Can You Be Strong AND Fast? | Fergus Crawley | Ep 49

0:00Fergus Crawley. Hello, thank you for having me. Welcome to the podcast. To me, you are the definition of a hybrid athlete, a true hybrid athlete. Okay, thank you. You do insane endurance events, but you also lift weights heavy as fuck, basically. You've got a strongman background. You've got some of the most impressive lifts and impressive stats. flats in endurance that i've ever seen combined uh would you just be able to for the people listening would you just be able to explain some of the feats that you've done yeah i'll try i'll try and list them chronologically because i've uh i did this my phone notes recently to try and try and tot up what might be next so things really kicked off for me in terms of in the same day hybrid challenges i guess the first big one was first of all very kind as well thank you i should flag and yeah first big one was 500 pound squat and sub five minute mile in the same day which was july 2020 that was still probably the most physically demanding in terms of real physiological output thing i've ever done mentally it was just chew the stem but in terms of feeling maximum maximum effort that's still number one so that was july 2020 in july 2021 i did a 1200 pound powerlifting total which is 545 kilos the same day as a sub 12 hour ironman so 3am lifting 205 kilo squat 121 kilo bench and 220 kilo deadlift 6am sub 12 hour ironman and the bench and deadlift scaps upper body the swim was awful but managed to pull it around to get the job done December that year I did a 600kg powerlifting total which was a 220kg squat, 140kg bench and 240kg deadlift same day as a sub 6 hour 60km ultra and from there I've just done a lot of flip flopping between either end of the spectrum so I guess the other big ones, I've got a 250kg deadlift same week as a 250kg single stage ultra I've lifted the Dinny Stones, 332kg up in Scotland about two months before doing the Kelpman Extreme Triathlon.

2:20What else has there been? What are the shenanigans? 500-pound deadlift and 5K under 20 minutes total in Wigan, just down the road. In October 2023, I tried to do a 500-pound deadlift and mile all under five minutes, but went out too hot in the first lap and came over the line in 5.02, I think. So ironically, I did a 500-pound deadlift and a sub-five-minute mile on the same day. but failed which is which was really funny because i saw ah you've run a 458 mile but because it took you four seconds to deadlift you failed and i thought that's a it's quite an unfortunate way to frame things but it was very good fun and actually that's something that i'm quite keen to return to at the moment because whenever i do big endurance challenges like i have done recently i get an urge to get back to the track to develop my mile develop my 400s 800s 1200s 5k maybe but i'm quite quite looking forward to the thought of a mile at moment and I like lifting heavy I think for me the default thing that I enjoy has been kind of monster Lincoln Park bro session and the gym that is a real safe place for me and has been for about 15 years so I just really enjoy exploring different elements of fitness and understanding how I can interact with them to develop myself my own abilities I'm not particularly competitive because there is no governing body for hybrid training, so to speak.

3:43But I've really, really enjoyed the training process and execution, both athletically and creatively, of those in-the-same-day challenges. The sort of excitement I get when I think of a neat pairing of numbers and go, oh, okay, I need that much strength and I need to work on that. So if I was to try and work towards that, how would I program this? And then you map it out for 16 weeks and you think about it and by week two you're absolutely cooked and you go, okay, back to the drawing board let's figure it out but i've been doing it for a long time so i really enjoyed that process and good example tried to do a sub three a three plate bench and sub three marathon in the same day in may last year and as is very popular these days got a stress fracture before i got to the start line of the marathon so that was the last attempt at a in the same day challenge but there's a part of me that's itching to go back to my roots with these things at the the moment i would quite like the idea of getting as strong as i can again knowing i'll never be as strong as i was when i was a powerlifter but i've really really enjoyed messing around with strong man messing around with stone lifting messing around with some sort of more obscure movements over the past couple of years because i've spent a long time moving a barbell moving dumbbells but yeah i think the the achievements i'm most proud of at my core are the sort of charity focused endurance events because those are the ones that have had the biggest impact but athletically as a sort of expression of hybrid training which is balancing progress in opposing disciplines concurrently yeah the big three are the 500 pound back squat same day as a sub five minute mile 1200 pound total same day as a sub 12 hour ironman and the 600 kilo palatine total same day as sub six hour 60 kilometer ultra marathon beyond that i like i like adventure i like exploring new places through swimming biking running being able to go to any gym in the world and not feel out of place being able to go to whatever event it is and be able to take part that's what I really enjoy about this and I think the word hybrid will come onto this has become a little bit more diverse and almost diluted from the original term which is no bad thing but I really like sticking to the traditional definition of that expression of opposing ends of the spectrum when it comes to fitness because it challenges me in a way that fires me up that's uh that's impressive that is super impressive uh going back to the first one that you ever did yeah which was the 500 pound back squat uh into uh the five minute mile so five minute mile what even brought that on so crossfit level one i believe dave castro said i don't know when it would have been i think it would have been it would have been late 2000s yeah about 2009 2010 crossfit level one dave castro said the ideal crossfit athlete would be able to squat 500 pounds and run a sub five minute mile in the same day and it had kind of been spoken about in forums online for a long time and i'd known about it since i was a power lifter in about 2015 2016 i thought wow that'd be cool i can squat 500 pounds i have no concept of running a sub five minute mile even running a mile at that point was crazy to me and And started my social media and committed to my first charity endurance event in 2018.

6:57Adapted really quite well and quite quickly to the endurance stuff. What was the first challenge? The first challenge was attempting to squat 500 ,000 kilos in 24 hours to represent the 500 ,000 deaths by suicide in men every single year for Movember. so I unfortunately tore my MCL after 2070 reps at 60 kilos after about five hours so what was the format again it was every minute on the minute for 25 minutes set of 10 at 60 kilos rest five minutes repeat for an hour was it i can't remember either way it was a lot it was a lot it was a lot of emoms at 60 kilos i mean there was one session i had that was 50 sets of 10 at 80 kilos in my prep for it so when we started training for that i had a really high strength base but we isolated that essentially this is an endurance event you're going to need a big aerobic base to support that strength base to be able to continuously squat 60 kilos repeatedly over a long period of time and this was my first big event it was a big ambitious bullish one but how did you even train for that like i've heard of like gem volume training that's probably the most similar to how you train where 10 sets 10 and that cooks people yeah it cooks me yeah when i ever do it and people say oh that's a hell of a lot of volume to put through your body how do you even train for something like that so so we highlighted what was i missing was kind of the first question so the top end strength i had more than i needed to be able to do lots and lots of reps at 60 kilos what am i missing an aerobic base i'd played rugby growing up but i'd become a power lifter and running for the bus would have been a big ask so essentially we highlight the best thing we can do in the short term is bring up your aerobic base in conjunction with developing my ability to tolerate work capacity well my work capacity with lots and lots of reps a lighter sub-maximal load so increase my zone 2 running increased my zone two biking as time went on and i ended up just doing more and more cumulative volume as the weeks went on with the squats i've always genetically my lower body is my biggest strength my squat my best ever squat is the same as my best ever deadlift for example short femurs however i mean my running stride is not as good looking as yours jake unfortunately but i do my best little choppy legs high cadence but the key detail was we just highlighted how do we bring up the aerobic base to support that top end strength without accumulating too much fatigue to get in the way of lots and lots of reps but because it was a light load with the with the strength training side of things i could do a lot of reps as long as the as long as that sort of blood occlusion and lactate didn't build up in my legs i could bounce back pretty quickly and that got better and better as my aerobic base got better so a set of 10 at 60 kilos didn't really do anything as long as I took 30, 40, 50 seconds before doing it the next time.

9:55If I took 20 seconds, after two sets of 10 at 60 kilos, my legs would kind of lock up. So it was that ebbing and flowing and managing that and being really efficient there. But ultimately, my knee didn't survive because the first half an hour break I took after five hours, what we should have done with hindsight was probably sat on the Wattbike just keeping my legs turning because what happened when I had a shower and a bit of food in that break, my legs locked up and I actually, I almost needed the weight on my back to even get down to parallel when I got back. So a lesson learned for maybe next time.

10:31There's been a few times I've thought about trying it again, but not for a while. But that was a really interesting introduction into the world of ultra endurance for me. We didn't get the job done, raised over 25 grand in doing so. I learned a huge amount, started social media, lots of valuable lessons. and look I'm very proud of squatting over 60 kilos over 2 ,000 times in four and a half hours or whatever it was so I'll take I'll take the the silver linings from all this but the byproduct was I learned how much I enjoyed zone 2 running because prior to that running to me was you leave the house with your shoelaces done up and just run into you blow yourself up and then get home and if you're not pink and blowing what's the point I mean I grew up and people who who had dads that ran marathons i was like what this is insane because i'd do a 10k do a 5k but i never once thought if i did this slightly slower i'd be able to do it for longer i just thought wow i can't believe people do four times this like yeah but they slow down but i just didn't know that so i learned a lot quickly and adapted to it really quite well in training for that specific event and then with the mcl injury was told in a month you can swim now in a month you'll be able to sit on a stationary bike and in two months you'll be able to run again so i thought okay i don't do well without a goal and this was early on so there's a lot of a lot of character development and ego development things that have come along the way now where now an injury wouldn't sort of crumble my identity but at the time if i didn't have a training goal i didn't really know who i was so i thought i'm gonna sign up for an ironman so i signed up for an ironman my first triathlon in fact my first marathon at that point you're still injured at this time so I was still a little bit injured so it's been two months since then so in January I started training for an Ironman month of swimming, February on the bike March, running, May, Ironman so not a recommended duration of prep for your first Ironman not a recommended duration of prep for any Ironman very foolish of me but fuelled by naivety and stubbornness managed to get Ironman Lanzarote done and really enjoyed the training process of relearning to swim getting an open water for the first time getting back out on the bike for the first time understanding intensity and zones on the bike for the first time understanding what it's like running off the bike understanding zones and running a bit more going the distance with the running and the endurance activity being the focus rather than the thing to support the strength like it was the first time around so that so 2019 is really when i kind of discovered how much i loved the balancing act and to go right back to to how we got to the sort of chronology i was still pretty strong and i've always fought very hard to hold on to that 2019 did a series of charity events in november um including my first hundred miler which was which was great i did 6 890 meters of lunges as well bodyweight lunges very similar which i believe is the furthest anyone has ever bodyweight lunged so if you're looking for a niche sport did you do that around the track uh it was a turf indoors so up and down up and down but i was using have you ever been to total fitness in the northwest you know the 200 meter tracks in there i did all my training in there oh wow so what was really funny was i was finishing work on fridays and my friday sessions were getting progressively longer up to 5k but i was finishing work going straight to total fitness and was genuinely having to move at a certain pace to finish lunging before they closed so it was really really funny and there were people that would come in for a session and see me lunging around the track and finish their session i'm still lunging and i mean that's odd that's not people have people like come up to you a few people did because they just like why are you why have you been lunging for so long i kind of explained it was a fun conversation but i was on the deadline towards the end of that training session i was like listen i've got four i've got i've got four k's to do today i'd love to stop and chat but that was 20 seconds of lunging 10 seconds of rest just keep going the whole time and that worked really well that's something i would like to for a youtube video lunge 10k but I'll recover.

14:30How many steps would that be on average? To be fair, one lunge is about a metre, I'd say. I would have known the answers to that years ago. Probably 10 ,000 then. I think it probably was about that. 10 ,000 lunge. Yeah, yeah. I got really efficient with them. Again, I had a really, really solid lower body strength base. That has always been my, I guess, genetic... That's the thing that I've had the most. I'm strong. I've got decent bench press and things like that but my my low bar back squat has always been relatively higher than everything else so going into 2020 i was training for the kelpman which is a ironman distance triathlon in the highlands of scotland but in an extreme setting so it's an extreme triathlon so cold water very hilly bike and then mountain marathon so i was training for that covid came along and i thought okay got access to a home gym got access to the outdoors what can my training focus be and I thought okay if there's ever a time that I'm going to go for the 500 pound back squat and sub five minute mile it's probably now this is probably the time to do it and at the time someone over in America Adam Klink had the same idea he was in CrossFit Krypton in Virginia I think it was and I saw a reel come up the week after I decided I was going to train for it of him Ben Smith and one other guy called Dane that were doing a track session to test themselves to give it a go because they'd have the same idea we can't really do much else there's no events on let's give this a crack and i thought this is hilarious no one's ever actually publicly given this a go before and here we are on other sides of the world going at the same time i think adam had actually tried it a few years ago but his mile was like 520 or something um so we we inadvertently ended up in this kind of arms race us versus uk or legs race actually you could say When did you find out you were both training?

