I Survived Antarctica… & Set 2 New World Records

0:01In my mind, I was like, if something goes wrong, I'll just get out of the water, right? And I had seven spotters for leopard seals, so dangerous wildlife. And I was like, how likely is it that we'll encounter dangerous wildlife? And they were like, well, if you were out there on your own, it would be a certainty. Spencer. Soly. You've bloody done it, mate. Project 7 is finished, completed. You're a three-time Guinness World Record holder. First of all, congratulations. It's an unbelievable feat. Let's just get your immediate thoughts. Thanks, brother. It's pretty surreal that it's come to an end.

0:41We were really in just a mad grind there for three weeks. And I've almost got that, like, when's the next one thing, because I haven't yet broken out of the feeling of just being always on. It feels amazing, mate. I'm really proud of what the team has achieved here. Couldn't have done it without the boys. They're just absolute legends, like legends. They're all like my brothers, you know? Genuinely, something like this just brings you so close. Now that you are a multiple world record holder, can you give us a breakdown as to what new world records you actually hold? The two new world records are fastest 140.6 mile triathlon on Antarctica.

1:28So that's 28 hours, 51 minutes and 11 seconds. That beats the previous world record by three hours and 50 minutes, something like that. Wow. And then also the fastest time to complete a 140.6-mile triathlon on seven continents. And that was 21 days, nine hours, and 18 minutes. Absolutely massive. So, yeah, we've been busy. And for those wondering what a 140.6-mile triathlon is, those are the exact same distances as a full Ironman triathlon and those distances were made famous by the Ironman brand. So you said 28 hours 51 minutes and 11 seconds for the Antarctica full distance triathlon how did each section break down?

2:26So the swim was an hour and 47 minutes which you know it is not too bad typically you know the swim and the run are always going to be relatively consistent you know this is a slightly slower swim well it's slower by it's nearly half an hour slower actually so no it's you know half an hour slower swim because of the wetsuit i'll come on to that later this is the the big boy thing in the middle uh 18 hours and 50 minutes on the mountain bike um so oh my god yeah so i'll come on to that but 18 hours and 50 minutes for the mountain bike and then a five hour six minute marathon to finish antarctica's a bit of a beast isn't it jesus christ i knew we'd save the uh best or worst till last whatever you want to call it um yeah but i'm never going to forget my experience here on king george island it's it's been just remarkable like like the the spectrum of feelings that i've had since being here is just like it's always exhausting it's as exhausting as the as the triathlon just like where your mind takes you at the very first day when we got here we were experiencing the worst weather that King George Island has had in the last eight years right just just coincidentally like we knew it was bad weather but it really got like crazy crazy there's a clip of me trying to open a door on my Instagram check it out if you've not seen it I've had like calls about that like door opening thing like honestly it was mad kind of weather that can kill you in a heartbeat we were staying up in this lovely you know shack if you want to call it that but it's a good like it's a good 25 minute walk from like base essentially and we had to make our way there several times so throughout the course of that day and it was literally like mad mad mad weather and it was just a real real reminder and a wake-up call how if this place chooses to just change tack on you then you're in all kinds of trouble you know like a triathlon wouldn't be possible in that weather so we were you know desperately kind of praying and hoping for a suitable window which on paper we had um even though it was moved slightly and you know someone up there sorted us right out because you know the weather was still you know Antarctic troublesome weather but it was nothing like that you know we were given a window in which to operate the whole project has been incredible, but that jewel in the crown, this Antarctic, was something else.

