The Rich Roll Podcast - What Nick Butter Learned Running A Marathon In Every Single Country

Episode Date: April 13, 2020

Completing a marathon is a noble accomplishment. How about completing a marathon on every continent? A feat of a lifetime. Now imagine completing a marathon in every single country in the world. Impossible? Meet Nick Butter — an enterprising young Brit who recently reframed human potential, becoming the first person in history to crush 196 marathons in all 196 countries. A world-record setting feat noteworthy for daunting financial and logistical challenges that often dwarfed those athletic, it took Nick and his team two years to plan and 674 days to complete — an astounding accomplishment that entailed running 3 marathons, in 3 new countries a week, every week, for 96 weeks, blowing through 10 passports and 455 flights along the way. More Jason Bourne than Forrest Gump, Nick ran through 15 war zones and endured several Argo-esque border crossings. He was mugged twice and repeatedly attacked by dogs, even going so far as to run 335 laps around a car park on the Marshall Islands to avoid that country’s overrun population of rabid canines. He had his luggage stolen. He ran in extreme cold and unbearable heat, oftentimes starting marathons at two or three in the morning to avoid 140-degree weather. He repeatedly succumbed to food poisoning and kidney infections. This list goes on. But ultimately, Nick prevailed -- and learned a few things about life along the way. What drives a man to attempt such a feat? In Nick’s case, it wasn’t fame. It wasn't notoriety. It was something far greater. In 2016, while enduring Marathon des Sables deep in the Moroccan desert, Nick struck up a friendship with fellow ultrarunner Kevin Webber — a man given just two years to live, courtesy of incurable advanced prostate cancer. Kevin’s courageous life embrace inspired Nick to rethink his career path in finance. Empowered him to tackle an impossible goal. And motivated him to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer solutions along the way. This is a conversation about the physical, mental, and emotional strength it took to conquer a challenge of breathtaking magnitude. It’s about the obstacles faced and overcome. The lessons learned. And the importance of giving back. It’s about audacious dreams. Unbridled adventure. And the courage required to jump into the unknown without a safety net. But more than anything, this is a conversation about this fleeting, shared experience we call life — and what we can all learn from Nick's example about ourselves and our place in the world. The visually inclined can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Note: This podcast was recorded pre-pandemic (on January 28, 2020). Reminder: I recently created a Facebook Group for fans of the show to to congregate. Click here to join. I think you're going to fall in love with Nick. I sure did. Peace + Plants, Rich

We are the lucky ones and yet we don't do enough with it. You know, I want people to travel, I want people to see the world, I want people to have that view. And I often find that a lot of hate and negativity comes from misunderstanding. And if we see the world and if we experience more cultures or religions or beliefs, then maybe that hate will be reduced. And I hope, and you say that, you know, what do people want to get out of my talks when I speak to them?

And it's not having something in your life or going to somebody's funeral or seeing something bad happen on the news for you to wake up and realize that every moment that we have of every day is is so privileged we are especially us in in the western world in this privileged society we have so much that we can give and we can do even if it's just you know spending more time with your family or saying to your loved ones that you love them more or going and doing that pottery course or that singing lesson or whatever it is that you're putting off you know that tomorrow may not happen coming right back to the beginning message that kev taught me which is not waiting for something to happen in your life to kick you up the backside to do something you have

an opportunity to do it now and whether you're 10 years old or 80 years old you probably have something that you want to do and you have an opportunity to do it. Even if you, like me, can't afford it, wasn't fit enough really, just go for it. That's Nick Butter, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Earth to listeners, how are you guys doing? This is your host, Rich Roll. Welcome to the podcast. Okay, as has become my refrain, I hope this finds you well. I hope it finds you safe, hopefully home for those able to sequester, and practicing responsible physical distancing while maintaining your important social connections. For those who are suffering,

my thoughts are with you. And with all who are selflessly putting themselves in harm's way for our benefit, much love and respect to all our healthcare, emergency response, supply chain, grocery, and delivery workers, to the companies pivoting production lines to produce PPE, the scientists studying solutions, and the philanthropists filling governmental gaps. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. One quick piece of housekeeping. I recently created a Facebook group for fans of the podcast. My intention being to basically help facilitate your ability to connect with each other. And I've been a bit remiss in announcing it. So you can find it and join at facebook.com slash groups slash rich roll podcast. And I'll link that up in the show notes.

Second, I appreciate all the great feedback on my recent conversation with Charles Eisenstein. And my intention as of this moment is to continue to host similarly themed, remotely recorded episodes over the coming weeks. But today, we resume our regular programming, a conversation recorded well in advance of this pandemic, with Nick Butter. Nick is an amazing guy. You guys are in for a treat. He is quite the enterprising young Brit who recently reframed human potential by setting a world record, becoming the first person in history to run a marathon in every single country. 196 marathons in all 196 nations. It's an astounding feat that entailed visiting

roughly two countries a week for two years, blowing through 10 passports and 455 flights along the way. It was something that was also at times more Jason Bourne than Forrest Gump. Nick ended up running through 15 war zones. He endured several Argo-esque border crossings. He was mugged twice, repeatedly attacked by dogs, even went so far as to run 335 laps around a car park on the Marshall Islands to avoid that country's overrun population of rabid canines. He had his luggage stolen. He ran in extreme cold and unbearable heat, oftentimes starting marathons at two or three in the morning to avoid 140 degree weather. He repeatedly succumbed to food poisoning, a kidney infection. I mean, come on, you guys.

he repeatedly succumbed to food poisoning, a kidney infection. I mean, come on, you guys. Having heard the entire saga up close, I still have difficulty wrapping my brain around what this man has accomplished. And I got a few more thoughts I'd like to share before we dive in. But first. 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

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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, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec,

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Okay, back to Nick. So what drives a man to attempt such an insane feat? Well, in Nick's case, it wasn't fame, it wasn't notoriety, but it was actually something far greater. In 2016, in the Moroccan desert, while he was in the midst of enduring the Marathon de Sable, Nick struck up a friendship with fellow ultra runner Kevin Weber, who is this guy who had been diagnosed with incurable advanced prostate cancer two years prior and given as little as two years to live at that point.

And Kevin's courageousness, his refusal to give up, inspired Nick and ultimately motivated him to walk away from his career in finance and tackle this impossible goal and raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer solutions along the way. So this is a conversation about all of that. It's about the physical, mental, and emotional strength

it took to conquer this challenge. It's about the obstacles faced, the lessons learned, and the importance of giving back. It's about audacious dreams, unbridled adventure, and the courage required to jump into the unknown without a safety net. But more than anything, this is a conversation about this fleeting shared experience we call life. One man's effort to dispense with comfort zones and make the most of it. And what we can all learn from his example about ourselves and our place in the world.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the incredible Nick Butter. Nice to finally meet you, man. Yeah, you too. Thank you for making the trek out here. No, not at all. I mean, who wouldn't? Well, here's the thing.

I was thinking about you this morning and part of the inspiration for this whole adventure is this encounter, this friendship that you struck up with this guy, Kevin, and this mantra that kind of repeats in your head, that loops in your head about the fact that life is short and life is precious, and you didn't wanna look back in old age

and have regrets about stones unturned. And here we are two days from, you know, Kobe crashing and, you know, nine people perishing in a helicopter accident, literally about- Close by, right? Yeah, very close by, like a mile and a half. That close, wow.

As the crow flies, like it's literally right over the hill over here. In the wake of that and the sadness and the reflection on a life very well lived is a global conversation about the preciousness of life and how short it is and how fragile it is. It's just such a shame. And the same for Kev really,

that someone has to die or be told they're dying in order for the conversation to start. But hopefully through a bit of the running that I've done, maybe we'll keep talking about it, you know? Yeah, so congratulations. Thank you. You just completed this whole thing in November, right? So it's still very fresh,

this two years of being out there and the many years leading up to it of preparation and logistics. Like it's just, I can't even wrap my head around what you've accomplished. And it's a feat that has come up a couple of times on this podcast because I know it's something that Dean Karnazes has always wanted to do.

And the last time he was on the show, I was like, "'Come on, man, what are you doing?' And then it was like, Nick's out there doing it." I think you were just about to complete it at that point. And so- I've literally just spoken to him- Oh, did you? Two days ago in London, yeah.

Oh, yeah? What did he say? And he said, tell Rich that I bowed down to you. And I said, it really should be the other way in which we swapped and I bowed. But yeah, he's a legend and he will do it. I know he will. Right.

And he'll smash it. It's just, I know how long it takes to plan a, we did it, but it's a bodge job. When Dean does it, it won't be quite how we do it. I don't think that anybody could do something like that without there being just countless things that come up, unforeseen obstacles and cataclysms that throw you off course. I mean, it's just too, you know, enormous of an undertaking for something like that not to happen.

Yeah, I'm just pleased we got to the end. I cannot tell you how many times we genuinely believed it wasn't going to happen. You know, it wasn't a case of, oh, no, we'll be all right. We'll just throw some money at it or we'll just throw some people at it. You know, every possible option you have, which gets you through most things, we just came so unstuck so quickly. And then it was just this kind of snowball effect of things going wrong. And then the multiplying of not having enough money, not having enough time. And then, you know, six weeks from the end my we had the first of many phone calls from my dad who is a legend and has managed to do everything for me on this journey in terms of flight so he was responsible for took the job i think i pushed the job onto him really um for

booking all of my flights and to getting me from a and b and c and d and then all the way through um and he called me and said we can't do it know, this was six weeks from the end of the trip. He said, we cannot do it. And we were angry. We were crying. We were, you know, we've come this far. And I was just thinking, oh my word, what are we going to do? And it went on for a few more weeks of saying we can't do it.

Despite the many years leading up to the undertaking of all the logistical preparations, all the, you know, I can't imagine how many phone calls with bureaucratic agencies about getting visas and permissions and all the like, and you think you've got it all sorted and stuff just happens, right? Yeah. Well, I imagine that before we left, when we got to the start line, as you would with most races or events, you'd prep to the point that you're ready. But it was so not that. We got to the start line and we thought, well, we're probably okay for a good few weeks, you know. And we had as many flights as we could booked and we knew what we wanted to do.

But we really had so much up in the air. You know, we didn't know how we were going to get into certain countries. It was just hope. You couldn't get that sorted out way in advance, like figuring out, you know, the visas and the permit. I mean, I know it's tricky. There are certain countries where, you know, they're just going to say no, or, you know, it's going to be close to impossible

to get in there. And the problem is, it's really volatile. So, you know, even if we could, which it isn't possible to do it all in one go at the beginning. Right. Even if we could do that, what's to say it won't change, you know?

And the amount of times we've had, oh yeah, no, that visa will be fine for years. It was on the list of green. It was one of the places that we thought we wouldn't have a problem. And then we did. And that was basically- Because of some political skirmish or something like that that happens. Yeah. Politics, violence, protests, flight cancellations, airlines going bust, you name it. And you don't have room for error when you're trying to do, I mean, let's just break it down. You're trying to do essentially two to three marathons a week in two to three countries, basically to stay on pace.

Yeah. So we said we're going to aim for three countries a week every week, knowing that we were going to have slip ups. And so, you know, sometimes I was doing five a week every week knowing that we were going to have slip-ups and so you know sometimes i was doing five a week because we were making up time yeah um and sometimes we were doing one because i couldn't get off an island for example right you know it wasn't just it wasn't just yeah yeah yeah and and you left the trickiest countries it seemed like until the very end the middle east right yeah that was i would love to say that was by design. And I actually had a bit of a view that I wanted to leave some of the dangerous ones towards the end, because if I was going to get kidnapped or killed or locked up, at least I've seen a lot of the world beforehand. And seriously, and I thought, well, you know, I don't want to go and do these ones and tick

them off and have the relief to then, you know, something happened. But also, it wasn't a case that we just couldn't get access to those places at the right time. And had we got access and something gone wrong, then it would have screwed up the rest of the flights along the line. And that would have had huge financial implications. So it was tactical on one part

and kind of just wanting to see the world before anything happened. So Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Israel, I would imagine all of those were super tricky, especially you kind of have to leave Israel until almost the end, right? Because if you go to Israel, then you can't go to Lebanon, right?

