hoods the drops and the tri bars but more important than any of that is what's going on in between your ears right and you have some pretty interesting mindset techniques and tools. As you mentioned earlier, James famously says it's 100% mental and 100% physical. On the mental side of things, this notion of disabusing yourself of any plan B, I think is really powerful. So talk a little bit about that.

So when I go into something, a, I mentioned earlier, I go in wholeheartedly believing, and I really do believe it's a done deal. I just have to turn up. Um, and then it puts me in a mindset of like,

right, well, I know I can do it. I know I'm going to do it. Where does that certainty come from? I know. I've just always been like that to the point of, and that's why I fail.

Like my first attempt at running the length of britain got injured failed my first attempt at my across europe cycle record got injured failed first attempt at this um got injured as well um and that's yeah and it's probably because i have this sort of ignorant side to me, I go in probably a little unprepared. You go in completely half-cocked from the get-go. I mean, you're a guy, I want to get into your back, let's just take a little diversion to talk about your backstory a little bit. You are born and spend your early years in Zimbabwe.

Yeah. You then moved to South Africa. Your dad is a big game conservationist. Rhino and elephant conservationist, yeah. So you grew up as a little kid with like elephants running around and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, my mom used to get annoyed because every day she'd wake up and the elephant had drunk all the water out of my paddling pool in the garden. That's wild.

For like weeks, she thought it had a hole. And she's like, where's this blimmin' hole? And then it got up early and there was an elephant. she thought it had a hole and she's like, where's this blimmin' hole? And then it got up early and there was an elephant. So, I mean, that's a pretty unique childhood that connected you with the natural world in a way that I imagine is probably more meaningful

than even you consciously know. Then South Africa, then you end up in the UK. And I get the sense that you're a bit of a Rolling Stone. You don't really know what you want to do or who you want to be but you seem kind of content to just roll with whatever with you know less than a dollar in your pocket and just figure it out as you go no absolutely I mean even coming to the UK I remember the reason I came I'd done a year at photography college and then they asked me to be an assistant lecturer for the following year just helping out in the dark room and various things to helping out that

the fuck was only a one-year course and then i finished that year and all my south african mates were coming back after their two-year visa ran out going oh britain was amazing i loved it we got to travel here here here and here and i'm at the bottom of africa oh that sounds cool i can't do any of that from here uh i got an ir passport. It's just like a free train ticket. Um, let's just go. I didn't need a visa or anything. And I think three weeks later I landed. I pretty much sold everything.

I managed to scrounge around to get a hundred pounds, uh, back in 2002, which wouldn't have lasted long even back then. I'd found out about a job in a salad making factory in Cambridgeshire which is the ones when you buy salads in a bag you know which you shouldn't do but you know it was that factory where you cut lettuces and put them in the conveyor belt and it all gets fixed and then I started working in a photo lab I did that for six years cut those days down as the photography grew and in the early days the photography was was great. I photographed Prince William, a lot of the sports stars had jobs in India and Morocco.

I worked on the Harry Potter films in the stills department, helping out the main stills photographer, Murray Close. So it was all going well. Because the dream was to use the camera as a passport to travel the world. So I was going to work for National Geographic. It was was the adventure that was calling it wasn't the art of photography not that that wasn't important but the real motivator was you had this drive and desire

to see the world absolutely and the camera was going to be that unlocking key for all that i remember as a kid taking all the pages out the national geographic magazine and putting them all around my bedroom and and then i got to london and then the reality of paying rent and buying food and i landed up living in a room not much bigger than this with seven of us there was a bunk bed and i was on the bottom bunk a double bed in this corner and then three people on the floor it was so small the one guy's legs were out the corridor like it was tiny we're just like it was almost squatting but the landlord knew we were there and we were paying him rent and he was like well i can't kick him out so i'll charge him like 30 quid a week or whatever it was and um but i just did it and lived out of a suitcase for a

couple of years just couch i moved 12 times my first year in london you know just trying to get more photography jobs and then i remember there was a point where i was going to go down from so i was working five days a week and then just thought well i might as well work six days a week earn a bit of extra cash and then i can buy more kits i was trying to save up for more cameras i just got to a point where i got some new kit and was cutting my days down i think from yeah back to five and then my flat in london got broken into and everything got stolen absolutely everything oh i didn't know i was like oh so i'm back to my boss at the photo lab i was like hey simon can i go back to six days a week please and then it took me another year of working to buy more kit and you know so i was working in that lab for six years cutting my days down

but then on the side of that you know i was getting some creative jobs but they really were terribly paid um but they were creative but the 22 year old of me was like well i need to earn more of course because i was chasing the money and i found out that photographing um school portraits at nursery school level just paid quite well you know you sell the pictures to the parents and they all buy the pictures and and i did that i did one school and i was like wow that was quite a good earner and then i was like well let's do this and i had a business partner james and him and i just were like right let's go all into this thinking if we earned enough money from the schools and we got photographers and to shoot them and people in the office we would have more time but actually we had less time no then you're just building the business and so then we eventually had an office we had seven staff we had like four photographers two people doing photoshop

um and one sales person getting us and we we did nurseries up in the midlands around birmingham all around london and the channel islands where james was from and uh yeah got to the point where photographing 10 000 kids a year and that was the goal more just a number like it's 10 000 this year it needs to be 12 000 next year and it just was we knew each kid was worth x amount of money per child photographed and yeah eventually this is a far cry from the national geographic well exactly yeah and then you know there's the part of me that goes and it's just like just suck it up just deal with it it's rubbish but you're putting food on the table mate you know well done um get on with it and then i turned 30 and i was

just miserable so i went to james i said mate i'm out like i'm out like can you buy my shares like i'll walk i'll walk away and then he was like yeah sure and going through and looking doing 10 years of accounts and i'm thinking ka-ching you know know, a little bit here, not a lot, but enough to sort me out a year or something. And he said, I'll give you a quid, mate. That's take it or leave it. I was like, yeah, fine. So you built this, I mean, that's a pretty robust, stable, big business.

Yeah. And you're a partner with one other guy. Yeah. And you walk away with a dollar. Yeah. And then I bought, I spent three quid on a frame. Sorry, four quid on the frame to frame the pound. So he gave me a Jersey pound note.

It's the only part of the UK they sell pound notes. I've got in my office at home now. So I've spent four quid on the frame for this one pound that I gave. So I was minus three pounds. But you know, for me, it was- But to reclaim your life. And it was, you know what it was? It was me going, right, this is my symbolic gesture of a keeping my friendship because james and i are best mates

he was best man my wedding years later even so it didn't ruin that and i'd known him for 20 years such a good friend though he couldn't he couldn't give you an equitable is this a guy is he a good friend yeah i don't know i mean part of it, he sort of thought I was dropping him in a little bit because I was mostly the photographer, the creative, and he was the business guy. And if I left, he would also was like, well, what about, I don't know how to do this. So there was a part, and we had some loans that needed repaying and he also sort of didn't like it either. So he was going to shut the thing down anyway.

But then the other part was me going like, I'm not doing anything purely for my financial gain ever again like and it was symbolic like i'll take this pound and this is it i'm going to moan about it and talk about talk about a podcast forever um but then so then i had this this sort of like what am i going to do i wanted to go traveling but didn't have any money to go traveling and also i the traveling wouldn't have scratched the the terrier which i hadn't quite worked out this concept yet but i thought i just needed to do something and then i thought well what if i break some sort of record that has an element of travel to it maybe i'll get a sponsor and they'll pay for it because that's right this idea of seeing other people who were traveling the world on someone else's dime and and and that being draped with this world record attempt and

you're like well why don't i go after a world record people rowing get somebody else to pay for it rowing the atlantic climbing everest they all had like logos of companies just like you do you have a lot of logos on your shirt right now. Because all sport relies on sponsorship from every level, right? But you had done nothing. You were in no position to ask anybody for money or to back you in any kind of feat. I had cycled lands. Given a resume that had zero experience on it. No, I know.

