The Hardest Geezer - From Rock Bottom to Running Across Africa | Russ Cook | S3EP.03

0:00Russ Cook aka the Hardest Geezer. Welcome to the Without A Minute podcast. Thanks for having me brother. I appreciate you coming in mate. I've been trying to get you on for a little while now. Yeah it's been a minute. When you first came back obviously from Africa that was the moment but I think we're going to get into a really cool conversation actually just prior to us recording now we've talked about a number of things that I've kind of had to stop you talking about. You are a very interesting guest mate. Thanks man. the purpose of this podcast is for me to get the rub so to speak off the guests right trying to understand the mindset how they you know what makes them tick how they work the way they work and really seek inspiration personally from from the guests which I know would then translate to my listeners before we get started I like to ask people what without limits means to them and I don't think there's anyone more fitting to answer that question without limits so for me I would say living without limits is living a life where I can look back as a 90 year old man look back on it all and go I absolutely had it there I left no stone unturned I did everything I wanted to do and I made the absolute most of this one little opportunity we got on this spinning rocking space that's what I think of without limits and obviously it's up to us to paint that picture and everyone can paint a different one depending on how they see it you know which is a beautiful thing.

1:22That's powerful, man. It's beautiful. And I think anyone that knows your story, and it's probably most familiar with your story post the kind of Africa event. I think that what you just said there would really resonate with them. But there was a period in your life when, you know, you weren't the hardest geezer, you weren't running across continents and countries and the person you are today. So how did that change? How did you go from being someone in a nine to five to being who you are today? Big time? Yeah, man. I mean, it was a long, long journey when I look back I think of the young sort of kid in me always on this search for meaning didn't really know how to find it and over the years I kind of just explored all these different avenues trying to find meaning really and when I was younger you know I would do that in gambling a lot that was a big one for me drinking binge drinking lots of nights out all the easy ones I think all the ones that give you that like quick little like little bit of happiness here and there that little bit of buzz so that was kind of where I started trying to find it quickly realized well I say quickly probably took me about three four years to realize that this heads one way and it's not up it's all the way down and there's a bottomless pit there of how bad things can get really so yeah I mean I specifically remember the the the turning point as you say is like I was in a nightclub 3am in Brighton and I I just had this moment I was like bruv what am I doing man uh I'm this is not this is not the life I want to look back on when I'm a 90 year old man I'm I'm waste years of just getting wasted here and I still didn't know what to do about it I didn't have the direction I didn't have the guidance didn't have the answers but the impulse in me just said to run and and then that's that's what I did and I ran 11 miles home that night pretty um in a pretty terrible state but that was the kind of the kickstart for me to go all right you know soon after that I started training for a half marathon then a full marathon and it was that cycle training for that that made me realize you know hold on here if I apply myself I'm dedicated I'm disciplined then these things all feed back into me and now I'm feeling more confident I have that belief in myself and that's what I really thrived off so that was like the kick start and then soon after that really was when I started applying it to all of the other areas of my life so I still I was cleaning at the time it was my my job I would be scrubbing toilets from about 4 a.m till late and late until the evening and i kind of started thinking hold on maybe i don't have to scrub toilets for the rest of my life maybe there's a few other avenues i can go down here uh and just started expanding my mind to thinking all of the options that i've caged into my brain are just exactly that they're just things i've put on myself I can break free of all of these if I really just so um that was kind of the start of the process and I just went a bit mad with that was that 11 mile home was that literally the first time you'd ran it was the first time I'd ran in a long time I did a lot of like I was really sporty as a kid played a lot of footy um did cross country and I was decent um yeah I was like uh in my i think if i dig out my school yearbook i'm like sportsman of the year and my yeah i was not bad um but that was the first time in probably about three or four years where i'd gone like let's actually be run were you most people look to like self-help books podcasts that kind of stuff to start to like change the way they think and their perspective on the world and obviously you mentioned you know you knew the drink wasn't serving you you're cleaning toilets you're probably thinking i'm this degenerate in in bright and where you're from how do i break was there anything you were looking at that was inspiring you to change or was it literally wake up one morning go do you know what fuck this I'm gonna start running challenging my my sort of efforts into other avenues it was a bit of both um so I needed that action to take place otherwise it was just words but I remember listening so at the time it was like Rogan had just started getting pretty massive so I was I was listening to and it was like the the original of podcasts back then so that was probably listening to a lot of rogan was the first time in my life where i'd had that sort of male um role model figure that had been through a lot that was that was talking for hours at a time about about these type of things about discipline about going out waking up working hard um and it can't it really resonated with me i remember listening to some Peterson episodes and it was like I know it's like the original of it all like it's almost cliche at this point like young lad doesn't know where to go in life listens to Joe Rogan and now he's off running blah blah blah but for me that was you know we're talking maybe 10 years ago now that was like that was a big help for me I think it you know it depends which way you look at it right some people might go oh that's cliche but something's got to start somewhere exactly that's kind of why I sort of poked and prodded at that because you know it's very unique if it was just suddenly you're cleaning the toilet and going, do you know what, I'm going to go do something.

