Jonny Davies Breaks Down Ultra Training, Running Economy & Gait Analysis

0:06I think so many people will look at a marathon, an ultra marathon, and they go, you know what, I'm going to give that a go. And they just throw themselves in the deep end and then either get injured or they go, I hate this. It's one of those sports that is difficult to love at the beginning. 100%. It's like coffee. Nobody really loves coffee when they first drink it. It takes the time. You've got to get used to it a little bit. it's an acquired taste 100 % acquired I think as well there's a this is like a difficulty threshold you have to get over before you can start enjoying it for me it's like the first year of running I was like what what are people on about this run as high this this whole like nice experience and like people like all looking really happy when they're running I didn't smile for the first year of running until I realized I'm like I finally got to a point where I could like hold a 10k like pretty decently I was like oh it's actually quite nice I'm rather proud of myself here I'm just thinking about that I I I hated running I think when I first started like just thinking about it, I really, like it would, it would really hurt me because like you, I think we're naturally quite competitive and you know, I had friends that ran and so I would set off running with them and I would be out of breath so quickly and like in pain so quickly.

1:14And to your point, they'd just be like speaking in full sentences and like nose breathing and, and I would just be struggling. And I think it is about taking it slow. Almost better to give yourself, you know, the goal once you've done some of the work. Yeah. Kind of like, you know, starting a startup and wanting to be a billion dollar company straight away without any foundation. You know, it's a difficult thing to realize. It's like with running, it's better to build some kind of foundation before looking at, say, your first half or first marathon. 100%. I was quite lucky because I was getting into it just before COVID.

1:47And then obviously without COVID, there was no races, no nothing. So my first like two years of doing it, I didn't have this idea of running a race or a marathon or an event, like nothing at all. I just had to spend two years of not having this pressure of like right you need to sign up for this because there's nothing to sign up for I was great I was just like I was out running as as much as I wanted or as far as I wanted to um without this like overwhelming pressure of like right you got to do these types of workouts and this this specific workouts get this specific outcome for this specific race I had no experience of going to like a race or a marathon anything that at all I just ran for the sake of oh this is a really fun thing I get to do and like oh look I'm getting fitter I'm like respecting myself a bit more by taking myself out each day that's that in itself is like an enjoyable thing.

2:24That's kind of what I tell anyone who's getting into it. It's like that in itself is far greater than the outcome of a race or a marathon. They're cool, but you know, the medal, like you don't wear that thing every day, you know, it's just sitting up and down the wall. Like you don't, it's all the other things that come with it are the most important parts to it. So by respecting yourself a bit more, do you mean kind of doing the difficult thing and feeling a sense of pride? 100%. I mean, that's what I would say to most people, like that's what you get out of this. A time at a race, It's honestly, no one cares about your time of year where you care about it because you worked really hard for it.

2:56And that's great. But ultimately, like the things that last with you is like your, you know, your standards, your disciplines, all the things that come as a result of like committing to a training block or improving. And then you get to look back and be like, wow, I'm a lot faster. I'm not fitter. You know, I've learned a lot about myself. I've learned what it means to push myself. Yeah, cool. The cherry on top of the cake is the medal and the marathon and the big day and that kind of stuff. And that's great and everything. But take that away. You've still got all these amazing things that have happened to you.

3:20And I think that's the thing that gets overlooked a lot of the time. Because again, through social media, it's the race day is the thing that everyone's like, oh my God, this is an amazing experience. And that's the thing that you get really excited about, this big event. But again, a lot of the time, if you don't hit time, a lot of people feel really, they're like, oh, they feel really disappointed. It's like, well, hang on a minute. You just dedicate three months of your life to getting fitter, faster, like waking up earlier, like improving all these areas of your life. That's so much more important than getting a medal or hitting a finish line.

3:46Like the finish line is over in a few minutes. You take the medal off the next day, unless you're one of those people that wears it for a week afterwards. in that case, like, stop doing that. It's, you know, all the sort of people that have it up on the wall behind them on a podcast. Actually, these are, these are, these are just. They are, actually. Oh, okay, they are yours. Yeah, but they needn't be. It's just. No, no, no. It's because, you see, we're. You've got to decorate the set. I get it. We're now, we're running a specific podcast. Ballad. And these are moments in, not necessarily my, these are, these are, you know.

4:15Yeah. These come with, these are marathon medals. No, they're cool. And, you know, I think it's. You've got to keep them. nothing to do with me really no they just look nice they do to be fair I got that one last year at Berlin other than it's the coolest medal yeah yeah so nice last year at Berlin yeah very hot boiling shocker terrible day yeah do you have a good one? no terrible I have a 3.30 I was shooting for like a 3.05 3.10 and after like 5 minutes in I was like this is not going well at all it was grim it was horrible it was but even then it was like okay but the point being I still finished that wasn't upset with myself I wasn't disappointed it was like I still trained really hard for that race.

4:50I got a lot faster. I know that training block was pretty enjoyable. And I was like, okay, this is cool. And, you know, just happens on the day, really hot. I still got to run around Berlin, be involved in a world marathon major. And I appreciate that that's a really cool thing that, you know, several years ago, I wouldn't even dream of doing something like that. So for me, it's like, okay, I'll take that away from this race as opposed to being like, did I hit this time that absolutely no one cares about other than me? Yeah. And so it's great. And, you know, it's like, okay, well, cool, give it another crack elsewhere.

5:16I think that the focus on the time is useful for the training right i think i think what what happens on race day happens on race day right and you either have a good day or you don't and that's that you know i think broadly speaking you should know if you really give yourself to a block properly as i'm experiencing now for sure you should know pretty much within reason where you're going to end up right yeah providing you don't have some nightmare on the day which of course is possible um i love what you said about it having a positive knock-on effect in your life, I feel exactly the same way.

5:47For me, running as a sport has such positive knock-on effects everywhere else in my life. I feel like it benefits my marriage. I think it makes me a better father. I think it makes me a better businessman. Genuinely, because the discipline that comes with it and the gains that come with it are kind of, they transcend running. It's not just about getting faster or fitter. It's in order to stick with it and do what's required of whatever plan you set yourself, you have to kind of adapt around it, you know, set yourself discipline and, you know, be around for it. But as mentioned, that has a knock-on effect into other things.

6:30And I think people see these training plans sometimes as like a sacrifice or as like incredibly time-consuming. It's no more time consuming than the normal training it's just built in a way that is designed to make you uh more a more efficient and better runner 100 i mean the whole thing with running making you you know better in other ways of life is just that like it's you look at you have to take a hard look at your standards like you have to give up other things to make that happen you go right what we're willing to give up well maybe the friday night pints i'm gonna have to knock on the head because saturday long runs after a few beers isn't actually that fun to try and knock out and do so you go okay well that's one better decision i can make okay well maybe i need to start going to bed a little bit earlier and maybe not scrolling my phone late at night i guess another better decision all of a sudden you make these incremental better decisions across the board and then you go oh wow like that's and then you finish the training block and you're still making really good decisions or smart decisions and then you know it just i think it just puts a big mirror to a lot of like standards you already have set for yourself and then you it kind of forces you to improve them either the running gets better and you and your standards improve or your standards don't improve the running doesn't really get much better like i've tried to balance having like you know going out loads and when i first started getting into running and i realized like why am i not getting better at this and it's like oh because like all the other areas of my life i haven't taken a look at and gone well maybe i should stop doing that or maybe this isn't that beneficial for it or maybe staying up on weekends or crazy early in the morning or maybe you know maybe i should just go to bed at a sensible time all of a sudden i was like damn then it's like eating better it's like it's annoying because it works it's like damn i'm you know taking this seriously i think when you invest that much time and effort and energy into something you want to you do your best so you go yeah well okay well maybe i shouldn't be out every saturday night i i literally i literally love it and i i relate so much to what you're saying and i i know that it sounds boring yeah right like but i i actually don't care yeah at all and saturday night my saturday night just gone i went to the track with two mates we did a really hard speed session uh it was really hot and sunny and just lovely beautiful evening everyone else around us out you know drinking having fun perfect no worries that added to our atmosphere everyone being out in the park getting pissed we kind of felt like we were in it too right even though we were on the track working and had a clean gin tea afterwards like genuinely but like I wanted nothing more from my Saturday it was like the perfect Saturday I just told you about it then went back with Jordan watched The Last Samurai had a cheeseburger and just thought I fucking love this