Like nothing. Nothing, no. know i got i uh like nothing nothing no but i got lucky i um i found a company that supported a charity and i went in with this sort of idea that well what if you support my so the thing i thought of was the around the world record right riding your bike all the way around the world was that like a low-hanging fruit record in terms of time sort of um it was still you had to do 167 miles a day so it's still hard but yeah the current guy who's got the record to 240 miles a day fully supported mark beaumont um so alan bait had the record uh and vin cox so vin cox had the record but only for a few days because him and alan bait were actually going together and then alan bait took his record but

vin cox thought of this concept of like well whoever wants to go for the next record why don't you all start at the same time and he made it a race called the global bike race started on the uh 12th february 2012 and the idea was start at greenwich come back in time for the olympics in london it was an awesome idea so i was like right i'm going to enter that so entered that then went to this company who i knew supported a charity in africa i said well if you support me i'll raise money for you for that charity and who knows i might raise more um for the charity and and yeah they would they just liked it uh they liked the idea the oh the ceo loved cycling and that's how i got funny i was like i couldn't believe i mean it's right it was so rare for just a novice to sort of get funding

for such a big trip and i i'm eternally grateful but you did did you even have a bike no well so i had a bike so i had cycled lands into john of groats oh right you did it did you even have a bike? No. At this point? I had a bike. So I had cycled Land's End to John O'Groats. Oh, right. You did it in like 25 days. 25 days. Yeah, like a very casual. Yeah, it was. I remember if I did 60K or something,

or, you know, 30 or 40 miles, I was like, whoa, I did a big day today. So I had no, I had the adventurous spirit, I guess, but I had no physical ability. You know, I remember my first bike ride. So once I'd sort of got an email from the company saying, right, I're in um i thought right well i'm going to get my bike out the shed which a i then suddenly realized i'd done lansian john of groats on a 62 frame and i'm a 52 so i was

i was like that's a massive massive bike um i tried to cycle london to brighton which is 60 miles and i got to crawley got a puncture and didn't know how to fix it. I had to get the train back home. And yeah, so I was really at a base, but I had the fire. I had the fire. It was something for me to chase. And all of a sudden I knew that if I just put in the hours, I could get to a level. Because I'd looked at Mark Beaumont and Vin Cox and Alan Bate and James Bothorp and Julian Saraya, all these other people who'd done the round the world thing.

And I'm like, they were just normal people with jobs and things. Um, none of them were professional athletes. Well, if they can do it, I'm surely I can. And I'm just going to have a crack and then train 40 hours a week for six months. How did you ramp up to 40 without getting injured? So 20 of that was on Saturday. I'd get up at 4, 4 a.m., 5 a.m., cycle through to midnight. And yeah, just slow base, base zone one, zone two, cranking out. I was 30. So yeah, 2012, yeah, 30.

So I was still young enough to not pick up all the niggles that i'm picking up now and yeah just worked really hard and eventually got to a point we're doing something like 200 miles daily as long as not too hilly it wasn't really sort of unthinkable so you set about this attempt to cycle all around the world uh and misfortune visits you yeah in the united states yeah i was uh i was doing really well i'd done so from so the rules are you got to do 18 000 miles and you got to pass two antipodes and because there's so much ocean in the southern hemisphere you've got wellington and madrid or a place in malaysia and a place in ecuador and those are the two i chose uh so i and you can fly in

between bits as long as you make up the miles and don't go backwards on yourself so i went down flew to spain so i did a bit in london but i it really started in spain went down into morocco because i wanted to do a bit of all the continents except antarctica and then flew to santiago did santiago to lima through the atacama again doing 170 180 miles a day flew to Miami and did Miami all the way up into Missouri and then it started getting a bit cold so I started turning back down and then when I was in Arkansas yeah unfortunately someone just ran me over um they were speeding they admitted speeding and they were on their phone I believe and uh I actually don't remember anything I went to bed the night before and woke up on the side of the road and i remember going

how's my bike and they said yeah it's pretty total man i was like what just lie to me you know tell me it's okay because without the bike you can't carry on it was actually one of the rules you had to do it on the same bike for some reason um so the record was off and I was going to come home. Were you in the lead in this adventure? Are you, you're not racing side by side with people. No, no. A guy called Mike Hall, um, rest in peace. He unfortunately got killed, sadly got killed in a, in a bike race in Australia years later. And he was one of the best in the world.

And it took, took the wind out of my sail for ultra cycling for a while. Actually, he was in that race as well and he would have i would have beaten the record but he would have beaten me yeah he was he was amazing like he was just so inspiring again just a yorkshireman with a belly and but it was just a machine on the bike he won i don't know if he still has the tour divide record but he he won the tour divide a couple of times he did he'd won the trans cont uh across the trans am sorry he set up the transcontinental race now that's just been um yeah really amazing he probably would have beaten me even though i think we were neck and neck his route was slightly

quicker because he went east and i went west um but you get hit by this car yeah and it's not a small thing like you fracture your back like you're in bad shape yeah it was uh you know i i would say to the guy who ran me over like it wasn't his fault like i was on a road you should never cycle on but i'm just following a line on a map you know he's he's a baker i believe he's done this road every day of his life he's probably never seen a cyclist at 5 a.m and then there's this idiot you know and and it was raining and there was some traffic lights ahead so i think my rear red light and the red light reflection off the water in the road so yeah no no hard feelings was just one of those unlucky things but yeah i just woke up with a compression fracture

on t11 a chipped tooth concussion um ligaments like knee and right foot because they stay clipped in i'm sorry yeah right because that's i must have swerved at the last minute because i landed on the grass um and he hit me in one of your big pickup trucks you know the ones you've you don't get here in europe uh i went straight up hit the windscreen my helmet did what a helmet's meant to do and compressed and took took the pressure my rear wheel like it just was trashed the frame was bent um and it was it was game over really for the record even though i thought i could carry on the doctors were like nah it's not happening and it turns out that the doctor on duty martin carey was welsh and he's like right don't stay in the hospital. Come to my house. And the Careys, Martin and Missy, I owe them everything.

They just looked after me. So you're in Arkansas. Yeah. And you go to the hospital. Yeah. And it's a Welshman. Yeah, I know. What a child.

I mean, I owe them everything. And they took me home and they bought me a new bike. They phoned the bike shop here in the UK and said, remember, Sean, can you send us a new bike, please? We'll pay for it. Yeah, they were amazing. So I was, of course I was, this is so before they bought me a bike, I was going to come home. Um, and then I remember going through my kits and I came across this little Olympic torch at some kids at a school near the Olympic village in Greenwich made me. And the idea was we're going to take this torch around the world back to London for the Olympics.

I'm looking at it going oh man these kids are going to be so disappointed um that i don't take their torch around the world and then all of a sudden the terrier had something to chase again and i was like right i'm carrying on but then i sort of had this not for the record not for the record the charity for the experience experience get this torch back to the kids i had to convince my parents and i was like like this is gonna be a hard sell you know like and then i thought right i've got it so i remember phoning them and say hey mom and dad you know statistically no one gets run over twice like i've had my turn i'm carrying on see you bye which in my head still makes sense but um it was the

only way i could justify carrying on in my head and feeling like right right, well, I'm not going to get run over again. I've got this torch to get back to the kids. So I did slightly less mileage. I think I was 2,000 miles short of the 18,000 in the end and a slightly different route in Australia. But yeah, I got back to the Olympics sort of, I can't remember. Completed that. Completed that.

Completed that. So this is a very circuitous route that we've taken for me to arrive at the original point that I wanted to make, which was twofold. On the one hand, back to this mindset thing around no plan B, the terrier. You latch onto something, it's going to happen no matter what. So much so that you sell your business for a dollar, you talk a sponsor into underwriting this adventure that you have no experience in whatsoever. And despite being hit by a car and fracturing your back,

you still find a way to complete this thing, which I think is unbelievable. But beneath that is this minimalist sensibility, like a dollar, I'll sleep in a room with seven people. You've designed your life, and it seems like even though you're married and you have kids now, you keep your life lean enough such that adventure always remains within your grasp, right? Like it's all about having a baseline so that you can go and do all of these amazing things. Like there seems to be a lot of intentionality behind that construction. No, absolutely. I tried to lead as simple a life as possible. I lived on a boat for three years on a canal, um, in up near Worcester. I bought an old world war two gunboat that, that Holland and Wolf made. And they also made the Titanic. So that was a concern, but it was, it was, it's beautiful

wooden, wooden hell and a lovely arch. And it was used, um, to rescue spitfires in the war. And when I took the front paint work off, it slid the roundel from the RAF roundel and had the engraving with the, the, the RA the back um of the boat and and the stern i should say and uh and i love boat life it was super simple you didn't buy that big a telly because you couldn't you didn't buy another sofa because you didn't fancy the current one because i had a built-in one and um yeah it was just i didn't have a garage to do my all my my hobbies and that's and that's probably the biggest reason i moved off off the boat uh and also it actually randomly sort of there's how i met caroline was just a whole series of circumstances that if one of

them had not happened i would never have met the love of my life and one was getting injured on route 66 i then was going home to the boat and it was really flat i was like damn it i need hills in my life so i literally the next week moved to the lake district just for six months to finish writing one of my books and to do some hill training and a friend of mine was going to come and climb scarfell pike the highest mountain in england uh and she bailed on me like last minute which means i had the weekend free so i went to the kendall mountain festival and met my wife and if any of those hadn't happened i would never met caroline and then once i'd met caroline i sort of knew that moving back onto the boat was never going to happen so then i tried to keep it thought i could maybe get it up to the lakes but it was

it was 60 foot it was long so i eventually sold it which is a shame but yeah going back to your point i do try and live a simple life as possible without too much distraction around what i want to do in life and what you know gets me going but it is hard when you have kids and family and responsibilities yes yeah there's compromises because you have competing values yeah exactly um because you have competing values. Yeah, exactly. But you have on your website, in addition to a whole section with all your failures, you also have a section on dreams.