6:34There's got to be catalysts. There's got to be inputs that are coming in, whether it's podcasts, peer groups, people you find inspirational. You've seen something that starts to build that confidence and get that momentum started. And I think that's why the power of, you know, figures online like yourself that are doing so much good, the podcast, whatever it may be, for young people that maybe are at a loss now, and arguably 10 years on from when you were at a loss, it's much harder now to work out where the fuck do I sit in this world? What do I go after? So do I conform with the usual frameworks and conventions of career and universities and jobs?

7:05Or do I go traveling? And I think all these told stories and adding extra perspective as to why you got to that situation and why your mindset changed. I do think help will help people that find themselves in similar situations. Yeah, I completely agree, man. I think it's really difficult to navigate the world as a young man. Sort of like everything's against you and you're at the bottom of the career ladder. you you have very limited options in terms of what you can actually make happen your body's weak you know it's like god i'll build power from here your best work you're not off um but yeah those podcasts back in the day really did help for sure i think you said there your best work you're not off and i think it does come back to that right and it's a big part of what without limits and this brand has been built on which is like the the effort you have to place effort on it because no one's going to do it for you and whilst you you mentioned that your job at the time was cleaning toilets i often reference it like i'd just clean toilets if i had to so there was clearly something in you that didn't mind didn't shy away from from from the work right um whether that was whether that was a means to an end to put food in the table and just to earn some money or whether you genuinely were going to give your all to cleaning toilets like where did this sort of hard work bit come from because there's no doubt that you are a bit of a savage you've got that dog in you was that something that you had in you back then or was it something that's kind of had had to develop over time I say it's developed over time but when I when I do look back my dad was big big part of that um growing up and I don't think I ever really gave him enough credit for it um until until sort of recent years but my so my dad cut has cut metal his whole life and my sort of earliest childhood memories of of him coming home super late at night seeing him for maybe like half an hour a day at most covered in metal dust stinking of like sweat and graft and um he would always instill in me from literally a kid he'd be like work hard work is everything um you know you get up you do your you do your work and and that is the absolute baseline yeah and he would even i remember him saying things to me like right if you run to that lamppost i'll give you 20p you run out that hill i'll give you 10p all this kind of stuff and And I think that paired with, I've just got naturally super competitive.

9:24I'm just competitive as fuck, man. Like if you get me in a room with the boys, I'll give me half an hour. I'll start figuring out some sort of game we can compete in. We've just moved into an office in Shoreditch. I have no interest in table tennis, but there's a table tennis table downstairs. And now me and all the boys every week, every day, I just bang, table tennis. So I think those two things kind of together were like the recipe for just mad dog ultra running really um i can see the makings of like a last man standing table yeah it always gets taken too far i've just paid like a hundred pound for a table tennis bag just to try and get the edge i think the reference to your dad's a nice one to bring in because i you know and again i think everyone's got different um stories of kind of childhood parenting and and um the effects of different styles of parenting on them and it's something i think about a lot with the three kids I've got but it does take a level of sort of maturity and perspective to look back and actually go at the time you know you might not have the relationship with your dad that you that was you know that you do now because you you're a young lad and you maybe you resent some of the bits but those kind of formative years he's parenting to the best of ability working all you know all hours under the sun and that God gives him to put you know to give you the best life possible yeah and some of that stuff has rubbed off some subconsciously and that work ethic is now something that's giving the success you have today definitely yeah I think um there's this saying i can't remember i heard it but i love it and it's about uh when you're a kid like when you're a young kid you look at your dad like a hero and then when you're growing up he becomes the villain and then as you actually become an adult and you go through these things yourself you see him again as a human um which i just think for me really like characterized my sort of journey with my dad whereas i saw him as a kid and i was like wow he's the strongest guy I've ever seen his Superman right here.