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11:19Well, I think at the same time as well, what the big issue I often see with people who really dedicate themselves to running is they take themselves off to this like isolated place. And I think social isolation is a really bad thing for our health at the same time as well. Yes, running is great for our health, improving our standards, but doing it in a way that doesn't involve this social isolation thing. It's like, obviously, lock-in mentality is great, but I'm a big believer in how many times a week can I run with other people? How many times can I involve social stuff into what I'm doing? So if you're going to Battersea Park track on a Saturday night when it's gorgeous weather, think about how many times it's like training through winter, it's crap weather.

11:53You're thinking, oh, God, what am I doing this for? It makes those sessions even better. you've got mates with you pushing you on a hard session you're still in a social area so I went for a drink afterwards to clean G &T like you do and then you've got people come around your house watching movies like that is for me like an awesome Saturday that doesn't then you wake up Sunday morning feeling fresh feeling great your social like batteries filled up as well trying to combine the two things I think a lot of people go that route of right I need to take my fitness seriously so I'm going to stop seeing all my friends I'm going to stop doing anything social and next thing you know they're just sitting at home alone on a Friday Saturday night being like oh actually you know what I was having a lot more fun when I was going out with my friends like how can you find like not say middle ground but like how can you incorporate socialising and hard training at the same time as well The Last Samurai as well is an absolute belter like seriously I've not seen that in a long time and I watched it and I just thought this is sick like I just thought it was great that scene Tom Cruise and he's fighting them off at the start he's a winner mate honestly like I don't care about him being a Scientologist or any shit like that or him bouncing around on that sofa screaming about his ex-wife I couldn't care less he was the last samurai I forgave him for that because of Mission Impossible as well I was like that's a fucking great series he is a belter and actually like it's not really up for debate no no there's a certain thing when you get to a certain style level where they're just nothing to do with running oh he can run no no no he sprints he can he's on the field he has all his own stuff I know that but you're aware as well right of the Tom Cruise run so like he does it in all his films you'll notice if you love Mission Impossible it's that exact same his sprinting shots on the steadicam yeah I was going to ask just get him in yeah sure Simon do you not have confidence that we can get Tom Cruise in do we need to find somebody that can do that of course we will okay is like an action movie like a Tom Cruise movie is that like the perfect like post training session weekend burger moment is there like what's the best kind of top three post training movies I'm a big believer in a pre-training movie so the night before a training session Rocky 3 oh mate Rocky 3 goes hard like Rocky 1's more of an emotional like hard hitting thing Rocky 3 for training like when he's doing all the training with Apollo Creed for the rematch that for me is like a pre I watched it the other night because I got this run on Sunday I'm like I need that's my mentality going into this they really kick the shit out of each other in those films Jesus I saw one of those recently I watched Creed 2 yeah maybe and they can swallow a punch those lads go for it oh yeah you know what I need because I need in my head when I'm training I'm playing through my own training montage especially when you're making content as well like it ultimately is a montage you're making you know in my head i'm just like going long life i like so this is only rocky three here like running around battersea park when we're top off like yeah that's it's about to make we're jordan and i set out to watch uh braveheart yeah uh and it actually wasn't on netflix so so we so we ended up with the last samurai which which you which by the way was just like i just just love it saw a lot of like synergy between myself and the protagonist with, you know, Stephen Scullion, you know, being the samurai and, you know, taking me in and teaching me the ways of the samurai.

14:58And, you know, it's all good stuff. That was, I have to say, like a really incredible Saturday night. I'm at a stage now with boozing as well, where like, I've got nothing against drinking. I drink from time to time. I kind of always regret it. Like, and I don't mean that in like a judgmental way. Like when I, even if I'm enjoying like a delicious glass of wine with colleagues or friends or family like i'll enjoy the sensation i suppose of like having a drink but in the back of my mind i'm like oh this is gonna have a knock-on effect on my sleep and stuff not a la stephen bartlett obviously where like i feel like it's gonna destroy my week like i don't think that yeah but like i do think okay like you know i'm i you know i'm i won't sleep as well especially if i have three or four yeah then it's kind of like i know that I'll feel this a little bit in my speed sesh tomorrow.

15:51And like, I am at the stage of my life where I'm sort of like, I don't know if this is worth it. I'd say, this is my take on it, because I do like a drink here and there. I don't like, you know, especially throughout a training block, I think giving yourself the permission to have a bit of fun and not be like, oh, I'm going to feel this the next day. I think the purpose of training, especially for big challenges and big races, is to build a level of resilience in you. if three drinks knocks you for three days you haven't got resilience like bit of a bitch if you ask me like you should be able to go out have a few drinks wake up the next morning rip a session you might not perform as well in the session yeah but cool you had a great night you had some fun you had some friends not feeling that guilt of being like oh but I had this there maybe I don't feel the best but guess what I'm still going to go and do it I'm still going to go I find that to be for me I almost get off the fact that I mean like I had my first like night out of the year a few weeks ago funny enough halfway through this night out I got an email saying I got into Moab 240.

16:46So I was like, oh, fucking hell. Of all the days. For me, though, that was wicked. I got to see my friends. It was the Champions League final on. Everyone came around to mine. Went out for a few drinks afterwards. Awesome night. Woke up the next day, knocked out the AK. I was like, yep, sweet, let's do it. Firstly, with the booze as well. So I actually almost find it easier sometimes if you're a bit fatigued to fall into like a harder session more easily. Like when I'm really well rested, like really hydrated, really and i've spent like loads of attention being like as dialed in as i possibly can you're almost like so aware of the session and the pace and the time and the mileage that it's quite difficult to kind of slip into that state that you aim for like if you're pushing yourself um you know a good example would be tokyo didn't drink any alcohol but only slept for like an hour and a half the night before the race and i was quite tired and just like felt a bit low and felt a bit kind of like you know i wish i'd slept really well last night and and that just wasn't to be but almost that being a little bit drained but having done some good work before just like knocked me into a bit of a flow state i guess where like i just found a pace i was able to sort of switch off yeah at that pace and just kind of cruise at the pace and like the k's were just ticking along nicely like i wasn't hyper aware of where i was yeah in the race you know it's kind of like there's a 5k block there's a 5k block there's a 5k but and all of a sudden you've only got like you know a couple of blocks left and it's like oh cool you're not thinking too hard i always think if you're really well rested and like you know everything's been perfect at the point you're over analyzing everything and to get into that flow state you know sometimes just i always refer to it's like you know the monkey the symbols like people ask me what i'm thinking about doing these ultras it literally is like the monkey the symbols going like that in my brain that's the only thing that's going on i'm just thinking consume carbs one foot in front of the other how i'm landing and then nothing else is going on.