And one of the dreams that you have publicly announced is to live on a deserted island, basically. So you have this Forrest Gump sensibility the beard forest never stops running um but here you are like channeling another tom hanks you also want to be cast away like i feel like yeah you have the terrier and you have the monkey but you also have tom hanks as like a talisman i actually have a tennis ball called wilson i feel like you need to meet this guy there's some kind of energy exchange here. But this idea of living on a deserted island

satisfies that part in you that just wants to be connected to the earth and free or liberated of the trappings of the material world, which I think is operating as part of this desire for adventure and exploration, right? It's like, how can I live in a more natural, primal way where I'm experiencing the world

in the most tactile way possible? Yeah. No, I mean, Caroline and I talk about it all the time. Our oldest is just starting school in September and we're conflicting with like, should we just take a year off and go and find an island and live on it? Or just, I could see you on a sailboat with your family sailing around the world and raising your children like wild animals. Or what's that Viggo Mortensen movie where he's got them in a school bus? Oh, yeah. That's a great film.

Until it goes nutty but anyway go ahead well no it's true we've talked about the boat thing i just get terribly seasick um because i i have the land you have a sailing record i have the sailing record for lands in john groats as well but i was sort of the t-boy like my mate uh two of my mates full sharp alex alley proper sailors you know fast boats and everything and um yeah i was just there to help out and but yeah we did an 84 hours i think we still have that record i'm not sure but i was seasick for 50 of it you know um yeah that was terrible i think since swimming britain i've got tinnitus as well and i i was getting into paragliding at one point and now i've had to bin that off because i just get really bad

motion sickness so the boat thing is just i know that feeling of being seasick for days and weeks and um but no you're right i would it's it's probably going to be the thing that i regret not having a crack at one point and caroline's the same and but then we've got responsibilities to parents like is it is it a good idea to take a kid out of school and make them leave the life you want to leave? You can play that game all day long. Like, you don't know. You have to live your life according to your values and raise your children in the manner in which you feel is in their best interest.

But I think whether or not, however that plays out, nonetheless, you're this person who has been to many places and connected. You didn't just drive around in a tour bus and fly to places. You've been boots on the ground traveling at a very slow speed through amazing swaths of planet Earth. And I think one of the beautiful things is that you can come back and tell the rest of us what you discovered, right? So of all the places you've been, of all the people that you've connected with and the things that you've seen, what are we not appreciating or understanding or what can we learn from what you've experienced that could maybe shift something in how we perceive our own lives? that could maybe shift something in how we perceive our own lives.

One thing that I, whenever I travel, I'm probably not a great person to ask this question to, because I'm mostly heads down, not talking to anyone and living out of service stations. But when I do meet people and chat to people or chat to people afterwards, who maybe I cycled across Russia and they saw me and then you know messaged me on Facebook is that we're all pretty much the same all over the world we all just want to get up and do a job and have holidays and all these sort of things but also I've realized that how important it is to have some sort of physical goal in your life like anywhere in the world I think anyone should just have something to work towards that has a physical element to it i think we're all way better for it if we do that and i know

if i don't have some physical goal that's difficult i'm grumpy and and all the people i meet all the way around the world they're all exactly the same we're all the same we're all humans on this planet leaving yeah we have slightly different circumstances and, you know, some people live in easier countries than others, of course. But inherently, I think, you know, we're all pretty much the same and we should treat each other all the same and we should all have a physical goal. Right. Empathy. Empathy and connection. But as for the physical goal piece, articulate why you think that's so important. Explain that to the person who's working two jobs who's never done anything physical but their life is hard enough as it is why do they

need to build something like this into their life because it's you know it's for me it's the same as just breathing oxygen like i think you you have to do You know, you have to just do it. Because I think you're also just missing out on life. Because there's a whole aspect of life that you're not experiencing by not engaging in something that has a challenging element to it on a physical side. You know, like when you changed your diet, you've untapped this whole new world, right? That you just didn't know existed. And I think the same thing is, is there for having a physical challenge and it doesn't have to be going and doing an Ironman. It can be literally just try and do a 5k. My, my wife's mom has been doing couch to 5k all year. She's still doing it. Um,

and it's great. You know, she's just doing it um and it's great you know she's just got this thing she's got this drive now she gets up and yeah it's hard um but she's getting there slowly i would also say is don't be in a rush for it because i think that's also and i am i definitely am i fail i fail all the time you know have the time, you know, have the goal, but you know, be prepared to do the steps to get there and don't get disheartened when you're not achieving what you think you would achieve. Cause you're just going to burn out or get injured or, you know, if you push it too hard and do stuff for the fun of it, you know, I'm into mushroom foraging. So I I'll go for a run without my watch or anything. Why is that not surprising? If I had to like draw a picture of somebody

who's a mushroom forager, he'd probably look a lot like you. Yeah, and actually near me, there's porcinis. I'm sure. Porcinis are like the gold of mushroom foraging and I know where all there are near me. So, you know, sometimes I'll just do it for the fun of it. And I think that's also important

to not always realize that there is a fun element of exercise and sport and challenging yourself. I think it's important to link those two things together. And I think beyond just the idea of embracing doing hard things, it's the cascade effect that occurs when you put yourself in that position. Because whether you succeed or fail in the pursuit of that goal, you're building self-esteem, you're raising the ceiling on your own sense of personal capacity. And that spills over into every area

and aspect of your life beyond just what you're capable of physically. Yeah, absolutely. You know, like you're just pushing that bar higher and higher. I've got a 22 month old, he tripped on the pavement the other day burst out crying thought he was dying you know we don't cry now and we trip on the pavement because we know i'm you know i'm not going to die if i trip on the pavement so our bars are really higher and i think it's by putting

yourself through those difficult scenarios and creating a bit of hardship in the form of physical activity will, as you say, lead to all other aspects. Because the next time something else happens in your life, you go, well, that wasn't nearly as bad as running a marathon. I can definitely do this. So I think that's definitely an element in that side of things. Yeah. Back to the mindset stuff. So this whole aspect of the conversation was kicked off by talking about this no plan B idea, which resonates throughout your life. Like you're someone who can pick up on a dime and go do something else endurance pursuits talk a little bit about in the context of the 105 how this idea of not having a plan b became kind of a reliable default mantra yeah it was interesting actually a couple of close family members actually sort of set me aside and go sean like what happens if you can't do a full a day

will you start doing halves a day like uh no what are you on about they're like well instead of just quitting if you get injured again what if you just dropped it down to doing halves a day and did 102 halves instead i was like absolutely not like no when that gets hard you can go down to olympic distance and then sprint and then eventually doing a 5k yeah and then it's just running or something um so no it was i was sort of offended i was like it's just never gonna happen i'd rather fail and go back to the drawing board and start again trying to do the falls every day then reduce my my bar or make my ambitions lower like i don't get any satisfaction about doing halves a day zero absolutely zero you know i could do a whole year of halves it would be less

satisfying for me personally it wouldn't feed the terrier because the terrier wants the fools right so and on some level the terrier is sort of like a mad alcoholic, though, who's developing a very high tolerance and needs to be fed even more and more and more and more. Well, this is a concern later down the line. This is the hungry ghost gnawing on your soul. Well, exactly. Because at some point, the terrier will never be satisfied. Right. Because he'll have achieved something.

And you attempting to satisfy it is a is a is a lost pursuit i know i know yeah but i'm like diminishing returns that will slowly drive you mad absolutely and i'm only your wife leaves you exactly yeah i've got another 40 years of things to fill i don't know keep telling yourself that you're running towards something and and start understanding or appreciating what maybe you're running away from. No, I agree. I'm not accusing you of anything. I am obviously running towards and away from something. I don't know what it is.

Yeah, I can't answer it. I wish I had an answer. At the moment, I'm just winging it. I'm winging it and see what happens. I think- Because no plan B. No plan B, exactly. At the moment, i'm good at

something and i'm good at being miserable cold wet hungry and tired and i'm good at doing multi-day stuff and i'm good at nailing those 10 pillars of endurance and i'm going to keep doing that until i can't anymore and then when that does happen then i think of another plan a that's something else and maybe it's being a PE teacher at school. You know, I really, youth sport is high on my agenda now. Since I've had kids, I've just noticed how hard it is to try and get facilities, especially in North Wales where I'm from. And so now that's my focus.

I even got a letter from Prince William. Oh, you did? I did, yeah. On day 60-something, he wrote, we got a letter through the post with the Kensington Palace? I did, yeah. On day 60-something, he wrote, we got a letter through the post with the Kensington Palace stamp on it. And we're like, what is this? And it was like, dear Mr. Conway. Am I being knighted?

Yeah. Is this the OBE? What's happening? Yeah. So it's like, dear Mr. Conway, congratulations on your 102. And then he wrote a lovely paragraph on the importance of youth sport. Because he's the Prince of Wales, of course. Right.