11:07And then as a teenager, I'm like, this guy sucks. You know, this guy's a loser. He hasn't done this for me. He hasn't done that for me. There's so, all my problems are his fault. He should have done all of this. And then you get to an adult and you're like, nah, actually like, my dad is a human. And he's flawed just in, I'm flawed as well. And we're all flawed. And, you know, you start to just look back and appreciate all the things he actually did do an amazing job with. so um yeah i think that's where i've got to with with like my issue with my dad and my parents in general yeah that's power man you referenced like the obviously the competitive edge and these are all things that probably when you're working a nine to five because you kind of conform to what you're supposed to do you don't necessarily tap into those things yet and yeah i think that is just maybe a message for people that are in that situation is like think about what your superpowers might be and what what does light your fire and then start to construct a life around it whether that's through hobbies and sort of after work activities and then maybe can become a career let it down the line but I do think it's worth you know if someone finds themselves in that situation where they're not necessarily fulfilled and their fire's not being lit every day by work yeah to sit with themselves a little bit and go what is naturally the things that I enjoy that and you know what I think that's one of the biggest um one of the biggest like privileges to have is that time because so often I think I'll meet people on the the nine to five or whatever it is that they've got that they're doing takes up so much of the time that they and their energy that they find it really hard to kind of have those little moments of trying to think of what else they actually want to do or tune into why they're doing what they're doing um and i think that was probably the biggest blessing for me about doing a cleaning job for example is it didn't take any brain capacity away from me i was just in in robot mode doing my thing but it allowed me to dream whilst i was doing all that it allowed me to fester up these ideas um and it and it's not always easy to do that if you've got a bit of a rat race job that means you actually you have to be paying attention all day long you can't dream up stuff um so that is it yeah i do look back on that and go even the cleaning job was a blessing in so many ways yeah i mean that's such a such a good story i mean i i feel incredibly privileged because i found myself in a job that i i mean don't get me wrong there's some days where i'm fucking like this is terrible yeah but i've always i've always found myself in a career where it was sort of rugby and sport and i'll come into running the business where i feel really privileged every day yeah um and when i speak to people that are in kind of jobs where they genuinely hate it I'm like you've got the power to change like change it yeah but I suppose if they're not able to sort of sit and that kind of like fear of taking the jump they're not able to sit and go okay what's next and I know you you you've told the story kind of quite fondly you went from the sort of nine to five was the nine to five the cleaning job yeah I mean it wasn't it was barely even a nine to five man it was like 4 a.m till another time they'll have a little break during the middle of the day and then I'd be cleaning again in the evening so it's about all around the clock to be fair and then all of a sudden you've gone fuck this ejection cord's been pulled and you've gone traveling is that right yeah so that's basically how that happened yeah i i was like right i'm done with this i'm just gonna i don't know what how i'm gonna do it or where i'm gonna go but i'm just gonna go traveling i had like a few grand saved up nothing major at all and then i've basically ended up in kenya um going traveling to kenya yeah well you know everyone's off to thailand and vietnam blah blah and i was like nah i don't want to go abroad to just meet a bunch of british people in different place i want to go and be like and just see something totally different so i went to i'd heard about this uh training camp called eten and i don't know if you've heard of it in kenya it's where all the big big major uh runners are from like loads of them are from it kipchoge is from there and it's it's about two and a half thousand meters elevation gain and they they have a huge running culture so i wanted to go there and just see what it was like and um even just being around these guys spending a lot of time with them living with them really just inspired me so much have you spoke about that before uh a little bit here and there yeah um interesting so so so running must have been again tying the idea of going traveling with running running must have been a big part of your of your identity yeah at that point i was you know i was fully on i was training loads probably doing over 100k a week with the goal of what just because you loved it it was maybe a year or two before.

15:27And I just became pretty obsessed. I almost got that sort of little, I don't know what it is, like that sort of little autistic number where you just zone in on something. You're like, nah, I'm having that now. So I was kind of in that frame of mind. And I'd read about these runners from Kenya and it just intrigued me. I was like, how are these guys the best? Like what makes them the best? I want to go and see it. And then when I did, you know, I saw their training attitude they're extremely dedicated to the lifestyle they're basically just live breathe running they all train together they're rapid and then I even started looking at their bodies they were always really skinny they were super heat efficient because they they're like long-limbed and didn't have much mass and I just started piecing these guys are just on a different level but um and I was like I quickly realized just genetically I'm never going to be there I'm just never going to be there but it's so far away from yeah I was like there is not a single world where i get even get close to this but the it was more just seeing their process of how they've like tuned into something and dedicated to something that i was like i can i can take that and i can apply it in my own way and shortly after that trip i met this italian guy who'd been cycling around the world for six years and he was just quite frankly the coolest guy i'd ever met he had a bike with a pannier bag on it coffee pot couple changes of clothes and when i had a good conversation with him I was you know it just made me look at the world differently because you know I'd grown up with thinking right I've got these expectations on getting maybe this level of education or getting into this level of career and then you buy the house and you do this stuff and blah blah blah and this guy was like yeah man I've been like raw jogging around the world for six years I drink my coffee every day I chat to people he's like very like spiritual and things and I was like, that's just like a beautiful way of living.