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7:56tried to mask it and tried to just think like well if i have the right kit it'll be fine and you know whatever if anything goes wrong i'll just be yanked out the water type mentality but like deep down i've been really worried about it um and there's so much in antarctica that you can't control do you know what i mean like a lot of what we do as a team having now achieved three world records is we control things that we can control and we work well you know we think about stuff like long before it happens so that we're not left um in you know unnecessary agony the swim is something else though do you know what i mean like we had a we had a swim briefing the night before the swim and i can't i can't tell you i didn't even tell my my wife or my parents it's like i like it was secretly and i've not actually even said this to the boys it was one of it was one of the most disconcerting meetings i've ever had in my life right like i stood there the level of safety parameters that were being put in place was crazy and i was just like i couldn't quite because in my mind i was like something goes wrong i'll just i'll just get out the water right and like i had seven spotters for leopard seals so dangerous wildlife a few on the beach two boats like a russian boat and a chilean boat with spotters on the boats and i was like how likely is it that like we'll encounter dangerous wildlife and they were like well if you were out there on your own it would be a certainty like you know we are there to prevent it and i was like so you wouldn't like let me swim on my he was he was like under no circumstances could you swim on your own in this bay like you'll be dragged out to sea and you'll never be seen again that's you know that's that's not happening i was like okay and the leopard seals live in the bay just just one bay over and i was like why are they not in here then and they they just said you know that's where the penguins are that's where the that's where they they are and there's plenty of penguins trust me where we were and i was just a little bit kind of confused by why they wouldn't just hop the fence essentially over into the next bay um water was zero degrees um and you know obviously the whole thing has come down to kit right and so I had a choice this is a while ago I was presented with this choice it was buy a triathlon wetsuit that is the thickest it can possibly be so to protect you against cold which would essentially do a very good job of protecting you against you know five six degree water but you can swim in it perfectly so like no drag nothing like you can properly make your strokes perfectly and you know for me that would mean finishing the swim in an hour 18 or something hour 20 or you wear a diving wetsuit which is far thicker so 13 millimeters thick you probably won't feel the cold as much although water will enter the wetsuit um but it would be much harder to swim like what are you going for and i just thought hypothermia will will slow me down for the whole day right so if i power through the swim with the with the thinner wetsuit and get hypothermic which would have been you know 90 likely i would have needed maybe two hours to recover something like that similar to Cape Town you know I would have needed like a lot but it would be worse here obviously I'd need a long time to recover and then it's kind of like in you it's in you then do you know what I mean it's kind of like that cold is in your bones even if you're able to crack on it's always kind of there you know and then if you're out in the cold again it comes on quicker it's just like it's it's there so I just thought if I can avoid that completely that will allow me to chase this fastest ever Ironman in Antarctica record because I don't want to be I don't want to be essentially wasting two hours three hours four hours if you go really badly hypothermic it could be life-threatening you know it could be that you have to spend 12 hours in a hospital bed you know whatever you know it's it's a very dangerous thing and also there's no guarantee by the way that that would come at the end of the swim it could happen halfway through and then you've got half the swim left to do you know so it's kind of like so in my mind I was just like I'll go bigger wetsuit I'll go harder swim um so you know jumped in the water true to the wetsuit you know I didn't feel the cold too much initially um and was able to kind of crack on but it was almost like you know it was incredibly buoyant but it was also far from slick you know like it was a big big like round shape almost um you know doesn't do a very you don't do a very good job of gliding through water i actually almost felt like i was pulling weight through the water so it was almost having like an opposite effect of what a good swimming wetsuit would do which is allow you to glide um and and i knew i was in for a good two hours right from the very beginning.

13:12I was just like, this is slow and this is going to be long and draining on the muscles and painful. And God, I swallowed like a good couple of liters of seawater just because I don't know what it was. It's just like my stroke was badly affected and I just couldn't not gulp down seawater. It was really odd and I couldn't feel my face my face was exposed in the water zero degrees for nearly two hours so I couldn't feel my face at all uh couldn't feel my lips couldn't feel my face and and like I vomited a couple of times during the swim because I was literally just like I was like gulping down water really salty water and then got out and Matt caught it all on camera I like spewed what I can only describe as you know a good couple of liters of of of kind of you know seawater uh and didn't need too much time to recover which is good so so i was i was physically drained really exhausted like but more more muscular more just like really fatigued and also that suit just drains you like i lost a lot of liquid in the swim a lot of salts um and uh needed hydrating so now we get on to the 18 hour and 50 minute bike, which sounds nothing short of horrendous.

14:32What happened there? This is where you literally just have to go, I've got two activities left in the whole project and this is going to be long, grim, lonely, hellish, painful, slow. I have no choice but to get stuck into it so let's let's go we were supposed to cycle the runway of the airfield which is as you can imagine because plane like planes land on it all day uh flat tarmac uh you know a lovely long 1.3 kilometer stretch of hard lovely solid ground um because the weather was so bad when we arrived, flights got canceled the following day and they were all bumped into race day. So Felipe, the absolute legend who's been looking after us said, look, dude, you can't use the runway anymore.