16:25Was it right at the start of your blog? So I'd done my testing on the Monday and the Wednesday, and I think I saw the reel on the Sunday. So I was like, this is hilarious. So I messaged Adam. I think I didn't have any followers at the time, so it's not the sort of message you would have taken seriously. But I think I once uploaded my training data, which I think my starting point in the squat was 220, and my starting point on the 500 pounds is 227, so not far to go enough to to be able to just condition myself to get back there and then my starting point the mile was 507 but on a road with a huge tailwind so it gave me enough confidence to commit to it but it was wrong it i definitely wasn't capable of 507 when i started because when i retested my mile for the first time eight weeks later i did 505 so it's like it was but it gave me the sort of the confidence to just go i'm going to commit to this and so we went back and forth a little bit and we were kind of watching the progress ultimately adam got there two weeks before i did and he did a 456 mile before the 500 pound squat two weeks later i did the 500 pound squat into a 458 mile so we did it the other way around which was interesting but the training for it was really rewarding because it really helped me understand how to balance progress in opposing disciplines so i am looking to improve my back squat and improve my mile time simultaneously those are two goals that do not complement one another at all systemically or locally and there were some weeks where i'd have a really bad session in the gym and i was like i'm just battered and i go to the track and i feel amazing and vice versa i feel absolutely amazing in the gym there was one session i had five by 500 at the at the track after 200 for three sets of three the 200 for three sets of three felt like an empty bar i was like i'm done this is i'm i'm flying this is amazing got to track first 500 i thought i was gonna have a heart attack and just fatigue was so high and i had to bin it after the first so it's five by 500 five minutes rest five by 500 and bin after the first five by 500 because like this this is awful because what we were trying to do was to build efficiency and consolidate stresses like we discussed earlier earlier in the week so my main day was monday heavy lifting and decent amount of volume at the track i'd then have a second quality focus session later in the week but it was the real input of effort into those track sessions that was new to me it was fun it was exciting and i liked the rolling with the punches of you can look at this on paper you can plan for this on paper and you can think about it in terms of periodization and just simple programming principles but because these two things are interacting and competing for adaptation you can't really predict on paper you just need to get out there and feel it and i learned a lot about how to program that in general terms but also a personal level what i respond well to what i don't respond well to and the squat moved really well on the day that i did it the mile i i only had one friend at the time that i knew could run a sub five minute mile he was a scrum half rugby player not a runner so i was faced with the decision of do i choose an inexperienced pacer or not have a pacer at all and i chose to have an inexperienced pacer i asked him to take me out in 111 he took me out in 104 so i was fighting for my life on the last two laps of that mile attempt but managed to get it done i think i think if you watch the way i'm running at the end of it it's what I think someone on let'srun.com said, I'd rather keep my six-minute mile than run like a pregnant 83-year-old woman, was how he described my running at the end.

20:13But that's because my legs were basically just completely locked up and tripped over the line, but managed to get it done. And that, from a social media point of view, that sort of put a bit of a flag in the sand online as to, oh, okay, this person is relatively capable of balancing these things. it was a bit of fun with Adam in the States I remember watching that and it was so impressive like watching that how many people have actually done that because I know it's become a lot more popular as far as I'm aware there's two others that I know of that have said they've done that on Instagram but with like watch data rather than hand timers and filmed at an angle where you can't really see what the weight is or what the depth is and things like that so that's not me saying that they haven't done it but doing it in a really sort of verifiable powerlifting condition, track condition sort of way.

21:05As far as I'm aware, it's only Adam and I that have done it in that sort of filmed in a way where you can see for yourself how it's unfolded. Who won the race, by the way? Adam did two weeks beforehand. Two weeks beforehand. So it was funny. I was trying to assess when's he going to go for it, when am I going to go for it. But I... What was the decision making? I think essentially I was six weeks out from when I wanted to give it a go, and I did a 5.05, but it wasn't full send, I think I placed too much emphasis on how much the squat would inhibit the mile with a bit of recovery. I thought the squat would take five seconds off my mile.

21:42Upon reflection, I think the training conditioned me to the point where there was almost no difference. If I'd done the squat, changed my shoes and gone straight away, there would have been a difference. But with an hour or so between, I think realistically, I probably could have done it a week or two sooner. but hindsight is a wonderful thing i don't really care i'm not competitive i like the fact that it was a bit of a paying attention to or how's he playing it what's the strategy but at the end of the day i'm just glad that we both managed to get something cool done and it was it was a nice thing for me at the time as a non-crossfit athlete to be like hey there are other ways to make this happen and i liked the format of 500 five as a neat number pairing so then with the other things i've done 1212 660 that sort of neat number pairing pleases my mind and i think it's just a really fun way of expressing strength and endurance concurrently do you know what this is a crazy fact and i'm going to say it before i forget so you said that you and this adam came up with this idea like on the same time i don't know if you know this but apparently dennis the menace was made on the same day really once one in the us one in the uk and the only difference was like his hair color but it was made like within the same day the name someone like people came up the same sort of the same character so Dennis the menace that's mad I know it's random as fuck but I just yeah yeah I prepared it was that just coming to your head now no no just because you that's a fun fact you didn't want to have loads in the chamber yeah just because you both came up with the idea yeah yeah I think this was before social media yeah it was yeah yeah yeah yeah so I'm sure there's a the American guy probably sued the UK guy that's probably how it went the UK guy went, oh well, what a coincidence.

23:29Jack and if you completed it before Adam, Adam would have sued you. We'll have to ask him. We've spoken since. It was good fun. Look, I like that it's just silly at the end of the day. It's not serious. It's a gym lift and going to the track with your mates. I'm not excited by being in a competitive setting. Since rugby, I've never really got much of a buzz or i've never optimized for winning because it just doesn't i don't know i what winning looks like to me is self-development and being excited excited about my goals and getting there through my own output and not saying that you can't obviously you can't measure that competitively but all i did was make it was just a youtube video really it's kind of all it was really i enjoyed i enjoyed training for it i enjoyed doing it it gave me a real buzz other people appreciated elements of it and it got some other ideas going that have been great life experiences for me but not winning anything i'm not i'm not doing anything that's registered with any governing body but i like the essentially a lot of it's been i grew up and was a powerlifter for a long time under the impression cardio kills your games you cannot do both of these things concurrently can you be elite in both things concurrently no but nobody's ever believed that you can be and i think that's what a lot of people are forgetting at the moment is on twitter especially you see this disproves that the whole hybrid athlete thing is just a fad because this person couldn't be elite in this and elite in this it's not about being elite in both it's about accepting that you can be pretty good at both if that's what you want to do if you want to be elite in something you've got to optimize for that thing you're going to make a lot of sacrifices 100 % yeah a small fraction of people do that that's the key detail but most people are recreational athletes and I don't think being elite at one thing brings happiness really because of the amount of sacrifices you've got to make it's a cost it's a big cost to be the best at something you look at any professional athlete in the world who are at the top of their game and yes they might be happy when they win but they're making a lot of sacrifices whereas the I don't know doing something because you love it and you love like i said you love the endurance stuff and you love the lifting stuff it will make you happier and look that's that's we'll skim over it but i've been very unhappy in the past and that's a big part of why i've done charity fundraising how i got into this world in the first place so i optimize for being happy and doing things that i enjoy and i'm going to stick to my guns on that and a big part of it as well look i make youtube videos i really do enjoy doing that but I'm very conscious that as soon as I start making videos for commercial gain or for what I think other people want to see it's game over because I'm then serving something else rather than waking up excited to create something and train for something and look training is very intertwined with the job now which is which is great but it does mean that it's no longer the escape it used to be for me which is something I'm conscious of because there's some sessions where I'm really focused in, I'm maybe filming it as well, maybe interacting with other people, maybe travel to somewhere for it, whatever it might be.

26:49And those are great. But then there's times that I'm on a long trail run and I just think, wow, it's so good to be outdoors in my own head, not filming this, not worrying about metrics and just appreciating being here. And that's why I got on training in the first place. So what I don't want to do is lose that because I know what my personality is like. And if I became obsessive about winning, and beating other people, I think I'd lose the curiosity and the excitement that actually has got me to this point in the first place. Because, yeah, my goals are unique. A lot of people don't wake up and think, yeah, I'm going to get up and lift at 3 a.m.

27:30before my Ironman. That's dumb. Why would you do that? But, yeah, it seems I'm dumb. I think it's good because, like you say, it's for you and you first. before anything else, before commercial games and stuff like that. You mentioned that you've done a lot for men's mental health. Yep. Can we just touch on the reasons why? Yeah. So my social media page in 2018 was called 24 underscore hours underscore of underscore power because it was a charity fundraising page for the squat challenge that we talked about. So I created that Instagram from scratch as a way of trying to start fundraising. The premise was simple.

28:07Look at how hard my training is. Donate some money, please. aggressively there was some aggression in there if someone said they were going to donate I was on Facebook Messenger saying hello me again and I really enjoyed the process of doing that but I did it because I had previously suffered from depression from 2014 to 2016 that was retrospectively diagnosed because effectively I was a stubborn young man that made my own situation much worse by hiding and repressing the fact that I was pretty unhappy. So I went from being very sociable, very sport-driven, Edinburgh's a small place, grew up in Edinburgh, knew a lot of people, always felt like I fitted in, always felt like I belonged.

28:49Rugby was a huge part of my life, and too many concussions became the end of that, which is a separate conversation because there's a bit of a link being formed between depression and concussion, which is interesting, potentially illuminating in some ways. But not long before I went to uni, rugby was game over you can never play contact sports again so that's when i pivoted into self-driven health and fitness learned about calorie intake learned about how to program for strength training and actually did the personal training qualification and supported the first 15 in the rugby team so i still felt like i was a part of it which was great but i arrived at uni having bought into the fact that go to the best you can possible that's the most important thing and i hadn't even visited durham where i ended up i tried to get into oxford didn't get in went to durham classic and hadn't even been there was no power lifting there was one gym for the whole uni that had one squat rack there was a performance facility downstairs that was a leco equipment everywhere really really well put together but you could only access it if you were in the first or seconds hockey the first or seconds cricket the first or seconds rowing and the first seconds of rugby that was it so arrived at uni to study a course i didn't particularly want to study which was theology and religion because it improved my chances of getting into oxford not because it's what i wanted to study brilliant sport didn't have a community was training on my own and pretty poor facilities felt like it was not conducive to the standards that i wanted and the halls that i was in i just got dealt a bit of a bad hand with everyone around me was lovely don't get me wrong very very pleasant people but i just didn't feel like i really connected or made friends with anyone and after about two or three weeks i started to feel like a bit of a failure because my friends at other places had good little communities good little friendship groups and were doing better at this next stage of our lives i felt very on the back foot quite embarrassed quite ashamed and like a failure really without boring you the details in the middle that got progressively worse over time i got more and more unhappy more and more isolated and the most important thing is did more and more that didn't help myself because I didn't lean on the support network that was available to me loving parents family friends that I could have connected with I was seeing friends at other universities that was that was a nice moment of respite but it wasn't it wasn't making the overall situation better at university in the UK you have to make a decision on where you're living in year two within the first term which is insane because you might meet people that turn out to be psychopaths you never know and you've got a sign with them.

31:30I did make a friend towards the end of first term through the gym who I'm still friends with today who's actually a sub nine hour Ironman athlete now absolute lunatic. He's FTP he's like high threes it's ridiculous and he introduced me to his friends at different halls they'd already signed for somewhere in second year so I was faced with the decision of do I live on my own in private halls in Durham in year two or go and live with friends from Edinburgh in Newcastle the following year and I chose the second option because I wanted to be around people and I didn't want to be I don't know I felt like if I was the guy in private halls people would have thought he's a weirdo why is he on his own he didn't make any friends what again that's kind of how I frame things in my head obviously irrational but I became more and more irrational and moving to Newcastle was great for a little bit but i i was not in a good place mentally i was doing i was doing myself damage with my self-talk i was not helping myself i had lifting which was the thing that was a real anchor for me and was a routine that always stayed my nutrition was always there i was quite good with my sleep because of things like that but i was very socially isolated wasn't enjoying my course wasn't enjoying where i was staying felt disconnected from friends family felt like i'd failed felt like i made the wrong decisions and started to really punish myself in my head for this and kept it all to myself because you're a man this is embarrassing that's how I viewed it towards exam season in second year so 2016 I really everyone started going to the library and my social life kind of became zero and a week went by where I realized that I hadn't I hadn't said a word to a person out loud hadn't interacted with a person other than a Tesco cashier or barista or something in a full week and from that moment onwards it all gets a bit blurry because i think that's where i really started to lose my head a little bit and and lose control over as i said what was rational because i was miserable i was depressed it's been it's been diagnosed afterwards and things got to the point where i it was affecting me physically couldn't lift weights that i should be able to do with my eyes closed couldn't eat couldn't sleep if i was sleeping i'd sleep through alarms it was it was it was a very overwhelming period because i had previously believed that depression was made up that mental health was a load of i would have called it woke rubbish something that people can use to label things that it's just them being lazy or inconsistent or a bit soft and then all of a sudden i was experiencing it physically logic would say at that moment I went oh I was wrong I should reach out to someone and say that I need help but it just sent me further the other way and there was an element of guilt as well because I had a roof over my head I was at a great uni I had friends I had family I could afford food and I felt this way and I felt like I shouldn't feel this way and I was punishing myself for feeling that way because there's people that have it much worse off than I do and all of this culminated in a suicide attempt in May of 2016 and it was another six months before I even told my parents about that so in the recovery from that got back to Edinburgh that summer felt happier immediately and then I lived with those friends in third year in Durham that I'd met in first year and I had a really good third year I got a dog which at uni is a very unconventional move but I felt like I really needed it it was a good friend of mine who I trained with in powerlifting at the time who said I'm getting a poppy from this litter next week you in and in the back of my head I went I really need this I feel a sense of routine structure purpose and a companion with that so I borrowed money from him to pay for the dog reckless decision but one that really really supported me and that got me outdoors it got me interacting with people I was in Newcastle if you walk around with a French bulldog poppy you can have people oh look at this it's fantastic and you're talking and you're like oh yeah and I was speaking to people again well this is amazing and it built my confidence built my confidence I started working in a coffee shop rather than revising on my own in the room and there was a quick turnaround because I started socializing a little bit again got back to Edinburgh had a really good summer with with friends and family and third year I enjoyed it I managed to finish my degree which was a big win straight to London to do a grad scheme and in summer of 2018 I felt myself going backwards again because I just wasn't happy at my job didn't feel sense of purpose didn't feel sense of fulfillment I was still training powerlifting I was traveling an hour each way to a specialist gym but I was working in the beer industry I did Heineken's sales marketing grad scheme and that meant I was drinking more than I usually would my there were lots of events to attend and lots of things like that so it was it was getting in the way of my training and ultimately i wasn't passionate about that industry i'm someone that's always taken what i do very seriously if i care about it and i just felt like i'd i felt like i'd recovered and then very quickly realized oh you're not where you want to be and then got quite unhappy again which is the irony so i took so recovery from 2016 to 2018 about two years where I was just happy to be happy again but I didn't have that spark that drive that ambition that I had arrived at university with in summer of 2018 it came back to me and I realized I wasn't happy in London working this job one day I opened up the laptop and I just got punched in the face with this sort of like white noise and just I don't know I just felt I just felt really nervous anxious and just just i don't know concerned and upset and emotional in that moment and i was like wow okay and it was just it was just it was just my brain sending me a signal like you need to change something you are miserable so i thought okay you've been here before you can very easily say i'll just just just man up and crack on with it because i hadn't seen anyone professionally i hadn't shared with friend with with friends or most of my family about the past experience the only reason i told my parents is because they said why the fuck's there a dog here at christmas and i went okay right take a seat i'll explain because my mom wasn't happy she never wanted a dog and all of a sudden there was a french bulldog puppy and she didn't know the reason why and that's the only reason i actually shared it i didn't feel like i was as a man ready to share that yet but i'm glad that i did how did they respond by the way completely positively they were horrified they were horrified that i like for whatever reason i didn't feel like it It was something I could share with them, but it wasn't a them problem.