They're not gonna let you in. You're on the money there. Exactly that. We left it till the penultimate. So final one was in Athens in Greece, obviously, home of marathon. And we went there on the November the 10th and the one before that was Israel.

And when I set foot on Greek soil, we still didn't know if they were gonna be okay with me going to Israel, you know? Because yeah, you think it's okay, but you don't know. Until you're there. and is that last so lots of lots of like Argo-esque experiences you know when you're trying to board a flight or get through customs yeah you're biting your nails thinking are they going to let me in yes I would say very Argo-esque but slightly less glamorous and uh and more kind of just being in dirty clothes not knowing really what time of day it is.

And I cannot tell you how many times I've got to a country and I don't know which one I'm in. That's how quickly they went. You know, I was standing at an immigration booth over and over again and they'd say, so where have you flown in from? And I couldn't answer them, you know, just because I was so exhausted. And then you get either put in a cell or you get questioned for hours. Even in countries that are okay because I've got visas in my passports that don't make me look particularly innocent. I certainly haven't undertaken anything

as vast and incomprehensible as you, but I have had some experiences in the Middle East, one in particular trying to get into Pakistan. That was, it was like, you feel like you're in a Jason Bourne movie. Like it's very strange. Like I remember being greeted before, I got off the plane in Karachi.

And before I even got to customs or baggage, I was greeted by two soldiers who didn't speak English, who demanded to see my passport, who just stopped me. I was the only Westerner on the plane coming in from Dubai. And they're like, basically saying, "'Give me your passport." And you're like, this is one of those, like, is this okay? Like once they have my passport,

I don't know what's gonna happen. They take me down to customs and there's a lot of, you know, sort of bickering in a language I don't understand. And it's super nerve wracking. And you think, what is going on here? And you feel like Argo. Yeah, you feel guilty even though you're not. You know, you feel like, what did I do?

I'm just here. And then they took me into a room, and I'm like, well, this could be it. You just don't know. I mean, it was all fine and all of that, but. I suppose the beauty of doing so many and so quickly is that you get that so often that you kind that so often that

you kind of become desensitized to it here we go again when you've got a you know another ak-47 pointed at you and you haven't got your passport you know and you think oh it's just it's just a wednesday but that at the beginning you know it was terrifying um and then other times i've had people that you know these they've got their weapons on they have their uniform on they have their badges their helmets they're they're looking very intimidating. And they then come over and like a huge smile lights up and they shake me on the hand and they know who I am. And you just think like all of my preconceived ideas

of everything that's come through, you have no idea whether it's gonna be brilliant or scary. Yeah, well, certainly I imagine it completely, you know, sort of changed your view of the world and humanity. How could you, you know, how could you not be completely transformed after, you know, this experience? Yeah. And everybody warned me at the beginning, you know, this will change how you see things, this will change how you view the world. And I thought, yeah, I understand that. But I didn't

understand that. It was only when I finished, do I now have this new worldview of everything that's going on? And even, to be honest, it's just kind of compounded my belief already when I started from Kevin's message about we have this precious time that we shouldn't waste, but also there's so many people that don't have the opportunity. You know, whether it's in Britain, in the US, in other countries that aren't as wealthy or affluent, people are, you know, we are lucky.

We are the lucky ones, and yet we don't do enough with it um and so coming back you know 54 countries in africa more or less all of those countries i've i saw situations which i i just didn't realize existed you know yeah and then on the other hand um which i'm a big advocate for as well our planet is in a really great place compared to how it has been you know poverty over, in the last 20 years, people living below the poverty line has halved, which is just outstanding. In my lifetime, the amount of people. But then you go and travel and you think, hmm, I'm a bit torn. And so this whole world view has completely changed me. And I've just got a lot of things on my to-do list now that I want to do.

Yeah, like what? and I've just got a lot of things on my to-do list now that I want to do. Yeah, like what? So I've started this charity which we're kicking off now called the 196 Foundation, which is off the back of the Running the World 196 trip. And I want to do some more. I want to help in small ways, not start a whole new charity and make it. You know, there's lots of charities out there. But just be able to fund and support some other people that are doing good stuff and um there's that there's that thing and then there's also the

thing that i want to inspire other people to do the same thing you know i want people to travel i want people to see the world i want people to have that that view and i often find that it's it's a lot of hate and negativity comes from misunderstanding and if we see the world and if we experience more cultures or religions or beliefs, then maybe that hate will be reduced. And so when I'm visiting schools now for the next year on my speaking tour and trying to share this journey, I want people to realize that, you know, don't just sit behind a computer and live your world through your tiny phone in your hand. Like, let's go and do something else. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's very easy to just descend into pessimism and despair if you're scrolling and looking at the news

and thinking we're on the verge of an apocalypse and nobody's talking to each other in a productive way. And we're seeing the breakdown of Western civilization unfolding right before our very eyes. And yet there is an indelible truth that we are in so many ways, like this is the best time to be alive. Yeah. And there are so many great things to celebrate and beauty in the world.

And, you know, to be able to develop a deeper reservoir of compassion for humanity by virtue of that tactile, you know, one-on-one experience that I'm sure you had a zillion times over over the course of the last couple of years. I mean, you can't put a price tag on that. So it's almost your responsibility to share that, I think. Yeah, I feel the same. And, you know, I went into it knowing that people said, oh, what if, you know, what if you spend all your money and what if you spend all this time doing it and then you don't make it? And my view was- Your banker friends. Yeah, yeah. And my my family basically from the pub yeah telling me you're gonna risk it you're gonna risk everything but the beauty is is that you know

when you do something that you love and that it doesn't matter you know if nobody buys my book if nobody wants to watch a documentary if nobody cares about what i'm saying afterwards i still had a great time in the process it's not like I've done something that I was earning money and didn't care about. You know, it's I'm using money and it's given me this incredible worldview that I can't properly articulate yet. So I feel incredibly lucky, but I'm also kind of impatient to tell everybody else to do something similar. Right. Well, let's take it back to the beginning. So grew up in the UK. Yep. Dorset?

Dorset. Dorset, yes. Active kid, skier, right, first? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, I was doing, I think like most kids, I lived in the country in the middle of nowhere, you have to do sport because there isn't anything else to do. My friends lived all over the place and I was either cycling 10, 15 miles to get to school or to my friends and then started running, but didn't really think anything of it it was just a means of transport and and then I got into skiing I was in the in the under 19 snow sports England team did lots of bits of racing did some instructing but then I had the voice of my my dad on my shoulder saying get a real time to get on with it yeah come on you've

got to earn some money one day and and he was right because you know ski careers are very short there you know you you're kind of uh outdated very quickly even if you're the best and i wasn't um and so i got a real job finance banking selling my soul in london uh yeah in london to be fair they were based all over the places you know had multiple jobs, but yeah, London jobs. And I enjoyed it because it was earning money and I was living the life where you buy new shoes and jackets and you think that's what you need to be doing. And then you look back and you think, oh, my word, what was I doing?

How long did you do that for? It was seven years. Oh, wow. It's longer than I thought. Too long. Yeah. Much too long. It was a big chunk of my life.

And I don't want to, as much as I kind of damn it in my mind, it still earned me money and it allowed me to do things. things. But if I could tell my kids, my future kids, my unborn kids at the moment to do something, it wouldn't be to do something that you don't enjoy for money. You know, go and do something that you enjoy. And if you enjoy it enough and you do it well, then maybe the money will come. Right. These pendulums tend to swing back and forth though. Like the kids, the kids of people like, like you and me, then they go, they go into investment banking. You know what I mean? They're like enough of this like hippie, you know, it's all love kind of stuff. Like I need to make some cash. It's so, so true. So true. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. You know, our best intentions are often foiled. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, you're completely right. And that's

gone through my mind. But all I can do is hope and guide a little bit. But maybe that will happen and it will happen. You know, I still had that and I'm still in this point now. So you're young. So you're doing the banking thing and that whole lifestyle, you know, hammering checks and the whole thing. Where does the itch, like at some point I would suspect and I'm projecting, but i would imagine like you start

to get a little sort of discontent or or you know a sense of not feeling settled in your path yeah um i think yeah absolutely discontent but also not you know you get you get to the point where you're you're getting you know you're gonna die one day and is this what i want to be doing until that point you know i started to think that more and more and also when you're going to die one day. And is this what I want to be doing until that point? You know, I started to think that more and more. And also when you're not sleeping well enough, you're not eating well enough, and you're commuting and you're in smog and trains and traffic and you realize that your whole life is based around this job that you don't particularly enjoy. You know, I didn't actively not enjoy it, but looking back, it was just not me. And if you asked any of my other colleagues at the time, they would tell you it wasn't for me. Yeah. Well,

I mean, sitting across from you, looking at you, it's hard to imagine you, you know, I'm going to tell you that was a compliment. Exactly. I don't. Listen, I was a lawyer for 20 years. Like I get it. I, I, I, uh, you know, I can't stand that, that life, but I, I realized that there was definitely more. And I think I got into running more and more while I was in finance because I wanted to have an escape. I think so many people do. You know, you're getting into sports, some people getting into it for fitness or to escape or to improve your mental health. And it did. And then I realized that I was ending up turning down opportunities to go to races because I had to go to work. And then the kind of balance,

like you say, the pendulum shifted a little bit. Right. So ultra running at that time or just 5Ks, 10Ks and that kind of thing? I think I quickly went from five, you know, from five to 10 to half to marathon to ultras pretty quickly because I wasn't very fast. I wasn't a good enough marathon runner. Yeah. You were like 253 or something like that, right? Good memory slouch.

No, it's not. But I... Not like 210 or anything. Exactly. I need to take another 40 minutes off that if I want to be a good marathoner. No, and I did some early ultras, just 100Ks, 120K things.

And I thought, yeah, okay, I can do that. And I was finishing in the top three, top five regularly. and i wasn't really training you know i was just working and then driving to a race and getting out and getting your trains on and doing it and you're finishing okay and you're thinking maybe i can do this and i'm not i'm really not a very good runner still you know i'm not i've done what 600 and something marathons i am not a good marathon runner i just enjoy it um and all the ultra runners say that. It's true. It's true. It's because we're too slow to run marathons quickly that we have to say that. But it's a big leap from saying like, oh, I want to do ultras to I'm going to pursue a career or

a way of making a living doing this, especially when you're in this white shoe industry where you're making quite a bit of money. It's not like, oh, you're a barista at Starbucks or something like that. You know what I mean? That's true. Like it's a, there's risk involved and, you know, real world considerations. And it's not like, yeah, there are the Dean Karnazes out there and the people who've been able to kind of figure out how to do that, but it's not an easy thing to create. Yeah, you're right. But then having, yeah, you're right. So you say, how long were you doing that finance job for? The answer is too long, you know, because for a good chunk of that, 80% of that, I was wanting to escape. But I think what

led me to that cliff, which I kind of call the cliff of adventure and doing what I love, is that Kevin, who we talked about earlier, who was my big inspiration, he was just the final shove. You know, all the way through my life, I'd had little mini shoves towards that edge. And whether it was, you know, my headmaster when I was in school, whether it was a teacher, whether it was a family friend, I've had some really brilliant people around me that have loved the outdoors and adventure. And it just is kind of going in slowly and slowly. and then you start to do this and then you have this idea you know you meet somebody like kevin and he says to you he's dying he's told he's he's lived for potentially only two years and prostate cancer

yeah terminal prostate cancer um and you have this guy that was incredibly happy telling you he's dying and you think what you know you don't understand I didn't really didn't understand how this guy was so happy and so genuinely um positive in life when he was potentially going to live for only two years and then it dawned on me that he realized that life is you know he's doing everything that he loves and life is so precious and so that was the final shove and you know it wasn't a case of right I'm going to go and run around the world it was what can I do to raise some money for them? And then I worked out that it had to be big enough to get the attention because I wasn't well known.