18:40I'm not really thinking, I'm not thinking, I've got this pace here, I'm not overanalyzing the process. I'm focusing on the process, not the outcome, but the process to me is just like, am I landing efficiently? Not making any glaring mistakes? Am I taking on what I need to take on? And that's kind of it. There's not much else going on there. Yeah, yeah. I love it. It's great. So I was about to say, you're well known for covering longer distances. Yeah. You're an endurance guy. I mean, you've achieved a lot in that space. what are your kind of main hacks for running further? Like what's your advice on people who want to take on, say, their first ultra?

19:16I mean, I think, again, it goes back to enjoying the process. Like ultra running is really, really tough. Don't get me wrong. It's like 100K, 100 milers, then those distances above that. It's all really difficult. It's a very different type of fatigue than you feel at the end of a marathon. Like you're someone, I mean, you've run 100 miles as well, haven't you? You've enjoyed it on the track. That was a very different sensation and feeling than running a fast marathon. they're both difficult in their own unique ways um there's always some obviously some crossover i think with the ultras you have so much time to fill and i just think it's a very different the way you conceptualize that time that effort that movement is a is a very unique experience in running like until i ran an ultra i'd never experienced anything quite like it and then when you're spending you know 10 20 30 plus hours running you're you go to some really interesting places i find when i'm when i'm doing anything fast my sort of mind doesn't go into necessarily like I'm just focusing on like right pushing pace here I'm really dialed in whereas with an ultra like it's so much time and you're moving at a pace it's not exhausting you and again you're trying to control that pace almost you're not overexerting any points you can keep going it just allows you to sort of free up your mind and again you go on this roller coaster emotions of massive highs low lows and you're constantly pulling yourself out the lows try not to ride the highs too high because you know you can sort of overshoot it's like running way too fast or get a bit arrogant with your performance and it's i think it's an incredible experience to be able to go up and down with that i think again with any any ultras like it's it's just a really beautiful thing to be able to move your body that far and again it's an experience thing like with like with everything anyone who's trying to get into running ultra marathons it's just about being open to the possibilities of experiences that you don't know what's going to happen you don't know how you're going to feel you kind of have to go into it even no matter how hard you train they are so damn hard and that's the thing as well it's like accepting that this is going to be incredibly difficult.

21:01It's going to push me to like almost like a breaking point, but also I'm excited to see how I pull myself around out of that. And then you come out, you know, you're never the same person you are at the start to a finish of an ultramarathon, no matter how, you know, this is a hard 50k, a hundred milers, 200 milers, no matter what, you are a very different person at the end of that, because you're kind of putting yourself in such a vulnerable position physically that you mentally become quite vulnerable. And I always think it's, you know, it's a bit of a therapy session. I'm not saying that running is a swap for actual therapy, but it feels a bit like that because you finish up and you're like wow that was a very deep emotional experience physically yes very hard exhausting but running 30 hours of no sleep you know you really tap into some you know some maybe some places in the brain that we often kind of like ignore a little bit or we're able to go i don't want to go there today during ultra marathon you're kind of pulling from all these different resources and tapping into you know things in your past or maybe things you kind of ignore about yourself maybe you know you ask you all these really deep questions and because you've got nothing to distract you you're just running you kind of have the time to go into it and tap into it and i always find like i ended up i ended up writing crazy amounts of notes to myself when i run ultras or i'll voice note myself i mean i've got i've got probably hours of voice notes to myself that i've i'll tap into something really deep and i just start having these like super in-depth conversation to explaining how i'm feeling about something it's the first time i've really like unlocked something i think that's the most beautiful part about ultra running and that's something that a lot of people who do run these crazy distances often tap into and they find themselves a very different person at the end of it i think it's really beautiful can you remember what some of these internal conversations would be oh man i remember i ran this one of my first ultra marathons i ran this 50 mile mountain race in upstate new york and i did it with a group of friends from from new york i was like oh super i didn't i wouldn't say i probably trained for it because it was like a last minute thing they're like, hey, we're running this ultra.

22:50I went out there and, like, the year previous, my cousin passed away. Really unfortunate. And really sad. I remember, like, being very confused about someone like my kind of, like, similar age to me passing away, I was very close to. And, you know, no one's really, grief's one of those weird things that don't really teach you how to deal with grief. And so for me, I was really struggling with, like, how to feel about it. And I remember I was out there and I was dealing with, like, some massive Achilles issues because again, I live in London. There's not too many mountains or hills to be running up and down.

23:21So my training was pretty flat. And then it was a couple thousand meters of elevation on this thing. And so my kidneys were burning the whole way. And I was like, this sucks. And I got to like the 60K, so it's 80K and 50 miles. Got to like the 60K mark. I remember just like having this beautiful period alone during the race. I stopped running with my friends. I was like, listen, I'm in a lot of agony here. I kind of don't want to be around people like cheering and all happy. I'm just like, let me be miserable on my own for a couple of hours. And I remember just kind of like, all of a sudden, and I was so tired and fatigued and dealing with all these physical pain elements, I kind of just went into this state of like being very confrontational myself about like how I actually feel about this passing and grief.

23:57And dude, I just had to pull my eyes out. I don't cry very often. I was like, damn, I'm really in this emotional state. I think I just held up these barriers for so long and I just started to like accept what was happening and going on and understanding and just giving myself permission to feel these things properly. I think I've always struggled to like understand or feel certain emotions and just like I'm aware of them but kind of just able to like park it or guard it a little bit whereas i do i just hit my ball and ball and i was like oh shit i literally let go and then all of a sudden all the pain i was feeling in my body and my achilles and my legs just disappeared and it's like so so interesting to understand like a lot of time physical pain is linked to emotional pain yeah maybe in our minds the physical pain we're feeling is just being amplified by something we're holding on to and all of a sudden i just start kicking out like five minute k's and i'm like how i'm like where the hell is this coming from caught up with all my friends and they've seen me be like basically just being like miserable for the last like five hours so much so that i was like can you guys come off so i can just like suffer my own hair i remember just i just caught back up to them smiling laughing they're like what happened to your kid i'm like it feels fine now everything feels great i feel fantastic and i then ran the last like two hours through we just started punching the pace ran the last two hours like hitting like five 530ks and i was like this is brilliant i had the best time i remember finishing that thinking like wow okay that's a real yeah you kind of like it's almost like a cathartic thing like like an amazing release yeah 100 % and that was me I was like the more I run the more I realize like it's so much better for like my emotional and mental well-being than it is like physical yeah great but it was one of those things like wow it really does like I'm I became much more aware of the guards I put up around my emotions a lot of the time and it allows me now to get whenever I go into ultras or big long training runs you know I try not to over listen to music I'm trying to be very present with my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, it feels like the only time I can really like let things down or approach a lot of things.