38:07It was a me problem. And they love that dog to pieces now. They love that dog to pieces because he represents a lot personally, but also he's now a core part of the family, which is great. But again, it's just the lack of logic with it all is that they were so upset that I felt I couldn't lean on them, obviously not understanding that that was a me problem, not a them problem. but it just feeds into the lack of logic from my end is that i could have done and i made things worse by not doing so so that day in 2018 in that coffee shop i decided that you've got to do something so last time what were you missing you're missing a sense of fulfillment what can you do to find one what are you good at you're good at squatting squatting has always been my strongest movement best squatting competitions 260 and that was sort of around then that was at my peak strength uh i was a fair amount heavier mind you uh that's what working in the beer trade will do for you but it was uh it was a moment i thought i'm good at squatting let's look up some statistics okay movember i've done some stuff with them in the rugby in the past i like the fact the moustache is kind of funny it kind of disarms the seriousness of the situation full day of work on heineken's dime sorry about that one uh sat my laptop planning out what i could do and i landed on i'm going to try and squat half a million kilos in 24 hours phone movember they connected me with Aussie who's been a great great contact of mine there and then the following day made the Instagram page said I am doing this on my birthday at the end of this year for November and I shared I was doing it for men's mental health and suicide prevention I didn't share why but in the two weeks that followed I had about 50 to 60 messages from friends of friends at uni friends of my dad people I'd gone to primary school with people I'd gone to school with and become disconnected from saying really really important really important you're doing this really pleased that you're shouting about this cause really really happy that you're doing this i didn't expect you to do something like this it's really important to me at the moment no one was detailed in why but there were enough blokes that reached out to me that made me go holy shit you're not the only person that has felt this way there are clearly other people that are a little bit discontented in their own lives and enough people messaged me support for the project as a concept and for the cause that was underpinning it that it gave me the confidence to just go you know what this is fulfilling and important to me to do this project justice I think I should share why so two weeks later through a personal Facebook account and my personal Instagram at the page at the time I just said look this is the reason why I'm doing this and the amount of support and surprise that that came from that was incredible and reinforced again how not common but how much less unique what i thought my experience was it was a lot more people felt the same way or had had similar experiences so from there it was full steam ahead to just just try and make that project happen build the wings as i fly made it up as i went along uh really really good fun training was great show opened me up to this world built social media from there um just by saying it was just a training diary and then donate please um so yeah that that was that really and look it's been it's been i think the thing that's important to me is is i made things being open and honest with people around you with your own mental well-being is not the solution to a lot to all the crisis that men face but as blokes we make our own situations much worse by not doing that and i am confident that i would not have got to the point where i felt suicidal had i lent on the support network available to me more and that's really the message i've always tried to put across with these is that i mean i've got tattooed on me be a man of more words was the first was the first campaign that was a slogan for it because that's all it really needs it just needs you to be a little bit more open honest transparent with yourself first of all but then with the people around you because i don't think we give people enough credit if if you're if you're close with someone and they need support you should support them and if you're going through a tough time you should trust in the people around you if you're not going through a tough time you should try and present yourself as someone that can be relied upon if someone is going through a tough time and that's always what i've tried to convey with the with the projects is i'm doing a difficult thing and i'm talking about something that some some blokes might still believe is weak or difficult to talk about but opposing those two things is a good way to get the message across and more importantly now a lot of people are managing their mental well-being or learning more about themselves through endurance goals through training goals and that narrative has become even more intertwined which I think is really cool because endurance training is a really good bouncer for me on a weekly basis just to get some clarity in my head so yeah all of the endurance events from a men's mental health and suicide prevention point of view come from that experience that I've had because I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and there's some people I don't like but there's so much of my experience that could have been made better had I not fallen into the trap of traditional masculinity without emotional awareness or context because i don't think drive resilience strength being a provider all of these things are objectively bad about traditional masculinity if they're paired with emotional awareness contextual understanding and a bit of critical thinking if you just bullishly go at everything with your head down without coming up for air or thinking about anything that can be a damaging way to interact with who you are as a man but if you if you look at things what they are and develop emotional awareness along the way I am now better at achieving what I'm ambitious with because I look at it from how does this make me feel how do I interact with this and what does this what is this serving in me?

44:28Is it serving something else or is it actually supporting what I want from life and what success looks like to me? So I think a warped sense of masculinity and success nearly killed me, which is why I'm very conscious of reflecting on those things regularly now. But most importantly, I think that's why I take so much joy in these self-driven events because it's me versus me and is a nice reminder of how much you can actually have power over yourself with practice an open mind learning meaning on other people being open being honest being transparent i wouldn't have got through any of these endurance events if i didn't have a support team around me and i wasn't open and honest with them and i think that's a really nice metaphor or summary for how i could have handled things better in the past i think handling stuff like that like you say being open being honest Are there any other things or pieces of advice that you'd give to someone that is going through a difficult time?

45:27Like you say, I think one of the main things that I took away from what you just said is having purpose in something that you're doing. Yeah, I think, I don't want to generalise obviously because I think it's easy to do so with mental health as a concept. But I believe that purpose is really, purpose is the thing that when I was missing it made me the most unhappy. that might be unique to me but I a lot of my friends a lot of people I interact with are very purpose-driven if they're missing that you see a downturn in them so most people listening to this podcast will be purpose-driven they'll be goal-driven that's why they're here and that's why they're listening so I think I can be a little bit more generalized in sort of my opinions on this one which is that it's very easy to get sucked into the monotony and the the routine of day-to-day life and it seems very difficult to find things away from that to serve you as an individual yes we have bills to pay we have bosses to report to we have families to look after all of these things but to be the best version of ourself for all of those things and to make sure that we i think as jimmy carr said enjoy the passage of time purpose of life there are difficult experiences that we need to go looking for to find out what is exciting to us it's difficult to create time to go for a run it's difficult to create time to go to the gym it's difficult to create time to go to a pottery class it's difficult to create time to go on holiday with your family it's difficult to create the finances for some of these things sometimes but the difficulty is the thing that is going to allow you to find out what makes you tick and what makes you happier and I'm confident that when you're happier you will be better at navigating the challenges that were there in the first place so what I mean by that is that things if you don't feel like you've got anything like that's really driving you forward or giving you a sense of purpose you have a lot more control over changing that than I think we give ourselves credit for.

47:18And people around you are much more reliable than you might think. And even if they're not immediate friends and family, there are lots of really great resources out there just to talk things through. I've always been a huge fan of being outdoors zone 2 because it's where I'm kind of honest with myself in my own head. I know people that write things down. I know people that speak to their partners. I know people that speak to their friends. I don't demonise alcohol for example because I know that a lot of lads will connect most over a pint or two and that's where they're most comfortable five a side, paddle, gym classes, whatever it might be use these as opportunities to just try and be a bit more open and honest with how you are with the people you spend time with, I think men especially just ask slightly deeper questions because it's easy to go how are you mate, yay all good thanks, how are you, yay all good mate thanks, yeah I see the football, all that I was fortunate enough to be part of a Rome Camp documentary called Our Silent Emergency in 2021 too I think recently and he was essentially exploring why his producer, best friend Joe he was trying to figure out if he could have done anything differently before he died by suicide and I was the part of the documentary that was the survivor so he was essentially quizzing me on one of his big questions was how could I commit to that knowing I was leaving people and family behind and things, which wasn't something I'd thought about much prior to that conversation, was another piece of my recovery to kind of process that.

48:48But in that documentary, there was a group of friends that were a group of five that were then a group of four, and they had a pact between themselves that whenever they ask how someone's doing, they always make sure to ask twice. Because as Brits, we give the superficial answer, and then you need to dig deeper for the real answer. and I think more often than not if we are fortunate enough to be in a good place with our mental well-being we have the opportunity to dig a little bit deeper with the social interactions that we have and be a very reliable support mechanism for someone that might need you to dig a little bit deeper if you're not in a good place then you can have a lot more of an impact on your own day-to-day well-being through routine structure a couple of difficult decisions in terms of maybe doing certain things changing certain things whatever it might be that's a prevention if we need to get into sort of the the cure side of things i really would encourage at first instance just just to be open and honest and transparent with someone that you trust and work with them to try and figure out how you can find a sense of purpose if it is a sense of purpose that is the reason that you're unhappy if it goes beyond that i wouldn't want to comment because that's where it maybe gets into medical or other reasons.

50:00And obviously that's no expertise from my end. But the conversation I've had over the years is a lot of lads in their 20s to 30s feel a little bit lost and they go through the motions, but they aren't the sort of people that like going through the motions. But they get so used to going through the motions and so used to keeping that to themselves that they make themselves unhappy. When in reality, if you're hanging around with a lot of people feeling the same way, you've got a lot more in common. and it just takes one or two of you to have that initial difficult conversation for it to then become an easy conversation.

50:32So all I'd say is I have come on more as a man and developed more as a man by having the deeper conversations about why I feel a certain way or why someone feels a certain way than I have by not doing so. And I view it as being a performance enhancer rather than a hindrance. I used to view vulnerability as the biggest weakness possible. That was a huge part of why 2014 to 2016 was so tough, because I felt vulnerable and I felt pathetic. But now I actively seek vulnerability. I was super vulnerable in my recent charity event. Very vulnerable, very exposed, nowhere to hide, brain wasn't working.

51:13And that vulnerability is a superpower because it gives me lessons, it gives me experiences, and it forces me to be open, honest, and transparent so that the people around me can help me figure out a way through. and yeah i think i think that's all i'd say really because i think i i know what my experience was like i know how to communicate with people that are like me but i wouldn't want to prescribe or give advice beyond that to people that might not interact with the world or their goals or ambition and things like that in the same way that i do because it's everyone's individual which is the best thing in the world but i don't think we celebrate that enough as individuals but also i I think is complex in the sense that it's difficult to know how we can support others.

51:59But I think openness, honesty, transparency, and asking deeper questions, or just digging a little bit deeper rather than the, yeah, mate, all good, cheers, you, and move on, because we're very good at doing that. We are. And for the people that have never really experienced depression, because... Or who label depression in the wrong words. Sometimes I've been guilty of it, and I'm like, to a friend, I'm like, oh, I'm depressed. And I'm not depressed, I'm sad. Yeah. Like, there's a difference. In my eyes, sadness might last a day. Like, depression doesn't last a day. Like, it's different. Would you just be able to explain, like, the difference of what, for someone who's never actually experienced it?

52:42Yeah. Because, like you said before, you said, like, beforehand, it was like, oh, just, if someone was depressed, you'd just say, it's on to man up, or you just, like, you didn't get it. Yeah. But until you actually experience it, you probably don't get it. Sadness is an emotion. Anxiety is an emotion. Happiness is an emotion. We have, every day we experience ups and downs. And being sad is an emotion. And I think that comes from a specific situation most of the time. I'd describe depression, again, there's probably a clinical definition here, but there's chemical and then the sort of the cognitive side of things, which is something I won't try and explain off the dome.