And then said, good luck with the rest of your challenge and then just a signature and it doesn't look like anything so we were like first we're like who wrote this we're like it must be the janitor who's just got a letterhead and then we googled his signature and it's come up and his signature is just willie it just says willie and um but this is what true venture foundation does right they they all it's at the moment it's north north wales based where where they have through the money we raised are going to have a grant system for clubs youth clubs and for athletes and individually youth athletes that they can just apply for so all the money i raise is in a pot at the minute and soon we'll they'll be putting it out and i'm working

i'm volunteering with them basically indefinitely. Ryan lives near me who set it up. And we go. I went to a youth triathlon event just this last weekend and did the prize giving. It was the final event of the year. And we're just trying to get more kids. Because in North Wales, only 39% of kids do sport outside of school. Wow. 66,000 fewer kids in Wales alone do sport outside of school since COVID.

And then we hope to expand A, into the rest of the UK, split first Wales, then the UK, and then also expand the types of sports we'll support. But at the moment it's triathlon, swim cycle, run, and a couple of smaller ones. Like there was a club who couldn't put a youth volleyball water polo in together because they didn't have the small balls for the for the kids because no one would fund it so we like figure that out yeah yeah so isn't uh is garrett thomas from wales wales yeah he's south he's from south wales so south wales is different there's a bit of a divide between north and south because south has Cardiff and they've got a 50-meter pool.

There's no 50-meter pool in North Wales, for example. And all the other pools are sort of council pools. So you have to – there's a slot and things like that. So a lot of the North Wales kids are having to drive all the way down to Cardiff for a gala. That's pretty far, isn't it? It's four hours plus hotels and everything. And there's never anything up and down. But you live pretty close to Wrexham, right?

Pretty close to Wrexham, yeah. So Americans know Wrexham for one reason and one reason only. Yeah, Ryan Reynolds. So talk to me about the Ryan Reynolds effect on that town, like where you live. That's amazing. So I'm probably half an hour, 40 minutes from Wrexham. But yeah, since him and Rob bought the football club and they've invested good money in it. They're very emotionally invested in this.

And it's been amazing for Wrexham. And I don't really watch soccer, football, but I have jumped on the Wrexham bandwagon. Absolutely. Because they're local to me. And a lot of the riders. Does that create like just a resurgence of interest in the football club or kind of oh yeah and they and also are they interlopers from the outside no they've they're amazing because they're putting money into the town and now the stadiums are full and they're selling all tickets and it's good for

the community and they've gone up a league as well i think they've got four more if they want to get to the premiership but that's a long way off but still uh yeah it's been amazing so anyway because i cycled down quite close to rexham on my website i was uh trying to get uh rob or or ryan to tattoo the rexham football club on my ass for uh 25 000 to the charity that sounds like something they would do though i mean he's a marketing genius yeah i thought that would be great yeah so anyway that for $25,000 to the charity. That sounds like something they would do, though. Well, I know, but I don't think they would. I mean, he's a marketing genius. Yeah, I thought that would have been great. So anyway, that never happened.

But it's sloping, so Rob will... We'll see. We'll see if this makes any impact on whether we can make that a possibility. No plan B, right? No plan B. You're all in, you're committed. I'm all in.

Just like they are to Rexum. I'm on the bum cheek right now already the other interesting mindset tool that i want to hear a little bit more about is this counterintuitive notion of refusing to celebrate small wins you would think in the pursuit of goal a larger goal you have these stepping stones along the way and emotional engagement and staying fresh with it um involves allowing yourself to have those little wins to celebrate along the way yeah you feel differently no very differently yeah for me if i celebrate too many small wins in my pursuit of the the full cake at some point it there could be a situation where it's

going badly but i go oh well i'm not doing so well but i got xyz from it so for example once i got to 21 i had the british record um i could have gone yeah i'm the british record winner yeah brilliant yeah make it a big fuss out of that then once i'd got to which i thought was 42 but it turns out it was 61 i would have got the european record for the most number of continuous uh sorry day by day uh fools i could have celebrated that i could have celebrated um oh there's a couple other things that sort of i did and then yeah i don't even remember them because i didn't celebrate them but the worry is that let's say i'd done all those little mini mini micro celebrations let's say on day 80 something bad happened the worry for me was oh well i'm really the british the the european

record and the british record holder i'm happy to quit oh yeah well i can be happy with what i've done um and that was not good for my headspace i needed to be again it's all or nothing no plan b i'm doing the 102 or and if i don't it's the whole thing's a failure like i'm not ever going to go and start doing the talk circuit going well i'm actually the british record holder yeah no it's who gives a shit yeah yeah for me absolutely yeah a bit the same as like oh why won't you do the most number of halves? Because I think the record for halves is less than the fulls anyway. I believe I could be wrong on that, but I think it's in 17. But you could create a record for anything.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's like, how meaningful are these records? It depends upon how incredible the challenge is, I suppose. How does that square with being a leader of a team when you have a crew of people and you're reliant upon the support that you need to accomplish the goal, right? Like you may feel like it's not in my best interest to celebrate these stepping stone goals, but I have all these people and I have to keep them excited about what we're doing yeah and i can't expect them to adopt my mindset and and have them show up fresh and smiling every single day yeah i think i failed on that yeah if i if i'm honest i think i didn't quite because i've never really done anything with crew before so i had a crew when i swam the length of britain and you know we were stuck on a boat so they sort of couldn't leave

and also that really was sort of something you know doing a world's first where no one's even attempted swimming up the west coast that was enough to sort of keep them excited but i and and also i had days off on that one it took 135 days but i had a good 40 days of bad weather where i couldn't swim yeah so we got to go to the pub and you know relax and have days off and things like that so i think that kept them sort of interested but again i failed there i think just motivating them i'm i'm not very good at compliments receiving or giving i feel like i'm very self-motivated and i sort of half expect other people to be motivated enough. If you've chosen to do it, just be motivated and do it.

And I think I apologize to the crew now. I'll openly say that I'm sorry for not potentially coming across visually and verbally as appreciative as I was. Because every day I'd wake up and be like, these guys are amazing. globally as appreciative as i was because i was every day i'd wake up and be like these guys are amazing like so because that's the other thing i did slightly differently to james i think is i think his crew were doing all day with him i can't quite work that out because there was pictures of both of them at the end of each day they would come in and out um yeah you know i mean they had you know they had different roles their job on the bike was to protect james and because there were a lot of people riding especially at the end and it was very dangerous on the bike was to protect James and because there were a lot of people riding, especially at the end, and it was very dangerous. So their job was to insulate him.

And I think they would, they were taking turns with that similarly on the run. But those guys, I mean, they were indefatigable. Like they could just, you know, incredible athletes, super committed to James. But I think James, to his credit, really understood leadership and team building in a way that maybe to your own admission, maybe, you know, there's some room for like growing and learning. Yeah. I'm just not, I'm not very good at like going to someone and going, mate, you're amazing. You're doing an awesome job. I love you. Like, I'm just like, I'm bad at that. And I should be better and i apologize to them because because what i did differently i guess is i had a morning crew and an afternoon

crew you can't be in castaway and forrest gump and also be a ceo yeah well i should have been you know and i wish i'd now i wish i'd given them more attention and shown them more appreciation um because the morning crew would do the swim and the run the bike and then come one o'clock which is when my bike ended usually roughly that's them done for the day they go home they can do whatever they want zero to do with it outside of going doing a bit of shopping as well and setting up for the following swim which of course took time and then the so that was the two chris's they did five days on five days off and then phil did everything and he would do all of the run and then he would do the bike maintenance. So that's bike swapped out so that I just had a fresh bike each day, uh, and nutrition and things like that.

And then again, so he would, he had his morning sort of, of course he had stuff to do before he arrived and, and the bike maintenance and all that. he arrived and and for bike maintenance and all that um and but you're right i if you're doing something like this your crew will feed off you 100 and if you're like oh i hate this this is miserable while we're doing it that energy is going to translate you have to you have to take responsibility for setting the tone you've got to be in a good mood and tell them. And it's hard when things are in pain because there is pain every day, all day with doing back-to-back irons. You know, your shoulders are sore on the swim and your back a little bit. On the bike, it can be neck or wrists, knees a little bit on the bike for me. And then the run, everything hurts, you know, all legs and everything. So it's hard to then be like, Hey guys, good going. Well done. I love you

guys. Thank you so much. Um, and I definitely failed on that. And I think if I did it again, or someone else is doing it, like you just need to really show your crew how much you appreciate them because you know, I i they were so good i genuinely didn't have to think about anything like the food was there i got i got my nutrition dialed in i nailed it i would do it different uh because i i and you'll hate me but i had almost no vegetables on the whole time you're like eating yeah so it was full fat cream and eating meats milks nuts fruits and grains. Um, and half of, I think I'd get 3000 calories a day.

I was doing about 8,000 calories a day. 3000 of that was in the full fat cream is like insurance, insurance calories, just in case, which kept me at a okay weight. I went from 60, I went from 70 at the start down to 67. Um, 68 is a good weight for me. That's 67. I felt like was a bit too light. I lost a bit of muscle there and my pace went down a bit and that sort of thing. But the crew knew everything.