17:22And that's what first birthed the idea of running across continents because I've always hated bikes and been like, nah, fuck cycling, but I love the running. So yeah, that's when the continent running started happening. That was the inspiration. We're going to come to the concept running, but just going back to the Kenya piece because I'm intrigued now. Yeah, go on. Did they accept you in? Is this something anyone can do? You can fly over there and just like rock up with your bags and how did you get here? Yeah, mate, so I had no plan. quite often with my travel things i don't don't roll in with the plan so i i just knew the village i found the village on google maps and i got a flight to kenya then i got a 10 hour bus across the country to this village then they dropped me off in the middle of the village and i started looking around going like where's the hotel was at then and checked myself into a hotel it was it was pretty mad experience for me at the time i was only 21 i'd not really done any travel like this before rolled into this hotel it was like i think it was like six quid a night or something and uh tried to turn the shower on it didn't work and then went down to the reception I was like what was the shower she was like oh no no shower here's a bucket of water and for me at the time it was that was mental I was like what there's no shower like this is insane um and then after I'd spent like a little bit of time in the village I worked out that there was this training center it's called I think it's called the high altitude training center one of the Kenyan Olympians like runs the place and that's where all the athletes are so you can go and stay there and then basically there's training runs from there every day and you're fully accepted it.

18:49I was nowhere near the level. I remember doing like a fartle session, I think it was, and I think they start with a slow and then go to a fast and I'd be on the slow thinking, all right, well, at least I'll get a slow one in a minute and then they start going fast like shit. But yeah, man, like they're totally accepted. You can just roll up there and just live in the environment. I'm thinking yeah because I can imagine like some sort of initiation where if you can't yeah oh you're never getting you know the a lot of these guys you know you see any Tom Dick and Harry off the street but I'll watch your marathon time be like 207 or something great like these guys just different yeah this is painting the picture now that I'm glad we're able to paint because um it's clear that anyone obviously you had a huge passion for running at this stage right you're running the marathons you're hitting 100k weeks but there's also like a level of um a level of effort and attention to detail where you've gone to kenya so you've gone direct to the source of the best marathon runners on the planet and you're thinking about what's their limb length what's their body type like what's their what are they eating how much do they run like forgive me but when i saw you pop up running across africa yeah i just see this crazy geezer like it's a bit of a jack the lad having a crack but it's clearly a level of depth there to like say your your your your love for running first and foremost but then also going after trying to understand it to the nth degree for you know to improve um your own performance yeah i i think i probably am mostly just that that a bit of a mad you know mad guy that just think thinks right i'll give that a go i reckon i can have it but i do um i'm not total lunatic i guess i think i think I think you're so far the mad guy that can have it.

20:37I think that is a huge part. But like I say, it's very rare to find someone that goes, you know what, I'm in a 9-5, I don't really enjoy it. I'm going to go travelling. You go travelling to Kenya and you seek out the best marathon runners in the world and then you're starting to think about what are the things that they're doing that you can apply to it. That is, again, someone that comes from a sporting world and men around people that train in various different environments. That is someone that really cares about the performance side of it and wants to learn and improve. I think like, but my like baseline philosophy on that though, is just, it's always good to try and listen and learn as much as you can from people that are in a position that you would want to be in.

21:13And also on the other side of that is like, got to have quite a strong filter for people telling you stuff, like telling you how to do stuff. If you don't, like if I don't, if I don't think you're a happy person, for example, and you're giving me lessons on how to live life, I'm going to be like cool bro but like I don't care whereas if you're like a elite marathon runner you bet I'm getting my notebook out do you know I mean I'm going to try and soak in as much or you're like an elite business guy I'm like yeah like let's get the note back this is this is worth knowing about um so I think I've I've always tried to have a filter for that of like are they someone that I should listen to if so let's like let's double down on this yeah yeah I like it and also So I think because I know a lot of my friends and I think they're sort of your peer group as well that are in this ultra adventure space and doing some wild shit that probably don't get the respect they deserve from like typical runners.