And so it just kind of spiraled. You know, it was, what can I do? And then I realized after one short Google, has anybody done it? And obviously following Dean, he's been threatening to. Right. And he hadn't yet. And so let's give it a go. It's kind of amazing that no one had ever done it before.

I know. I absolutely can't believe it. I feel really lucky and almost like a thief. Like I've stolen it. Nobody's looking at me. You feel like an undeserved wearer of the crown. Yeah, absolutely. Because there's so many great people out there.

I mean, especially Dean, but others as well. Yeah, but you made it happen. That's the difference. I'm proud about that. I'm proud that I'm the first person to do it. And I'm proud that we did it in a, it really was a journey of horrendous lows and fantastic highs.

And so it was exactly what it should have been. So just so I understand the timeline, you're starting to get into ultras while you're still working at the bank, right? Yeah. Meanwhile, you're banking ultras, and you met Kevin at Marathon de Sable, right? Yes. So you're able to train and compete at Marathon de Sable while you're still working this job. I was working less then.

Yeah, I think that was probably- So you already like got one foot out the door. One foot, yeah. My whole soul was out the door. It had been for years, but yeah, literally. I was a little bit out the door and I was ready to go for it. So the real exit plan is lining up enough support

for this new crazy harebrained adventure that would allow you to train and and you know do this thing and feed yourself basically yeah you know what a lot of people have said that to me the training didn't even go through my mind because i thought that the hardest thing in that whole they had two years from meeting kev to then thinking about it to then coming up with the idea the idea was made and it was two years from idea to start line. Right. And that was mostly planning.

You know, I turned up in Toronto, Canada, minus 25 degrees C, super, super cold on day one. It was January the 6th, 2018. And I got there, and I realized I hadn't run a marathon for three and a half months. Because the training- Well, you like broke your ankle like four months before you started, right? Yeah, yeah. But prior to that, I mean, I read that, I read that like you were putting in 150 mile weekends.

Yeah, big much. So you were putting in some pretty epic blocks. I didn't realize that it was too epic at the time because I was just going for it and my body was right. And I was in really good, I actually think I was fitter then than I am now just because I was escaping from work and you know i was constantly running every possible minute i had right and then that two years was just like oh my word we've i've

jumped into this world where i don't know what's going to happen i need to make this i may need to make this trip planned and logistically possible i know i can run and then i just forgot to catch up the running bit and so so the planning the two years of planning transpired while you were still working at the bank. Half of it. Yeah. Half of it. They were very good to me and they said, have time. And they let me have some unpaid leave. And then I ultimately didn't go back. And I was very honest with them. I had some fantastic, you know, you have good bosses, you have bad bosses at that time. I was very fortunate. A brilliant friend of mine now called Razi, Razi Ahmed, he supported me and he believed in what I was doing.

And he understood that there is more to life than work, which isn't that common in that industry. And so he said, yeah, go and do it. So by the time you finally cut the cord and walked out the door for good, you had enough support lined up at that point and you were well invested in the preparation phase of all of this to be able to make it work. I definitely jumped before we had everything lined up because there had to be so much.

I spent a lot of those two years planning it on my own. And then another friend who I also met in the desert in the same tent as Kevin, a guy called Jeff, who's a really lovely guy. He's an Everest summiter. And he said to me, you know, you need to really get some people in your team. You need to pay some people. And I said, I can't pay people because I'm going to spend a fortune on this trip. And he said, no, you need to invest in the support because you can't do it on your own.

And that was my first time I thought, OK, I probably should listen to that. And I did. And I spent some money and I employed an assistant to help me work things out and then skip forward to the middle of the journey where we had 19 people that were working, plus loads of volunteers that were making the trip happen, whether it was psychologist, nutritionist, performance manager, security, visas. And then we got to the point that we couldn't afford it anymore. And people started dropping off and people's lives continue, especially the volunteers, you know. And so we went through this whole big cycle of just me planning it, having a little person involved,

and then it peaked at a really big team and then it petered out. And I'm just fortunate that I have some really great, and as you know, anything that happens and i'm just fortunate that i have some really great and as you know anything that happens like this is is it's not just me there's so many people that make it possible i can't even imagine like trying to compile the right people to make these doors swing open it's almost like you need to hire a specialist or like a diplomat with relationships that run deep internationally so that you can kind of, you know, massage who you have to massage to get these feces to go through. Like, I know you had ended up having to pay a lot of bribes. I'm sure those were like,

you know, feet on the ground, like, you know, when you're trying to go somewhere or something like that. But just the pure politics of the whole thing is unbelievable. The politics was difficult. I had a company. So I worked out that I could go with a visa company that would get me all of my visas. And we worked out the value, and it was something like 25,000, 30,000 pounds just on visas. And then we found this great company called Universal Visas, and they said, you know what? We want to support you. We want to help you, and we'll take all of our fees out of it. And it really helped.

Oh, that's great. But they were such a small unit. And when you get little wins like that, you take them and you hold on to them. And Faisal and Maz, who are kind of the founders of this company, they are still great friends with me now, WhatsApp regularly, and they made everything happen. But it was only because they were working at 2 o'clock in the morning

on a Sunday on their day off that it was possible. And that was the same for everything. I honestly, I owe everything to these people. So I was very fortunate. But in terms of bribes and, like you say, massaging my way through all of these, you know, when you turn up a border, I remember in Chad and I didn't have a page free in my passport and I was getting stamps on like the inside page and all sorts of stuff. And they said, you haven't got any room. We're going to have to charge you. And it was like $400 for a day's entry when it would usually be $20.

Just because you didn't have a blank page. Which is rubbish. That's crazy. In 2019, it was a piece of paper. He put the money straight in his pocket. But you still have to pay it. Yeah. And you had to go through like 10 of paper, right? He put the money straight in his pocket, you know. But you still have to pay it. Yeah. And you had to go through like 10 passports, right?

Because you're having to send passports to different locations to get them approved for visas. And we're waiting on the return of them while you're also trying to cross other borders. Like, how does that work? Yeah. So, I now travel with two. And I always traveled with one. And the other one would be home. So, there was always two in the pipeline. And you can have two? Like, they allow you travel with two. And I always traveled with one, and the other one would be home. So there was always two in the pipeline.

And you can have two? Like they allow you to have two passports? Yeah. I didn't even know. I think it's common amongst lots of countries. But you have to have a reason for it, and you have to ask. And I had a very clear reason why I needed it. But then you have problems where you realize that, okay, so I've missed a country because I was ill or because I missed a flight or we've had to redirect for some reason because of the protest. And so

I've got a visa in the wrong passport. Now what do we do? You know, and that happened, I'd say close to a hundred times. And it was, I had friends. And that's when you have to like make the 2am phone call to the visa people to expedite whatever. Yeah. And sometimes- We're going to be landing in two hours. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes they say to me, well, we can't expedite whatever yeah i'm gonna be landing in two hours yeah yeah exactly and sometimes they say to me well we can't expedite it because your passport's in france or you know or somewhere else or and they can't physically do anything because they don't have it so yeah it was a logistical absolute logistical nightmare passports is one thing but then you have

the flights just linking up from you think it's obvious to be able to just fly from one country to the next even if you have to go around the houses a bit. But it really isn't easy. Linking up the 14 Pacific Islands in two and a half weeks, two weeks, is nigh on impossible. And when I was speaking to Dean the other day, you know, if he's going to do this quicker,

which I believe he will, it's going to take some serious, I mean, you're going to have to have private planes. There isn't a way to do it much quicker yeah he should just hire you you're the one person on the planet who actually i've talked about has experience with this i might be going for a run with him over the next couple of days now i'm here but um i'd love i really would love to see him do it because i quite like to be an outsider looking at the trip so I don't have the stress. Well, that's very spirited of you. Were there ever countries where you had to kind of skirt

the law and just sneak in and get away with it? I mean, I know I had, I've had Charlie Engel on the show a couple of times and he's told stories about their epic trans-Sahara run that they did. And I think they got to one border, I can't remember what country it was, and they just weren't going to let them in. And I can't remember how they solved that, but it was another kind of nail-biter visa situation. Yeah, lots of those occasions. And so we had two or three visas that were refused multiple times. So that was Iran, Yemen, and Syria

off the top of my head. And they were places where you don't just sneak away uneasily. You know, if you say, oh, well, which border do you want to cross that's illegally? Yemen and Syria isn't the one you'd pick. And so we did manage to do it all lawfully. But there were occasions where, so for Iran, I went to Kish Island, which is part of Iran. But I felt so intimidated there because you were told you can't come. Your visa was refused multiple times and it was only approved through the visa guys. I had no idea how we made it work. And I don't know if I arrive and it's actually valid.

But I had a moment going through Yemen from Oman, drove through the night from Oman to get to the Yemeni border. And this guy, my driver, he was lovely, but very dodgy. That's all I can describe him as. He just appeared and seemed very dodgy, and I was a bit nervous. Got to the border at two in the morning, and this was about five countries from the end. This was so close to finishing. And I realised as we were crossing the border

with all of these military personnel, 20 plus armed people surrounding the car, that he was smuggling goods into the country and using me as a mule, basically. And he said to me, you know, just put these under your seat and just sit on these and don't tell them. And here's me spending four or five years to get to this point of planning and work and effort. And I thought, oh, my word, how has this happened? And we were there for a couple of hours they quizzed us we had everything out of the car um there was lots of raised voices and fortunately they let us through he i think by i have no idea what they were saying but by the looks of things he he paid them yeah that's terrifying it is yeah because you could have just ended up in some prison somewhere, the key thrown away.

The government isn't required to come and get me there. Yeah, diplomatically, you would be in a world of hurt. Yeah, yeah. And I had that feeling a few times. I was locked in an airport in Central African Republic for a while because I didn't have the right paperwork with me and I didn't have any money to pay my way through. I'd used all of my bribe money up. You know, I'll travel with thousands of

dollars just to use as bribes when I can, because you have to, especially going over land borders in Africa. It almost feels not like a bribe. It just feels like the done thing. It's almost like giving a tip or whatever. Exactly. Exactly that. That's a very good way of putting it, actually. And I was tipping heavily and I ran out of money and I just had to wait until the following morning for them to let me out of this airport. Wow. And I say airport, it was just a shed. Yeah. So it must've been, I mean, I think people who don't know any better look at what you did and it's all about like, how did you run all these marathons but like that's like the easy part you know it's just like oh it's a relief

all i have to do today is like run 26 miles like i don't have to worry about all these other yeah yeah i remember you know i remember having those those days in my diary you know i look at my diary in the morning and it's either flight day or or run day more or less. Every now and then you get some more time off. Flight day or run day. And when it's a run day, it's just great, you know. Yes, there's some times when you're terrified to go out and run because you don't know whether you're going to get attacked or, you know, it's mugged and all sorts of stuff happened. But you get to that point where your run day is the best bit. And obviously we love running.

I'm a runner. But then, you know, you don't have to get on a plane or you don't, you know, I've had some connections which were eight different planes just to get to another country. And then you have to arrive and it's two o'clock in the morning

and you have to run. And the running bit is just the reset. If without the running, I think I would have gone crazy, you know? And with the, you know, logistical problems that were continually arising and flights getting canceled

and all of that. I mean, every day lost to some unforeseen circumstance pushes you off your schedule and makes it more difficult down the line to kind of complete this thing timely. Yeah, absolutely. There's not a lot of room for error. There was no room. I mean, at the beginning we were a bit naive

because we thought, yeah, okay, we built in about four buffer periods of about 10 days throughout the trip. And we thought, okay, we've got a little bit of time if things go wrong. But then it dawned on us that we'd used that time far quicker than we'd planned. That buffer time had gone before we'd got six months in. All your bonus points are done. All the bonus points are used. And this is over, just so people understand, this is over like what, 624 days or something like that? 674, yeah.