53:24But depression is an overwhelming state of being that kind of consumes your entire existence. Whereas being sad can compound into depression if there's no space given from it. And I think that's the thing. If I think back to my experiences, I was sad in the first couple of weeks because I felt like I was failing. but there were a lot of things I could have done to make me happy that might have maybe balanced against that to the point where I didn't just go on this downward spiral. But from a clinical point of view, I actually wouldn't feel confident giving a really clear-cut answer as to what the difference is between sadness in a moment and depression in a situation.

54:10But I think the nuance from my end is that, yeah, I think language, I don't emphasize this too much, I think the language around things, the one that I do try and focus people to change their language on is committed suicide. Committed implies criminality. And died by suicide is a better way to frame that because it almost, it doesn't imply that the person that found themselves in that situation has committed a crime or whatever it might be, or committed to something that's interpreted in a certain way. That's something I'm always keen to avoid with language. And like you said, I'm depressed. I mean I've never taken that personally but I am, it's a nuance that for someone It's said too much It's said too much or that's depressing or something like that I think, yeah, look I always feel like I'm in a bit of a micro depression post big events and my routine, rhythm, sleep, everything is off and I just don't feel energy or passion for anything and I think it's it's for me the way it manifests is and look it comes and goes, I am an intense bloke i i'm a i'm a deep thinker i'm very analytical i'm very ambitious i am i'm all in on everything and i'm susceptible to ups and downs peaks and troughs and recently because i'm in this sort of post event period there's always going to be ebbs and flows and i don't feel like i've been able to get into a good routine i'm waking up i'm not feeling full of energy that track session today really enjoyed it because it was the first bit of intensity and sort of energy I've had in a while but I've not been able to do that because I've forced recovery and all these little things but today's a good example of there are so many things I can do that give me joy and give me energy that can make me feel better in the moment but that doesn't change the fact that right now I'm kind of in a bit of a a lull yeah but I wouldn't call it depression because it's self-inflicted and you can track back to where it's come from the source but the the sort of Feelings are similar, but I think, yeah, for me, when you stop, I'll flip the question a little bit into something I'm comfortable being clear on, which is if you stop finding joy in the things that give you fulfillment, purpose, and excitement on a day-to-day basis, and you struggle to find passion for the things you truly care about, that's when I'd look out for yourself and try and have a conversation with people, because whenever I feel like nothing is really making me happy on a day-to-day basis, I'm just doing things, that's when I sort of own up to friends or family and say, look, I might have too much on at the moment or we need to get this boxed off so it's one burden that's removed or whatever it might be.

57:03But I view that as self-awareness, emotional awareness and self-development rather than weakness. And I think for men, we can do a lot of damage by framing things in the wrong way, but we can do ourselves a lot of good by framing things the right way. Ultra endurance. I can be in an absolute hole and frame the next 100k to go in an ultra as, this is it, this is everyone, I can't possibly do this, the pain suddenly feels worse, the emotions feel worse, everything's worse. Because if I know I've got 1k until the next checkpoint, I've got a k to do. All right, fine, I can do that. and the emotional swing that comes from just how i frame that thing it doesn't change the outcome it doesn't change what i'm working towards but it changes my interaction with it and how i keep moving forwards and yeah i i i think if you can try and frame if you can try and frame

57:59If you're wondering what it is you're doing for what purpose in a positive light, then you've got more control over the situation. But I think the main thing is sadness, I would probably argue, could be mitigated by doing something you enjoy. if you feel like you can't find the enjoyment in that thing or you've lost the passion and you constantly feel sad that's where it's maybe worth having a conversation with someone phoning a hotline speaking to friends speaking to family whatever it might be um yeah i'll look i'm gonna i'm gonna remind myself afterwards of what the actual clinical nuance is between the two because it's uh it's a good thing to be able to explain to people and it's interesting because like a lot of people say that we live in like a snowflake culture at the moment and things like this and i know it's kind of like a touchy subject but um i think it just needs to be like like you say defined a little bit more like depression is a little bit more serious than just being sad for a day yeah it is but i do think i do think some maybe this is just very microcosm of my own existence on social media but I think people are starting to associate now political opinions or societal opinions to people that talk about mental health.

59:21And I don't talk about mental health in a way that is reductive of the individual's ability to support themselves with it. I'm quite agency driven. I'm quite ownership driven. And my interpretation of how I've done damage to my mental wellbeing is through that of a warped sense of masculinity or definition of success. That doesn't therefore mean that I think being ambitious, being driven, trying to succeed, trying to move things forward, going all in on things you care about, working hard, I don't think all those things are bad I think your interaction and relationship with them is bad but I think there are corners of the internet now that are now seeing, talking about mental well-being as let's just calm everything down, we shouldn't be working too hard, we shouldn't be doing this we should be reining it in and I don't personally buy into that and I hope that people don't interpret any of my messaging as that way because I I think it's just I think it's just a case of I don't like how this is more a general conversation but I think opinions on one thing now are being aligned with opinions on other things by by certain certain people and I think that's where the polarization of opinion in in the world now has got so so crazy that I

1:00:51it's things like I've seen I've seen media outlets criticize criticize young boys that focus on going to the gym because it's a form of toxic masculinity and it can be it can be that's the key if they have a really bad relationship with it they're doing it for body image or they're doing it because they think it's going to get them laid or because they do it because they think it's going to get them a patek or whatever it might be i've got to look like this person on the internet whatever it might be that is a negative relationship with it i at 17 18 had a phenomenal relationship with the gym and I know that my friends did too it was self-development it was ownership it was control it was understanding our body understanding how to get the best out of ourselves we weren't worshipping manosphere morons on the internet we were just going right this is fun we get together we train we've got control over our nutrition we've got control over our training we're making progress this supports our other goals in life this is great so what I don't like is people labeling individual things with broad brush strokes because of bad examples elsewhere and I think that's where interaction with interaction with it's all individual at the end of the day all I encourage people to do is to better understand how they interact with their own mental health so they can make informed decisions as to how they can better support it or support others beyond that it's too individual to really give broad prescriptions and yeah I have seen some narratives online of people that sort of argue that being ambitious going after big goals especially in a gym in an endurance setting is inherently damaging to someone's mental health or they're doing it for the wrong reasons and i just i don't buy into some people might some people will in the same way that some people are criminals some people like to play rugby some people like to play football we're all very different i think it's it's not it's not a big point but i think it's just there yeah i want my narrative on mental health to be that through through some difficulty there is a lot of gain to lie on the other side of awkward conversations challenging conversations that become easy conversations through practice and through going out and looking for purpose and fulfillment because life isn't ever going to be easy we don't live in a perfect world far from it it's probably getting worse at the moment as well and i mean historically we've never been a perfect world have we but i think we've only got and i view this differently now because i'm viewing this as round two at life you've only got one opportunity to maximize how much you get out of your existence and if you make that more difficult to understand because you don't acknowledge that you are a human being with emotions and volatility and a brain and well-being and he's managed i don't think you're going to be able to get the most out of it unless you commit to that understanding so it doesn't mean you need to be depressed or you need to have a bad episode to think about that but I think it's day-to-day things like how does this make me feel do I enjoy this am I doing this for the right reason and yeah it's something I think about a lot but I'm kind of in a weird place at the moment where I'm in that post-event recovery and I'm thinking about a lot of these things myself because it's what do I want to do when I'm fully recovered what's going to make me excited what's making me get out of bed in the morning and feel buzzing and what are the things that i'm doing day to day because they need done or because i'm doing them for the sake of doing them it's important to feel them lows as well because without the lows you don't get the highs so you after an event you feeling pretty low at the moment because like you say you're recovering you can't just move straight on to the next challenge because you need to let your body recover yeah um it's important because that makes your goals and achieving your goals so much better like if you were just winning all the time or if he was just achieving a goal after goal after goal i bet it got pretty boring to be fair i think so and i think i i think i think that's the thing i appreciate most about all this stuff now is that i i mapped out what success looked like from school to uni to grad scheme to job to promotion to house to holiday to another promotion to car to second house whatever the fuck it was this linear progression that I had faith in and at an macroeconomic level I actually think that doesn't function as well as it did in our parents generation for example but I put faith in the wrong definition of success definition of success for me now is kind of how much do I get to enjoy day to day and what are the things that are preventing me from doing that obviously commercially it's all quite intertwined and bills need paid people need paid and all that sort of stuff but i try and enjoy things that i'm doing because i know that i'm best at them when i enjoy them and it means that when the lows come they're much easier to manage because it's all part of the bigger picture of the thing that i'm passionate about and i'm confident that everyone is passionate about something but it is easy to be worn down by the challenges of day-to-day life to forget about the things that you're passionate about or to to believe that because you become an adult where your responsibilities increase i don't have time for my passions anymore or you or you forget that you are a person that needs to be looked after as well and the reason i'm the example i of here is i have a conversation with athletes a lot that are really bought into their first or doing an ultra and they say oh they're they might have a bit of friction with their with their wife or partner over why why they're doing that why are they giving up so much time why are you leaving me and the kids on a saturday morning or them not understanding what it's giving that person and i have a lot of conversation where essentially it boils down to that individual is a much better version of themselves if they're serving their own goals and they feel like they're achieving something.

1:06:40They come back from their four-hour ride on a Saturday morning, they're the best dad that they could possibly be the rest of the weekend and their time is blocked out. They're not sat there on Saturday evening thinking, God, I really wish I was training for something that I care about. And that doesn't make them, that isn't bad. That's not, they're not thinking about their kids. It's kind of, you've got to serve yourself. Put your own oxygen mask on first sort of mentality is to be the best version of yourself to those around you. You've got to look after yourself. But it's our job to try and communicate that effectively to people around us why things are important to us and why our passions are things that we're passionate about.

1:07:13Because, I mean, I don't care about certain things that other people care about. But I'm not. And this is where factions between certain training disciplines makes me laugh. Road cyclists hate runners. Road cyclists probably hate gravel cyclists. Powerlifters hate bodybuilders. Can't we all just be happy that we're all passionate about something? that's that's how it's not that serious is it it's not that serious things aren't that serious and i think um but it does become serious when you feel like in your own life you can't you can't get any wins on a day-to-day basis that you can measure and i think that's what training in the modern world gives people is life is very gray clock in and clock out kids picked up from school routine weekend whatever it might be it's very churn churn churn churn whereas did you lift the weight or didn't you did you hit the pace or didn't you did you do the two hours or didn't you is a really nice way for us as individuals to go that's a big win today and it makes the churn easier it makes you better at the churn it makes you better at the routine and it makes you a happier healthier version of yourself and i think that's important i think fulfillment and purpose are things that we don't give enough credit to the value of in the modern world and i think it's it's almost being able to pursue those things obviously a great position to be in and not everyone can do that instantaneously but i think you shouldn't feel bad for feeling like you want a sense of purpose or fulfillment and that's what i optimize for i think that's round two at life you could offer me a certain amount of money to do a certain job that i'd never take because if it doesn't make me fulfilled it doesn't give me a sense of purpose it doesn't serve success to me but previous version of me younger version of me it would have always been what's the most prestigious what's the most successful what's what's the highest value etc etc and that was the wrong interaction with success for me as an individual i want to touch on the most recent challenge you that you've done yep we just be able to explain to the people what you've done 10 year anniversary correct so as i've said may 2016 was suicide attempt and may of 2026 was 10 years on so my brain and my iphone notes took me to 10 ironman distance triathlons in 10 days in 10 cities and that started on april the 30th and finished on may the 9th exactly 10 years to of the day so we went edinburgh glasgow belfast dublin liverpool manchester leeds cardiff bristol london and it was chaos it was absolute chaos but it was it's been something i've been thinking on for a while i started my prep for it formally in january but i was kind of easing into it in october onwards kind of and it's the first time that i've deprioritized lifting heavy and sort of trying to hold on to as much strength as I can in pursuit of an endurance goal.

1:10:12So I gave up being a hybrid athlete, you could say, temporarily. I gave up being a hybrid athlete to be a shit triathlete over a long distance, but that's the way of looking at it. And massive logistical project, massive team effort, lots and lots of work to bring it to life because a big part of the project was I wanted to try and create – I was trying to model the project on if I as a young man had seen this when I was struggling, would it have got me out the house to come and get involved? so we tried to make the message very intertwined with look this is for mental health and suicide prevention we've got private swimming pools private cycle tracks and private athletics tracks for you to come along and get involved for any distance any pace because it's all in a little loop so if you're moving slowly if you're moving quickly i'll see you in the next one and we'll interact that way and the aim was to get people along that may be struggling or may want to show up for the cause and kind of just send a message that if you see 60 people at a running track supporting a project for men's mental well-being to anyone that sees that it sends a message that okay maybe there are people out there that care for example so I mean yeah where do I even begin with the actual project itself Edinburgh was a great day felt like I woke up at my own house coffee in my own kitchen drove to my unusual swimming pool and then cycled along the coast to a racetrack beautiful weather really really good bunch of people great day kind of full sense of security didn't feel like i really began um so edinburgh was edinburgh was great really really enjoyed it short drive through to glasgow and then good day in glasgow as well the cycle track was 176 laps of a 1k loop on the bike which was mentally quite draining but as much as i complained about that at the time things got much worse so i probably should have complained about it then but yeah mentally that was tough that was tough uh but glasgow was a great day look highlight of that one for me was there was a there was a 13 year old that came along um i saw him sort of hanging about by the fence at one point thought is he here for us or is he worried that the tracks um being used and he doesn't want to interfere i saw him on the phone and they came running over introduced himself really really good head on his shoulders um very honest with me about where he was struggling at school and why he loved running and why he stopped playing rugby and there was there was no he wasn't having any issues it was just navigating the world as a teenager and it made me think back to when i was his age i thought fucking that's hard being that age isn't it you're thinking about a lot but he showed up on his own to an event based on somebody saw on social media and we had a really good conversation i think you know what i was like that that that is a massive boost that you as a young man have a brilliant head on your shoulders you clearly interact with the right content in the right way on the internet which is a is an issue i didn't grow up with i didn't have to navigate doom scrolling and all of this just stimulation from the from the internet now but that was great

1:13:13belfast belfast was where things started to generate i think because that was the first time that we so that was the ferry on and off so we had a drive from glasgow to the coast onto the ferry, ferry over, and then short drive to where we were staying for the following morning. I'd forgotten to brush my teeth when I went to sleep on the way to the ferry. We got onto the ferry, stopped, woke up, thought I'll go and brush my teeth, and didn't have any contact lenses in, so I couldn't really see, fumbling around like a mole. I looked out the window and saw Chris trying to scale, who was the head of logistics, he'd taken the ladder off the RV double bed that was up top, and he was trying to scale it up to the top the hallway without falling over.