22:08It's clear again that I'm not saying you're a typical runner, but anyone that sort of has that backstory of going out to Kenya, like you're someone that has respected the sport and you respect the best athletes in the world. You just chose to channel it in things outside the box, which they didn't do. yeah I mean I always had like I've always said that you know these Olympic guys these elite elite 10k 5k marathon runners I am not in that league at all I couldn't compete in their world you know not even close but um I'm not necessarily trying to like the world that I that I know I'm best at is uh right we're six months into Africa I've got food poisoning for the fourth time i'm pissing blood someone's tried to rob me today and we can't get a visa for the next country that's that is where i'm best you know it's niche but that's where i'm like this is my this is my corner of the of the ultra world you know where i'm like i don't think many people can do that better than me i'm not i'm never gonna you know i'm not busting out 210 marathons or anything like this um yeah we've painted a really good story there like marrying the sort of love for running it's sort of changed your life you run a couple of marathons you go to kenya you meet the guy with the push bike that's cycled around the world for six years and living this free life and you mentioned that's what was a catalyst to start running across continents like what what made the switch then because you could have just taken what you learned from the kenyans and just gone and run some faster marathons and you meet this guy and he sort of changed your perspective on the world like yeah why did you choose one path and not not the other um i think for me personally I just found way more interest in uh in the sort of like travel adventure side of ultra running um like I could have got faster in the marathon you know I could have tried to get a 230 or two or whatever but I was never gonna be the best in that game I was never gonna be I was only gonna learn so much from it so for me I'll dived into that sort of adventure thing adventure world of like right I could run across continents you know that's why I planned the ages London run around from Istanbul to London and I was like if I can do that you know I'll go for 11 different countries I'll meet people from various different cultures around the world and I'll test myself in not in the optimum uh conditions but I'll test myself in like the worst most difficult slept in a hammock for for two months like not slept not eating very good like that's that to me will tell me more about myself that's how I viewed it um so that's what I wanted to do you're saying that that mindset or that ambition to go and run from Istanbul to came from this geezer on a bike yeah yeah literally like as soon as I spoke to him the thought almost instantly popped into my head you know as soon as I thought of it I was like what's happening all the boys like yeah that's this is my plan and they were going you're gonna die or you're retarded you can't do that and then that made me even want to do it even more you know so when you're mapping out as a venture to get back from where you were in Istanbul again are you looking at going I need to run 50k a day 100k a day that's going to be quite tough from a physical standpoint or is it genuinely I'm going to run for as much as I care to run this this day and I'm going to find somewhere that kind of makes good for me to sleep and then I'm going to go again and I was like one marathon a day I was like one marathon a day felt at the time like right at the edge of what was possible for me physically how did you think that was possible for you physically because I'd ran quite a few marathons at this point and I was like I think I can squeeze it um based off like my training I was like you know I was I was probably doing about 200k weeks up to like all long and slow no speed work but like I was by the mileage I was working out like I think a marathon a day is like enough of a stretch goal that it's realistic enough that I could do it if everything goes well and I'm a dog but it's also like right right what i could achieve like right there so that's why i decided i was like marathon a day it would take about two and a bit months which is the whole summer if i go into the winter the conditions start getting pretty muddied so um that's what i yeah that's what i decided to do marathon a day you nailed it marathon day istanbul back to the uk yeah any hairy stories from that one yeah i mean i was sleeping in a hammock right so i had a camelback with a hammock in it my phone toothbrush toothpaste soap and a power bank a little rain tarp as well so i you know i'd run a marathon and then i'd find some trees you can kind of do this when you're out running you and it will just show you like this is what i was doing i've finished my running all right where is it i need some trees i need like a little bit of a hidden area find some trees and i'll go and just hang out and sleep for the night then pack all my stuff up do the same thing the next day uh but in terms of hairy situations car there was a few man there was um there was one night i was stopped in bulgaria by the police whilst i was just i just set my hammock up and they said you can't well they said in bulgarian but they were like basically you can't camp here because there's wolves everywhere and i was like oh fuck i just ran a marathon in like this mad european heat wave over somewhere like 40 degrees I was absolutely cooked I was just I can't possibly go any further went one extra kilometer down the road and then just went if there's wolves there's wolves fair fair game I'm I'm dinner tonight if it's if it's going that way hang the hang the hammer up again and just all night hearing wolves running around my hammock howling all night just kept me awake all night long so I shit myself all night but I managed nothing nothing ended up happening and then there was another situation I got myself into in Hungary just I was about halfway through the run at this point and I'd had dinner in this town and found a campsite there was about 10 minute walk when I thought right we can make it to the campsite and as I'm walking there this uh this bird starts walking with me and uh you know I'm in pretty rough state I'm not looking sharp and she starts like walking and chatting to me and i'm like oh god what's going on here then walk to the campsite and then she started she follows me in and the campsite owners tell me that the campsite is full and i'm like mate all i've got is a hammock i can see your field is totally empty and basically what happened is this bird was a prostitute local prostitute and they knew and they thought i was trying to bring a prostitute into the campsite and i've gone like please just let me just need to sleep this uh they wouldn't so we walked back out and it's dark at this point and then this bird basically like pulls me up and goes like me good fuck and i was like oh darling i was like i was like i know you you know it must be a tough market if you were trying to call to me because i'm in terrible conditions right now and um pulled up a photo of me and my friend and told her it was my missus and i'm not having it um then she's trying to pull me in a bush she's like blowjob in the bush i'm like and then she basically she's trying to get money out of me she's turned she's gone right well if you're not doing that then you need to give me money because i've wasted like two hours of my evening trying to chase you down i was like you know it sounds like a skill issue on your behalf there you know you've gone for me wrong move and then she gets on the blower and starts like having it down the phone i was like shit because I'm thinking that's a pimp there so I just started bolting it um she starts running after me and then uh I ended up camping that night on the edge of a motorway down this bank slept for maybe like one hour my phone died sun rose in the morning and I was like you know it's probably like the grittiest things had got because you know I was one I was quite scared that these guys were going to come and find me and i remember that morning i woke up and went to a public bathroom there's this smashed mirror i was looking at myself in the mirror i'd lost a bunch of weight and i was like really feeling it and you know to think that even just a year ago i'd never really done much traveling and i found myself in the middle of like rural hungary in this bashed up public bathroom and i was like washing my face and i was like you know this is this is a moment where you look back on when you're 90 year old geezer and you go like we fucking had it Russ do you know what I mean and I was like this is what you came for lad you know dive in here we go like you know this is the moment where you've got a decision to make are you about it or are you not and then ran another marathon that day ended up in a petrol station the petrol station geezer gave me a beer and I looked on the watch and I'd made on the map and I'd made it halfway and I was like right halfway it's you know significant chunk we can do this I mean it sounds like you're ticking the adventure box right but it sounds like a stark difference from the picture you painted of this italian guy that's having a nice coffee chatting to nice people and cycling around the world yeah was there any bit of you go well that wasn't how i'm doing something now that didn't marry up with what he said because we've gone from like high performance kenyan runners this italian inspiration dude to now being chased by pimps and stuff yeah yeah now for me so for me at that time in my life you know I really I wanted to be tested like mentally um I was I had I felt like I had a lot to prove to myself and to other people you know I think to I probably underestimate how much I wanted to prove to other people as well at that time you think like young bloke in I was like 21 maybe 2021 22 something like this um I worked shitty jobs for my for most of my life um I wasn't really going anywhere no one had a particularly bright opinion of me you know I was a bit of a menace around my town so at that moment I was like I just want to prove myself that I'm like worthy and this was this felt like a way I could do that so that for me that was like such a powerful motivator of like why I wanted to why I wanted to push myself I just want to do something hard and overcome it how far would you have taken it though?