674 days. So in that period of time, you only have 10 days of wiggle room, right? Or the whole thing capsizes. Absolutely, yeah. And you know that. That's the scary thing. You have so little wiggle room. And we had a moment where I was bitten by a dog in Tunisia, of my first african countries tunisia is relatively affluent compared to the other

african countries um these five dogs on the beach i was running with a friend of mine who came out to support um andy and i were running along this beach and these dogs just came and and bit me and i thought it's okay i've got my rabies jab i'm only two and a half miles from the end and i just ran lots of blood pouring down my leg and And I got to the finish and I thought, that's fine, carry on. But I didn't realize that I needed to have top-ups for my rabies in subsequent weeks. And where I was going to be, they didn't have the rabies vaccine readily available.

And so it meant rejigging everything. And that was just, you know, and since then, following that bite, I was terrified to get bitten again, not because of injury, but because of ruining the trip. Right. Well, dogs were a big problem. Yeah, they were. Right?

They were. In one particular island of note. The Marshall Islands, absolutely, yeah. So I did lots of, so I call them the micro states. So you've got most of the Pacific Islands are tiny in terms of where the land is. There's lots of land kind of semi in the water, semi out of the water. And you've got Vatican, obviously smallest country in the the world 82 laps i did of some peter square in the vatican did you get like was there some with that was there weird permissions like okay

here's the you just run the perimeter inside the wall yeah so i tell you what i i could have that could have come unstuck really really badly badly quite early on. So Europe was my second phase of the journey and third phase of the journey. And there was a security guard who came to me when I was eight miles in and said, you can't run here. And it was only by pure coincidence that this security guard was heavily into Kung Fu. And my friend who was filming for me at the time happened to be very heavily into Kung Fu. And they, once again once again sport winning they shared their sport sporting moments and he said you know what i'm not going to tell anybody just get it

done wow and how did kung fu even come up i know i know and and uh because i i you know in those situations you say and you do whatever you need to to to convince them and i said you know i'm i'm a runner like this is fine i've done it in all these countries please help and and you you ask the question like you're a runner you sport and it's like. I've done it in all these countries. Please help. And you ask the question, like, you're a runner, you're in sport. And he's like, oh. And we got chatting. I tried to be as friendly as I possibly could because you have to be. And it turned out, and I've still got his email address.

He was a brilliant bloke because he could have said no. Yeah. And we didn't have all the right permissions that we needed, which I thought we had, but we didn't. And I couldn't. And he said, go to the office, go to the visa office, which is just around the corner. But I couldn't leave because I was eight miles in. And if I'd left, I would have gone out of the country. And so he just, he was brilliant. So coming back to those countries, very, very small countries, 140 laps in Jamaica because of

some gang violence in Kingston. And then, like you said, the dogs proved very, very difficult everywhere, but especially in the Pacific Islands. And I ended up doing 335 laps of a car park in one of the most beautiful places in the world, which turned out to be rather ugly. There's just wild dogs everywhere. They just run after you.

Yeah. So all you need is one, you know, nip on the Achilles and you're toast. Exactly that. Exactly that. It's the Achilles and you're toast. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly that. It's the Achilles I was most worried about. You know, if you get bitten in the wrong place

and you can kind of soldier on and patch it up, but if it's nipping something that physically stops you from moving at running pace, then you're screwed. Yeah. And I had 20 dogs. I actually think it was more than 20, but call it 20 dogs, big dogs, very aggressive. They have a diabetes crisis in the whole of the island

because people don't go outside and exercise. These dogs are- Because of the dogs. Because of the dogs. And I arrived in my hotel and they gave me my room key and a stick. And they said, if you go around the corner to the shop, you need to take your stick.

And they didn't know I was trying to run a marathon. Yeah, like how would you have known that? I know, right? You know what I mean? Hopefully everyone, you tell Dean now, take your? I know, right? You know what I mean? Hopefully, I can tell Dean now. Take your stick, Dean. Or a taser. And then there was a country where you had to run on a landing strip?

Yes. Good research. Where was that? Tuvalu. Tuvalu. One of the most hard-to-reach countries in the world because they have, I think it was a couple of flights a week. hard to reach countries in the world um because they have i think there's a couple of flights a week um and there isn't any space on the island other than the runway and so everybody lives on

the beach um which is rocky and you can't you simply can't run there um but what to my amazement not only was i allowed to run on the runway a live runway because they knew when the flights were coming and there wasn't going to be one when I was there um but the whole community of this island used the runway as a hub of sport you know everybody comes out it was the most unbelievable sight thousands of people on this and it was the whole country you know literally everybody from the country uses this runway and I've got great videos and photos of people playing volleyball and and and football, hundreds of different games on this huge couple-of-mile stretch runway. And so I was very pleased to do my whole amount. I don't think there's many people.

So did you get a bunch of people there who ran with you? Yeah. So as they, I mean, you know, you start off, you do your first up and down, and they kind of look at you like you're a bit nuts. And then once you've done your 15th or 16th time, they realize that something's going on. And, yeah, everywhere was like that. People came out and ran.

Which country surprised you the most? Oh, I think I would say nearly all of the countries surprised me. My preconceived ideas of the countries were nearly all the time completely wrong. And that's because of the media. It's because of my brain reading stuff and taking it as read, taking it as that's because of the media. It's because of my brain reading stuff and taking it as rare, taking it as that's what it is. There were some really lovely countries which I didn't

expect. So Sierra Leone was a really fond favourite of the whole journey. The people there are poor. Their health and their healthcare system is incredibly poor. And yet everybody there was smiling. And we'd had people, you know, women passing me water bottles saying, water is life, and they have nothing to give. And yet, they give you their water, you know, and that just amplified. So I think it's very difficult to say which surprised me the most, you know, going to places like Turkmenistan and North Korea, which are incredibly controlled. But you got the whitewashed propaganda tour in north korea right yes like they they're just with you the whole time and they're showing you what they want you

to see in the whole thing yeah i think you have to be incredibly lucky to not get that propaganda tour but what i did see was more or less what i was expecting it was incredibly clean you know there's lots of little aspects to stuff that you think oh i wasn't expecting that or you know how they all queue in single file in silence in the underground. And little things like that. But it was more on a bigger scale. The things that surprised me the most is how the correlation between people

that are so lovely and have nothing. You know, and then I end up spending time. That's what you hear time and time again from anyone and everyone who's traveled to those types of places. They come back very, very struck by that truth. And yet, and I've said this before on the podcast, we get home and we forget or we reset. It's so easy to reset.

And I really try hard not to. But, I mean, I have. You know, you get up and you buy stuff, you go online, you get into your rhythm again. You get up and you buy stuff, you go online, you get into your rhythm again, and it's really hard to buck that trend unless you, I believe, unless you move away or you immerse yourself in it. But there is ways to do that, and I think it's just be more in touch with it, so see it more and read about it more and don't necessarily, the amount of negativity on the news and sadness on the news from stuff going on. And yes, we need to know about that stuff, but there's also

some brilliant things going on in the world that I wish people could pay attention to. There should be a positive news channel. Right. I agree with that, but then conversely, I'm doing my part. Conversely, you know, there's certain areas of the world that don't get enough attention for, you attention for what's happening there. I mean, Haiti stands out as one such place, right? And I know you had an experience there. Yeah, Haiti. Haiti, country number four for me on the trip.

It was certainly my first experience of poverty. And it was obviously the earthquake there that killed and made a lot of people homeless and orphans. And the violence there that killed and made a lot of people homeless and orphans um and the violence there really struck me it was heavily armed people on the streets that were approaching me when i was running and it was only because i had a guy that was driving behind me at a snail's pace when i was running in humidity to to help me with the water that i realized that there isn't there isn't enough shed you know you be in places and i'll see something on the news about some horrendous attack and I'll call home and say,

oh, don't worry, I'm safe. And they'll say, well, you know, we haven't, he hasn't made it to our news. And it's thousands of people that have been killed or something in either a natural disaster or by human hands. And I feel, yeah, you're right.

There's just not enough of the right media. How many of the marathons were sort of sanctioned races versus you just creating your own course? Yeah. Difficult to say because a lot of the, most of them were my own course, but most of those own courses were turned into races by people that were supporting me there. Oh, wow. That's cool.

Exactly. So I would turn up and not have a race to run. It was pre-planned enough that the people there knew what was me there. Oh, wow. That's cool. Exactly. So I would turn up and not have a race to run. It was pre-planned enough that the people there knew what was going on and had set something up for you. Yeah. So my plan, my default plan is to get to the hotel, look at a map, roughly know where I'm going to run, run the distance, get some witnesses along the way, job done. But more often than not, as the trip went on, as the awareness grew, I was arriving and then met by people and they said, oh, we've got this route for you. These are the water stations.

Do you need any other food? This is the media we're going to do. That's pretty cool. And it's amazing, you know? And it happened all over the place. I felt like, you know, I was having my own personal, and it was my own personal runs everywhere I went. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And for purposes of legitimizing the world record aspect of this for Guinness, like there's all kinds of rigmarole that get baked into that, right? Like you got to have multiple GPS trackers and witnesses and things like that. Like I know it's a whole thing. It's a pain. It's a real pain. They're sticklers. They are sticklers. I guess they should be.

Yeah. On one hand, I agree with it. Sticklers. They are sticklers. I guess they should be. Yeah, on one hand, I agree with it. But on the other hand, there is a certain, it's frustrating me because it's kind of trying to fit a, you know, a square box into a round hole kind of thing.

There isn't the rules that apply for a big two-year multi-trip easily. But I suppose the base, I had 11 pages of rules, by the way. You know, that's how detailed they wanted my, and I agree. And luckily we followed them and it's been a pain. And I've had lots of people helping me to make sure we've got those, everything they needed. But, you know, I wore two different brands

of watch. So two different kind of GPS systems. I had a GPS tracker that was just on me. That wasn't a running watch. And then we had to get witnesses during the run and some of them were hotel stuff, but it's difficult. You know, when you run in, I don't know, in a Portuguese speaking African country, about 20 months before I finished the trip sign this affidavit and they have no idea what they're signing um and so we've had to get lots of backups you know people i've met in airports or on the plane and say can i just get your email just in case you know just in case have they signed off on it now so what does that vetting process yeah it? Yeah, it's long. It's really long. So we need to log the logbook.

We need to submit an official logbook with all of the data in. But my logbook is a little bit difficult because along with all of those witnesses and GPS data, we have all the photos and videos. There's 400,000 photos and 20,000 video clips to show because that's all metadata and it proves where I was and it helped my cause. show because that's all metadata and it proves where i was and it helped my cause and so we're we're in the process of sending the hard drive a physical hard drive with everything on that they can then go through and yeah and decide whether i've done it so in addition to the visas and you know making these flights and all of the travel you know logistical nightmares that were continually plaguing you on top of all of this you know you logistical nightmares that were continually plaguing you. On top of all of this, you know, you're traveling to most of these places alone, like more often than not, right?

This is you. Yep. And you're taking responsibility for making sure that you have the witnesses and that you have, you know, your watches are all charged and all of that. And you're trying to film this thing for a documentary, right? You're documenting it for a project beyond that. So just the mental headspace, like, okay, are the SD cards wiped? And where's all the footage? And how are you logging that? I mean, I can't imagine staying on top of all of that on top of everything else.

Yeah, you've hit the nail. It gives me goosebumps, actually, when you hear me say, when you talk about that. Because I'm incredibly proud that I've managed to do that, but I honestly don't know how it happened. You know, the amount of stuff. The watches, you mentioned watches being charged. When you're staying in. You're in some crazy country and they're, you know, you have the right adapter and all of that kind of stuff, right? Yeah.