15:32And I was like, well, what are we going to use? And he said, well, I don't know. That's pretty complicated. There's nothing really to cycle on. There's this little hill uh and then there's ice and snow and he said but just here if you come out here there's a two there's 200 meters that way and 200 meters back and it's um slightly uphill on the way out and slightly downhill on the way in and it's covered in ice and snow and slush and holes and like it's proper like like if you walked through it you'd batter your shoes basically like it's just a hellish little kind of dirt trail 200 meters out 200 meters back no and i was given a mountain bike and told that's the only option so i said great let's go so jumped on the mountain bike and went 200 meters out and 200 meters back for six hours and covered 54k in six hours and realized that I was in for a very serious day right on the bike came in and thought to myself and by the way the weather wasn't great it was like like hammering down snow and quite windy and I think I was averaging 11 kilometers an hour but actually it was translating to less um because I was taking the odd coffee break that that presented as a as a big problem but one that couldn't be solved right so like immediately you just sat there drenched drinking a coffee going I have no choice but to crack on for um you know another 12 hours at this pace yeah there's literally there's literally nothing else that I can do um and that's exactly what I did I went up and down this little hill uh over and over and over again for I think I did that for about 15 hours uh i managed to bank 140k um something like that and then some bloke took pity on me because it was nearly midnight and he just said bro just go and use go and use the airfield like he's like there's no one here and it doesn't matter just just get out onto the airfield but he gives a shit like here the gates over here type thing and i busted out onto the airfield and i was just like oh my god so I only had the airfield for like 40 kilometers but still that was that was a nice experience because I got to just like bang up and down yeah no it's only a long story short it wasn't the most physically taxing bike ride because it was quite slow and you know I was just just had a really really high cadence in in pretty low gear and and just doing my best to not pay attention to time and essentially just just ground it out mate total time 18 hours 50 minutes as you can imagine you know sitting on a mountain bike initially it felt like being a kid and being given like a new bike for Christmas and you go like up and down like outside your house for for like an hour only that this was quite different and that that brings us all the way through to kind of morning of the following day, like everyone was coming in and having breakfast around me and stuff.

19:04And I was still cycling when everyone had come back for breakfast. So obviously I'd seen everyone the previous night for dinner. And then by the time everyone came back in for breakfast, I was still doing the laps. And then, yeah, had some eggs when I got off the bike and cracked on with the marathon, mate. And that was, as you can imagine, something I didn't really feel like doing but there was a there was like a final sense of termination to the whole thing like like I knew that this was the last bit of work um I was very tired like very tired I did the first 7k and then sat in a van just to have like a quick um bit of fuel and and I was like I had by the way all the time in the world to achieve the record um even if I had had a two-hour nap I could have I could have achieved the record anyway but a part of me just thought I'm not here to have a nap, do you know what I mean?

20:00Let's just finish the event, let's just get it done I can have a sleep afterwards we ran 800 metre laps for the whole marathon down by the water which is twice the size of an athletics track if you're unfamiliar with metrics and just ran round and round Fair amount of elevation in it, not going to lie. There was a couple of what you might call a little hill in it, which wasn't great, but I tried to limit it to just the 100-meter flat bit, and I just couldn't do it. I was running 100 meters, turning around, running 100 meters. I was like, no. I literally did two laps like that, and I was like, I'm not running 10 lengths to do a kilometer, like, no.

20:45So I just chose to keep the elevation in just because it would have driven me demented to run a marathon over a 100 meter distance um and anyway mate i was there with my boys chris and johnny were there matt was shooting content um and uh yeah look as ever first 5k were probably the hardest because it's just like you you feel like you're not taking a chunk out of anything you know you're just you're just you're literally just you know the marathon distance goes from 42 to 37 you know you still have 30 it just feels like you're not you know in any way there and they were quite painful case as well quite slow and i was just like you know just knew that if you kept going it would be done uh started thinking about the james's place uh guys and and you know if you're if you're a man in suicidal crisis how you're very likely to be suffering more than i am in that moment so it's just to get a grip and push through and carry on and got it done eventually.

21:44Just cruised it in 507, 506. Can't quite remember. I have to say I didn't feel particularly emotional at the time. It's quite hard when you're that depleted and that exhausted. I remember Tom was there, Tom Beard, who's the director of Finding Michael, who's making the film for this. Tom literally shoved the camera in my face at the very end. He was like, how do you feel? and I was just like, I'm not sure I feel anything at this point. Struggling to talk about it, struggling to talk, took a few finishers photos. But it was kind of in pain. Delighted to get it done, delighted to succeed. Obviously, when you set yourself big goals and you pull them off, of course that feels good.