32:29mate I don't know if there's a limit of how far I would have taken it even before Africa I think you know I went into Africa saying run Africa or die trying and fucking believe me I meant it you genuinely like that I meant it I was like I'll die for this game and I wasn't a joke I actually would have do you think and the reason I say this is because there's only one other person I've sat across the table that said that and I've genuinely believed it. Yeah. Guess who it was? You're in your world. Gougie? No, I don't think he would.

33:01Ned? Ned. Yeah. I think Ross Edgeley's about it as well, but I don't think like, I think he's more of a danger to himself because he's just, he's not, when he delivers it, it's not how you would deliver it or how Ned would deliver it. Yeah. Ross does need someone looking over him to know, because he would pass out for the cause and drown and do whatever because he's that kind of client. But I don't think he's saying it out here in the same way that you would. Yeah. But I think that's fuelled from pain a lot though. Like when you really, to say it and mean it, you have to have like that. Cause I wouldn't say it now.

33:29I don't think. I wouldn't, if you've set me on a new challenge, I wouldn't say it now. I would have said it then. And it's, it's, it's, it's, I think it is a lot that has to come out of pain. But with the perspective now in hindsight, right, because you're there trying to prove your self-worth to yourself, but also these people that, yeah, maybe have a view of you because of how you were as a kid. Yeah. Young, yeah, in a terrible round town dying for the cause doesn't sound like a worthy way to go about it doesn't does it but I think that's why I say I think it has to come out of the pain like you can't I don't think anyone's saying that is the happiest like a happy person necessarily

34:14because you if you were happy you wouldn't risk it all would you for the game What were you so unhappy about? Because like I say, I would take it to the point where you maybe die, but then just stop there. Because that's like you've done enough to prove to everyone that you are. About it. So you're about it, yeah. If I end up in hospital, get bit by the wolf, but don't get eaten by the wolf.