1:13:52I saw him have a few good attempts, and he got to the top and just fully, fully stacked in. I thought, ah. I looked to my right. My brother was in a deck chair sipping a beer. I thought, what the fuck? Then Ed was over there smoking a cigarette. Doesn't smoke. And then someone was filming this, and then Tom was just laughing in the front seat of the car. I thought, what the fuck is going on? This is just chaos. But at that point, I thought, again, there's little moments along the way where I thought, as hard as this is going to be and as hard as it is, this is just funny. We're just a bunch of lads just dicking around, really.

1:14:22And it's for a good cause. There were points where it was serious, but looking out the window, I just thought, you know what? This will be a great memory for us all, because this scene that I'm squinting and looking at is just ridiculous. Woke up in Belfast outside a police station. I was wondering why there were so many cars going around the RV, but I realised it was because it was a police station, so I didn't put the drone up that morning. Got to the pool. the Belfast support of the pool was great the bike I was on my own for pretty much all of it and it was a loop around an industrial estate when you turn right onto the industrial estate the road surface was awful like as bad as I've ever been on a bike it was shaking my bike so I had to screw up my bike four or five times water bottles were flying off screws were coming it was really really bad and just absolute monster of a headwind on that side bit of a tailwind on the other side but it was a tough day on the bike and we realised that the wheels, the spare wheels that I'd jumped through hoops to get ready for the start line by driving all across Scotland to get them sorted with stock and everything had been left in Edinburgh.

1:15:28So when I had my first puncture and thought, let's just change the wheel, and they went, wheels? And I was like, you fucking better tell me where the wheels are right now. I know, I think they're in Edinburgh. So that wasn't great. So that was the first dip emotionally, was about 120k into the bike ride in Belfast. I had a bit of a dip. Victoria Park, where Stephen Scullion has done a lot of training there. Really, really good park. I turned up and thought, this would be a great place to do a threshold run. So let's do a slow marathon around it. But there was a really, really good turnout there.

1:16:00So friendly, people in Belfast, people bringing baked goods, people with their kids. It was brilliant. Really, really nice day as well. Got that done. Drive down to Dublin. I woke up airborne at 3 in the morning in Dublin when we hit a speed bump which was interesting and then Dublin South David Lloyd very kindly accommodated us they were the only private facility that we needed to use the rest of them were sort of public funded and things like that so it was a bit of a smaller turnout for that swim and then the Dublin bike was really really quite draining because on paper we thought it was going to be quite a fast bike track and we were hoping to get the first ferry that would get us into Liverpool the following day at 1 in the morning.

1:16:43If we got the second ferry, we'd get into Liverpool the following morning at 4 in the morning for a 5am swim start. So we wanted to get that first ferry. So I got to the cycle track, did a lap with Tom, camera guy, at decent tilt around the loop and to go 30 kilometers an hour around that loop in the in the wind that it was exposed to was 247 watts i thought fuck my brief is basically my brief is basically no higher than 190 200 at any time really so that was quite disheartening because i accepted at like kilometer 25 of the bike that you're not getting the first ferry so you now need to mentally process that we have one guy called damien come along who was great and then the team sort of subbed in just for some bike support as we went.

1:17:29Thankfully, we discovered my brother was still an absolute weapon on the bike and held 340 watts for 90 minutes. Prick. He hasn't rode a bike since 2020. So that was very useful. But again, that was fun because having my brother riding a bike, watching around corners was like watching Bambi on ice. But then I was looking at my power data like, this is just, this is insulting, Jamie. Why are you doing this? Got through the bike. The energy cycled through the city centre of Dublin to get to the track, which was interesting. I mean, it felt like a proper commute, dipping, diving all over the place.

1:18:00Got to the track in Dublin. Energy was amazing. People playing music. I think there were people that had three or four beers by that point. Someone had done the Dublin City Half Marathon that morning. Had been at the pub and then was here. So what's going on? This is brilliant. But there was a guy that did 60K, just sent it the whole time. A lot of people did the marathon. Really, really good energy. A lot of very open and honest reasons for being there too, which is great. so one car left early to get the first ferry and then we left and essentially just just tried to get there as early as we could so i could get as much sleep as i could and i was very worried going into liverpool because it was the only open water swim it was bank holiday monday no facilities would even consider opening for us and the water was going to be 11.7 degrees which is cold that is very cold the keltman water is 12.6 to 13 degrees and that's like a cold water swim and whenever i've done that before i felt i've always felt my temperature drop at about three three k but i was my main concern going into this was that my body was under so much stress and fatigue that i'd get in the cold water and just immediately go into shock because it's a real thing cold water shock is a real genuinely real thing and and whilst i could easily say i'm experience in open water i felt it enough i've never gone into it this fatigued and this just done in so my concern was i was going to feel that cold shock and my body was just going to fuck this mate i've had enough but arrived beautiful morning and funnily enough the first the location my first ever open water swim in 2019 so quite a nice full circle moment there my parents were there because it was it was down the road from where they live and the swim was actually it was challenging but it was great my temperature did drop at 3k quite dramatically what'd you do at that point i well you could if you were doing something longer you could get out do burpees press up something like that to bring your core body temperature out but i had essentially for the for the world record the guinness world record it was to ironman cost off times so the swim had to be done within two hours if i got out and tried to get my temperature back up to get back in i would have lost half an hour 40 minutes and timed out so at 3k i thought i just need to get this done you wear like a thicker wetsuit yeah so i had i had um i didn't have you can get neoprene vests that go under your wetsuit i didn't have one of them because i ordered one that was too small i couldn't get it over my neck um and they didn't have stock of a bigger size so that was just poor planning on my part but i had thick shorts on neoprene gloves neoprene boots and yeah it was my torso and then kind of just my core body temperature that started to drop so i think with a neoprene you start cramping or anything no no issues there thankfully um because i know that's the problem isn't it yeah like open water swimming i had that i had that a lot at the start i haven't had that for years though thankfully um i did have a lot a lot at the start with my swimming it was very frustrating pushing off in the pool and oh god and then you're kind of floating about with one leg yeah you're trying to scull you apparently apparently something to do with the cold apparently keeping your core tight so your extremities pull blood from your extremities and then the lactate builds up if you contract generally it then it locks up but if you're if you're moving consistently and well practiced because yeah as you said exactly that mechanism if you then contract suddenly like if i squeeze my hamstring it would go um so you've got to be careful getting out that if you if you push up or anything that's where you can go in here and stuff like that so yeah at 3k i was like i can feel my core body temperature dropping i'm starting to shiver in the water here that doesn't feel like a good sign but 850 meters to go might as well just get this done and then figure it out once the swim's done and did exactly that temperature was bad took me about 40 minutes my temperature to get workable again and really get moving on the bike without shivering and and chattering like a maniac um bike was good that day i had a guy called cameron come along that was a was a great lad he had a personal reason for being there and and he pulled me along nicely we were side by side for a lot of it it was good fun a few few other people jumped in too which was great and then the run was in Birkenhead Park which is actually quite hilly but it made it quite rhythmic where it was walk the hills run the flats run the downhills and it became pretty rhythmic bang on time really but the main thing was I was so so anxious and worried about that swim that the rest of the day kind of didn't matter because I was just so buzzing to have got that swim done and at the end of the day halfway mark excellent and liverpool to manchester short drive i can sleep in a fixed position no ferries for an extended period of time i was thinking this is gonna be five hours of sleep in a static position it's gonna be unreal woke up in manchester and brain felt better but body was starting to feel pretty battered at this point manchester was good swim cycling out of manchester towards three sisters race circuit which isn't far from here i don't think it's not too far that was a really really good bike day really really good bike day so sean conway who's done 105 in 105 days um he came to the run in liverpool and then was at the bike in manchester as well he's been a big help with getting over the line and yeah really reinforcing to me that the worst part about this whole project for you is going to be the sleep deprivation and the travel oh great okay cool thanks you all that really really fills me with confidence um i couldn't have done 10 in 10 in one location that would have been horrendous i could have done but it would have been awful and pointless but Manchester was a good day.

1:23:25There was a lot of people there at the bike track for a good stint. The Three Sisters employees were great. They were really up for it. And, I mean, commuting out of Manchester, I was fully, fully nearly killed. There was someone that was on their phone behind me, I think, that came up at about 50, 60 miles an hour. And I was very neutral to it because I was fatigued, but he swerved and honked his horn at the last minute. And I just thought he could only have been distracted and then looked up and gone, oh shit, and just honked his horn instinctively. But if he'd turned right and there was a car there, it would have hit the car.

1:23:59If he hadn't looked up, it would have gone through the back of me. That's one thing I actually keep thinking back to in the past couple of weeks, is I just get a moment thinking about that was a close call and would have just been someone not paying attention, I assume. But other than that, Manchester was a good day until about 25k into the run, where my shins started to show up. So Tibant started to get pissed off and I started taping them up, started trying to understand how we were going to manage things moving forwards. I needed to strap up my patella tendon as well on the bike because it was starting to hurt a little bit at the top of my pedal stroke.

1:24:36But strapping got me through to the end of the Manchester run day. And then again, Manchester to Leeds, not too big a trip and static sleep. So, oh, and it was a slightly later start in Leeds the following day as well. so day seven leeds and it was a 21.3 meter pool which for a sporting uni leeds carnegie really weird don't know who signed off on that one but um it did the job good bunch of lads in there and then we went to the brown lees funded and supported cycle track which was great my logic was leeds is very hilly they're going to make the cycle track pancake flat nope hilliest cycle track of the whole project great but really really enjoyed leeds because there were like 15 lads on the bike and they were all there for the whole thing which was cool and we were in a group or we were separated into small groups or i was on my own it was it was a perfect day of big unit small units solo come together break it up just to manage things mentally weather was great wasn't too windy and it was quite rhythmic because you went up a nine meter elevation hill came around and you had a decent long stretch of downhill so it was the first day that had me three miles really which was nice.

1:25:44I mean, it wasn't a huge amount, but I could spin and not worry about pedalling for a little bit, which was nice. Then got to the running track in Leeds, and frustratingly, we had a private booking. This had been communicated over email that there would be a group of six and a group of eight at 3 and 4 p.m. However, they didn't communicate that with everyone else, so there were lots of other groups at the track wondering why we were in lane one, wondering why we were moving slowly wondering why certain things were happening more and more people turned up it was a bit of a mess for about two hours where communications were getting quite intense there were some very entitled and rude interactions with people that essentially we were allowing to be there because of the private booking the staff at carnegie didn't handle it particularly well to make everyone's life easier to the point where it got a little bit heated crisp dealt with it well and people were explaining like we do have a private booking here there should be signs up they aren't up i acknowledge that but they're in lane one doing this for this reason and like yeah you you can you can be in the outside but don't tell people off for being in lane one or being in lane two because that's where they are we are booked and paid to be here so that wound me up for about two hours where i kind of went a bit feral and moved too quickly and didn't really eat or drink much for two hours so that was the only example of like an external stressor pissing me off and having an impact which is good because we did things can like external stresses can have a big impact but that was the only time that was a problem but don't hold it against them just a great example of clear communication is kind and effective for everybody involved if you make it vague it can just snowball into a bigger issue so finished in leeds relatively late and then leads to cardiff drive this was the day we were dreading.

1:27:33That's a biggie. Longest drive of the whole project. I was of course not asleep in the back of a moving RV. Definitely ratchet strapped down safely of course if anyone's watching and wondering that doesn't sound like a sensible thing to do. It was not but nonetheless. Sleeping in the back of a moving RV. Left Leeds at 10ish and then my legs were being shaken awake at 4 in the morning by Chris and I thought I woke up in Cardiff. On paper we'd always known Cardiff was going to be the toughest day. but when my eyes opened that morning, I was just, this cannot be real life. This cannot be real life.