25:45So that's why now I'm just like, hey, I'll do this every day. And you know what? It just kind of, especially if I run early in the morning, it kind of sets me up the day. If I run in the evening, I could get to reflect on things. And, you know, it helps me because I journal a lot as well. That's a big thing I do around a lot of my running is beforehand how I'm feeling, afterwards I'm feeling. And it just allows me just to keep check on things and just be a bit more like emotionally mature, I think. That's really interesting. I had a similar thing with the crying. I don't ever cry. And after the Amazon Ultra, I think it's like 230K, something like that, five days, Amazon rainforest, like incredible experience.

26:20On the plane on the way home, I just like had this complete like emotional, at the time it kind of felt like it was a meltdown, but it's more of like a breakthrough, I think. Yeah, absolutely. Literally I was wailing, crying. I had to like hide under the covers. the students going I was like Eddie drinks it I think I had a couple of glasses of wine or something and like I was watching I was watching that Tom Hanks film A Man Called Otto which is all about him wanting to commit suicide and he doesn't do it in the end because he finds this friendship in this community that he doesn't really like people and it's quite it's quite it's a relative it's nowhere near as moving as as I thought it was it is moving it was the trigger that you needed I don't know what it was, but it triggered me.

27:09And I sat next to this woman. And literally, I started crying, but really quite uncontrollably. And I thought I could kind of hide it, but I couldn't. And I started really going. And I had to get the covers and just go over into the window. And I was literally going like... I couldn't stop. I cried for ages. And then on the next flight, it kind of happened again. No Tom Hanks on this one. I was just sat there. Yeah. And I just started like bawling, crying again. Yeah. And I was just like, this is odd, but I loved it. Like it felt so nice. It did 100%. It felt like years and years of pent up stuff just like leaking out of my eyeballs.

27:52Yeah. Yeah. I find that like doing ridiculous distance ultra stuff is enough to break down like the barriers you kind of build up. Because again, like day to day, especially like yourself, like you're getting stuff done. Yeah. There's almost an element of nonstopness to what you're doing with podcasting, with work, with training. like your sole focus on the next job you kind of don't give yourself this permission to sit take stock and go right and as i'm i'm the exact same like i don't sit there being like all the time you know trying to think about how this impacts this what impacts this so for me it's like whenever i'm out on these big ultra these big challenges i'll get a point where i stop overthinking anything because i'm so tired and fatigued that that part of my brain that's trying to like give up with come up with an excuse or reason not to think about this thing just kind of like falls away and I'm kind of left with my subconscious and you have these very deep conversations.

28:36Like I'm still working through voice notes from the last ultra I did because I'm out there, the two one in Texas and I've got so many clips of me, even just like doing a video to myself thinking like, right, this is what we're thinking of here. And it is a really like, you finish these races in such a, almost like content or at peace with certain things. And I think I find it so bizarre. Like the most I've ever cried was like the day after I did the run the capitals challenge it was like 960 kilometers in 11 days and that was like that was painful to do that was really painful the whole thing I didn't kind of like cry I wasn't emotional I was just like job you know 18 to 90k a day day after day day after day day after day in agony foot swelled up two three shoe sizes bigger and I was just grinding through it and it was like the day after I woke up and I even like didn't go home I was checking to a hotel I was like I don't want to be home I just want to be somewhere that's not the RV that we were sleeping in or back to my own face and just stayed there I woke up the next day and like Just bawl my eyes out.

29:33There must be something, I think, in extreme physical exertion and emotional release. Just talking to you now, I haven't thought about this in ages. In 2023, we made the Finding Michael documentary on Everest. And unfortunately, I had promised my parents I would just stay at base camp. Because I think it makes sense not to put myself through any unnecessary risk, particularly having lost Michael to the mountain. And I had a friend, Alex, who I met up there, who was there and he was climbing and he climbs and he summited and then he came down. And I'll always remember seeing him back at base camp.

30:17He was just like, like sobbing, sobbing, but eyes like, it felt like his eyes were kind of twice the size that they normally are, just absolutely full of water, like just blubbering, like couldn't get a sentence out because he'd just seen like, you know, the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. And he's achieved this probably, you know, goal that he's had for years and years and years. And like, it was just this, he had this massive emotional, you know, breakthrough, I guess. And it's, there's so much extreme beauty in the longer stuff, I think. Not all of it, obviously. But you know Chris Taylor, right?

30:55So like being on a few cool things with him now. Yeah. You know, the desert stuff, just like the sunrises and the sunsets and just the the the scenes in the wadi rum desert and and the music and just all this stuff is so moving right and then even to a slightly lesser scale the project seven stuff you know just the the seven continents and the antarctic and it's it's just all like it's an amazing thing to see absolutely right and then when you add in the physical exertion and the lack of sleep and you know the strain and the stress of it all i think it breaks down those those kind of emotional barriers that perhaps you don't even realize they're there like i don't go through my life kind of trying not to cry like you know but i just nothing really moves me yeah unless you're watching the last samurai because oh yeah genuinely like there was when the when the when Matsumoto's son gets killed the way it's shot they don't make films like that anymore no films are shit nowadays compared to that they are I literally was watching that summer I was like why don't people make films like this it's just absolutely sick everything's shot like an advert these days everything's like designed to just keep you interested like if you're scrolling as well and like everything's over explained and it's all like it's too it's crap yeah they feed it to you too easy there's no work to be done aren't film shit you're creative and stuff like do you notice it when was the last time you saw an incredible film at the cinema ages ago anyway like it's uh ages ago ages ago like like it's just all it's it's so disappointing yeah like when when matsumoto's son dies in the last samurai and he's running across the bridge with his with his like with his swords out and he's getting decked by all the stuff and then it's like there's smoke coming out of him because he's fucking being shot like over and over again and he's screaming and Tom Cruise is all teary looking on.

32:48It's just fucking banging. Honestly, I cried. I was sat on the sofa and I was like, oh my God. I taps into it. It's just banging. Proper stuff. They just don't do it anymore. Why don't they do it anymore? Simon, why don't they make proper films anymore? Well, I think there needs to be this sort of running commune at your house now. I think there should be some sort of movie night. Some sort of, yeah, it's like go for a big training session, a burger, we'll watch an action movie and have a cry all together. No bullshit that has to be like, even if you take like an old school, like the original Jurassic Parks, Beltis, new Jurassic Parks.

33:22Oh my God. Honestly, I struggle. I would say it's because they've got to appeal to an audience of people that are... Kids. They're so easily distracted. They're fighting for every second of attention in the film. If there's a period more like a minute long where nothing happens, where there's no time to build suspense or like build whatever they're trying to get to, because everyone can just flick on their phone and start scrolling because they get bored. Why do the dinosaurs all have to be jacked up, special mutant dinosaurs? The fact that it's a dinosaur is enough, isn't it, surely? A dinosaur is a fucking dinosaur.

33:50It doesn't need to be a cross-breed, cross-contaminated dinosaur with a fucking metal arm. Bollocks. Bullshit. Just a fucking normal dinosaur is frightening enough. Yeah. Fucking T-Rex in your bedroom. Done. Yeah. I don't need it to have some genetically mutated gene for it to be more frightening. Who gives a fuck? It's a T-Rex. That's enough.