34:41I don't expect you to have an answer for that. Yeah, I don't know if I do, to be honest. um but i think like there does you do have that conversation with yourself like and especially in africa there was you know i remember going into drc there was like a lot of people that told us about drc and i was becoming like very aware of the risk of it um people getting killed over a fiver this type of thing tourists getting killed and i was like you know you do have to have that conversation with yourself like am i game am i that game or am i game to just push it really far or am i game to die and it's like no no no i'm game if if this is if this is the cost they're not right yeah that's why you are that's why you're one of one man i think it like i say why whilst i quiz you on that like dying for the cause i think um people like you walking the earth that would die for the cause make you know for these conversations yes without people like you who couldn't have the conversation you wouldn't be who you are i want to talk obviously talk about africa and africa's africa's been well documented and you've talked on many great podcasts about it so i want to try and come at it from a different angle hopefully that's what we get out of this next phase of the you know our conversation before we get onto that running back from istanbul solo mission very much by yourself i would feel a huge sense of isolation i know you've got your phone you can speak to your mates and whatever else um everything you've done post that has required a team and and building that team otherwise you just fundamentally probably wouldn't get across Africa.

36:10And I know there's a lot that goes into planning Africa. There wasn't probably much that went into running back from Istanbul. I want to sort of that inflection point of Russ Cook going to the hardest geezer, the hardest geezer starting to think about the actual logistics of running across a continent. You start to have to professionalize how you look about things. And that's through sponsorships and building a team. And when you get back to the UK, you've got this huge adventure life mission. You probably now know you're calling. How do you start to formulate the big projects and pull that together?

36:39tough man um and that's really not my wheelhouse like it definitely wasn't but obviously you know when you want it that bad you just kind of make it work as best as you can so when I first started thinking about Africa and then getting people involved with it the the one thing that I did that I can look back on and say like we did that well was basically just communicate the vision to everyone that was coming on board and like being super upfront and honest about like the lack of the lack of resource lack of almost expertise on the team um is the lack of experience in making this kind of thing happen but i was like this is the goal if everything comes together we'll raise a million pound for charity i'll be the first person ever to run across africa we'll make hopefully one of the sickest documentaries of all time and you'll be at the forefront of helping us make it happen and that's kind of how communicating that was how i got people to buy in um into into the project and then once they were brought in you know i i very much had that like i'll die for this game attitude and as much as i wouldn't expect everyone else to die for the game they i think they could feel that i was about it that much that like we all had to be pretty pretty up there on a level of like we will make this happen and you know we started off with no sponsors really no cash sponsors that's a lot give started did help us a little bit but we had 10 grand in our account at the start of project africa you know 28 days before we ran out of money it goes from being you know the the run back from istanbul goes from being quite a selfish act yeah particularly if you died yeah to being quite selfless raising money for charity like i say what's your mindset when you get back you're like i'm gonna now channel the fact that i am built different i've got this ferociousness that can't be matched yeah i've got a passion for adventure but also i can do some good here and raise some money for charity yeah that i mean that's pretty much the the way of thinking is um i was like i know i know in my heart that i'm capable of this and it feels like you know going back to that nine-year-old geezer on my deathbed like I want I want to look back and go like I I at least tried you know I at least tried to get the maximum out of myself that I could so it felt like an obligation almost to try and make this thing happen uh and then you know I think I also think it's important to say that like yeah there was some unselfish elements to it like I did really want to raise money for the charities and I do genuinely care about those causes but you know there's also a part of me that just wanted to do it for me as well like i don't think there's anything wrong with saying that there's not and you wouldn't run you wouldn't spend 365 days no exactly so i think like you know i wanted to do it for me but i also wanted the court the overall mission to have a wider impact than it just being for me um so that's why you know we wanted to raise the money for charity and even like making the content that hopefully like you know people come up to me fairly regularly and tell me that they started running off the back of that and that sort of thing which i think is sick um so yeah there's um there's a lot to be said now right about the the investment time and energy that you have to put into doing something some of these challenges right and you need support of brands and i think now because it's become such a thing where there's so many the celebrities crossing over into this space there's different people that are just coming up with these different challenges and all of them have their own merits and again for each individual it's within the perspective or the sort of context of where they're at they're all challenging to some degree but it means that brands and people coming into space that they don't know where to spend their dollars and obviously you found it super hard back there on a mission that was like running across africa which arguably is probably one of the hardest things that's been done so far um and what's your kind of view on like trying to pull together a different spot i mean you're in a different position back now now but again i'm looking at from a from an athlete perspective but also as like someone who runs a brand like that's got to be hard right what pulling in the sponsors yeah getting that yeah getting the money together to be able to do these things and now it's got to even harder because like i say as a brand who do i spend the money with what's a worthy mission now yeah yeah it's being it's almost been like commoditized just running across countries yeah it actually has as well i think for me um i would like really look at the uh authenticity of a project like uh is someone doing it because it's a you know they want to get big on socials and they've got no outside motivation other than that.