1:28:11I then heard Matthew Pritchard from Dirty Sanchez. I heard his voice outside the door, his gruff Welsh accent. I thought, okay, welcome to Wales. And look, he's here at four in the morning. That's brilliant. There was a great bunch in the pool. Swim actually felt really good. And I was in good spirits, but I was in a lot of pain. Shins were bad. Knees were bad. And just everything was just battered. But the shins were the real problem. Walking was an issue. Any dorsiflexion was a real challenge. I was walking downstairs backwards at this point and stuff like that. And the main thing was I was absolutely exhausted.

1:28:43Really, really tired. First time I felt like I was falling asleep in the pool. And then we had 30k from Cardiff to Glandau Circuit, which is up north somewhere, another racetrack. And I was struggling on that. We had a few big climbs. there was some cycle pass where I kind of was spinning my wheels out a bit on some wet leaves busy-ish a roads couple of busy-ish b roads it was quite overstimulating I pulled into a service station for a piss at one point and I caught myself just like leaning head-on mirror with helmet on just like do I just sleep for a bit do I just sleep in this absolutely horrible toilet on the side of the road this would be nice and thought no crack on there's people outside waiting got to the circuit and was really really pleased to get there and then there was about 25 people 30 people there on a thursday or a wednesday midweek thursday it was a thursday um and really really diverse bunch really really good bunch i thought brilliant okay the support here there's people here for varying reasons do your best to show up for them so went to the rb knees taped up and i thought oh well whilst i'm getting my knees taped up i'm gonna sleep i'll just lean back and sleep so i had my first eight minutes of sleep during the project itself and And that gave me enough energy with a bit of caffeine to get out there, get onto the circuit.

1:29:58And I had some, the best conversations from a mental wellbeing and interaction point of view I had were on the cycle in Cardiff. Really, really important. And I left Cardiff cycle thinking this has been a successful project. I'm really pleased with this. Fell off the bike riding to the toilets by just turning into some gravel like an idiot and fell off and cut my hands to pieces and everything. Just pure human error, just not thinking. It was funny because I was just like, I'm just tired. Got off the tri-bike because every time I went to the aero bars, I started falling asleep. And it was like momentary.

1:30:33It was like you are sat up, not in the aero position, elbows down. I opened my eyes, veering off to the right. Like, oh, no, need to get back on the road bike here. Commute back into Cardiff was 382 metres of gain over 23K, which was not what I was expecting. I hadn't just forgotten. a bit in my head I was like it must be relatively fat or mostly downhill it was horrendous there were some really brutal hills in there and that sapped my morale big time and I'd finished my fluids and things like that got to Cardiff Butte Park Tibbs being strapped up 20 minutes sleep in the back of the RV was at this point in five minutes on two minutes off running walking just to make it as sustainable as possible and maintain that for about 25 30k then started having first spout of stomach issues on the project i thought i'd solve that by chinning an entire bottle of maple syrup just to get any as many carbs as i possibly could something i've been sipping on the whole time but doing a whole jar was not a good idea as it turned out regrettable yes and then i i was in a lot of pain tibs really started flaring up it was it was feeling stress factory in terms of pain levels and things like that it was really quite bad i felt hot i felt tight i felt tense and i just i just didn't really want to interact with people to be honest which is the first time i've really i didn't i wasn't rude to anyone or anything but there were a few interactions i just i feel so tense and tight and in pain that i just kind of want to be on my own but everyone was there what was amazing that all these events was there were people nobody came a lot of people just came to just be there to support me and i was like well i'm gonna do the whole thing so i'd go to the toilet they'd wait and then it'd be like just to be there side by side which is amazing people People gave up huge amounts of time just to support, which was awesome.

1:32:21But there were moments where it was better for me to just be in my own head for a little bit. So I just said, look, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to drop back, whatever it might be. So Cardiff was a real, real battle. And there was a lot more walking that day. It was the only day I got close to timing out. I finished in 16 hours and 43 minutes that day, which was 17 minutes short of the 17-hour cutoff, which we needed for the world record for the amount of cities. and honestly sat in the rv that night i recorded i put a reel up about this i wasn't flapping i wasn't i wasn't having a tantrum or an emotional breakdown or thinking irrationally i was just looking at the day that i'd had knowing how i felt right now and how hard it was and thinking that i've got bristol tomorrow i'm under the day after i was like i'm i'm at some point tomorrow it's game over so in my head i was convinced i was waking up tomorrow for it to be the end at some point did you say that on the real uh i think i did yeah i think i said i think i said i just don't have any concept of how tomorrow is going to be possible i didn't say i expect to fail tomorrow but i messaged my wife saying yeah it's it's game over at this point i'm just i'm just showing up tomorrow to just go until i break what did she reply she said basically you you'll you'll be very tired you already knew today was going to be the hardest day so just just get to the swim and that's what we did i think that's what i think she she she knows that with me day to day but also what i'm really proud of being able to do in the project was i was very good at not thinking about what was to come it was what am i doing i've got the swim think about the swim right you're on the bike think about the bike okay you're right at the track now think about the run it wasn't holy shit I'm 10k into the bike and I've got all this bike and then the run to do it was phase by phase by phase even when I was really done in woke up in Bristol swim was great amazing pool everyone had their own lane which everyone was buzzing about there was a local guy called Manuel who found he's got an Italian accent as well which is really funny so it was like just I've now had a whole lane in a 50 meter pool to myself I'm everything else is bullshit now I'm never going to enjoy swimming again like well did you really enjoy swimming anyway because I sure don't at this point but it was a good swim good swim and there was a girl there called lucy who said i'm a physio if you need any help later on please come along i thought okay that's great news i feel like i'm gonna need it oh i forgot to mention as well in um in cardiff i started getting basically my quad just kind of contracted and stayed there so my sort of rectfem just fully contracted and just stayed where it was so if i tried to run and stride it would just contract and was like proper agony cramp so it was a real walking hovel and i was hoping that because it had been hot because i've been stressed because i've been tight because i had stomach issues it was a sodium issue but in the back of my mind i was worried oh is this a physiological thing that's going to be a problem and then swim was good in bristol cycle to we actually cycled to bath for a cycle track there odd down which gcn use and minor road raid incident along the way where i had to prevent myself from seeing red and being on the front line from the front of the newspaper or headline of the newspaper thankfully didn't cut myself just short but it was a yeah i did have a moment where i thought oh wow that's uh tiredness really really took over your head there for a second didn't it got to the cycle track and it was it was good because with all the cycle tracks on paper they're really good and quick but in reality they're designed to be challenging so they've got hair pins they're exposed to the wind the elevation is kind of annoying and it's kind of rolling in a way that's so some of them weren't actually that quick but this one was this one was decent you could move at a decent click if you wanted to you couldn't just roll but you if you if you put down 200 watts i could sit there about 31 32k an hour comfortably which is great bristol was probably the best bike day the whole thing i bounced back phenomenally from a good night's sleep i say a night's sleep there's like five six hours in one position which is well it wasn't six it was five and a bit so static sleep not rolling around in the back of an rv makes a big difference who could have guessed and i couldn't believe it i just couldn't like i i couldn't believe it i was fueled by how much i felt like i'd bounce back and then once i got towards the end of the bike in my head i was like oh shit all i've got to do today is the run now and i did that i did find a way to do that yesterday and then tomorrow's London and you're not going to fail in London are you?

1:36:54So I was like maybe there's a way through this. Got to the run in Bristol, 8k running, smooth, steady, 6 minute k's, then the quad tightened up again, completely contracted and wouldn't go away and I went Jamie, phone Lucy right fucking now, please get that physio here as soon as we possibly can because this is bad. Was running very consciously of it to the point where I wasn't talking to anyone because I had to focus so much on my stride but when you've got 34k to go and you're moving like that you start to get in your own head and then it completely locked up and I was just walking for a bit and I said I'm just going to walk until Lucy gets here and then it got to the point where even taking a decent stride walking was bad so I could move at like a 12 30 30 minute per k pace walking and I started doing maths in my head and I thought oh no I could time out here today so I'd gone from being quite positive I'd bounce back really hard to absolutely plummeting you're cooked sheet ended up we loosened it off stretching wise bit of massage in there checking there was nothing structurally wrong and then I did some more maths because we'd lost a bit more time on that I thought right I need I need to average nine minute k's now to not time out and I thought you can't you can't walk that so I'm already in pain i'm gonna put some headphones in play slipknot in my ears at full volume and just send it for as long as i can and i did 6k in under 30 minutes and i just put my head down and just sent it and i realized after about 200 yards i kind of geared up to if you're gonna be in pain just deal with it for as long as you can and break try and try and get that to like 10 30 11 minute k before timeout buy yourself some time and what i realized was effectively that less ground contact time meant that it was much less painful so my quad wasn't having that full like long contraction with the ground it was kind of much more snappy so five minute per k even 445 per k felt a lot more comfortable and i did that for 6k got a bit weird got a bit dark had my first gels of the whole project because i was eating on the move and things rather than sort of taking taking things a bit more cautiously and got 6k boxed and then i think got to it was like yeah 20 26k i was at this point and yeah i'd broken the back of it effectively i could have walked the whole way in if i needed to walk 2k and then did that again and genuinely the thrill that gave me of going from i was i literally thought i can't walk this is it to you're gonna fail on day nine to oh my god i can send it for a little bit by myself the time and there was a really good bunch of people that that came along to the bitter end as well, which was great.

1:39:37And yeah, in that run, I went from thinking it's game over. You failed on day nine. There's nothing else you can do because you can't really move to discovering that I'd failed biomechanically at certain paces, but aerobically I still had what was needed to keep moving, which was really, really strange. And that's the one thing I'd train about my training for us to do this again. and I'd spend more time in the mountains purely for the benefit of more ground contact time, more change of direction, more demand on my joints, on my tib ants, on things like that, because I got very, very good. Like my zone one running was 525, 530 per K.

1:40:15But as fatigue set in, it would become 630, 645, 7 even. And I hadn't done any 7 minute per K running and training because my heart rate would have been, there would have been no aerobic stimulus whatsoever. so it doesn't seem like training but biomechanically i would have benefited from more volume ground contact time to mitigate against that got bristol done i think i i ate a whole dominoes in lane one between 35k and 40k which i don't think anyone's ever done before because i just thought right i'll walk i'll walk and refuel for tomorrow as much as i possibly can because it was a 4am start in london what was on the pizza chicken feast chicken feast is that you go to yeah yeah i just kept it simple i thought i thought whenever i have whenever i have pepperoni from dominators i feel like my recovery is 10 times worse the following day so it's obviously just whatever's in that meat is just terrible but whatever meat isn't in that is terrible and it was uh it went down really well it went down really well but i just used essentially it was then a game of you're gonna get it done today you don't need to rush anymore get as much food as you can so that when you're done, shower, bed, sleep.

1:41:23And that's what we did. It was a unique experience having five kilometres of pizza and then running the last 2.2k in, but everyone was great. There was a lad that had to rush off the last train home to Wales, which he made. Harry, that was a good shift from him. He would have stayed if he could have done, but he was like, my missus will kill me if I get back at four in the morning, so that can't happen. And then woke up in London at the Aquatic Centre, and we had about 40 people at the pool, which was amazing. aquatic sense is the best i mean it's the best facility in the uk so having that privately for the final day was pretty special group cannonball swim was the worst one of the whole thing i felt so anxious the whole time i'm not someone that feels like i've had my what was you thinking about you know what i think it was in every single pool my routine and rhythm was get in start swimming find the clock find the reference point that gives you a time because i never look at my watch i i don't like looking at my watch when i'm swimming if i'm doing distance because as soon as you know how far you've gone you 0.5 how the long time feels from that point onwards you literally slow down time at that point ignorance is bliss so i in every pool there was a big clock or a little clock at the end of the at the end of the length that i could figure out okay so i i won't check my what i won't check my watch until i've done one hour swimming so I always knew I'd roughly be about 3.4 3.5k at that point but I was scanning so that's a fucking clock I was like what I don't know where I am I was like so I'm gonna have to guess I'm I am actually pretty good at like I could tell you probably within two minutes where I am in a pool it's really weird because I've done a lot of continuous distance swimming so if you said it got to end length how many minutes have you been swimming I'd go 47 and I wouldn't I wouldn't be far off but it really started to get in my head I was like I don't know how long do you be swimming i don't feel very good oh god and then for whatever reason i just felt tense the whole way through and i i'm genuinely i it might have just been the smallest thing that i built this routine in the previous nine days that i then didn't have which seems mental but i was very tired also it was 10 days of 10 outmans 10 days so fatigue might just got the better of me um maybe nerves for the rest of the day maybe nerves of the fact that you might cock this up today on the last day that'd be embarrassing wouldn't it but um really really good really really good to get it done and the pace was pretty much the same as every other swim which was good so there's no performance drop off but i felt like i felt i felt tense across my chest i felt a bit tight and nervous walking was really bad walking backwards needed support shins were agony and if you'd looked at me then you wouldn't think that's someone that's going to cover a marathon distance later on came out of the front of the equastic center the rv was like 400 yards around the corner i was i'm not walking there can you bring me my bike so in sliders and a dry robe just cycled off towards the rv because i can't i literally can't walk that far that'll take too much energy from me got onto the bike we had a really really good group heading from the swim to the pool which was amazing and all of a sudden i'm in central london looking up at iconic buildings on a sunny saturday morning roads pretty much to ourself look behind me got the boys day 10 i'm like this is class what an unbelievable experience this is and i really got a big smile on my face then turned up to regent's park in a circle which is a mile loop and huge group of people waiting cafe that we could easily access rv parked right in front of it truck parked right in front of it other support car parked right in front of it parents were there dogs were there class and i just had a really good day that felt like a training day in london with friends it just felt like a group ride and was really good fun fueling was easy cafe to and from i was caffeinated up to my eyeballs walking through a public cafe in cleats when i needed the toilet was a bit embarrassing but needs must and no worries that anyone was going to steal my bike because there were a lot of people around which is good because that is a concern in london but i really really enjoyed that and then the last bit from regents park to bassist park was again just i'd never rode my tri bike in london so being in the aero position along sort of iconic streets was kind of just novel for me, which was good fun.