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36:34I told you about that guy I used to know who every morning, this is Jurassic Park related, so every morning he would like, with his breakfast, have the same breakfast every day as whatever cereal, would start watching Jurassic Park on his laptop, 15 minutes whilst he was getting ready, hit pause, go off, have his day at work, next morning, same thing again, hit play, and he would just do that on repeat for, he did it for like two years, just watch Jurassic park on a weird little loop yeah but i mean he was a psychopath obviously but like nothing wrong with it like it but also i think that's better than scrolling for 50 minutes on like yeah like way better i'm i'm a long i'm a long form content only person yeah like we like long form content where we can have a proper conversation absolutely you know but we do hope you are hooked by obviously obviously when you're watching our short clip we hope that you are addicted to We won't make a clip out of this bit, but...

37:28So if you are listening to this on the long form side, congratulations. We appreciate you being here. And if you happen to enjoy the short stuff, then great. Watch that as well. Let's talk about shoes. So when you do your long, like 100k, 100 mile plus, what shoe do you run in? I chop and change. So depending. So I just done 192k a few weeks ago at the Backyard Ultra in Texas, the BPN race. And I ran the whole thing in two pairs of Sockney Azoras. brilliant shoe like I came across them during training and I was like these are like fast enough and can get a good kick out but for me wide enough as well because my feet have a tendency to expand during big ultras so these ones are like nice wide toe box no issues finished up with like didn't lose a toenail didn't have a single blister nothing like they were great that's nice that's a really nice feeling this one I'm doing next on Sunday running across the UK probably comes in a minute that one I'm looking at I need it I need something a little bit faster so I'm just going to chop and change between a few different like variations of faster shoes something with a plate in them full plate like a super shoe yeah yeah mate I've got to run fast it's 140k and I've got like 17 hours to do it in ah you'll do that yeah there's a lot of climbing it's not oh right it's North England it's not on track I know it's flat here I know we're used to running Battersea Park here it turns out most places aren't that flat have you tried the this Terex the Gravac Terex yeah yeah they're nice it's got a sort of plate in it they do I've worn them for other like traily things they're nice yeah just yeah this whole thing I'm doing is on road anyway so I always have a love hate relationship with trail shoes I think I find them like really heavy and like bulky I quite like a lighter shoe so what do you reckon you'll go for like a puma maybe they're too tight on my feet I'm a size 13 they are quite thin they're 13 and I like to go like half size you're a size 13 exactly not anyone with a big cock around here a size 13 and then I often wear I'll bring like a 14 and a 14 and a half with me for most things.

39:2514 and a half. Who are you? Shaquille O 'Neal. Mate, have a look at the size of my boat. Shaquille O 'Neal. They probably smell a bit there. But like, yeah. Look at his. Absolute boats. Hello? This thing's like a phone from the 50s. Proper. Do they exist? No. When did phones come out? The 70s? Yeah, the 70s, 70s, 80s. The big ones. Phones in the 50s. Gordon Gekko size. Yeah, well Gordon would have one of these, should we? 100 % boats. You could kayak on this, I think. 100%. Transatlantic in Johnny Davies' shoe. something going on there I would probably probably be a better swim than I'm a runner the size of my flippers 14 and a half yeah okay so here's the thing a lot of running brands don't make shoes in my size so I'm kind of limited Puma ones like they look everyone's talking about how great they are and I'm like oh it'd be really cool to test them out don't make my size well they like a fast you couldn't ever wear a fast start no so they don't make them Adidas go up to my size Nike go up to my size I'm assuming Jordan's pitched you this heavyweight running division idea yeah he's mentioned it a few times, yeah.

40:24What do you reckon? I love the fact that, you know what, any way to get more people involved in. He's mentioned it a few times. He's mentioned it a couple of times there and there every day. I think any time, any way can make more people feel included in running. Like when I first started rocking up to ultras, like I'm not exactly the smallest bloke in the world. I remember just being like, there's no one my height or size here. How much do you weigh? 95 at the moment. By the way, I used to be 120. When I played rugby, I was 120 kilos was my playing weight. And when I started running ultras, like my first 100k I was 109 kilos Jordan size so he's 107 or something yeah yeah no I was big but I wasn't like I was just like there was way more muscle I've stopped lifting weights upper body and I've still got like a decent amount on me still as I progress with running I'm trying to get that down I literally only do lower body now do you run 5k's and stuff?

41:17not really no? I mean I do speed work and things like that but I've never run like a 5k race or like My 5K PB happened during a half marathon. Yeah. So I don't have... For me, it's never interested me that much. I was always interested in... Because of those two years I spent from when I got into running, no one ever told me, like, oh, you kind of should start at the 5K and then progress up that way. I was like, I really enjoy doing this. Let's see how far I can run. Run a spontaneous 50K, then I ran a spontaneous... Then I was working up towards it. And then my first proper race was 100K. My first experience of going to a race where you get a bib and everything like that was the Thames Path 100K.

41:50and like the expo was literally a bloke with a little stand giving out the bibs that was my first first experience of like a running expo it was literally just like a pop up camping table you said your name here's your bib and then 100k to Henley lovely I was like wicked this is great I really enjoyed that so going from there to then like a London Marathon Expo big jump up in like you know standards of like how big these events are but I thought I enjoyed it I mean that was my first experience of doing like a proper formal ultra anyone getting into ultra marathon running in the UK I think that's a wicked 100k to start with because it's pretty flat.

42:23Gorgeous. You run from Putney to Henley along the river. Race to the Stones, another good one. That's a good one. Have you done that? Not done that? No. There's a few. Ultras are very different, I feel, to marathons, depending on how you run them, obviously. Of course. But it's a different... I actually almost feel like the Ultra is a nice way to start. I think it's a great way to start. Honestly, I went in with that angle, first of all. I'm now trying to reverse engineer being like okay actually I should probably have a nailed on 5k 10k half I should probably really work through those at some point as well but for me I don't it doesn't do the same thing for me I think as well you've got to find what you enjoy find what you're maybe probably a bit better at as well and for me something out of doing these big challenges big multi-days I love being in that space for hours and hours and hours and hours the idea of a 5k the 5k is a nasty distance we hate it in here yeah honestly anyone whose distance is a 5k like hats off that is it's rough it's rough 5k is the worst it's also to get good at the 5k the trying to trying to training you're doing is pushing that zone for so like ah honestly it's grim it's grim it's good you almost you almost feel like you feel if you're pushing for a big big time or whatever you you feel horrendous in the very first k and then you've just got like another like i don't know 12 13 minutes of hell yeah anyone who's chosen that as their distance is like people talk about like running options you know must be something going on up here i'm like no no no if you choose that 5k is your distance something's going up there like for you to like in like that's that's where you want to spend your like time and effort and energy like you gotta really have like a few things going on there even the 800 meters is rough as well like 800 when when it's ran in the way that some people run it yeah it's just like how on earth are they like just basically sprinting for two laps it's just insane mid distance looks wild as well I think that's why obviously the marathon ultra marathons get all this kind of like big attention because of how far those distances are it captures people's attention but people who are good mid distance runners or 5k runners it's like wow I didn't realise how I was like in my head I looked at these big ultras and people who compete in them but now I'm looking at people who can run a ridiculously fast 5k I'm like mate it's insane oh it's insane Alfie Manthorpe who was a guest in here recently but i i speak to him a lot because i'm i'm a shoe nerd so i literally just call him yeah we'll just have a chat about shoes quite regularly dialed in yeah he's dialed in yeah he i also follow him on strava obviously and he uh he ran a 13 minute 50 5k at the track the other night so he averaged like 249 pace wow and it's just like you can't even imagine yeah like i mean and also by the way he's ran 10k at that pace so like he he described it as like oh yeah i need to get fit i was like that just feels a bit of a kick in the team doesn't it yeah i'd say you're quite fit but also he's doing that during a training he's a mid-training block he's no that's not a race that's like yeah yeah no no during training he ran the day before that and i don't know he ran three times that day oh okay so like he he had like he was like he often runs like two or three times in a day but like obviously being a pro runner uh but he uh but yeah that was just like he then ran 5k immediately after that at like 310 pace oh nice to cool down nice cool down three yeah three i know it's all it's all uh it's larry kind of alien stuff to be honest 100 i get the saying whenever i see hugo fry running an easy run it's like a four minute pace i'm like he's like casually he's testing out some new pooms the other day and he's like i'm gonna test these out for a 30k run so it's an easy job easy easy run look i was like why how come his 30k run I was like, oh, that's why.