Where's the plug? Yeah. and all of that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Where's the plug? Yeah. And also, even when I'm in places where there is perfect electricity, perfect adapters, you know, I'll get so shattered and I'll have a shower

and I'll lie on the bed to go to sleep and I'll fall asleep. And I'll wake up at three in the morning thinking, ah, I haven't charged my watches because if I don't charge them, I can't run. And if I can't run, then we're going to have to replan it. And so even little things like that were a stress. Fortunately, I mean, I had my uh my brilliant uh assistant and a guy called Veton who who organized a hell of a lot for me and was constantly on my case um but it was the you know

when you go away with people and you decide whether you want to go left or right or whether you want to do something or not do something having that sense check with somebody else was difficult not to have it. Should I be running down this street now? Is it safe? I haven't got any security in the center of Caracas in Venezuela where it's famous for kidnaps. Should I actually go out or should I wait? And having that sense check is difficult. Yeah, like you say, the documentary, filming everything as well. A great friend of mine called Mark Beaumont has cycled around the world, has the world record for cycling around the world.

He gave me some great advice before I left, and he said, if you're filming it, you've got to film all of the stuff that you don't want to film. And when you're tired and you're just like, I just want to run. I don't need the extra hassle of having to document this, and I don't feel like it right now. And even to the point that I was actively aware of how fatigued I was by the fact that my brain didn't want to lift my arm to take a photo. You know, when you're at the end of a very, very long run and your whole body is depleting

and any slight movement is a waste of energy. Mentally, my body was okay. But mentally being able to go, all right, okay, I'll finish and do a video and try and convey what you're really feeling when actually I'm thinking about, right, okay, I need to go and get some food now. And, you know, all of this stuff that goes on. And food, food was this whole big other aspect which went, I mean, I think it was more like- Take what you can get. Take what you can get and eat it a lot. Always ask for seconds on the planes even if you don't like it.

You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. How many flights total? Four 56 456 wow including the flight home yeah and to put it into perspective we were we thought we would do 220 so that gives you an idea of doubled yeah from the planning the ideation to the actuality yeah yeah um it's just so many things went wrong and i believe we we planned it as well as we could have with the time that we had in the budget and everything. But even if you had all the money in the world and all the time in the world to plan this, things go wrong. And that was why we

had so many flights. We had 450 odd flights, 120 visas, nine passports on my 10th now. Yeah. How was Lebanon? Yeah. Lebanon was, when I ran there in Beirut as the official Lebanon marathon that I ran, that was fine. I ran along the coast and it was beautiful. But-

I've done that Beirut marathon. I've been to Beirut twice. So yeah, I'm familiar with it. Along the Corniche there, it's gorgeous. Beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful. And I like that. Lafoud is great as well and i i then had to go back to lebanon to get into syria and crossing there was a load of

protests quite recently only a few months ago crossing by ground into syria yeah across exactly leaving lebanon leaving beirut to go over into damascus um and the a couple of days before no the the day before i was due to arrive, I had a call from my dad saying that the tour agency that's supposed to be taking you, tour agency, it's not this big tour company, it's just one man on the ground, said that their driver, the driver that he'd hired to take another group of people to the border the previous day had been shot and killed. There had been a real real all these protests going on

and the problem was the lebanese plated cars traveling towards the syrian border or the other way around and so we had to be careful and i switched cars halfway through the journey in order to not have that danger right um and i remember it you know i thought i was when i did that journey we made the decision that we're here. We don't have any other time. Let's just go for it. I'll get my head down. Let's hope for the best. Had another driver, obviously, because the driver was killed before.

And they'd advised me not to do it. And I said, let's just get it done. And I remember asking the driver if I could stop. We didn't speak very good English at all. And I said, can I stop, go for a wee? I need to go for a wee. And he said, not here. And he was racing through. And

only by pure luck that we made it. And we switched into the Syrian plated vehicle and went through the border. And then how was Syria? Syria was a surprise. The center of Damascus is beautiful and actually much less run down than I was expecting. People are lovely. And by pure fluke, again, this happened so many times where I would be in a position where things would happen. I was running around the stadium in Damascus because it was safe. It was very hot and there's lots of cars. And so it was a good, easy way to do the marathon. And I had witnesses as well. So it was a win-win. And I ran in Damascus in the stadium, and then a few miles into the run, I was joined by the under-19s national Syrian female football team.

Oh, wow. And they were coming to train, and they saw me run, and they were like, yeah, let's do a few miles with you. Wow. What an amazing thing. And I had these 20, 25-odd people that were all training in their pristine running kit, and it's not something that you think of as Syria. And it goes back to those preconceived ideas of people expecting me to be running in a

war zone with bombs going off all around me. Right. But it wasn't at all. Right, right, right. Do you think that the experience would have been different if you were American? Yes. Yeah. And I've briefly said that to Dean as well.

Yeah. The amount of, I'm very fortunate to be born British and not have those political blockers. But that said, you know, we've colonized a lot of the world and we've had some, you know, I've had some lots of frowns and looks to me, but it's a little bit different. I think it's more hostile. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would imagine. What about Pakistan? Were you able to run outdoors there? When I was there, I was in, you know, they were like, you can't go outside. And my host was training for a marathon and lived there, was a Pakistani national. And he didn't train outside. Or he said he would occasionally run outdoors, but he could never go back to the same spot, like at the similar time of day.

Like he had to mix it up because of kidnapping concerns. Yeah, I was told that advice. If I'm doing it, don't post my route. Don't tell people where I'm going to be just in case. Lots of countries are like that. But it goes back to this. People say, how can you sum up the whole journey in one word? And I say people.

And this network of people that I had that made it possible was exactly why I really enjoyed Pakistan. I mentioned my old boss, the good boss, Razi. He was Pakistani, born in Pakistan. And he had a really great friend that he used to go to university with in Lahore, a guy called Kabir. And he got on the phone to his friend and said, Nick's coming to Islamabad. Will you help? And he did. And I arrived at the airport.

He picked me up. He gave me a tour. We went for some dinner. And unfortunately, it was I arrived at the airport. He picked me up. He gave me a tour. We went for some dinner. And unfortunately, it was absolute, absolutely torrential rain. And so I was running in about a foot of water, which I was running down the central reservation of a four lane highway in Islamabad because it was the only dry place to run, dry-ish place to run. But in terms of danger, around dry-ish place to run. But in terms of danger,

I had Kabir tell me where to be, inside knowledge. And without all of these people, I tell you, it would not happen. You know, money cannot buy you those connections. Yes, you can get people to be there at the right time and to pick you up and to have a security guard with you. But actually it's the inside knowledge

that made all the difference. Yeah. I would imagine there were probably options in certain you know dicey countries to do the marathon on like a british military base yeah right yeah did you ever do that or did you opt to no i want to be in the communities i didn't do any in brit military bases. I did in Afghanistan. I ran in the UN compound in Kabul because we were due to have a five-armoured vehicle escort up into the mountains, which was unheard of. But they'd approved it. And then it was retracted because there was a blast and a few people killed in an attack the day before I arrived

again um and so incredibly sad there was lots of gunfire in the evenings when I was there but it was one of those places that I was in this UN compound and we ran we ran around all over the place there was a brilliant ultra runners as part of the the UN staff um and they supported me and we ran with um i had a helmet and a bulletproof uh vest um for some of it and uh i didn't want to leave you know you turn up to these places terrified and then you make so many great connections you don't want to leave and so yeah there was a few there was a few compound runs like in jamaica i ran around the uh the high commissioners compound because there was um 67 people murdered the weekend I was there through gang violence in Kingston, right where I was. And, you know, they weren't going to kill me,

but I might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so there's lots of things like that, which you don't plan. You know, go to Jamaica, you think of beaches and rum and cocktails and stuff like this happens all over the place. And so you have to be a little bit wary. What did the kit look like? Like what was the bag, you know, that you were hauling around? Did that change as you figured things out? Yes.

I suspect you started with more than you needed. And then as you got your footing, that piece of luggage got a little bit smaller. Absolutely was a bit like it was a bit like a bell curve actually i started with a biggish pack a rucksack i was traveling around the world take a rucksack that makes sense but everything was just difficult to get into it i had far too many things um skip ahead to the end and i was traveling with a tiny tiny bag with like one pair of pants one pair of socks and just wash like showering in my clothes and washing them and as i went on well that's the good thing about running yeah yeah it's one pair of shorts you're wearing your shoes

already yeah you know i tell you that and i'm still i still have them with me right now because i'm going for a run later today the pair of shorts that i wore all the way through um my kit sponsor which i'm wearing do sport live they um they gave me some shorts and i wore all the way through, um, my kit sponsor, which I'm wearing do sport live. They, um, they gave me some shorts and I wore them every single run and it has a bite mark out of the back where it's bitten by the dog and I still wear them to this day. So you're absolutely right. Yeah. I'm going to frame them. We might auction them or something. I don't know. They're pretty disgusting. I think, I think the frame would, I think the frame would, and they're really, um, their son, you know, the, the, the waistband they're black're pretty disgusting i think i think the frame would i think the frame would and they're really um their sun you know right the the waistband they're black and as they go down because it's been so sun sun bleached they're basically close to white now right um so yeah my

kit where my kit went up and down but um i also had a bit of a problem with um souvenirs people used to give me brilliant stuff like medals with my faces on trophies made by brilliant sculptors and all sorts of stuff but i didn't have anywhere to put it and so i ended up having actually traveling with a souvenir bag because i didn't want to have to say no to this opportunity to take something yeah and you want to have that stuff it's cool um what about the camera equipment i mean was this this iphone or gopro or like how were you documenting it every bit of camera equipment has ever been made. Not quite.

I've, I traveled with a lot. I travel with some decent lenses for some, I love my photography and we're releasing this photography book and it's just a hobby, but I believe I'm okay at it and I'm passionate about it. And so I traveled with a lot of photography lenses just for taking photos.

For like DSLRs, like full-blown. Full-blown, like three kilo, three kilo yeah right big lenses so you're running with that stuff too um sometimes if i had a so frequently i'd have a car or a motorbike or a cyclist that would support me um and so they would have it in the car behind me and then if i see something i want to take a picture of this a group of kids or something you know i take the picture but sometimes i i wore my backpack and um and i ran um osprey gave me these really great running backpacks which were quite a bit bigger than the like the other ones the salmon ones and so they do fit the cameras um but then gopros i had three gopros um i had my drone

which was confiscated many many times yeah yeah um all my batteries um i had i think i had fly drone in syria no i didn't i didn't take it to syria i don't think i'd have got close yeah um but it was it was it was confiscated a few times cuba most places in africa don't like it um haiti was another one um and yeah i i traveled with lots of it and and it was uh a lot of it was stolen actually in china um and i didn't realize it'd been stolen but my bag when it went through the airport, they decided that I wasn't allowed the camera equipment. And so put a nice letter in my bag, it all in Chinese, which I can read, which I assume says, we've taken your stuff.

And I never got that back. So I had to kind of- Did you have footage in there that you lost then too, or just the equipment? Very careful with the footage. The footage was always backed up immediately. Right, so yeah, you gotta finish the marathon, get to the airport, back up the footage. Write my blogs, tell people what I'm doing, make sure that the onward- Yeah, because you did a great job

of chronicling the thing in real time on Instagram with beautiful photographs and amazing stuff. Yeah, thanks, I think so. My Instagram, and I'll plug it it's nick butter run nick butter run i i posted it because there's no point you can't do it after the fact you know i can't spend the following two years doing it but it was difficult and people would often mail me or email me or message me and saying are you alive we haven't heard from you in a day it's like yeah i know i'm in the central africa i'm in the congo like i haven't got easy wi-fi

and yeah connectivity was another another big thing trying to check in with people and I know I'm in the central Africa. I'm in the Congo. I haven't got easy wifi. And yeah, connectivity was another, another big thing, trying to check in with people and my sat phone being broken sometimes. And being able to actually write my blogs, write everything on Instagram and remember it because I was writing notes as well, hand notes for my book because there's stuff that you want to remember that

isn't, you know, I can't fit in a, in a small, small space in an Instagram post. So it's overall, you know, you get an idea of the scale of the trip. It was the most amazing feeling to finish. But I feel like I want to go back.