22:28But this will come later for me. I will reflect on this later and just let it all sink in. you know the fact that Antarctica was one of seven legs to this is a joke like I literally just opened my backpack and found my Arizona Ironman medal that feels like something I did five years ago like genuinely like I I can't in any detail tell you about like how the other races feel because we're just here at the moment it's it's it's incredibly strange traveling the world in the way that we've traveled it in all of these different time zones like not sleeping being on planes for 100 hours or whatever it might be and then finishing here and like this feels like the achievement this is the challenge like i've done six iron men in the lead up to this you know what i mean in the last 21 days it's pretty and that's not me boasting i just like i keep forgetting about them like that's how like depleted i am like i genuinely like when i finished this it took me maybe an hour to remember the rest of it like i was just out here like feeling like this was this barbaric hill that we've just climbed and it's so incredible antarctica is certainly a challenge in itself like i wouldn't advise bolting the other six on if you're considering doing anything in antarctica is kind of almost unnecessary like this place is it's um yeah it's incredible but it's a lot.

23:58Yeah. I mean, it sounds like from what you just said there that all of it was incredibly difficult, like Antarctica, don't get me wrong, but there was no real point where you felt completely crushed. It was always just, I'm just going to keep on going and get on with it, run the final leg. Am I right in saying that? Or was there any point where you was just like, I can't deal with this anymore? There were times during the swim that I questioned my ability to do it in a single go the swim was frightening i didn't i didn't like the swim the swim also this sounds strange to say because obviously you would expect me to be freezing but i was actually at times like boiling like almost to the point of being um claustrophobic like this wetsuit took half an hour to get on i ripped it i don't know if i told you so like we We've ripped the leg of the wetsuit wide open, huge hole.

24:53And I was like, well, fuck. Like, you know, like this, you know, I can't wear this wetsuit. It's the only thing we had. And, you know, water is going to come gushing through my leg. And my leg is going to be exposed to zero degree water for 90 minutes. And I need my legs, you know, for the cycle and the run. So I was just like, shit, you know. and that that was kind of like the first thing that happened and chris literally was just like stone face was just like didn't react at all to ripping to us ripping the wetsuit at all gave no indication of it being a problem or anything at all and literally just went that's fine we'll tape it don't worry we'll tape it i was like we'll tape it he's like yeah we'll tape it he's like don't worry about it we're good we'll tape it down by the water i'm not gonna tape it now because obviously you've got to walk down to the the beach and uh we don't want it opening up at all so we'll tape it down by the water went down duct tape just around my thigh just taping taping taping taping around the thigh and i was like this is this is nuts like you know what i mean and uh um the swim was so slow and there was a huge current as well so from swimming left to right if you're looking out from do you see that picture with the penguin yes yeah i did there's a fucking photo of me swimming there's a penguin jumping out the water behind me both called me today genuinely and was like is the photo with the penguin real i was like i was like what she's like there's a penguin in the water with you and i was like yeah i know i know and she was like she's like yeah like did you guys put it there i was like what like of course you didn't photoshop a penguin into the photo like obviously not do you know i mean of course it's real and she was like she's like that's incredible i was like yeah i know i know yeah it's really cool it's like a lucky photo i think i'm not sure matt knew the penguin would be in the air when he took the photo so yeah so water did come in through the tape and and stuff like you know once you're in you're in you know you've got to just you've got to get on with these things if you if you like i've noticed that when you allow worry to just consume your mind it's a massive problem like on a few of the swims i've gotten in and had like an internal moment of panic almost straight away because you realize like the my my face is exposed right above my mask and my whole mouth and nose were exposed 90 minutes zero degree water so like put your face in a in an ice bowl of water and imagine it being there for 90 minutes so you know you can't talk you can't react i was drinking to i was drinking all this water without really meaning to i was trying to spit water out i couldn't use my lips like you need to do this to spit water i couldn't do that like you know like it was you know the whole thing shit um and there's this big current as i was saying sorry from left to right so swimming left to right was kind of okay swimming right to left was was awful so like really fighting quite a strong current so it took a lot longer to get back down the bay and then coming back a bit easier but there was this very strong current so that's kind of disheartening you know you're swallowing all the water because the current's coming that way you're not you're not really moving at any real pace it's kind of and you know that you're exposed to the water as well so there is a ticking time bomb element to it it's like i can't like you can't really go oh this is fine i'll just like i'll you know flip over onto my back and and and skull it which would be like looking like a squid you know like using hands like that because then you'll be in the water for three and a half hours and you can't be in the water for three and a half hours because you know it's because it's too cold so you know there's an element of i have to get this done but i can't get it done quickly because of the current and the wetsuit so if i push myself really hard i'm gonna waste all my energy when i'm out the water i'm screwed like i'm trying not to swear limp like limp dead can't even smile for the camera johnny and chris are holding me up i lay down on the ground they lift me up they're like we have to get you into the heat um like it like I was a bit like, this is a real rough way to start the day.