You know, once we'd had it dialed in, I just had to turn up and everything was ready and laid out. And they were incredible. Absolutely just the best, you know. Was there a dark moment of the soul in this adventure like what was the hardest piece so it was around day 30 i wrote a piece about it on social media where there's a series of things that happened um so one of them was i got the total that we for charity and i think it was less than a thousand pounds but on day 30 and i'm like what why is it so low like does like obviously no one cares like obviously i've i've missed the And I think it was less than a thousand pounds, but on day 30. And I'm like, what?

Why is it so low? Like, does like, obviously no one cares. Like, obviously I've, I've missed the ball here. No one cares. We're never going to raise what we wanted to raise, which was 102,000. And then Caroline was having a rough time as well. You know, that just that particular day, the kids were kicking off and they were ill and they just were like not wanting to go to bed and not wanting to eat and just doing being kids basically and then so you know i'm coming

home and she's having a rough time i'm like well why am i doing this if like we're not raising any money for charity at this point caroline's having a tough time um you know and it's hard not to look at social media and see how many likes you get and all this because in my head that would hopefully transcend to raising money for charity that that wasn't as, as high as we thought by this point. And I thought, well,

have I missed the ball on like socially, you know, what people do now? And like, does anyone care about, you know, just this guy who's, you know,

can just go off and he's, he's leading such an easy life. He has to create this hardship for himself just to feel fulfilled yeah and there's also a sort of point at which oh another guy's going off and doing something crazy like there's always somebody who's going further longer farther you know and you kind of begin to yeah have this immune response to it yeah so and of course it was a personal challenge that i wanted to test myself to see if i could do it but at the expense of a my family and b like what are you actually wagering here and what is what's the what is the why exactly yeah you know yeah you want to achieve this goal yes you want to raise money that's not really the why like what is the

deeper why well i have to feed the terrier it's like i have to feed the terrier right but yeah let's go beneath that oh gosh yeah i have no idea i like what is that drive all about i don't know maybe it's social acceptance maybe it's trying to like i wasn't very good at sport at school maybe i was bullied uh you know i maybe i've just got this inherent need for social acceptance. You know, I was a bit of a loner and I thought I was happy being a loner, but actually, you know, doing something and beating my chest because all mammals need to beat their chest, right? Maybe I need that more than I thought I needed it. Um, yeah, it must be that it must be an element of me trying to go, look at me. I'm good at this stuff,

man. I have the best. I'm the only human on the planet to have ever done X, Y, Z. Um, it's gotta be, there's gotta be a little ego there that's fueling this fire,

which I think is fine. I think I'm happy that it's there. Maybe, you know, maybe it's something just trying to be cool for my kids, you know, be a cool dad, although I've reliably been told that that never happens.

Yeah, it doesn't happen. I also think that's bullshit. That's sort of like, oh, I'm raising money. I'm doing this for my kids. I want to show my kids. It's like, no, no. It's probably not that. The kids don't care.

No, they don't care. Your kids are too young, first of all. And by the time they're old enough to appreciate it, it'll just be that weird thing dad did. Yeah, and he'd be like, the record's 500 now dad shut up yeah so but in that on that day 30 though and you're you're sort of confronted with that why yeah because you know i wasn't getting maybe the social recognition i wasn't getting the people going in their pockets and giving money to the charity you know caroline was having a tough day that day um yeah so there's probably a lot of those little things that well it was played on my mind and then i'm just like

what's the blooming point you know what is the point i'm just it's just sport all i'm doing is trying to do a few more full irons and one other guy did you know and yeah it hit me that day is it worth cratering your marriage and threatening your relationship with your family yeah all these things and then failing at a potential other goal which is all part of the jigsaw and i know the charity thing wasn't as you say the be all and end all because i needed to chase the record but it's certainly something well Well, something you cared about and also created another layer of accountability. Exactly.

Yeah. It's dangling all the carrots, you know, like what are the carrots you've dangled in front of yourself to keep you going forward? And certainly the charity is one of them. And, you know, the ego side is having a cool pub story

and, you know, coming on a podcast, you know, all these, being able to write the book. You know, I love, I've written seven. Yeah. You've written a lot of books. There's one we don't talk about. So why is that? Well, these, these 10 rules of endurance are clearly your next book. I think so. So I'm going to weave in the sort of my experience in iron one Oh five plus all the other stuff I've done into this sort of experience book of

of the 10 pillars i think so um and that's part of it i love writing and i love all my books are in the downstairs toilet so whenever i go for a pee they're there and they're reminding me and i just love having them there um it's ego thing as well i guess um although you do keep the copyright to your written word for like 70 years after you die. So I love the fact that like my great, great grandkids are going to get like two quid one month from dad's book sale, great granddad's book sale. You go to the pub. If books even exist. Yeah, exactly.

At that point. Yeah. But back to this dark night of the soul, the reckoning with the why, trying to figure out or find, you know know a place to plant your flag and and continue forward how did you get to the other side of that what did you do mentally what did you rely upon to um to transcend that setback um i don't think i did anything like practically i just was like well okay this is how i feel i feel that this is potentially a waste of my time and no one cares but i've committed to doing it so i'm going to get up tomorrow and do it and then i got up the next day and i felt a little bit better and i got the next day i got a little bit better and then within a week we'd had a little bit more money

the kids were a bit better caroline was having a good time she came and joined me and ran a marathon because i think it was around then she started doing a marathon a day with me uh sorry a marathon a week every sunday um and then and a couple more new riders came because around day 30 all of a sudden more more riders started joining me on a regular basis um it's sort of a don't quit before the miracle yeah yeah if you stay in it these things and also a bad day today definitely doesn't mean a bad day tomorrow that's one thing i've learned in all the things i've done if anything a bad day today means it's more likely to be a good day tomorrow i think and the same as the other way around a good day today doesn't mean a good day tomorrow right like

you've got both ways well yeah because you can i remember when i cycled around the world i you know bits in america where i'd have a massive tailwind i'm like this is easy and i'd take my foot off the gas and i just coast because i was pushing less power and the heart rate was down and i was still floating along and then i get to a town and i'd say oh well i've had a good day you know i've done 200 miles two hours quicker than normal i'll just rest up i get to a town and i'd say oh well i've had a good day you know i've done 200 miles two hours quicker than normal i'll just rest up i've done a good day and then the next day i'd only do 120 miles i'd be like because i had a head when i'm like damn it why didn't i capitalize on that good day and just do what i normally do just just do the time and you know on a good day you'll go

further so i've definitely learned that as well you know a good day today can mean a bad day tomorrow and vice versa yeah so sean the everyman ordinary guy with the the numbers in the lab that are super unimpressive we have this person right but on some level there is a talent there is a uniqueness what is that talent like what is it that makes you distinct or or or different or um an outlier if you had to identify your strength i mean because is it tenacity is it the terrier i think i think wanting it because i think there's definitely a more there's at least three people who joined me who I think can break my record. You know, local guys.

There's a guy called Decker Dave who had the British record for the most number for a double decker. And he was doing 11 hours for, and he was 57 years old when he did it. So he had 20 and no one in Britain had ever done more than 20. did it wow um so he had 20 and no one in britain had ever done more than 20 he's 64 now so even he admits that he's he can feel his numbers going down a little bit so but you know there's there are people out there who could physically do it but it's whether you want to do it for one and whether you are you know i don't know who said it but someone said be ignorant ignorant enough to start and stubborn enough to be ignorant ignorant enough to start and stubborn enough to finish well naive enough to start and stubborn enough to finish and there's

definitely that element of of just wanting it so much that you're just going to sacrifice anything to get there but then there's obviously all the experience that you need that goes with it and that takes time and energy um so i think i don't think i'm an outlier i think there are more people out there than you maybe we think who could do these things um they've just chosen not to or they don't want it enough um or they're not experienced enough to deal with all the little niggles that happen and dealing with the headspace and and that and that comes with time there's no way so when i did my world's longest triathlon 2016 that was the last time i've been at my fittest so between 2016 and now i've been almost the unfitest i've been because i did my europe record in 2018 and that was okay but i was only 25 days and it was cycling only and i lost all my fitness

after that but i still think even though i was really really fit after the the the long triathlon i still couldn't have done 105 then even though i was super fit because i didn't have the experience in all the other things that go around with it so uh i would love for someone to have a crack at the 105 like i have no business in holding this record forever absolutely none what's the ally 10 10 10 of me goes oh yeah oh it'll get it'll get broken but i like I really like the fact that you're encouraging it to be broken. And you're holding onto that very loosely. Yeah, absolutely. Like, send me a message.

I'll help you. I'll tell you how to do it. I'll tell you how to do it. And I know you want to set up a woman for the woman's record. What is the female record? So there's someone who's done 25 in 35 days in America. There's someone in the UK who's done 20, 20 continuous, not a one a day.