It's almost like a big recce, you know. I want to go back and see more of each place. There's a cool, like, sizzle reel film on your website that, you know, basically gives you an idea. It's kind of very, you know, quick cuts of all these different places. It reminds me a lot of Casey Neistat's Do More video. It's very much in that style of like, it's so hectic and chaotic and you're just being bombarded with the stimulus of so many different cultures. Very cool. Yeah, I know. We like those videos.

I was very fortunate that Spark Media put that together. They came to me before the trip and said, you've got to do a documentary and we'll help. And I said, well, I can't put any money towards a documentary right now because we're spending everything and everything else. And they said, don't worry. We'll just help you put it together. And they are now producing the final documentary. Right. How many hours of footage did you come home with?

We have 20,000. We have, I think it was 18 terabytes, 20,000 video clips. So I have no idea. It's a tough edit because, you know, it can't be 196 episodes, you know? Like how do you craft a cohesive narrative out of such an epic journey without it being repetitive?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of people would say, well, I ran here, then I got on a plane, without it being repetitive yeah you know yeah exactly i think a lot of people would say well i ran here then i got on a plane then i ran here you know but for me it wasn't like that you know it was it's basically going from one problem to the next and just just just articulating in a relatively linear narrative of this is what happened um but the way that we're doing it it's a parallel narrative we have lots of interviews with my family and friends and team, and that's interspersed throughout the documentary.

But it's the same when writing the book. You know, my book, and I plug it as well because it's on Amazon. Plug away. It's on Amazon. It's called Running the World. It's coming out later this year, but there's no, it didn't seem to be a specific release date. No, because I need to finish it fast.

Okay. That's the problem. And it leads me into i've written almost the word count for this book and i'm only in chapter two you know how can i cut stuff out it's it's yeah i want i want people to see the whole journey it's really difficult i think you your first pass needs to be overwritten you know get it all down and then you have this big piece of clay that you can chip away at. And it's so fresh. I mean, you just finished this thing to get it.

I think it's important, imperative for you to get it all down on paper as soon as possible. And then you have something to work with. Yeah, you're absolutely right. How I'm spending the next few days running, writing, running, writing until I go home to more stuff. But it's, yeah, I love it. I'm a very, very privileged position to be in

to be able to moan about having to write, you know, difficult to write the book on a trip of lifetime. On a very practical level, like how, you know, how is the process of, you know, lining up all of this sponsor support and kind of, you know, making sure that you're serving them as well? I mean, these are relationships, right? Like they're not just giving you money. You have to be, you know, a good ambassador for these brands. And I mean, you have like 46 brands or something like that supporting you, right? Yeah.

I would imagine it would have been, it seems to me it would have been a lot easier. You just have like one huge company comes in, Visa, Nike, whatever it is, we're writing you a huge check and you just you're you know you have one company but you're having to work with tons to kind of cobble this whole thing together if you can write to to branson for me that would be great um no we we did come on richard yeah please well you've done it already now you can just back pay me so

no it's um you're right Having that many sponsors is difficult. But fortunately, there's very, very few of them that have any formal commitments. And they're people that have come out of the woodwork and said, look, we want to help you. We don't expect much, but what you can give, we'll be grateful for. And I think on paper, you say 46 sponsors. We've got now, I think it's 50, just under 50. And I think a lot of the outside world would see oh it's just a load of money that people would be you know giving you i spent 90 i'd say let's

try and get this right 85 82 percent of the trip that kind of number was paid by me and my family yeah the rest of it you know you're a lovely lovely brand would give me some socks right that's great but great but it doesn it doesn't do anything else. And I need socks. I need 500 bucks because I don't have a page on my passport to get stamped here. Exactly that. And when you're wasting, you know, getting into Bhutan cost us $1,400 just because it's a difficult direction.

I need an invite. So you have to basically pay for it. And so actually funding the trip has to be in the top two or the top three of the hardest thing to do. And I sold virtually everything. My parents and my family gave up a lot of money, loaned me a lot of money. And at the time- Sold all those suits? Yeah, I actually did.

Did you? There's a lot of shirts that went to charity shops as well. Cause I thought I've got so many shirts. Um, the irony being is I now need a shirt to, uh, to wear when I do my theater tours. Um, no, I, you're absolutely right. I stripped my life back. I now live in a van. Um, I live in a van and I travel around doing my speaking tour all over the world with just trying to share the journey and I wouldn't change it for the world. And had I had hundreds of millions of pounds to spend, the trip wouldn't have been the same. And I wouldn't have felt so invested and so pressured. And all of the feelings were amplified by having everything on the line. You know, being told I wasn't going to do this six weeks from the end after having everything in my basket. I hadn't not left anything out. It's that motivation. You

know, people say say so what gets you out of bed in the morning when it gets tough that's one of them yeah you know i think i read that the total cost of the endeavor was in excess of like 500 000 pounds yeah something like that yeah i would think it would be more than that it was it was yeah but i mean it's we haven't actually done the final numbers yet because there's a lot of stuff that we're still paying. I would say it was more close to a million. Yeah. But that kind of money,

there's great friends of the family that I haven't seen for years who just put their hand in their pocket and said, yeah, we'll give you a few grand. And that made all the difference at the right time. Well, if it makes you feel better, a decent documentary budget is about a million. Yeah, maybe.

That was the budget of the documentary that you're making. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. You just had to do a few other things along the way. That's a very good point. That's a very good way of looking at it. I was just investing in a documentary. Exactly, right? Come on, Spark.

It's all on Spark now, right? No, we've got some good connections with the documentary. Exactly. Right. Come on, Spark. It's all on Spark now. Right. Now we've got, we've got some good connections with the documentary. I'm, I'm very privileged and I, I feel like I just want to go and, and, and physically, I cannot, I cannot tell you how thankful I am of people. I almost get emotional thinking about it. The amount of people that have come out, just, you know, a lovely lady called Rowena. She was listening to the radio before I started and she lived in Spain. British, lived in Spain. And she said, come and stay with me.

I stayed with her, put me up in a beautiful home in Barcelona. She then drove me to two other countries because she wanted to help. And it's that selflessness of people from all over the world that made the journey. And I just want to encourage everybody I speak to in this upcoming tour to help, to realize that your people around you are everything that make the world good. Without people, the world would be beautiful, but it wouldn't be as fun. Yeah. What are some of, I mean, you just kind of said it, but the takeaways and the lessons along the way? Yeah, I think the takeaways, A, never try and remove those preconceived ideas from countries. More, and I really mean it, more like 95% of the time I was away, it wasn't exactly how it was portrayed.

In all of the, whether it was a guidebook or whether it was a travel magazine or, you know, you compile all of this stuff of how you believe a country is going to be. And unless you visited it, it's not the same. So now what is it like when you turn on international news and you see some report from someplace that you've been? Well, first thing I do is text my mates there and say, are you okay? More often than not, that's the real reason. And then I get the response back of, yeah, it's fine. It's not actually as bad as they're saying, or it is bad. And when I see CNN, for example, lots of big disasters from all over the world, or BBC World News as well, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be talked about. And I believe that by focusing on some of the negative stuff, it actually creates positive stuff because people then come and help. But I wish there could be the follow-up stories of this is now what's happened in the wake of a disaster or the wake of something happening. Because people need to see that as well.

So I guess the other big thing is coming right back to the beginning message that Kev taught me, which is not waiting for something to happen in your life to kick you up the backside to do something. You have an opportunity to do it now. And whether you're 10 years old or 80 years old, you probably have something that you want to do and you have an opportunity to do it, even if you, like me, can't afford it, wasn't fit enough really. And so just go for it. And Kevin, you know, who you met, what year was it that you did Marathon to Sob? 15, 16, 15.

15. Was diagnosed with basically, I mean, basically a life sentence, right? And now it's five years later. Yeah, five years and 40 days, something like that. Did he join you in Athens? Yeah, it was incredibly moving. We had a lot of tears during that run and had some laughs and some really lovely chats. So Kev was 49 when he was diagnosed, given terminal prostate cancer, given as little as two years to live um and he drives he

describes it at the moment as drug roulette so he's basically taking his drugs and one day they'll stop working and maybe there'll be another drug that works and maybe there won't and it's that day that comes that we don't want to happen you know when when he'll drop off a cliff but and and you know in his meds will stop working but five years on um he's still with us and he still will die from cancer. He is absolutely riddled with it. And I just wish that we could get the message out there. So I suppose this is a big, a big message of mine that I'm going to probably be preaching around the rest of my life is that if you are a man and you're over 40 years old and you haven't gone and got

your prostate checked, you have to do it because you could have prostate cancer with no symptoms and you could be literally dying any day. That's the reality. If you don't do it because you could have prostate cancer with no symptoms and you could be literally dying any day that's the reality if you don't get checked and you catch it late the chances of you dying are huge if you catch it early the chances of you living are huge and so and also if you're not a man or you're not over 40 the chances are you know somebody who is um and so that's the most common form of cancer for men, right? Yeah, biggest. It's actually, well, it's overtaken breast cancer now, so it's the biggest-

Oh, is it really? Yeah, yeah. So it's overtaken breast cancer, and breast cancer's obviously had a lot of public awareness and funding. And I just feel like it's now time to turn our heads and look at this cancer that's now killing a lot of men. And 12, just over 12,000 men die from prostate cancer

in the UK alone. That's every 45 minutes so you you uh use this adventure to also raise funds for prostate cancer uk right yes did you guys did you do you raise some how much money did you guys raise we we um on the just giving page i'll have to check it i think we up about 125, but I know we've got a substantial offline that's gone in. So I believe it's just over the 200,000 pound mark. We wanted to raise 250, and I think we will. Hopefully when the book and the documentary comes out and with my… So that's ongoing.

Oh, it's ongoing. And I won't stop until I know that that target is in the bank, you know, because there's no reason why we can't do that it's just it just takes everybody that's listening to this and everybody that's listening to the things i'm going to say in the future just a dollar or 50 cents a pound whatever it is just a small amount really makes a difference and that money that we're raising is specifically going towards a national screening program and so that means that men can get access to free and easy uh checks right without having to go through this whole ordeal. And I hope we'll then have enough money

to combat the stigma attached to prostate cancer and the fact that people don't want to talk about it because it's embarrassing, which it shouldn't be. Really? I didn't even know. Is it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because people, men especially, don't want to talk about it because it involves your bum. That's the reality.

And it shouldn't be the case because it's killing people. And so I'm convinced that if it involved a different part of your body, they wouldn't be killing as many people. So you've got this speaking tour coming up. Has that already started or you're on the cusp of that? I saw Dean just the other day speaking in the National Running Show in the UK. So it's kind of started, but it's ramping up properly starting in March. And it's like a full, like, I looked at the schedule.

Like, there's a lot of dates all over the UK. All over the UK. And we're now starting to do some in the US as well. And what I've got planned in the future will bring me to North America. And so I'm hoping that if people enjoy, hopefully people enjoy what I'm saying and we'll, we'll take something from it in the UK and then I can, I can then do more in the US. And what's the, what's the message when you get up in front of kids or schools or these groups at these theaters? Yeah, I think the message is to, A, there's, there's a big message of resilience in this whole journey, right? You know,

overcoming the stuff that you think you can't do when you, when you get out of bed in the morning and it's raining and you think, oh, I can't go for a run, it's cold. Yes, you can. Like there's other stories behind it, but the overarching messages of time. So I preach about this number of 29,747, which is the average amount of days a British person will live for. 29,747 is the magic number. person will live for 29 747 is the magic number and i want people to realize that that number is going down every single day and we have an opportunity to live to live our life right now in in the uk alone we spend on average nine years of our life watching tv and we spend 90 of our life indoors and so i'm i'm basically standing up and preaching about the fact that like yes okay

you need to earn money to feed your kids and pay your mortgage. But you also have an opportunity and a responsibility to enjoy and to live your life as passionately as you can with the stuff that you love. Because otherwise, it's going to be too late. You're going to get to your deathbed and not have done what you wanted to do. When I look at what you've done, one thing that strikes me is you just basically made this decision to do this. Like you became a runner later in life. It wasn't like you were out winning races, winning Badwater and Marathon de Sauve. Like you're an enthusiast and obviously you have a certain amount of talent and dedication because it's hard to run these ultras. But the thing is, like, it's not like you were a name in running.