1:45:31And I got to Batsy Park, had... Did I try and sleep? No, I didn't. We got everything strapped off, my tip ants and things. Had two double espressos and thought, right, let's get locked in and send this. About 40, 50 people out. There were 190 registered. I think 70 turned up across the day, but it was a stunning day on Bank Holiday Saturday. So I think a lot of people probably went, you know what i'd like to support focus on this one but i'd also like to support my local pub because this is good weather so there's a lot of people i don't blame for not coming along but it was a great group great group and a lot of people again they're there the whole way through i was good for about 10 15k and then tibs started getting really bad because concrete versus running tracks as well obviously a lot more impact and i've ran a lot of laps about sea park before i've done a 50k there at the end of january every year for the past three years and yeah there's only so many laps a man can take but weather was weather was pretty intense it was hot so i had to get more fluids on board the good news was though fueling i didn't need to go into it with the mindset i'm fueling for tomorrow as well as today sorry i'm only feeling for today not tomorrow so as long as i was getting 60 grams of carbs per hour at the pace i was moving i'm fine whereas I was generally aiming for about 100, 120 for the most part as I went.

1:46:52Sodium and fluids had to go up, but it was okay doing that. As long as it was cold, it was quite refreshing. But I think the main thing I was thinking about along the way was that at no point on the runs had I ever been on my own if it wasn't by choice. There was always someone there. There were plenty of people there. And I just think that was a really nice message for the project itself that we're all here with our own weird and wonderful reasons for doing endurance or whatever we train for and I felt very supported by that person just being there even if we weren't having a conversation and I wouldn't have got through the project without everyone showing up I wouldn't have got through the project without the support team and I was never alone even when I was suffering but the reason that we got the job done is because I was open honest transparent and reactive with the people around me to tell them what I needed when and I needed it so that we could keep moving forwards.

1:47:43And I think that was a nice way of summarising what the project was all about. But got it done. The last day was quicker than the previous days by some margin. The bike was really, really efficient. Again, any gooch pain that day wasn't a problem tomorrow. The tibs were bad, and I did think I had a stress fracture on my left side in London, but I thought, fuck it, you're in this deep at this point. The pain was really, really tough. It's the most pain I've ever experienced in a physical event ever by some margin. Have you taken any pinkos or anything? Yeah, I was using paracetamol every whatever you're allowed to, three or four hours.

1:48:19Yeah, four hours. I was really looking forward to that on the last day, which is where you start to go like, I'm glad this is the end because I'm well past the point that it's diminishing returns in terms of health and well-being, obviously. This is a community engagement project. It's a charity project. It's media, it's content, and it's a personal achievement, but it's not. I'm not doing this for my health but yeah I would use them on the last day and no ibuprofen though I kind of always avoid ibuprofen and any any endurance stuff because again if you if you get into the habit of using it repeatedly it can wreak havoc in your stomach and all that stuff so paracetamol was doing a world of good for the first when it kicked in I thought oh thank goodness but it wore off pretty quickly and let's just say every four hours didn't feel like enough but it was painful but I had great support and got it done 10 Ironmans, 10 days, 10 cities.

1:49:13Unbelievable journey. Very, very rewarding, very, very challenging. In many ways exactly as we expected on paper, but on paper versus when you're actually in it is a very different ballgame. And Guinness World Record for most consecutive 140.6, most cities to complete consecutive 140.6 distance triathlons or something to that effect. I can't remember how it was worded, but either way. Got the plaque the following week. Some buzz. Family at the end. Dogs at the end. And yeah, something I'm very proud of. And something I was glad to put behind me because as much as I enjoyed the process of training for it, it was a lot of Zone 1 work.

1:49:53A lot of diesel training. And I'd missed, well, one time. It was about 30 hours a week of training, which was pretty antisocial.

1:50:03and I miss speedier stuff. I miss the sort of more pacing, more metric, the sessions that you wake up worrying about the rest of the day. Oh, shit, I've got 4x800 at this pace later on. Oh, God. That stuff's fun. But, yeah, it was some journey and one that I'm very proud of. Do you ever reflect on how far you've gone since that day? I did a lot of that during the project. Yeah, I do. I do. It's very empowering to think on, but I think the simplest thing about it is I make sure to not, I do my best not to not give myself credit because it's very, very, very difficult. One, originally, the two moments for me that really highlight it are it was super super tough to go against the grain and put myself out there and say i attempted suicide i'm doing a charity project and i'm starting to post on social media for it in 2018 that was that was completely new to me scared the shit out of me but i had enough faith that it was it mattered more to me than it did scared me and then leaving full-time work to engage in shenanigans online for the next few years was March 2021.

1:51:26That is so tough to do. Leaving work to pursue your passions and go on your own is so, so challenging. And having the balls to do that has opened up a world of opportunity to me that is a lifetime of memories. And I've got a lot of years left in me, I hope. So I'm always very conscious of making sure that I don't fast track things too much and almost leave nothing on the table. But yeah, I think back to then and i think the biggest the biggest sort of commentary is that i was guided down a path that you didn't need to pay much attention to realize was wrong for me with the sort of university grad scheme essentially if you paid attention to me when i was younger you would have seen this is a bloke that is passionate about health and fitness performance and ambitious driven like supporting people likes doing these things and you could have said okay go and do sports science at Loughborough learn about that because that supports what you care about but it was very much a case of what are the best results for the best grades for the best uni and I don't buy into that system at all now and that's a conversation I'll have with future children and things and a whole separate conversation but I'm very proud of myself for finding a way out of it but then to having the balls to not get sucked into the the rat race that I was in forever because I've had a lot of fun along the way and i met some amazing people there's some amazing things and i've kind of done it my own way and i think i'm very i'm also very proud that i've held myself accountable to the fact that i'd know in my heart of hearts if i start producing media for that serves something other than my own enjoyment it's game over but there have been moments where cash flow has been tight or when things have been booming like a lot of people are shocked i haven't done the high rocks for example and it probably would have been good for views and commerciality at several points if i had done but it's just not something i've woken up and thought i'm really excited about doing this because for me one my asthma is really bad when running indoors to the sort of start line competitive setting just doesn't fire me up as much as getting out the car and running up a mountain does training for it it would it'd be too much time i like doing cardio modalities outdoors spending time outdoors is why i love training whereas if i started doing them indoors for the sake of an outcome at an event that would be a bit warped for me and i like top end strength training rather than sub-maximal sustained strength output so muscular endurance yeah exactly exactly so not that i don't think there's value in any of those things at all but for me personally it's just not something that's fired me up i rate that you just do the things that you love so many people are out there doing the things that they hate to potentially impress other people or for, I don't know, they've got commitments or they've got they've said that they're going to do something I don't know, one day and then they've stick to it and they're so stubborn that they've got to see it through I think it's impressive on one hand but it's also, I love the beauty of you that you can just go after the things that you enjoy doing yeah and i think again maybe that is because i've gone through a rough period of my life and i hold myself really fiercely accountable to that but i hope that people take that from any conversations like this one or any content that do what you enjoy but also me not enjoying something is not me saying i don't think that's a good thing or that invalidates it because i've had people online that think i hate high rocks because i've said i'm not interested in doing one and that's not my thing at all it's just i i have different views in the same way that i didn't like playing football growing up i played football i played rugby i went you know what i'm absolutely pro rugby doesn't mean i don't like football i don't like some elements of scottish football but that's a that's that's something else but i think uh again i i think this is the this is the thing is is the beauty of recreational training is that it allows you to explore the things that you enjoy the things that you don't enjoy what gives you fulfillment what gives you purpose what gives you community and what gives you energy and ambition and drive out with work family and other commitments and I think identity is at the core of that where if you identify as I identified as a powerlifter for a long time and for about two years I stopped enjoying powerlifting but I still did it very seriously because I am a powerlifter and I always liked the idea when Alex released the book The Hybrid Athlete in 2015 read it and thought wow it would be so cool to be able to be really strong and run a marathon never even considered actually doing that because I'd get slightly weaker, or if you get weaker you're a shit powerlifter and therefore you're a shit bloke that was kind of how my brain worked but I think um I think the beauty of how the how the hybrid term has evolved and how the fitness industry has evolved is that there's so many more entry points and the bar has been reduced for so many things for people to try new things explore new things and find the things that they're passionate about and if we circle it back to the mental health discussion we had I think for a lot of people their mental health can be approved by exploring and going looking for things they're passionate about what I really don't like is when factions form when this thing is better than that thing my thing is better than your thing starts to become the narrative because unless you're a pro no one cares your mom and you care and sometimes your mom doesn't care and sometimes sometimes even you don't care you're just doing it because you think it'll look good on social media and I think that's where doing things for the right reasons is the is the best way to have a healthy and long-term relationship with training doing things for the wrong reasons is going to serve you in the short term but is going to burn you out in the long term no for sure and i want to touch on training i kind of like the final point um with hybrid training i feel like a lot of people get it wrong yeah they end up over training simply yeah um how how do you even go about training say for example i'm a completely new to this how would you set up a week because i know that obviously you're a coach yeah um and your experience with it you've tried and tested it as well which i think is the main thing like on paper you can have the best program in the world but then you do it and you realize actually this is too much or too little or things are programmed on the wrong days um yeah how would you go about it so it's a great question because i think there's there's a lot of components to it and i think there's there's principles and the sort of considerations here so i think the first consideration is that the easiest way to program effectively for hybrid training is to work backwards from specific goals and those goals should be measurable not vague so something like i want to train for a 500 pound back squat and sub five minute mile on the same day is much easier to plan for than i want to improve my squat and get faster because there's so much variability in terms of those things in terms of how much and therefore how much training allocation you give it what does get faster mean over what distance what volume are we going to need so i think for an effective for an effective hybrid training plan you need to work backwards from a specific goal and once you've got that specific goal there's some sort of core principles that underpin all my training and underpin all of our athletes training which is i mean number one is that we peak intensity at the start of the week peak volume at the end of the week so hardest efforts on the turbo trainer on the track heaviest lifts in the gym are earlier in the week longer slower zone one zone two stuff end of the week and that sort of inverts of the week goes on so tempo sub threshold muscular endurance stuff sits sort of somewhere in the middle and then is it followed by a rest so in general terms we would probably give someone a sunday as a rest but it depends what they're training for if you're Training for an Ironman and strength, there's unfortunately a lot of sessions that need to fit in there.

1:59:30But I think the key detail is understanding that less can often be more with hybrid training and that working backwards from specific goals means that you can determine what the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do is because there's a lot of junk volume. More is not always better. And it is not as simple as does this muscle group interfere with this movement pattern because that's so localized fatigue versus systemic fatigue. objectively marathon training and bench press they don't utilize the same muscle groups or movement patterns but both contribute to systemic fatigue and you are with a training plan looking to balance systemic fatigue so that you continue pushing things over time localized fatigue is sort of you recover from it quicker but systemic fatigue creeps up on you and it's sort of where MRV on a weekly basis comes into play so we peak intensity at the start of the week and volume at the end one so we can see how an athlete responds to intensity in terms of their feedback towards the end of the week and then volume going into the following week how do they recover from one or the other and what does their interaction and progress look like with a certain amount of intensity, certain amount of volume.