29:05Just one final question on Antarctica. I think you mentioned that with all of the other legs of Project 7, that you had an 18-hour time limit. Is that relaxed for Antarctica then? Yeah, we had an 80-hour time limit for Antarctica. 80? 8-0? 8-0, yeah. Crikey. That's what Guinness World Records deemed the time limit here. That should give you some indication of what can happen here.

30:27I'll see you next time.

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31:26so there's only two other people um that have ever done uh these distances in a triathlon format in antarctica and that's connor eminig and anders hoffman anders hoffman has a pretty cool film out on apple called uh project iceman and i i i'm not off the top of my head sure of his finish time but it was in the 70 hours, I think, 75 hours, 76 hours, something like that. He was very unlucky with weather. He's a tremendous athlete, by the way. Both Conor and Anders are insane athletes, and hats off to them. I've got a huge amount of respect for both of them. And to be completely honest with you, I wasn't really gunning for Conor's record.

32:10I didn't actually realize that the fastest Ironman on Antarctica was Conor's record. um but obviously nice to have something to aim for um so you know it was it was an interesting thing to learn that the previous world record was 32 hours and 50 minutes or something like that so you know in the back of my mind i was like cool let's try and beat that you know why not um so i actually spoke to connor he's we should get him on the show connor's an incredible guy he is a wonderful canadian dude big heart really helpful to me lovely like i just thought what an amazing guy like you could easily look at what I've done here as him and go well it's pretty you know irritating and aggravating that this guy's essentially just come after my records but I spoke to him about that actually and just said look I was inspired by Conor you know I saw what Conor achieved and realized that um you know he took it a bit slower over the course of a much longer period and you know that that gave me the bones of the challenge to race it not race him just race the challenge um and no a huge amount of respect for him he's a wonderful man actually but i really liked him and also he just like he's he's just he's a legend like he messaged me straight away to congratulate me uh you know no bitterness at all of any kind and and just thought that the whole thing was brilliant says he's been following from the very beginning you know rooting for us all the way just kind cool energy let's take it back slightly to rio because we haven't spoken about that yet and it probably seems a long long time ago for you now given how much you've gone through in antarctica but that also looked like quite a tough challenge from the outside looking in why was that one so difficult the the start of the rio run is possibly the worst i have felt mentally like outside of feeling like i'm in danger in the swims i actually couldn't believe how bad it felt like there's actually a difference like i got off the bike here in 18 hours 50 and this marathon way easier than rio like like a million a million times easier like and this one was pretty rough as well but like at least i think it was you know i was able to run at 5 20s and just you know move and keep moving and it was kind of all right you know rio not at all I was like down at 640s at the very beginning, couldn't move any faster.