And you just took it upon yourself to do this thing that nobody else had ever done. And you figured it out. Yeah. I think it's easy. Like people, oh, he was a banker. And he was, you know, I was like, oh, maybe he had a million dollar bonus that he just paid for this thing. But that's not the case at all.

No, not the case at all. Not the case at all. And you're right. I'm not a fantastic runner. I, like you said, ultra runners say that, but I'm really not, I'm not even that fit, not even that healthy. You know, I literally just wanted to go and live by what Kev said is to enjoy it and to travel and to run. And, um, and I'm going to continue to run because it helps with my mind, with everything that I have in my life. So running, I describe as just very much my mode of transport. And it happens to be a cheap, was a cheap and easy way of getting around until you decide to run around the world, of course. Right.

And it was funny as I was reading some of the media on you, and it seemed like journalists were shocked that you still like to run. You're like, I want to get back to running now. But people are like, what? It's bizarre, isn't it? I don't really understand what that question I get is. So what are you going to do next? Well, I'm obviously going to run. I'm not just going to stop.

But at the same time, I get the point of I've run so much. Now, do you want to stop? But I'll tell you what I am not missing, which is getting on and off planes or having that long snaking queue in airports to get to immigration. But no, running is, like yourself, it's great for, if you love it, you carry on doing it, obviously. Is there a bit of a coming down from such a huge experience? I haven't experienced it yet.

I think things have been kind of niggling me in the background, like stuff that I've missed that I didn't realize I was missing. Like meeting new people all the time. I was meeting new people and making friends every couple of days and then having this great relationship with them and then having a chat with them on WhatsApp for the following weeks. And now I'm very much in the zone of, okay i'm still meeting people in theaters and i'm you know talking to new people but it's uh it's not as intense and it was that was quite a special

two-year bubble of my life um but i think the a lot of people did say oh you're gonna have to prepare yourself when you come back because it's gonna be a this but i've just filled it i've just filled this gap with being busy and writing the books and getting the documentary out and doing the tour. And I think once that stuff starts to die down and I've finished the book and I've compiled all the photos for the photo book and I've witnessed the documentary come and go and it starts to fade a little bit, then maybe, but other stuff will take its place. Yeah, I think that's healthy. You know, I know a lot of people who they do some really super crazy thing

and then they feel like they just have to keep upping the ante or doing something crazier. And, you know, that's an addict mentality because it's like chasing the dragon, right? Like you've done this incredible thing and much like I would imagine, you know, a soldier returning from a deployment, like there's an adjustment period

because you've gone from a very extreme situation, not to compare, you know, running marathons to being in battle, but the idea of being in something that's not of the normal life that is very heightened and intense to then being sort of sitting in the countryside and having to adjust to that, right? And there's this wanderlust or this itch,

like, you know, I need that dopamine rush again. And I think people get into trouble with that. But to the extent that you can kind of leverage the experience that you've had and the kind of platform that you've created for yourself to then take that, whatever that energy is, and pour it into being of service to other people, I think you'll find great fulfillment in that. Yeah, I hope so. And what I've got next is still running, and I've just slowed everything down. And we're going to go – the plan is to do something similar, but to enjoy it more, not focus on a record or time,

and to basically write more, take more photos, and really, yeah, I suppose just immerse myself in what I'm doing. And what I hope to do is to run, go and run, set another record, just because it's not been done, by running a marathon in all of the national parks in North America. Oh, that's cool. Because, exactly, it's cool, it's beautiful. And I've got, rather than doing three a week,

the schedule that we've roughly planned, and I've been thinking about it for a while, even during the last trip, was it's about 10 days. So every 10 days I'll do a run, and I'm then breaking it down to do some school talks and to do some other corporate work,

but also just travel around in the van, getting a puppy in three days time, by the way. And so the puppy will start to run with me. And, and then get, go over to the US in, in January,

2021 and start trekking across all the national parks, tick them off over 500 days, and then go up to Canada and do another 500 days to tick off all of the other national parks. Only one border crossing. Easy. Easy. And I hope I'm not going to have to pay any bribes

to get into Canada either. You never know. I was kind of living in the headspace of Ricky Gates over the last couple of days because he's the most recent episode that I just put up and have spent quite a bit of time thinking about his cross country, unsupported run across America,

which has parallels to what you've done, but which is also a very different animal because he's somebody who, whether it's running every street in San Francisco or running across America, like these are ultra endurance events, but they were really about taking your time and connecting deeply with your community

and your natural environment. And yours is different in the sense that you're popping in, you're running these marathons, you're having, you know, a valuable experience with the people and the landscape when you're there, but then you're popping in, you're running these marathons, you're having a valuable experience with the people and the landscape when you're there, but then you're out, right? It's very rapid, rapid fire. Too rapid, too rapid. And certainly for anybody that does this kind of thing or the same thing again in the future, whether it's Dean or otherwise, I wanted more time everywhere. And you add one day to every country, that's another nine months.

You know, that's the kind of length of, you can't add another day. But slowing things down. 196 extra days. Exactly. It's intense. And what I'm doing in the future is just slower. And I want to take time to look around and enjoy what I have.

And I also, I'm looking to get into a bit of learning about the environment because of, you know, our big problem in the West is the environment, despite the fact of all the other problems going on in the world. I want to just learn a bit about it and start to use the trip over those 1,000 days to learn and to hopefully share what I then have.

I can come back and see you in a few years' time and say, well, this is what I now know. Because I know virtually, I don't know nothing about the environment because I had to do lots of offsetting projects for my trip to make our whole journey carbon neutral. And so this next thing I'm trying is to learn a bit, to share the journey of this trip as well, and hopefully get other people into sport. Let's talk about the carbon offset thing. That's interesting because there is this thing like oh it's very self-indulgent you took 445 flights and god knows how many you know car rides etc like that how do you offset i mean that's a massive carbon footprint to offset

yeah so we um i was trying to find companies that were going to be able to help me offset. And I think the standard one that everybody jumps to is when you're offsetting carbon emissions, you plant a tree. You know, that's the obvious go-to. But there are many, many other ways to do that. And using the carbon credits model, which is through this company called Natural Capital Partners, they very kindly replied to my one of many, many emails and said, yeah, we'd love to help you. And they sponsored my offset by giving me four projects in which we would do various different environmental work. So to use an example, Guatemala, which was also one of my favorite countries,'s a company there called Ecofiltro, and they do water filtration. And they also create stoves, which require less wood.

And therefore, the people that are cooking on these stoves then have to use less wood, and then the smoke is less, and so they get ill less. And it's also cutting down less trees, if that makes sense. And so what this company does, and they're a very, very big company for lots of multinationals all over the world and they said we've put all of your they even asked me about my diet you know what kind of what kind of diet i had and how many planes would be taking and how many uh and they gave me the certificate with which was offsetting 45 tons of carbon emissions um and we're currently in email discussion about upping that just to make sure we're completely covered with everything. So 45 tons was offset, which was CO2 equivalent.

And that means that all of these, so we had four projects around the world. This one in Guatemala was one of them. And not only does it help the environment, but it helps the communities of people in country. So I don't know if it's a perfect system, but I think it's a much better way than just planting trees, that's for sure.

Yeah. One of the places in the world that I know so little about that it's embarrassing is Africa. I think it's the same for a lot of people. Yeah. I believe I know a bit now, but what I have seen,

I liken, I suppose this this is it may sound silly i don't know but i like in africa similar to the us in the sense that we've got 50 states and 54 countries in africa and they're very much governed differently different laws different rules different attitudes different races different religions um it's just that africa currently is less well off but if you were to read books like a great book called factfulness about how the kind of environment and the culture of wealth is is shifting um to asia and to africa you'll start to see that africa is booming it will boom it's not a case of oh no they can never be a civilized society. Africa is, A, beautiful, but, B, has so much potential. And so in terms of the climate and everything that's going on there,

I had, I think it was an average temperature of 44 degrees C in those 54 countries. It was hot. Yeah, what is that like? That's over 100 Fahrenheit. Yeah, absolutely scorching. And some places, you know, deserts don't have rain for very long periods of time. And then you learn about all of this, and then you go to somewhere like the Pacific Islands, which are actually directly under threat from rising sea levels,

which I also learned, which, you know, is also about the saltwater membrane in these islands and how the water is rising and ruining the... So there's all sorts of elements. But I tell you what, if I could tell anybody to go and visit any continent and spend some time, it would be in places like Sierra Leone and Togo and the Congo,

where people live very, very differently. What about the North Pole, Antarctica and the Arctic Circle? Yeah, good point. Good mention it. Well, I definitely didn't need to do any running in the North Pole because there isn't any land. It's just a lot of frozen water. But in Antarctica, technically co-owned by seven different countries. And so it's not technically a country, didn't need to do it. But it's one of the seven continents. Right. You know, I've got to do it. And so I was talking with a few friends recently about what I could do. And I'd love to run in both the poles, something substantial.

But then I have the conflicting interest of the climate, you know, and the environment. And should I be traipsing through these places that are delicate and maybe should be more protected? I don't know. Yeah, it's an interesting thought experiment because in terms of offset, like if you can create an adequate amount of awareness that creates some kind of action in the wake of it, does it become a rational thing to do? Yeah, and your guess is as good as mine and how will you know until you've done it and is it worth taking the risk and um i mean as a as a tourist as

a human of the planet i'd love to see both the poles and to properly witness them and do a brilliant expedition and yes i would love to plan them but i don't want to we're in a quite a delicate balance with with the with the climate so i I don't know how I'll feel about that after learning. You know, I've talked about this learning period over the next few years when I do this next trip. I might completely change my mind and go completely green in a different way. I don't know. How's the diet?

We can start there. We can have a conversation about that right now. My diet and your diet are probably the opposite. My diet and your diet are probably the opposite. No, I'd love, and I will, to get closer and closer to the likes of your diet. I'll leave you with a couple of books. Yeah, please do. No, I'd love to.

Throughout this whole trip, these two years, I actually thought about being vegan through it, through the trip. And I'm so glad I didn't because I think I would would have starved. Because yes, there's obviously that, you're not gonna starve if you haven't. It would have added a lot more complexity to it. Although I think in a lot of less developed parts of the world, a lot of vegan food is pauper food. It's rice and beans and grains and things like that.

Especially, I've traveled all over the Middle East, that's the best vegan food I've had anywhere. Places where you think, oh, it's gonna be so hard and it's not hard at all. No, and I don't know enough as I should to make kind of informed decisions. And there's also the occasion, I mean, many, many times when you arrive in a country at two in the morning

and the only thing next door to you is a chicken house or you know a fast fast food place um and if i go anywhere else then i'm at risk of either getting into trouble or getting lost or getting attacked or whatever um and so i think i've made a lot of excuses why i shouldn't do that um but maybe by the time i see you next um you will be changed. You're my new project. Yeah, please, Rich, do it. Well, here, I was like looking at some of the stats on your run. So on 22 of the marathons, you had food poisoning. On four of them, you had kidney infections.

Yeah. You did 101 marathons on an empty stomach. I mean, 22 marathons with food poisoning. Horrible. Oh my word. The amount of days I woke up and literally would just crawl out of bed to the bathroom to then vomit and then get my gear on.

Because of the water or something you ate in a strange land? Yeah. A combination of everything. I think it was a knock-on effect of not having enough water. So for example, in Iran, I didn't have water for 24 miles. It was 40-plus degrees, and I was urinating blood by the end. I was peeing blood. Wow.

And I'd had that several times. But in Bangladesh, the humidity was huge. And so I had a kidney infection and food poisoning in Bangladesh, 40-odd degrees, and I poisoning in Bangladesh, 40 odd degrees. And I was literally throwing up every single mile. Wow. And you just, you know, you think I'm going to just give this all to me. Was that the hardest marathon? That one and Kuwait or Djibouti.