So I can't, I don't know. I don't know what the woman is, but Caroline, my lovely wife, she's, um, she's interested. Yeah. Which would be amazing. How cool would that be? A husband and wife. So I've, I've, uh, I've taken the horse to water with her and she's she because she's a really good swimmer she used to swim competitively as a teenager she can run she's doing a marathon

a week with me and and we met cycling so she knows how to cycle she would just need to get a bit quicker on i think the bike and the run certainly the bike i mean i needed to get quicker on the bike as well but i've got the course we've got the crew we've got everyone right where i live and it's your turn to be to be a single daycare i know absolutely so i think i think if a female did a month 31 days i think that would definitely be be a record i think it's probably 21 but i think 31 would be a cool number because you've done a month of them yeah because if you look at all my data i it definitely doesn't favor this record doesn't favor uh a male biologically like the power was when you with a group of riders your power is not crazy high the run doesn't have to be fast the swim the swim is easy but like as you know it's

triathlon is very skewed away from swimmers and even if you're not a great swimmer it's still a way to recover from the day before and limber up oh if triathlon was the run first multi-day day after days would just be a whole different game because when i woke up in the morning i was like i can't walk down the stairs i i cannot do it but i knew once i was in the pool, I was like, I can't walk down the stairs. I cannot do it. But I knew once I was in the pool, once I was a couple hundred meters in. Get the blood moving. Get the blood moving. It fixes everything.

So I knew the swim was my safe space. I loved it. And even though I wasn't super fast, I wasn't slow either. I was an okay. I was doing about a, I did a 107 swim time as my fastest. And then a 120, I think was my slowest but i was hovering around 120 total time each day um about 115 swim time five minutes stopping to eat and it's nothing so yeah it's easy yeah so whereas and on a good day and a bad day you're losing 10 minutes right

whereas on a good day and a bad day on the bike hours hour and a half two hours same on the run back to this notion of what distinguishes you um i think yes the the the desire the wanting it is important i think there's this tenacity this determination the terrier spirit within you but i also think um there's something to this propensity to action that you have. Like you are willing to leap before you look. Oh, yeah. And that's the naivete piece, right? Like not being intimidated or afraid and not being paralyzed by the unknowns, which I think is something that a lot of people get overly caught up with. the unknowns, which I think is something that a lot of people get overly caught up with.

So much so that you decide you're going to swim the length of Great Britain and you have like no swim training. No. You have no idea what you're getting involved in, right? Like you don't really have a background in this. You're not trained up. You hadn't swum more than, I think I read three miles. Yeah, in a pool. Was your longest swim?

Yeah, in a pool. In a pool before doing that? Yeah. So that's insane. That's a bad idea as well. And the world's longest ultimate triathlon or whatever you call it, you kind of went into that

without really training for it or understanding training. Yeah. No, none of that. So there's a bullheadedness piece to that. There's a stupidity piece, but there's also an audacious kind of boldness to it that I think is the tip of the spear

that opens up these doors. And when you pair that with not being afraid to fail, it creates an equation that allows you to do amazing things as long as you stick with it and stay in the game yeah no absolutely you've you've nailed it on the head there with the swim especially that one a i didn't live anywhere near the ocean so i couldn't do any sea training i had zero money um i got sponsored but there was an accounting error so the money that was going to pay for it landed up paying for about half of it.

And then I crowdfunded the rest of the swim. I only got it like seven days into the swim. So I, the closest I had a pool near me, but I was so consumed with all the other aspects of trying to pull that swim off because that one really no one believed was possible. You know, 900 mile swim up the West coast. I was putting stuff on yachting forums saying,

oh, you know, I'd like to know about tides. And everyone was just hammering me down. Like, dude, whatever. Like sailing, it's difficult in a small boat. Like it's not going to happen. Waves are too big. Tides are too strong. There's killer whales in Scotland.

Like I got everything. So people were very cautious of trying to help because they just thought it was a waste of their time. And that took all my time. And I knew that actually, so I could swim. I knew how to swim. Have you heard of this? The biggest open water swimming event in the world, I think, is called the Midmar Mile in South Africa.

15,000 people do it. Oh, I didn't know about this. It's a mile across a lake. 15,000 people do it every year. Our school did it. So when I was, I think, eight. No, I couldn't, I was about 10 or 11. I swam this mile. I've done it twice.

They do eight, eight, um, uh, waves of swimmers. And one year I did after I swam Britain, I did, they call the eight mile club where you do all eight. So you swim it, they take you on a boat back, you swim it back. I swam it with Kerry Ann Payne, um and lex lexi kelly she's american um they uh yes so i knew how to swim but i just was unfit and my technique was crap so when i did the cheese rolling in gloucester you must have seen on youtube where they roll a cheese down the hill and people chase the cheese you don't really know about this it's a 200 year old tradition in britain where it's called the gloucester gloucestershire

cheese rolling they and it's vertical they roll this cheese down you run after it head over tail whoever gets to the bottom first wins the cheese anyway i did that 2009 and just fully ruptured my capsule on my left shoulder so when i swim and i get fatigued i drop this shoulder and i push like that and then so i just have a terrible drop this shoulder and I push like that. And then, so I just have a terrible left-hand technique. And it actually played up a little bit on this because also from when I swam Britain, because of all the waves, I did. And because I didn't want to get neck chafe. Right.

You want to get rhino neck like Ross. Yeah, I know. It was crazy. And then I just, again, I'm micro managing everything. And I'm very good at that. Like I never let it get anywhere near what he got because I nailed it early. I started, I wrapped a buff in Vaseline and, um, lanolin. So I did a Vaseline and lanolin mix in the microwave, mixed it all together, rubbed it all over this buff, put it under the wetsuit to stop the little chafe. And then it was flushing a bit and cold but at least i didn't get chafe but then i eventually got to this technique where i would just over roll like

it's to breathe i would just be doing that rather than doing that and it was terrible but also with all the big waves i'm sort of breathing up in the sky and if you look at all the pictures on this swim now in the pool i'm like my head's up i'm over rolling i'm over rotating my legs are out like this but i knew i would get fit on that swim and because it was there was no time element other than trying to finish before winter i knew i would make it like i just i knew i just swam a mile you know two miles i couldn't do it as long as i did about 10 miles a day i think in my head i was like right i'll get into scotland before winter

even though i was hoping to do more than that but it landed up being much slower i thought it was gonna take me two and a half months took me like four and a half or something yeah but who cares yeah i did it right this propensity to act like you threw yourself into this thing and figured it out as you went and as a result you've accomplished things that you probably couldn't have imagined for yourself. Yeah. So I'm trying to like mine the lesson from that. And I think it's that courage to kind of liberate yourself from this social,

this imprint, this imprinted kind of social expectation or attitude that we have around safety and security and like always knowing like where each step is gonna lead you along the path. And you're just kind of bouncing around like a ping pong ball. Like I'm sure there's more conscious intention behind it but i see somebody who's acting on instinct and and really driven by this sense of adventure

and is is kind of just going from one thing to the next and not spending too much time worrying about what the larger plan is here like trying to be really in the moment with who you who you are yeah no it's true and i think once i think of something it's just like well that's what i want to do now no i'm just gonna do it right and i'm not prepared yeah and that is like a forrest gump thing like i'm just okay i'm gonna run now and then like okay i'm done yeah no exactly and then obviously where it sort of bites me in the ass a little bit sometimes is there's there's weather windows and you know so last for last year's attempt i thought of it in december because i had this other idea which i can't talk about which i was going to do which you know about but that just kept getting delayed and why can't we talk about it well i don't want someone else to

do it oh okay if i if i go someone else might go i'm gonna have a crack at that and then make my life i'm sure somebody else has thought of it maybe knowing what it is no one's done it since 1994 so now you're giving clues oh exactly but um i then in december 2021 i decided right i'm gonna go for the 102 and then i looked at the training i was like right maybe six months it's cutting it fine but i can't really start later than july because then i'm running into october november and weather and all that sort of thing so that was also partly the issue with the previous attempt and also kit like by getting kit with the supply chain issues getting a bike was possible um you and james both like out doing it in freezing weather and like what are you guys doing just relocate

this whole thing well he had more i think he had more variation on temperature but i just had the rain you know just the rain i just made cycling on the roads with potholes you know that all the water just covered up all the potholes and you couldn't with potholes you know that all the water just covered up all the potholes and you couldn't see them and luckily you know within a week i knew every pothole by name pretty much so uh that wasn't too bad but it was slippery and taking corners you had to slow down i was on a rainy day i was easily half an hour slower just because it was raining you know because your glasses are covered up with all the muck off the road and things like that um so yeah what was the question i'm sure there was one uh being present with who you are and not getting caught up in the security blanket yeah

sort of narrative yeah around how to live life, like the guiding principles around how you're living and how you're making decisions about where to invest your time and your energy, as opposed to the 401k or the, you know, the upwardly mobile career path. You're just like, well, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I think I'm going to do now. And that's kind of it. Pretty much. I know. It's going to- well, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I think I'm going to do now. Yeah. And that's kind of it. Pretty much. I know. It's going to backfire terribly. And is your wife different?