46:09Okay, it makes sense. You said you lift less. So you're in the gym less or you're in the gym doing different things? In the gym doing different things. I still always hit two fundamental sessions I have to hit every single week. And most of that's lower body work and then core work as well. I come from a strength and rugby background. So I used to be able to do, my deadlift was 240 kilos, which is completely unnecessary for running ultramarathons or marathons. However, I'm now trying my best to remove mass upper body, which is, again, having a really big bench press isn't that useful for running a good marathon or a good ultra marathon.

46:44So I'm now just occasionally doing a little bit of upper body, mostly focusing on core and then lower body work. So for me, it's like, how can I improve things like my ground contact times? My leg sessions now involve things like plyometrics, things like lots of pogo work, lots of force absorption work as well. Pogo? Pogos. Pogo sticks? Well, no, pogo. When you're doing plyometrics, you're doing pogos. I don't know what that is. Go on. get the cameras out there you're basically like you know how to improve your ground contact time so you're literally like stiff legs hopping and like how can you attack the ground and get back up again at the same time so like it's all working landing mechanics which is which is the area i find most interesting around running is like the mechanical side um so work closely with physio the running room go for adrian be my physio for years and like we are dialing in a lot of the mechanics of running to improve um especially as a heavier guy like how how can i land and absorb that force as efficiently as possible and reproduce that force.

47:37A lot of work, we did a lot of this in rugby. So coming from that background is kind of maybe quite injury resistant because a lot of this stuff is around prevention of injury as well as increased performance. And so for me, it's my leg sessions on, you know, how heavy can I go in my squats? Yes, there's elements of like working through all the major running muscles and all the joints. So ankles, knees, hips, making sure great range of motion. I've got good strength profile throughout the entire range. But what I'm not trying to do is, you know, put myself in a state where I can't walk for two days afterwards like my old leg day sessions used to be so now it's very much more focused on single leg exercises making sure i haven't got any imbalances in strength making sure no one legs you know usually speaking one leg's always a little bit more dominant the other but how can i keep that asymmetry between five percent um you know look make sure my calf calves are strong making sure there's no areas of weakness around all the all the joints there because again like when you're running ultra marathons the weakest point in that chain is the first thing to fail and once that one thing fails everything else is compensating for it and you then play this game of catch-up and ultimately leads to sort of, you know, issues and injuries.

48:33Whereas if you can, like, build really resistant legs. And again, good thing about strength training is increased bone density. So forcing yourself to do heavy lifting at least one session a week forces adaptation of the bone as well. And obviously, everyone these days is talking about bone stress injuries. I mean, very fortunate and grateful never to have one, even though we're doing this for five years or so now. Especially as a heavier guy, there's a lot more force going through. One thing I really do take consideration in is how can I strength train my lower body without getting injured. And again, I think a big part of that is looking at the adaptations you get from your bones because your bones are one of those things that when you run a lot and especially if you're not fueling effectively, like that bone density has a tendency to start dropping down.

49:12So again, things like DEXA scans to have a look at the bone density, that's a really important metric we look at every few months. And then just with strength training, just, you know, consistent strength training, you're not trying, I'm not trying to, I'm trying to elicit the adaptation without adding massive amounts of fatigue. So I'll try and double up on the, on the intense days. So days I've got speed work or days I've got hill work, later that day, I'll then do my strength session. And I'll try and like keep my easy days very easy, just one easy run. But my intense days, high fatigue days, it'll be like a track session in the morning, give it seven, eight hours.

49:41So you're not dealing with competitive adaptations, your body trying to adapt from two different stimuluses, such as running and lifting. Giving that time and space between them is really important as well. That's why I'll never go from like a track session again. Oh, I need to go do my lifting session now. Because again, it's two different systems of the body you're training and two different recovery mechanisms involved with that and they can conflict with each other almost like you're sort of pulling in two different directions so keeping them quite separate but for me i try and give them the same day of a high fatigue day make sure eat really well that day pre-session post-session i'll up my calories by an extra thousand that day just to make sure that i'm giving myself the best chance to fuel but also recover from those sessions and then obviously that night i'll be like out like a light you said you're interested in in the kind of mechanics of running.

50:25What do you mean by that? So with running, like form is super important. So like how you land, how you like your ground contact time. There's so many elements to efficiency in running. We can always find those efficiencies in different areas. It's really hard to self-judge that because when you're just running, you're just trying to do your best as you can. So one thing I've done, I just come back from the Red Bull Athlete Performance Centre in Salzburg, which is where every Red Bull athlete gets to do their like couple times a year, their medical testing and their performance testing. So they have every test under the sun, you can imagine.

50:55This is even for their F1 drivers. They have special machines there that test the G-Forces they can handle, their capacities to steer. Phenomenal place. There's no other sports lab in the world like it. They have a blood center there, so they have blood tests in the morning. They have a pharmacy on site, so they're going to be like, right, you need this, here's that. Brilliant place. And we did a full biomechanics testing for the whole day to make sure my body's up to scratch for what I'm doing this weekend. And going through everything. So there's 3D cameras around you when you're doing your jump tests.

51:23You're doing things like calf race force tests, looking at every sort of in the finest detail possible. And then on a treadmill, looking at your landing forces, looking at your gait analysis, finding ways you can increase your performance without increasing your energy output. So looking at different cues you can do, how to train better, improvements to your running economy. All these areas, which again, it's incremental increases, right? You're not trying to change. It's like going from 150 cadence to 190 cadence. It's not going to happen overnight. It's little incremental differences. So things like working your cadence, working how your foot lands, absorbs force, kicks back out again.

52:01And that's in all stuff that you then progressively work on over time. It's not like you go get testing done and they go, right, you need to change 10 things about how you run. And it goes, right, here's how we're going to slightly improve this or slightly improve that. Even things like how far back your arm should go on your technique, or maybe you're leaning too further forward. Maybe your head needs to you raise up there. All these little form cues are really important. Like when I used to play rugby, we had a great coach who'd film a lot of our sprint sessions. So learning sprint dynamics is super important.

52:27So like how fast can you get, you know, your foot from hitting the ground to then up in a dry position? How can you get fast over four or five steps? Whereas with distance running, you know, you're sort of, how can you, how can you not put yourself in the bin? Or like, how can you make sure your form isn't damaging you over that period of a marathon, ultra marathon? then what can you do to improve the damage you're getting from yourself? Because running is damaging. Ultimately, it's just you're landing multiple times over. The pain you're getting your legs from running isn't from pushing off, it's from landing.