2:00:40So we can then, as we discussed earlier, consolidate stresses where we will unconventionally pair the heaviest lifts and hardest effort lower body endurance training in the same day earlier in the week. Because that one conditions you to perform under fatigue. Two, it allows you to only recover once within the context of a micro cycle from that big spike of intensity. Because then the rest of the week is a bit more focused on other energy systems and other adaptation. whereas if you're recovering from three separate intensity sessions in in multiple disciplines across the week all of a sudden you've got lots of spikes along the way that will make it very difficult to understand where you hit a wall and that's where there's a bit of trial and error with hybrid training because you will hit a wall because you need to understand how much weight training can you accommodate alongside how much endurance training and once we hit that wall why did we get here how do we adjust it what do we do next and that's why it's not effective to take 100 % of a strength training program and 100 % of the endurance training program and just splice them together because they were designed independently to not account for any other inputs and as a recreational athlete we have jobs families other things to manage that are inputs that we need to manage so you cannot just always do more and expect better results because you have to adapt and you have to recover so intensity and volume that relationship consolidation of stress is within that relationship less is often more with hybrid training being another another thing to factor in and i think i think one of the big mistakes people often make as well as when they start working in endurance training on top of strength training is they don't account for the additional energy expenditure that comes with that and inadvertently put themselves into a calorie deficit and therefore after six weeks wonder why they feel under recovered they haven't adapted they've got smaller and they go oh cardio killed my gains rather than i didn't account for the additional expenditure in terms of my input so those are sort of the core principles that go into it but i think what are your strengths what are your weaknesses what are the timelines the compromise you have to accept with hybrid training is that if you could get from a 315 marathon to a 259 marathon in let's say six months if you are going to be hybrid training and focusing on strength development alongside that it might take you nine or twelve and i think that has been lost a little bit online recently where i think there's a there's a subsection of this where a lot of people have stopped lifting heavy lower body training have maintained muscle mass through sort of low intensity bodybuilding movements and are just becoming runners or triathletes and still still talking about the umbrella of hybrid training when reality and there's nothing wrong with that by the clear detail but the way alex coined the phrase originally as it was intended was the challenge of hybrid training what the problem hybrid training is a programming methodology trying to solve is to determine how can you balance those opposing energy systems so that you can get stronger or at the very least maintain the strength that you have whilst progressing your endurance it's not just a case of seasonally dropping one in priority for the other and then going like this that's just pure realization so the the core questions to summarize it down if someone was looking to develop their own hybrid training program, set a specific measurable goal to work backwards from, do some baseline testing to see where you are versus where you want to get to, look at the time that you have available on a weekly basis first and foremost, highlight where the lowest hanging fruit, most bang for your buck work is, don't place too much emphasis on what each individual sport is talking about, so don't place as much emphasis on mileage as runners only are placing emphasis on, don't place as much emphasis on volume as powerlifters only are emphasizing for example because you are going to have to figure out how much can you adapt with intensity versus volume top end strength work versus assistance work all of these things and start cautiously and build cautiously because the most effective athlete in any sport hybrid or otherwise is the one that can make progress continuously for the longest without getting injured or without hitting a wall and And there's no one way to approach it.

2:05:17And that's where I think it's important to go into it with an open mind and abandon the ego. I think a hyper train is great to help you manage an ego because you can plan for something on paper. And then the next thing you know, you're on the floor cramping in your legs thinking, I didn't expect that. That hasn't gone to plan. So, yeah, those are sort of core principles to consider. and I think understanding that doing the training in the first place is more important for most people than the session order or how many hours there are between training sessions or any of these more granular details because the interference effect that hybrid training is ultimately looking to work against only really becomes something you need to consider when you are pushing for top-end performance in both things concurrently.

2:06:07For most people, to make progress in both concurrently, it is simply a case of doing the right amount of training sustainably and consistently towards a set goal because what is measured is managed, is a phrase that is used in financial services because essentially unless you know what you're working with, you can't manage it. In the same way that arbitrarily saying, I'm doing a high-rocks this weekend, turf games that weekend, and then I've got a marathon, I've got this, I'm just going to do lots of stuff in between. Are you training for adaption and progress towards a goal, or are you training for fun?

2:06:41Both are absolutely fine. But you can't just do lots of stuff, chuck lots of shit at the wall, and expect better results when it comes to a specific outcome, because specific outcomes require specific training. As you'll know, pivoting from high rocks to marathon prep, everything has to change, but you'll keep in elements of each to maintain the skill work, maintain the baseline so that when you go back to it, the skills and strength and the ability is still there. Obviously, if anyone has any questions, they can reach out directly. And what would your top three recovery things be? So I'm a cynic on this one, I'm afraid.

2:07:17Number one, don't do too much training in the first place because you can't ice bath your way out of being overtrained. Number two, audit your sleep schedule. I don't think I think too many people look at things they can purchase to improve their recovery without looking at what they can do with their sleep first when do you get off your phone where is your phone in the morning when your alarm goes off are you scrolling it when you wake up are you scrolling it when you go to bed do you eat too late do you wake up at different times consistently are you a shift worker what are the things you can plan around that how do you find a way to get better quality and more sleep and then number three would be to audit your nutrition intake i think it'd be the third thing it's very it's very boring very dull but i'm i'm fairly of the opinion that the unless the basics are a hundred percent nailed with recovery layering things on top of that is kind of like chucking a bucket of water on a fire so make sure that you're eating enough primarily look at what you're eating protein carbs fats quality of nutrition micronutrition obviously supplementation hydration how how how intentional are you with those things and that is going to support your recovery a lot more than any gadgets or gizmos would in my opinion which is which is a bit cynical but i think i i have some look i my i don't believe that with travel, with business schedule, with things like that, there is much I can do beyond making sure that I am eating as well as I can whilst on the move, trying to focus on sleep as much as I can whilst I'm in different locations, and making sure that I'm not sending it too often because I've got an event here or I'm filming a video there because that's the stuff that's going to bury me, and I can't then go, ah, never mind, I'll just put some Norma Tech boots on and solve this problem.

2:09:17So that's my view on that. How about you? Do you subscribe to a similar view? Are the things you rely on with your recovery? No, I think that's definitely the key. Sleep for me, huge. Probably the element, and it highlights what you said, but doing less rather than more. A prime example is after a busy day's work or a busy day's training, should I go and book a massage where it's going to take me half an hour to drive to and out of the massage and then half an hour to drive back? or do I just spend them two hours chilling out, maybe sleeping a little bit longer, maybe napping, or like you say, just eating good food and chilling out watching Netflix?

2:09:57Which is going to benefit you more? And sometimes adding more in, whether it's, I know a lot of people like getting acupuncture, they like foam rolling, they like stretching. All these things are great, but only after you've done the... Great point you made there as well on on what do you lose in doing the other thing. As well as money. Yeah, correct, correct, yeah, 100%, 100%. How much is it to go to one of these sauna ice bath places? It's not cheap. It's not cheap? It's not cheap, no. Some of them are like 40 quid. I went to one in London. It was pretty cool, to be fair, but it was 67 quid for an hour, which I didn't know until I arrived, to be fair.

2:10:41So when she handed the car machine over, I went, hmm. But I have made the trip here, so I'm not going to say no thanks I'm going to go elsewhere but yeah I think um that that was really hammered home for me at a macro level with I mean I was speaking to Sean Conway about it when he did 105 and 105 he had a physio planned in for the whole thing and he decided after four days effectively this is getting in the way of me just eating and going to bed and that's gonna move the needle more than this sports massage daily to to manage that and I think yeah like you said will you be able to decompress more to sleep better to wake up more energized and feel more in control of your day-to-day if you spend that hour and a half of travel massage and travel with your now fiance congratulations thank you in front of netflix because there's value in that i think that's what a lot of people lose sight of with the recovery mechanism and if you take it to the extreme with brian johnson for example is yeah i i i think things that on paper aren't don't have any utility can be very valuable for reasons that can't be measured.

2:11:44Like saunas and ice baths, marginal benefit on overall recovery. If I'm in a sauna and ice bath with my mates, which I do in different places all over the world, I have a great time. It's just as much of a buzz. And that's probably the thing that actually relaxes you. Correct. And puts you in that sympathetic system that helps you actually recover. Exactly, exactly. And there's value in that. And this is why I don't drink very often, But if I'm in a city for a short period of time and I've got a friend there, I'll have a couple of pints with them. Because essentially I will enjoy – it's just a setting.

2:12:18I'm from Scotland. We're drinking on park benches at 12 years old. It's just the way things go. But also it's just a great way to socialize intentionally for a couple of hours. Do you need the beers to do that? Absolutely not. Would I be better off without them? Perhaps. And I can do that as well. But it's a case of I enjoy the experience of catching up with someone that I care about and forgetting that I'm thinking too much about my recovery. Because when I wake up tomorrow, I'm going to know I've felt like I'm not too anal about my goals. But I'm going to go and hit this track session very hard with real intent because that's what I'm doing right now.

2:12:55Whereas last night, I was catching up with a friend. There's value in things that I think a lot of people demonize beyond the things themselves. And I think that's where recovery mechanisms need to be looked at within their context rather than in and of themselves. Because, yeah, people hate on ice baths. But if you love ice baths, fantastic. It's so person-dependent. I remember back in the day, probably about 10 years ago now, I remember watching a guy that was doing a marathon a day for a year. And he said... Did he like District? Was it him? I'm not too sure. It was just I remember the story of I think he got to like day 60 and he was in so much pain every single day and he was like rigid sleep plan, nutrition plan, everything.

2:13:39And then one day he just thought, fuck it, after my marathon, I'm going to have a pint and I'm going to have a burger. And he started doing this and he then got through all the 300 marathons so much easier just because he was letting himself relax and eat whatever he wants and he wasn't bothered about getting the certain amount of macronutrients in, having the right amount of protein straight after. Instead, he just loosened up, had a beer, had a burger. That's a great example. It's a brilliant example. I can think of... Some of the best ultra-endurance athletes I know drink like fishes or drink like fish, singular.

2:14:18Fish isn't a word. That's a word toddlers use. I think the plural of fish is fish. Or is it fishes? I don't know. Either way, I've made a dick of myself right at the end of this podcast. But ultra-endurance athletes generally eat what they can, when they can in whatever amount and then sink six pints afterwards i mean if you the cricket back in the day rugby back in the day it was um it was very it was a lot less professional and a lot more socially driven but there were still some amazing performers and some people that pulled out blinders on on wild hangovers and i now feel like we're advocating for booze here but that's uh that's not the angle it's more a case of the thing that allows you to decompress feel relaxed and actually sleep better unwind better may be more valuable than the thing that is going to give you a 0.1 % marginal gain because of a study done in 2016 that indicated it may improve recovery final question what is the next goal well i am not planning anything until i've had my first child on August the 26th.

2:15:21Well, it won't be. It's due on August the 26th. Saying that so confidently is asking for trouble in terms of delivery date, but I'm super excited about that. Congratulations, by the way, to you and your wife. My wife's super excited about it, and we are relocating, and that's been an interesting process for reasons that I'll share soon publicly. Still is a little bit up in the air, but that's stressful enough, and also I promised myself I'd take 12 weeks of messing around and just enjoying enjoying doing what i feel like doing on a weekly basis training wise before i make any firm decisions i'll be honest i am very drawn to the idea of doing the 500 pound deadlift and mile within five minutes again i'd like to go back and box that off and i think it's probably time that i gave a backyard ultra ago because it plays it plays to my strengths i think i've got a lot of experience in sleep deprivation i've done 250k single stage i've done a 40 hour long triathlon give or take with very little sleep i mean maximum seven minutes in there so it does play to my strength so i think if there's anything that i would be quote unquote good at other than balancing multiple things slightly above average at once is probably a Backyard Ultra.

2:16:47And if there's ever a way to leverage the sleep deprivation of having a child for gain, a Backyard Ultra is a good way to do it, isn't it? I do think it's... Yeah, it's something that I'm drawn to, and I think it's... But I think the reason I may be putting it off a little bit is because I know it's something I want to perform in. And whilst I'm not competitive, if I said I... It's maybe incredibly bold to say, but I think with the CV I've got and the experience I've got round one should be at least 30 hours and I would target, if conditions allowed key detail, 48 which is a mental thing but I think it's not out there you see some people, they've never done one before and they've won 30 to 48 hours I hope I get out there and get punched in the face for even thinking that but I do think the the individual minerals that go into making someone experienced enough to really go at one I think I've experienced most of the things that make them really challenging and that means that if I got the training right I'm confident I could I could put in a good shift in round one and I think I if I was if I was to do it I would set myself pretty lofty goals I think at a personal level but whatever happens happens because the only question I ever asked myself with any training goal is when I get to the start line, have I done enough to be stood here right now within the circumstances that I had available to me?

2:18:20And if the answer is yes, whatever happens next is whatever happens next because the process of getting from A to B, B being the start line, is where I see all of the value. The event itself is the victory lap and the longer the event, the more components of the event, the more variables, the more things that can go wrong and all you can do is adapt as you go and do your best and i think that's what i enjoy doing so i think that's where that's where backyard ultra appeals to me because the variables are varied and the community around it seems really really cool at the moment i've recorded five podcasts back to back yesterday and three of them had all recently done backyards and i kind of sat browsing i'm going to start browsing and then maybe i'll book one before child arrives maybe i'll book it immediately afterwards we'll see but i think it's an easier thing to train for than a triathlon in the short term because bike admin and getting to pools and pool timings is a bit more awkward whereas lacing up a pair of shoes and getting out the door is much easier and i'm really enjoying being back in the gym and whilst i'm 25 kilos off my total lower than i was when i started project tenacity prep it all come back really quickly and running and lifting is a is a pretty easy relationship to manage whilst traveling as well whereas triathlon is just a nightmare like bike boxes swimming kit oh sorry sir you need to do an induction to use this pool oh no there's a kid's birthday party on oh you've traveled an hour to get here that's a shame um punctures in foreign countries all these things it's not that fun when triathlon training is good it's great when it's not the admin makes me want to smash my head through a wall but that's where the value lies that's where the value lies I wish you the best in both obviously having your child, good luck with that obviously I know that's going to be a big challenge for yourself but also everything else that you do and we'll catch up soon we shall do, an away fixture I think because we ran out of time today so you're coming up to Edinburgh sometime soon I think Jake that's the way we'll do it, excellent, clash I wish you a bit.