34:38Problems with like my breathing. Just I think, you know, it was all catching up to me. You know, and also the previous marathon was in Dubai and we like really turned the dials up on that one. So like we burst into 12, 10, 10, 10. And like we were running at, you know, I was running at four 10s at the end of that one. just so you know like literally just gunning it yeah yeah sub three hour marathon pace at the end of Dubai and I think I could really feel that in the legs in Rio um so like the swim obviously doesn't really affect your legs the bike you use different muscles so like it doesn't it doesn't actually really affect your running obviously if you go and hammer some mental bike ride it's going to affect your running but like if you you know are trying to use your energy efficiently it's actually all right getting from bike to run um the bike was was pretty long as well lots of people in the streets in Rio so um and you know obviously they're they're more welcome than I am uh at this stage uh but you know we're trying we're trying to make time basically on the bike and we we basically did a fair chunk of it in the cycle lane just by the beach you've always got people kind of crossing the road and I think I said to you it feels like that driving test where you've got to like you know spot danger before it happens you know like and it's kind of you can see people crossing the road like a while away and you almost know that they're just not going to check the cycle lane before they cross you're traveling like with a big tailwind at like 55 kilometers an hour in the cycle lane and you know hoping some child doesn't suddenly just step out into the cycling because that would be a problem um but uh but no it was kind of all right mate like you know looking back at it all done i i don't feel that i want to whinge about it but ignoring the cycle which had a tremendous headwind on the way back to rio back towards the the hotel where we were staying at was you know pretty soul destroying there's nothing worse than a headwind on a bike i'd rather cycle in torrential rain than in wind like like wind is really shit unless you're cycling with a massive tailwind which is absolutely awesome headwind is the opposite tailwind like we like in rio we were it's actually really funny chris and i thought that we had just become like incredible cyclists and really fit we turned this corner and we had like 30k to bang out in a straight line and we were kind of like cadence was around like 80 and we were like putting out maybe like 120 watts so like nothing so like you're not you're not really expensing any energy you're just spinning slow spinning slowly by the way and uh and we and we were putting out like 40 kilometers an hour like just just hammering it and like when you put a bit of pressure behind the pedals you could go like 50 55 kilometers an hour and i i literally was like looking at Chris and I was like are we are we heading to the Tour of France are we are we just are we just conditioned animals now we're cyclists like that's what we are now like this is our identity like I'm I'm one of those mad cyclists that you see in Richmond Park and like you know they just you think you're going fast and they just gun past you like on the phone do you know I mean that's me now uh because you don't really realize you you have a tailwind and then we spun it around at the end and then it's like you're doing 19 kilometers an hour like cranking the pedals just like in hell for the whole way back so we had that all day i don't know mate as well i've done plenty of exercise in the last three weeks so i'm looking forward to like just lifting weights to be honest and going for really casual light short runs are you not going to give yourself a couple of days off i have a couple of days off now it's going to take me three days to get home So today is obviously a day off.

38:38I'm not going running in Antarctica again, I don't think. That's fair. Then this evening, in a couple of hours now, we have a flight. Listen to this now. So we have a flight to Punta Arenas. We're going to get in at about like 6.30. So we'll get to the hotel for say 7.15, have dinner. Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., we are flying to Santiago. then we're flying to Sao Paulo then we're flying back to London and at the time of recording this it is one in the afternoon on Friday the 5th of December I get home so we start traveling now in two hours we start traveling home I'm getting home on Sunday at 2 p.m.

39:25Jesus just in 48 hours It's a long old slog. But anyway, no worries. We're very used to airports and planes, to be honest, at the moment. Now that this challenge has come to an end, what do you think has been the biggest takeaway from you, from the challenge as a whole? My takeaway from it is that, you know, if you don't give up, you'll get there in the end. The mind is an incredibly powerful tool. You know, I'm not a professional athlete. yet you know extraordinary things have been achieved here which is pretty cool I'm very proud of myself my family are very proud of me which is always a wonderful feeling I think that you know the whole point of Project 7 was to raise awareness and funds for James's Place who support and save men in suicidal crisis.

40:19I think men and masculinity are in a really strange time. There appears to be a really big divide between men and women. I think that's a real shame. I always see content of women kind of demonising men and vice versa. I just think it's a real shame that there's this battle of the sexes. what happened to kindness you know I think men have a pretty bad rep because unfortunately there are very prominent men who have very toxic misogynistic voices and I think young men are a bit confused to be honest they're being told one thing by their parents be kind, be considerate, work hard and then you know whenever they're on their phone scrolling they're being told be strong earn loads of money, buy all these materialistic things and that's the way you're going to earn a women's respect and women are beneath you style of content and I just think it's awful and it really bothers me and I think it contributes towards male suicide rates in the UK and I personally would like to set a good example for young men and I'm not looking to be that person really but I'd like to set an example to my sons in particular, that men and women are equal and that everyone should be kind to one another and that, you know, go out and try and do extraordinary things with your life.

41:51And I've had a lot of time to think about men and men who are in trouble whilst I've been out here and wondering why it is that they feel that they have no option but to take their own life. And I don't know, the first thing that comes to my mind is this warped view of masculinity and the probability of young men thinking that it's weak to talk to people, I think, is a real shame. 50 % of people who take their own lives haven't sought any kind of help. So haven't spoken to anyone about it. I think it's exactly the kind of thing that you can imagine certain people online saying, you know, if you're feeling weak, bottle it up, don't talk about it, you know, just be strong.