52:57So how can you distribute that weight or that force evenly between the three joints that are managing that? I find this stuff fascinating, especially as a bigger guy who has to be a bit more conscious of this with the amount of force going through my legs. And how can you, again, like, minimize that force so you can maximize the distance you can run? and I honestly I find it the most fascinating area of running because a lot of people talk about you know yes things like your VO2 your threshold these are important but getting a lot faster but I find it interesting is like how can you improve the technique especially when there's so much technology now available where they are like literally like filming you from behind filming you from the side and they're watching like how every step lands and looking at the angle between your ankle your your knee angle your land angle are you landing beneath your hips you're landing too far in front of you so you're overstriding which is you know you're losing a lot of a lot of energy there if you're overstriding you know you're landing correctly and that's one thing i got in when i got into running i had reasonably good form because i came from a running sport background with rugby whereby i was used to running for 40 yards at a time and then i got to rest and breathe whereas now you know i'm running for 30 hours at a time and there's not much time to rest and breathe you're just constantly moving just a lot slower thankfully yeah but i think that's that i find that side of running so interesting because again a lot of the reason why people get injured running is because of their form not being strong enough and so for a lot of people the biggest benefit to them would be okay let's get a gait analysis done maybe there's some obvious things they can fix in there um because a lot of people say like oh you know running's bad for your knees or running's bad for your only if you do it incorrectly it's only if you're doing it incorrectly a lot of incorrect running comes from having a bad bad form or bad technique so i always i always say you know it's not that running's bad for you you know i just had a specialist at the rebel sensor look through that um orthopedic dogs that like scan my knees look absolutely everything i've run 14 000 kilometers now the last few years and again, knees are looking great as ever.

54:41Tip top. Tip top condition, which is a really nice thing to hear. But again, a lot of that comes down to taking care of myself, especially doing these extreme challenges. You'll know like it puts a lot of strain in your body knowing that, okay, I've run these ridiculous distances and these crazy challenges, these crazy ultramarathons and knowing that yes, my knees, my ankles, my hips are all in great shape. Like I'm in fantastic condition. That gives me a lot of confidence then go out and train really hard that week. If I know every few months I can get those tests done and have a look at it. And again, you don't have to go to Austria to the Red Bull HQ to get this sorted.

55:09You know, the running room in London, great spot to start. They're my physios here. And again, I get those tests done every six months. Just have a look at where my, how my gait is increasing and my efficiency is increasing when we're running. I've got five years of data with these guys now. So they can see in the videos from five years ago, look at my first form when I started getting into this to now. And we can see that change over that period of time. And that's a really big thing. I think a lot of people miss. They just go, oh, just go run more. It's like, no, no, no. Like work with a coach or work with a physio who can analyse your performance and analyse how you're running.

55:39And there's so many gains to be made just from little incremental increases to cues or form changes. You could be hitting your head against the wall as well, you know, if you're just doing it wrong. Oh, 100%. Like when you plateau, it could be easily because you're just not technically running properly. 100%. And the thing is, it's like skill. You can practically get better at all those things. You could improve on them. I think that's where a lot of people find they pick up injuries, they plateau. They go, well, I'm not getting better. It's like, well, you're leaving a lot of gains in the table because your technique could do the bit of work on here.

56:09And again, it's one of those things that unless you see it on camera and it's film that slowed down, you don't really notice it because the way we run, our eyes can't pick up in time. So it's great to see because I'll be like, in my head sometimes I'm like, that's pretty good. And my physio look and he's like, why are you doing this? I'm like, what do you mean I'm doing this? He's like, why is this foot landing this way? Like, what are you doing here? Like, this is like overstepping here. Like, look at the difference between your two sides here. This foot's slapping the ground. This one's like absorbing nicely, bouncing off.

56:36I'm like, I have no, I was like, I can't tell you I'm doing that. In my mind, they're both evenly doing it. He's like, no, no, that leg's doing 20 % more work. I'm like, I had no idea about that. Well worth having. 100%. What do you like with your diet? Really good. Yeah, really, really good. It's one of those things that running has almost like forced me to improve my diet because now I know I need a certain amount of carbohydrates. You know, that has to be increased. Well, if I want to eat that many carbohydrates and not gain weight, I'm probably going to have to look at the other areas of my diet.

57:03Maybe I shouldn't, you know, shit in the evening. is I going to go, okay, well, that's not going to help me too much. Like we mentioned earlier, by folks taking you running seriously, it lifts those standards elsewhere. So I'll track through different periods to make sure I'm getting enough carbohydrates in, make sure I'm not overeating, make sure I'm not under eating as well. I think a lot of people, you know, when you start running a lot more, you have a tendency to just be hungry all the time. Do you get that? Yeah, I'm like always starving. Yeah. So I have to be quite careful. So I'm quite careful of like right evenings, like high fiber foods, like highly satiating foods that are going to fill me out.

57:34Obviously, hit my macros, super high protein. I don't try and overdo on the fats because I know my carbs are so high as my primary energy source, but I want to make sure I'm recovering from all my sessions properly. So decent amount of protein in there. And again, I'll weigh in once a week just to see how I'm, am I going in the right direction? Yeah. Am I, you know, if I'm losing weight really fast, that's a concern because - Are you trying to lose weight? Not very slightly. So very carefully. I'll not during the most intense parts of the training block. Once I'm going above 80, 90 kilometers a week, I'm then, the goal is not to try and lose weight because at that point, you're sort of like dampening your recovery by being in a deficit it's also really hard to try and balance the deficit at that point so what i'll often do is earlier parts of a training block when my mileage isn't too crazy i'll then go through like a quite well-structured dropping phase of weight and then i'll sort of sit at that level but then i'll wait once a week to check in be like right am i eating enough for to recover but also make sure i'm eating enough that i'm not putting myself in that deficit but also as well i don't want to make sure i'm overeating which is easily easily done with when you start running big managers weight does matter when it comes to your speed.

58:35As someone who used to weigh 120 kilos and now is like 94, 95, I can tell you weight really does matter. And again, I think a lot of people get into running, all of a sudden they'll realize, oh my God, I'm always hungry now. And I could eat so much and I'm still hungry. So making smart food decisions, high vegetables, high fiber, making sure you're getting these things in there, especially with running, you know, a lot of food we eat when we run isn't very good. Like it's sugary carbs, which I think, you know, isn't necessarily the best for our stomachs. So trying and implement, make sure, you know, getting in good vegetables, good fiber, good clean protein, just as a sense of like, I'm battering my body with basic breakfast is always sugary cereal, gels on runs, sweets if I need to like compensate and get more carbs in my system.

59:17All that stuff's not great for your stomach health, that refined carbohydrates. So I do like to make sure I balance it out with like very clean, healthy eating outside of there. But again, it's not about being perfect. It's just about being progressively better. Yeah. So I do diet, especially when it comes to like a big race or a big challenge, like I'll dial in for that. And then I give myself that period afterwards to be like, well, I'm going to enjoy a bleaker burger. That's fantastic. Yeah. But like that feels like proper food to me. It's fast food, but it's not shit.