Djibouti in Africa was scorchingly hot. Just because of the heat. Yeah. And, you know, I was trying to cover up as well to kind of be respectful in these places. And you just end up absolutely roasting. I remember sheltering in a place in Djibouti, which was this tiny, tiny shed of a restaurant. And the air con unit they had there, which was a huge air con unit, was cooling the room to 32 degrees C. It was so, so hot, even indoors.

And so those temperatures were bad. Yeah, lots and lots of food poisoning. And it got very much like I said, I was used to it. I took lots of supplements to try and help, like probiotics to help my gut and stuff. But, you know, when you're out on a run and you need to drink from a tap in somebody's garden because you're thirsty, it's... I would imagine you got a lot of shots too before you... Yeah, literally everything you can have. And that took, I think it was three months to get everything um and then i was more or less done and i had to have

a couple of backups the following year into year two of the trip but um that was fine i got i felt a little bit ill and i had i think it was 200 and something days on anti-malarials which made you feel rough anyway in in certain Muslim countries, running in shorts, no bueno. Yeah, exactly. And there was lots of places where I would turn up and assume that that was the case. And then I would ask in reception whether it was fine. And they'd kind of give me the look as if to say, you idiot. Of course, you can wear whatever you want. And then in other places, it was the opposite, where I assumed it it would be okay and it wasn't um but then did that cause problems uh it yeah i'd had a um somebody threw a a water bottle at me out of the window

um which was full and it hit me and it hurt but it wasn't damaging me but they they were honking what country was that? It was Central Africa. I can't remember, I'm afraid. No, it was Central Africa. I also then, I was hit by a car and I broke my elbow in Central Africa. And I believe that was semi on purpose. It was just their wing mirror,

but it hit me so hard that my elbow broke. So did you have to put it in a cast? Like how did that go down? No. So I went to see a doctor that was in one of the embassies and they said, yeah, well, if you want me to x-ray it,

then we'll have to take a few days out. And I said, well, we don't have the days, so we don't know. And then I went back on one of my passport pickups. So one of my many times where I've had to go back and exchange passports. Back to the UK. Back to go back and exchange passports. Back to the UK. Back to the UK for like 12 hours. And then I went and got my, yeah, exactly. And I got my

elbow looked at. So yeah. And so yeah, there was those times when I did have to think about the religion. Religion was a really great eye opener. I tell you what, even if you do this whole drip just to learn about religion. But I was i happened to be in saudi arabia in jeddah um the day of eid where everyone gathers at mecca um uh just the day just the night before and the families which were having these huge gatherings along the coast it was just so beautiful to see and i came very um very very kind of almost fell in love with the with the different range of religions that we have in the world. And so again, it's another classic example

of religions are seen as war makers and bad sometimes when yes, they are, but there's also the other side of the coin. I've been running in Jeddah. Have you? Yeah, I ran along the water. The Corniche. Yes.

Yes, over the bridge and along and you've got the couple of mosques. Yeah, there's a couple of mosques right on the coastline along there. Yeah. It's quite something. Yeah. Were you running in day or night? Day.

Day. Yeah. And I ran in shorts. And that was a place where I got back and they said, you probably shouldn't have done that. I ran in long things. Yeah. And I ran in shorts in Riyadh also and was told afterwards that that was not a good idea.

Yeah, I think that's slightly more frowned upon there. And it was just, it was ignorance, really. I just didn't know. But that's the same, I've been in places where I thought it was absolutely fine or where I've been running around places during prayer time and anywhere else it would have been fine. But at the moment I was in the wrong place at the wrong time

and I was disrespecting people by not giving them space and you know you make those you make those mistakes and you learn so so now that you're home and you flip on the news and it's brexit and it's trump and it's you know insanity and all of that like what is the lens through which you kind of process all of that given given the worldliness, you know, of your adventure? Yeah. Yeah, worldliness. I definitely do feel worldly. I definitely also feel like I'm not as worldly as I want to be still.

Because in all of those places we just discussed, there's so much more to be learned. And be there for a day. Yeah, exactly. Be there for a day. I mean, you still run 26 miles. It's still a lot to see. But actually to take into people's religions and what they do at mealtimes and all that sort of stuff. So when I look at the news, my lens of this whole new worldview that I have,

it's one of sadness on one part, because I want there to be more positivity and to show the great things that I've experienced. But then on the other hand, complete elation and joy at how lucky i feel to have seen everything um and then of course you have brexit and trump and all of the the squabbling the squabbling over things that ah you know i wish we could just spend a little bit of time just give us 10 minutes of the news a day talking about the problems that are happening in the congo or in sierra leone or you know um and and yeah there's. And there's lots of ways to look at it. It's frustration, to be honest. Most of what I see is frustration now

because I want to do more. I want to be able to shake people and rattle them and go, why are you moaning about Brexit again or moaning about your commute? The world has its own thing. Well, it takes some crazy event to rejigger people's sense of priorities. And that's to bring it back to Kobe Bryant.

I mean, that's kind of the, everything kind of stopped on Sunday when that happened. It was so shocking and absolutely surreal. It was an incredibly foggy morning here. Like you couldn't, the visibility was almost nothing. So there was, and that's sort of unusual. And it was just as bizarre. There was a weird heaviness

where everything just stopped for a minute. And the whole world like bore witness to this thing that had happened. And it allowed us to kind of connect with what's truly important. And the question, yeah, the question then arises is why can't we make that more, you know, top of mind in our daily decision-making and how we navigate the world. And I hope, and you say that, you know, what do people want to get out of my talks when

I speak to them? And it's that, you know, it's not having something in your life or going to somebody's funeral or seeing something bad happen on the news for you to wake up and realize that every moment that we have of every day is is is so privileged we are especially us in in the western world in this privileged society we have so much that we can give and we can do even if it's just you know spending more time with your family or saying to your loved ones that you love them more or going and doing that pottery course or that singing lesson or whatever it is that you're putting off, you know, that tomorrow may not happen.

And luckily for Kobe, he's had this incredible life where he's done a lot. But I guarantee there's also things there that he hadn't done yet that he'd wanted to do. Yeah, no, I think that there were a lot of things that he, you know, he had a lot of things that he was working on and wanted to, you know, express in his life. And then, you know, his daughter and the, you know, the other people that were on that. It's just,

it's unbelievable. Yeah. Not to end on that note. I do want to know what your banker buddies think, like now that you're back, are you still connected with the people that you used to work with? Yeah, a lot of them. How does that go? does that go a lot of my friends it's i mean i'm well i'm turning up to see them now when i'm living in a van so that's that's a difference right because we're living in a converted van you're like the weird guy down by the river now exactly exactly that right um it's um to be fair i think some of them look at it in in envy in a little way not just the traveling bit but just the change that i had the i had the jump but also um a lot of them look at it in envy in a little way, not just the traveling bit, but just the change that I had the jump. But also a lot of them still think I'm crazy,

you know, turning your back on money. And I mean, it's not extreme, but there's both sides of the coin. They definitely think about my true friends. They know that it was always in me to do it. And so many of them, a great friend of mine, Andy, who I used to work with, he came and did 19 with me, 19 countries, 19 marathons. And he was just coming out for the weekend and started in Brazil.

And we did. That's cool. We ran in Chernobyl together, all sorts of stuff. Family's good. Yeah, family's good. My parents blessed them. My dad shook my hand at the end when we had our little final closing thing in Athens and said, never again. Honestly, they have been so great.

And my brother is slightly younger than me and he's a nurse. And he took six months out of his job and life to convert this van that I'm now living in. So when I returned home, I didn't have to go back into that life. And so I could kind of seamlessly progress. So yeah, the amount of people, and I've said this a few times, I've got just over 2000 new contacts in my phone from all over the world. And so when there's holidays all over the place, or when there's religious occasions happening in the world, I get these messages wishing me right you know from everywhere but it's got to be like wait who's this guy like what country did i meet him in like you know i've saved people's names with the country

just because it's a photograph like you know i you know it would be hard to keep all that straight out yeah it's but it's great for contacts because i've now being able to help other people that want to travel and so on my website, I have this. Yeah, you could set up a whole consulting business around this. Yeah, I'm trying. You're like a fixer. Exactly. I'm a fixer that can't remember where I was.

No, I've got a lot of great people that can help. So, I mean, along with that, this next focus for me this year is the speaking tour. I'm also doing a few little mini runs. We're going to circumnavigate Iceland. We're going to run around uh that's a mini run mini run thousand miles a couple of weeks we're trying to trying to do that that's going to be beautiful um difficult more enduring certainly on the body i know there's a cycling race that goes around it yeah yeah i mean there's a beautiful tarmac road all the way around right around the country um and then i'm gathering a few people with um

with the brand that's been supporting me for for years do sport live they are giving me the reins to create a team to take out to malawi and we're going to run the length of malawi oh wow um just for fun just to gather some team that have have this this whole ethos of of this brand is exactly what i breathe which is be set free similar yourself, just being outdoors and live this world. So I'm putting that team together. And other than that, it's speaking to all time. So if anybody wants me to speak anywhere, then let me know, because I want to share the journey. And I think, I mean, it's all very well doing this over a conversation, but the amount of photos and videos that kind of illustrate the dodgy moments kind of paint it better than I can.

Well, good, man. It's all good. No, thank you. I'm so grateful for you having me on. Yeah, fantastic. I mean, I can't congratulate you enough. I just can't even wrap my head around what you've accomplished.

It's really quite something, super inspiring. And I can't wait to see you get out in the world and and share this message i think it's super important so my hat's off to you and and i am here as a resource and of service so if you ever need anything from me yeah i'd love to help you out thank you man no i'm i'm very grateful and you've you know what you're doing i think uh many people underestimate the power of good you're doing. So I'm grateful. Thank you, Rich. It's just me sitting in my house

talking to people like yourself. Yeah, I know. And it makes a whole lot of difference. It makes a whole lot of difference. And when somebody else goes and does this record or whenever something else happens and we can share that moment because I'm looking forward to that day.

I like how enthusiastic you are about somebody else, whether it's Dean or somebody else, going out and breaking your record. Oh, I want it to be Dean. I want it to be Dean. I've followed him. I'm a huge fan. I absolutely love the man.

And I genuinely want to watch the trip unfold without having to be in the painful positions of being in pain. You're like, oh, he's there. I remember that. Exactly. No, I hope I can be a part of it as well. Thanks, Rich.

Thank you. So if you wanna connect with Nick, nickbutter.com at nickbutterrun on Instagram and Twitter. Book coming out at some point, documentary, all good stuff, man. So let me know when all that stuff is ready and I'll help push the word out. Thank you very much.

Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you. All right, man. Peace. Peace. Amazing, right? How cool is that guy? I love you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right, man. Peace. Peace. Amazing, right? How cool is that guy? I love you, Nick.

Thank you for sharing your experience, strength, and hope. Huge inspiration for all of us when it comes to defining our own challenges and raising the ceiling on our own perception of what is possible and our innate potential. As a fun aside, I'm pretty sure our time together inspired Nick to go plant-based. So give him a high five on socials, at NickButterRun on Instagram and Twitter. Also, please check out the show notes for copious links to experience Nick's world beyond the earbuds. And again, I set up a Facebook group for fans of the show that you can

find at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash rich roll podcast. And that's linked up in the show notes as well. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on the program on Apple podcasts on Spotify and on YouTube as well. The most important thing is to subscribe, Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. I love that. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate.

I appreciate everybody who worked very hard to put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing the show and creating all the clips that we share on social media. Jessica Miranda for graphics, Allie Rogers for portraits, Georgia Whaley for copywriting, DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Hari Mathis. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here

in a couple days with another amazing episode. Until then, think more broadly about your potential while you social distance. Stay safe, eat the good foods, get lots of sleep, breathe, and try to move your body. I love more deeply and lots of other good stuff. Until then, peace, plants, namaste. stage. Thank you.