42:43And I think that's a shame. And I guess I'm hoping that this event has displayed strength, vulnerability, pain, weakness in moments, and something that some people can hopefully relate to other elements of their life, even if it's not physical. And I'm looking forward to getting home and seeing my family. I desperately miss my wife and kids. And yeah, I haven't showered in two days. I'm glad we're not doing this in person. Yeah, no, I feel like shit, to be honest. I'm looking forward to a lovely a lovely shower this evening and a steak and chips somewhere in Punta Arenas, I think. And yeah, look, I hope that this has had a positive impact on some people.

43:35You, of course, don't have to, you know, go and become a world record holding athlete or even an Ironman for this to make a difference to someone. You know, if you've been considering getting into running or lifting weights or just making a positive change to your life hopefully this can be what ignites that in you um you know it's not long ago that I was really lazy drunk you know not doing anything with my life and uh really ashamed of myself so change is possible and hopefully this showcases that and I hope it can help someone couldn't have done it without the sponsors um oakley meta free train um heights um huell um they're genuinely like amazing kit uh incredible partners to have obviously we couldn't put on a show anywhere near this big without you know their involvement and their then backing us uh metaglasses are incredible by the way they're like they're like the features on them and stuff amazing they play music really loud like if you're doing sport and stuff it's so helpful and as well like here for example on the bike I was um I couldn't take my big gloves off and stuff and there's only so much the juror can can tell you like without flipping the screen and I couldn't flip the screen because I was on a mountain bike and just like messing around with it so like anytime I wanted to know anything I'd just like ask my glasses and it would just tell me like average pace and like how far I've gone and so it was pretty amazing uh what's been your favorite place of the whole challenge antarctica has to be antarctica has to be the favorite yeah because it's it's amazing mate like like what runs through your head here is that you know i'm probably the first person to be doing this you know and it's just it's just kind of cool you know like i'm the i'm the first person uh to do a triathlon on king george island uh you know so nobody else has ever gone through anything like this here you know so that's cool i'll always have that um also just the landscape mate the landscape and and what you see here is incredible that you walk out the door there's penguins everywhere like penguins are so cool my godfather now calls me spenguin because of the swim and um i'm hoping it sticks obviously uh but it's uh mate yeah i mean this is this is the most interesting and the place that i appreciate coming to the most like the place where i feel the most privileged to be um no arizona was amazing like doing an official iron man event in arizona was very cool i love americans i just think they're really fun and like you know everything's always a bit of a vibe in america it was like some big homecoming football game that day outside the hotel as well so like you know the whole place was just like popping off it was kind of cool honestly i don't mean to like dodge the question but it's just you know everything was cool if you take the the triathlons out of it and the pain and suffering in the races out of it as just locations cape town was awesome you know perth is an amazing city as well i think somebody said something to me about how they weren't a massive fan of perth before going we loved perth like perth was fantastic beautiful place bumped into a couple of lads from my house at school in perth on the run can you imagine can you imagine the chances of that so so i'm out on the second lap of my of my marathon run in perth it's it's dark sun's kind of gone down and i ran past two lads will light and rob ponty from my house at school like i literally couldn't believe it what is going on it's incredibly like mad that i would see kids from my house at school in perth on the run with no communication prior to that rio rio's amazing mate copacabana at the copa um it was pretty sick mate so so that that was cool the swim was amazing beautiful no wildlife to worry about lovely warm water like incredible weather rio is cool rio rio is brilliant and then of course antarctica but if i had to if i had to only you know the biggest part of the challenge the most challenging thing that we've done, like the biggest swings in mood, the most aggressive thing was here, right?

47:55So this is where we're going to hang the hat. Well, an absolute mega stint and an unbelievable achievement, mate. Huge congratulations. We're all very proud of you. And we look forward to seeing you back here pretty soon. Pretty high end that I didn't end up in this thing. Big achievement. As well. Mate, thanks so much. And love you all. Travelling back to London. and be back on Sunday. See you next week. Please do follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. It only takes a moment, but it makes a huge difference to us. We have truly incredible guests every single week and you wouldn't want to miss an episode.