Oh, she's terrified of the future. No, again, even sitting here, I can't even genuinely give you a reasonable, sensible answer because I don't know. Because it's just not how my brain works. because i don't know because it's just not how my brain works but i think the the the bandwidth of your life like the horizon of your life is obviously quite large right now you're writing books you're traveling around you're giving talks you're speaking you're doing all these things that would probably really impress the young photographer who had dreams of being a national geographic fellow. Right. So when you think back to the aspirations of that person and reflect upon your life today, what is the message that you tell that, that young person

with a dream? Just don't be scared to just wait and like, go you know i and i think that's what i do i just think of something that i would potentially regret not doing you know that's quite an important thing and i think that's quite common but to action it i action it to mike i will 100 regret not having a crack at this you know like the 102 when i failed the first time there was sort of talk about yeah well you well, you know, James Lawrence is pretty impressive guy. Like maybe you don't have it in you, buddy. You know? And I saw him on day 100.

Yeah. And I mean, he was delirious. Yeah. Like he struggled, man. Yeah, exactly. You know? So who are you to think? You know, I've never done a nine man at the event in my life. Uh, I've never done a triathlon. In fact, I've, I've done three, I've done three one day events in my life around the London marathon for the scouts. Uh, I did a tough mudder and I did a 50 K ultra a couple of years ago. It was literally other than training. Of course, I'm doing one day training and things, but actual events. That's all I've ever done never done any triathlon not once uh not done a proper running race it's just it one day events have

never excited me um so you're right you know once when i failed last year there was a huge part of me and people i know and the internet going like who's this guy like right not so easy right not so easy like come on man like you know and um and of course as i said like i plead guilty to that by the way i was like i remember you messaged when i when i announced the attempt i remember you saying uh we'll see snap shots shots fired yeah yeah yeah and then at six and you had that thing i was like told you maybe not as no not in like a schadenfreude way, but out of like a respect for just how, how difficult. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, a huge part of me maybe didn't take it seriously enough.

There was that time window where I sort of knew that six months wasn't enough, but I thought I was just going to have a crack anyway. Otherwise I'm waiting a whole another year for the, for this would have, would have been this year. was i'm waiting a whole another year for the for this would have would have been this year because the sensible part of me would have been like when i thought of it in january i would have started in april the following year which is what i said this year but of course i'm like i don't want to wait 14 months i can't want to now and i think i can get there and i was wrong i was i was wrong you know i the route wasn't good enough i was a little bit down on fitness although even day seven with the injury my all my times are a little quicker so my swim was quicker i think i'd done the fastest bike on that day um that my run was slow super slow so i was sort of on the right

track but yeah i wouldn't have made it because i just didn't, I, I, I just winged it a little bit too much this time. Um, and I don't regret it because it became fuel for my fire the next time it was like, right, well, I've cocked that up. What did I do wrong? I'm going to do it better. Uh, I'm going to train a bit more. I'm going to work on a bit on my by um my speed because i can go forever but with doing the full a day to get the sleep you've got to be fast as well so i had to bring in some speed work into my training so i did that worked on a better route um got you know the crew got a different crew uh so yeah everything i just did a bit better that i'd messed up the time before because let's say i even had got to a physical level i potentially would have still messed up

because of other things had i not done the seven right and actually so going back to getting to the start line fully fit there's three things i would do differently if i did it again one is i would still do my three sessions of each thing a week for six to eight months i think that's how long i did it eight months then i would do a week-long uh bike packing ride about two months out morning till night 200 miles a day just cycle find out anything that's weak you know because you'll pick up all the the little weaknesses and tendons and muscles by going day after day on the bike i then would have taken a week off and done the same on the run and done a week-long run with a backpack fast packing a bit like what i've got here to run

but i'd have thrown a tent in there as well done that for a week seeing what niggles i picked up because that would have picked up my weak knee for example and maybe my weak right ankle and maybe this hip thing i've got now uh and then i would have done five in a row and i would have done a five in a row about six weeks out and that's controversial because and and the reason i didn't is because i thought well what if i get injured then it's ruining my attempt but then if i get injured doing five i'm getting injured doing 105 right so right you're just you're just yeah you're basically uh you know creating a situation where you can pull out before you begin because you're you're just realizing what's inevitable yeah so let's say i did the five and i picked up this knee thing i'd have gone right why did that happen i need to work on that

go work with my physio work with everyone so that it doesn't happen on the 105 and so there's a couple of things that happen not to say that the 105 was going to go easily i love that your training block is like okay i'm just going to do these 200 mile days on the book i'm not going to do this insane run camp and i'm going to do five ironmans in five days just as just in training yeah to get ready i think you'd have to like if you want just your like just the insanity of that like in terms of how we think about difficulty and what's possible versus impossible like now having done 105 your sense of normal is like so out of whack compared to like the average person yeah but you're like yeah then you do five and

then you do you know like like so cavalierly so casually yeah i don't know it does seem normal if i'm honest like i i i'm trying to right now think of someone else looking at this and i i want it feels normal right and that's what i want to i want to we got to end this but i want to bring that back to the person who's watching or listening who perhaps is losing the thread right now because they're just,

they can't relate. Yeah. So let's get back to ordinary Joe. I love being non-relatable. I don't want to be normal. Yeah. It's like,

you're like the average ordinary guy who also did this crazy thing. Like what is, what exactly is average or ordinary or normal about this? Nothing, right? Nothing, no, I like that.

But to ground it in accessible principles as the person who's gonna write this book with the 10 tools of endurance, what do you say to that person who is struggling with committing to the hard thing or trying to access a new gear where they put themselves in a position to struggle and fail and challenge themselves physically mentally and emotionally yeah i don't know if i'm that sympathetic to people with little self sort of motivation so you know i actually i really

struggle when i meet people and they go like oh i just i just didn't want to train so i'm training for a marathon but i just couldn't you know i didn't train this week i just couldn't be honest i really don't like i just you know i'm i'm not the the goggins who shouts at you and gives you all that motivation like if you don't want to be motivated, man, like, I just, come on. I sort of, I don't understand it, I guess, because I'm so self-motivated. Well, also, if you're reliant upon somebody else to provide extrinsic motivation, then that's problematic. Because you've got to find a way to. You've got to keep getting it.

Yeah, you have to be able to instill that in yourself no but like so practically is is find out why you want to do it you know if you want to run a marathon or if you want to do an ironman let's say you want to do an ironman you've never done an ironman why why are you wanting to do it you know and and yeah but you can't even answer that question for yourself yeah well i want to chase things. No, so genuinely, I have zero interest in doing an Ironman, a standalone event. Zero. Although James, he wants to do a head-to-head on his starvation trial. You're going to challenge each other? Yeah, when he's asked me, he's like, come.

Is there going to be a day of reckoning? See if you can do a duel. More shots fired, right? That could be a pay-per-view. His fastest is 10 hours. He's done a 10-hour. I think I could do a 10. I think I could do it i think i could do

a 10 what's your fastest iron man i've never done an iron man have you never seen the same thing yeah you've done all the long stuff as well so you get me yeah i understand i understand but if let's say you wanted to do one you've really got to a want it and and if you don't want it don't do it i think you should do it but i'm not going to be there sort of setting your alarm for you and waking up in the morning like but if you've decided you want to do it like really focus and put energy into the reasons why you're doing it and write them out you know write them on a post note stick them next to your bed if you're a visual type of person or print pictures out i remember when i swam the length of britain i had a picture of the john o'grote's harbor

and i printed it out and i had that as my visualisation. Like, that's where I want to get to. Nothing else matters. I've got to swim to that spot. And, you know, write them out. Why are you doing it? Is it to raise money for charity? Is it for ego?

Is it for a cool pub story? Everything's just as important as the other one. And try not to forget it and if you you know and take the baby steps and trust the process and get other get advice from people if things if you're getting injured especially with injury that's a hard one of course because there are certain times where injury is you know will stop you and should stop you because depending on what you want to do after that it's being able to differentiate good pain from bad pain yes you know there's pain that's just pain and you just deal with it and then there's pain that will potentially lead to something that will a have a lifelong effect on you or b eventually stop you

later down the line and it's about managing that that but for the most part from a mindset point of view yeah you just got to think why and what's driving you what's your motivating factor and for me it's a record and it's trying to do a thing at a certain time you know i'm doing 100k ultra uh at the end of september i know i will never win that race like it's just never going to happen um it's i've not trained for it uh i've not done hills in months uh however i really want to see just what i can do how fast i can do it so i'm going to push myself i'm going to look at my numbers which i normally don't do and and just see so that's i'm chasing this this philosophy of how well i can do once i've set that time then and let's say that time's close to the winner of that particular race then maybe the terrier will be like oh maybe you can win the next year you know i've signed up for

the 215 mile run across scotland for next august now that's something i think the the last year's winner was 58 hours and i'm sort of going well i wonder if i could do 58 hours as well so that's something that's excites me and that's all i need that i don't need any other external motivation other than a for this up this hundred coming up is how how quick can i do that uh and then and then that's all i need i literally need nothing else yeah i'm so motivated to do that i don't care about any of that let me tell you what i want to see from you okay i want to see you and james go head to head in a mr beast Beast type video challenge where, you know, you each have to do something head to head that challenges you in a way that has nothing to do with swimming,

biking, and running. So James famously won that competition where he rode around on the Ferris wheel for however many days when he was a kid. Oh, that's right. That's like his, in the superhero origin story of James's life, that would be the opening scene, right? He rides it, I don't know how many days or whatever, and refuses to get off and win some prize. You have the cheese rolling thing. Like you have this capacity to just endure on the kind of mental capacity level beyond normal people.