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1:01:56yeah for sure there's care of attention going into it but I eat that I eat pizzas I'm eating a lot of pasta at the moment because love it yeah just because like you know the plain white rice bowls I just can't like to be honest I struggle to get on board with that it's just hard to eat I think you have to still enjoy food for me is one of those things I always enjoy as you can probably tell you look good mate thank you very much I appreciate it but like I like to eat eating is a passion of mine it's something I'm yeah I love to cook I love to eat so for me I wouldn't want to sacrifice like quality of eating like nice food or good food or food that I enjoy as well like a lot of people get like good enjoyment out of like going for nice meals eating good food I wouldn't want to have to then go like oh I'm now going to have the most plain boring meals now almost like I think it's almost like a bit of self-punishment there it makes the it makes the training feel like a compromise if like if you're training really hard and you're eating so clean that it's boring yeah it's like it's almost like for me it's gone the other way Like I'm eating tons of lasagna, tons of pasta, loads of bread, loads of bagels because I need the carbs.

1:02:56And if I don't eat the carbs, I can't do the session. Like I'll be middle of the third rep at a track and I'll be like proper suffering and I'll go, that's because yesterday I ate, you know, my steak and broccoli that I love and eggs and stuff. But I didn't have that big bowl of pasta that I should have had. 100%. I know that's the big thing about running. You can afford to start eating. You don't have to be as dialed in or as strict with it. for me though as long as I hit those macro targets kind of wherever they come from doesn't really matter too much so for me it's like cereal is my guilty pleasure cereal cereal two bowls a morning what kind of cereal I either go the cereal the lowest amount of fibre in it because I'm just one that's like the sugariness yeah Coco Pops or Rice Krispies are my two you have Coco Pops every morning most mornings yeah before a session you're a beast mate Coco Pops I also have giant bowls giant bowls for the giant man as a single man who lives in his own in London I don't have to compromise without having these like small same with like glasses you know some people have like small glasses every glass in my house you live on your own yeah oh my god so hang on a sec so like so when you wake up in the morning it's just you yeah my god how old are you 33 oh mate this is like can you imagine I'm turning 38 in August yeah there are there are there are four people that I my three children and my wife and like literally from the second you wake up at like 6 20 in the morning you're just running around looking after three little people till they go to school and then you're in with your training and your day and stuff but it's like I can't imagine waking up on my own do you imagine I can because I did the other week when they were all away how was that?

1:04:35can you imagine not setting an alarm, it's the weekend and you just wake up at like 7.30 and like don't have to make eggs three ways yeah, it's really nice I'm not like I'm an age where all my friends are having kids at the moment and I'm chatting to them yeah that's why I can watch Rocky 3 on a Saturday morning before I go for a run I'm just chilling with my Coco Pops yeah it's wicked Coco Pops and a Bee Bagel yeah it's class have you had Bee Bagel no again not on advert is that all good yeah fuck class Bee Bagel is just like just have a quick look you can get them ordered here there must be one in the vicinity Bee Bagel again they make their bagels fresh all day they've got a big bagel churning machine there's like no preservatives nothing they literally when you buy them they're literally like use them today tomorrow that's it they've got no shelf life because they're just so fresh full of seeds and onions oh I love that it'd be everything bagel fuck delish my point being is I don't have to compromise you know how with obviously kids and my wife you have to have like smaller everything's instruments are smaller like bowls are smaller like you're drinking glasses like when you go to bed at night do you have a glass of water yeah what kind of size glass is it just a normal size okay normal sized glass it used to be a pint glass pint glass yeah I'm going to say to you they're all pint glass or a protein shaker I still love it that for me is that for me is a serving size of a drink Otto broke my my pint glass and you know I haven't stolen another one from the pub in a while you know you can actually buy them can I?

1:06:02yeah yeah yeah oh great okay pint glasses don't just come from stealing from pubs oh yeah that's a good point yeah yeah anyone who's bought a pint glass I've got our glasses are all pint glasses but they're all just stolen from pubs oh yeah I know my man I respect the industry too much I can't be nicking pint glasses I've got one of those nice Beaver Town ones but all the skulls have come off so I literally the other day in the washing machine I was like we should go for a drink because that's a bit worn I'll get a new one fresh one there swap it swap it around there so I did this hard session yesterday and literally felt like I was going to black out right because I was glycogen depleted so the meal that I had the night before wasn't very carby did four times eight minutes at 3.45 felt honestly see like i was about to die um and literally like got home and was so light-headed like i literally felt like i was gonna like hit the deck yeah right and i had the most just you said protein shaker i had the most leery protein shake it was just delicious so like filled it with frozen strawberries loads of oats three big scoops of ghost cookie yeah uh again on advert uh why by the way do we not have adverts like this.

1:07:13These companies should just pay us. And then two bananas, like literally just the filthiest, like protein shake, gone, and then just lay down on the floor for like 25 minutes. Wait a minute to kick in. This is just lovely. And I could kind of, you know, you can kind of feel it just oozing down your veins. It's so nice that after a hard session, you're depleted and you just like absorb carbohydrates and you just like, you can feel it filling your body and your blood just like pumping with it. It's just delicious. it's great yeah I love it I think it's a bit I think it's one of the beautiful parts about all this stuff is like after a hard session is like reward having a beautiful like even it's something that you know day to day you would always have it's like no I'm gonna smash down a smash down a fat like a good pizza it's like oh hits pizza so good where'd you go to?

1:07:59Grasso in town do a great pizza nice I order from Melanzana because it's just really local and it's actually very good there's lots of pizzas I like bread stall but you kind of they're fantastic you have to kind of be in the mood for one though they're pretty they're heavy I get the hot honey one yeah yeah fantastic delicious big fan of that so tell us a bit about the challenge that you're doing this weekend this weekend so June 21st so this will be going out after I've either completed or failed this challenge you shall complete my friend I shall complete thank you very much longest day of the year so I'm making the most of the longest day of the year by running from the east coast of the UK just outside Newcastle Tyneside across the west coast it's a place called Bowness and Solway and that's just outside like Carlisle.

1:08:41So 140 kilometers starting at sunrise. I've got until sunset to make it across the other side. So I'm racing against the sun. Technically not the sun. I'm racing into the rotation of the earth, but it's got about 17 hours of daylight on that day. I've got 140 kilometers to do and I'm fully racing against the sun. Um, it's my first project with Rebel, which is wicked. I'm so happy to be, uh, to be doing stuff with them, but they've also, they take things seriously. So that's why they sent me out to Austria to do all my testing. They're like, right, we need to make sure you can actually do this and throwing their resource behind it.

1:09:09So it's the first project i'm doing where it's which is live streamed as well oh cool so they've got the live stream on there they've got the whole this tracking system is built into the live stream so you can see me versus the sun against each other across the distance um countdown on there also means like there is no you know it's like during ultra marathons like you probably don't want people to be watching you all the time this is it i'm on it's on on the entire way through there so i'm excited about that because it just means people can hear me chat a bunch of waffle as i'm moving across but it's also quite nice because there's so many moments during these challenges that you're you're up against it and it'd be interesting to see like how that affects when there's a camera in the entire time going through it and just having to like just crack on through so 140 kilometers 1800 meters of elevation mostly on b roads so there's no trail thankfully it's just literally on the b roads back roads right by hadrian's wall and from one side to the other so by 9 30 ish p.m uh where it comes into sunset either the sun will set first or i will hit the finish line first but it's gonna be pretty tight in there well mate congrats and um i'm sure you'll smash it thank you very much it's very exciting thanks so much for coming in thank you for having me on very kind uh and good to see you and good luck thank you so much mate cheers