So in the way that Mr. Beast makes videos, like whoever can have their hand on the side of his boat the longest wins the boat or whatever. I want to see you guys go head to head in something like that. I'd be up for that. I think that would be great. That'd be great, yeah.

If anyone has any ideas. I feel like we have to figure that out. Yeah, let's keep in touch. You know what I mean? Like just some ridiculous challenge i'd be i think that would be great that'd be great yeah if anyone has any ideas yeah yeah let's keep in touch i mean like just some ridiculous challenge that really is more about your mind i think than anything else yeah that would excite me that would excite me actually yeah yeah i could figure that out i want to do i'd like to find interesting ways to push myself that don't take three and a half months so and i think i'll need to just to not be away from the family and that's why i'm signing up for a little bit more one day races

which i've never done before um but maybe that's part of it maybe there's these psychological challenges that uh i could uh sort of kind of scratch the terrier you know yeah maybe that would also scratch but maybe instead of scratching the terrier let you know? Yeah. Maybe that would also scratch the terrier. But maybe instead of scratching the terrier, let's, you know, pet him a little bit. Try to understand him. Yeah. You know, lock eyes with him. Yeah.

See if we can get a little communion here, a little deeper insight into why the terrier is the way the terrier is. You are right. I'm still terrified that he then decides to sit on the sofa forever. There's nothing to be afraid of self-awareness is power my friend no it's true it's true and and and every time i listen to

one of your podcasts i sort of go right i definitely need to work on that side of me a little bit more maybe my step into yoga is going to be a start of it. Now I'm doing the breathing thing, which I poo-pooed for ages. But it's really revolutionized. So I've only done it this last week. I get up at 5.29, I do half an hour of yoga, and it's the most transformative I've felt out of all the other things, like the ice bath, the sauna, diet changes and that thing. The simple thing I feel has changed me

the most i sleep better for it um i feel better in the day um yeah caroline was like wow you've you're in such a good mood lately um so i'm definitely gonna but i'm doing the classic sort of boy thing of like right i want to get into yoga right is there a three-hour yoga session i can do yeah more is better more is better right yeah yeah yeah which is such a it's antithetical to the whole yoga thing to begin with right like it's hilarious and i'm so terrible i'm shaking on every pose and i love being competitive yeah in your in your asanas yeah um well let's also work on maybe getting a few vegetables in you as well. So at home, I'm sort of part-time vegetarian, part-time vegan as well.

Don't have a lot of meat in my mind. And you're growing some of your food and foraging the mushrooms. Yeah, foraging. I've got a big veggie plot as well. The growing season is a bit rubbish, so you get all your vegetables in like a month, one month window type thing. But yeah, Caroline and I, we will have a Sunday roast on Sundays, but mostly our weekday meals are pretty much vegetarian. And I really would like, you know, reading, reading your book. Really every, I've read it twice now and I'm like, damn it.

I really need to do this. I really, I really need to do this i really i really need to just go go all in um but yeah it's on my list yeah you versus uh james lawrence who can sustain a vegan diet the longest oh i think i could no i love it i actually probably would win that because i don't know james has tried no i talked about it i think it's habit it's habit more than anything i think if so we do this where they deliver all your, the ingredients to a meal every week in a box. And so that's all, I don't think they do a vegan option, but it's a vegetarian option. So we have four meals a week at home that are mostly vegetarian.

And I love it. It's cool. And I feel better for it. I also do feel better with with game meat then so i do try and only when i have meat it's either fish or game um but yeah but on on the 105 yeah it just it's just i started stomach you maximize caloric density basically and also i wasn't there to try and do a sub you know sub 10 i knew i needed the calories and i knew i needed to survive the day i needed i needed to not lose weight um but food very rarely changed my my energy levels on the on the one of because i was so fatigued

i was so tired i was in so much pain if i ate nothing or everything i was i still felt the same yeah um so all it was was just minimizing eventually going off the cliff from a performance point because eventually at some point i'll just waste away and have no power left and then i'll be doing a seven hour bike and a seven hour marathon and then i'm back on the wave so and once i had a system because i ate almost the exact same thing every day to the and at the same time so i'd wake up out of porridge and cheer in the morning with butter and honey and i'd have that very liquidy in a liter and have that on the way to the pool then i'd have a banana and then i'd have some athletic greens and a couple of malty vits then on the bike i'd have small cheeses and small bits

of meat um then at the if i hadn't finished the porridge by the pool i'd have that before i got on the bike and then there was three feed stations i'd have a banana a packet of crisps um every now and then i could have some tomatoes and and cucumber uh just uh because i just fancy them um i'd have something like a welsh cake i have a welsh cake oh you know i should have brought you some it's just like a flowery like cake with some like a biscuit yeah but no it's more crumbly um like a scone and if you flattened a scone a scone if you flattened a scone scone scone um it's sort of like that and then i have the cream and then i have uh some nuts and some fruit lots of fruit right um and i'd have that on each feed station and then during the run uh oh and i'd also have uh rice pudding i don't know if you get that but rice pudding i'd have one of those at every feed station. Then on the run, bananas and I'd have a pasta meal, two pasta meals on the run, a full meal.

So walking and eating with a spoon, a carbonara or spag bol. And then in my bottles, I had carb powders in the bottle. So I'd have about 2000 calories a day just in the bottles maybe 3 000 in powder form and then yeah that especially with the cream because i'd have two through 2 000 a day in cream which for me was i'd eat eat eat and then literally at the end i just down a bit of cream and then go and then that was sort of insurance right like if i messed up all the eating at least i had that as backup right and then that that kept me as i said i only lost three kgs over the three months. So I was happy with that.

Because people, I could have lost 10 kgs. I could have gone down. I'm only five foot, I'm under five foot eight. So I could have been, I could have gone on to 60 kgs easily. Yeah, from 70. So I was happy with 67. I think what you've done is extraordinary. It's a testament to the human spirit,

your tenacity as this terrier, and just inspirational for everybody to know that you've had your blood work done. You've been in the lab and you've been tested and there isn't anything physically extraordinary about you beyond your sheer determination, your force of will, your refusal to give up, your ability to persevere against obstacles. And this proclivity to act, I think, is really powerful. considering the upper ceiling of their capabilities, my hope is that maybe your testimony will encourage people to rethink that.

Because I think it's easy, like I was saying before, when you start this new normal around like, oh, 105 Ironmans in 105 days, like whatever, right? Like, oh, we could, maybe it's 200. Like, let's just do a reality check here and appreciate the extraordinary nature of what you accomplished, whether it was 100, 101, 102, 105. This is a feat that I think very few people

can appreciate just how extraordinary and difficult it is. And as I said to James and have said publicly, you know, I think it's deserving of much more attention from the broader kind of, you know, mainstream media than either of you two guys have received. I think you're deserving of much more attention and appreciation for what you have accomplished, because it really is something that as somebody who's dipped their toe in this world, I have a hard time understanding or even having a taste for what that must have been like. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for saying that. I haven't really thought about the external ramifications of where this has

gone and where it could go and who's you know benefited from it and who's inspired by it because i'm still only four four and a half weeks out from it so i think it'll take like four or six months to a year for me to probably decompress and work out what actually happened yeah i have no memory of because every day is the same like when i cycled around the world every day was different but this one every day is the same so it all sort of went into one big blur right and your relationship with time shifts and you didn't know what was going on in the world or so which is strange yeah it'll be a while before it uh sinks in and becomes I think once I've written the book and I sit down

and I it'll force you to confront it yeah this happened and you know you don't have to run to Carfest

if you don't want to I think you earned a little break no I want to okay good well I'll see you there then I guess right yeah absolutely cool

thank you for coming here and sharing you are an inspiration amazing what you've done and I can't wait to see what you've done next Um, thank you for coming here and sharing. Uh, you are an inspiration. Um, amazing what you've done and I can't wait to see what you've done next. Not that you need to top it. I'm more interested in, in how you synthesize these experiences into actionable wisdom for the rest of us through the book you're going to write. Yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah. Very, very kind. Yeah. So, um, if people are keen to learn more about you they can go to

Sean Conway Adventure SeanConway.com or Sean Conway Adventure on Instagram on Instagram yeah those are the two places yeah that's it

cool man awesome thank you cheers that's it for today thank you for listening I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation

to learn more about today's guest including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voice of Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media

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