41:16If it is just that, then it's like, oh, I don't know, you know. It's a bit of a vanity project. And, like, he all are to a certain degree. But... To that point, though, you were a nobody before Africa, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I started Africa with maybe, like, 20 ,000 followers on Instagram, something like that. I think I was one of the early adopters of sort of following it. And I remember thinking, fuck, like, I don't think you have any... well, I didn't have any sort of comprehension of what exactly this geezer was doing. Let's talk a little bit more about Africa. I mean, you would die for the cause at that time.

41:50Was there a duty of care about the team you were bringing on board to know that, okay, I would die for this cause, but they still need to follow me into the battle? How are you having those conversations? Yeah. I mean, that's a tough one because I think I just try to be as upfront with all of them as possible, where I was like this is the reality of what we're working if we have no evacuation team we don't have a logistics guy at the start it's just free camera guys um you after a lot of the countries are going through a super dangerous there is anything is on the table here and it's up to you guys you're all your own men it's up to you guys to make that decision and like I can try and inform you as best as possible to make sure you're not walking something you have no clue about but ultimately you know you've got the call um so i kind of just tried to leave it in everyone's everyone's hands and it's like you know i mean to give you a walkthrough of the uh of the recruitment process right i had a recruitment process where i got everyone down to worthing where i'm from took them to the pub gave everyone got everyone a couple points in had a nice little chat lulled them into a false security then i piled all of them into a van drove them out into the forest chucked them out into the forest middle of the night gave him a tent said see you in the morning 7 a.m figure out make a video figure out then i picked them up in the morning how did you recruit these people though through social media yeah just through social randomers yeah didn't know anything and then took him to the running track said i know your job's cameraman and you'll never have to run your life but i just want to see if you're about it so two hours just run as far as you can just left let them run on the track they're all fucked right they're all bad at the end of And then I made a run for two hours.

43:34Then I pretended that I had, like, loads of weighted vests in the van. I said, right, I know you boys thought you were done, but I've actually got some weighted vests. I want to see another hour. I want to see how bad you are. And all of them, they're, like, dying on the floor. Every single one of them went, all right. And for me, it was, like, it was so important to see that. And it's nothing to do with running or their physical capabilities. but I just really wanted to ring home the message to them that like there's going to be so many times when you think you're done, we're cooked, everything's gone wrong and I just need your answer to be able to keep going.

44:11Did you know you were an actual leader by that point? No, I still am not very good at leading. The best part, for me, the most important part about leadership is knowing where you're going and the one attribute I had in leadership because I knew where the fuck I was going. That was it. Didn't have any of the soft skills. I spoke to people very directly. So that's something that I've worked on over time. But, you know, leadership's a tough one for me. I'm trying. I think it's a tough one, right? And no one's a complete leader, but by what you're saying, you get a bunch of randomers come to a pub.

44:47You've got 20 ,000 followers. So you know a hero at that stage, right? Yeah, yeah. All of a sudden, after a couple of pints, they're willing to sleep in a tent, run around a track and then pick up a vest. Yeah. to go like you you mentioned that you're very good at painting a vision to people like there was there's clearly like there's this ability to get people to to follow you into battle yeah I guess you know at that point it it is it was I think um for me I think a lot of young men can feel feel the same thing when when I say and I'm sure you've had these experiences you you're when you're a young man you don't know where you're heading in life you feel like you haven't got guidance but you but you know there's more for you you just don't necessarily know so when i have i've talked to the boys about like the project and stuff i'm tapping into that feeling that we've all got of like there's something more i just don't and then and then i've just gone that something more could be running the length of africa you know and they've gone yeah maybe it is and then once they're locked in you know we're all just like like i'll head back through this wall for this opportunity you know um but i think that's my thought on like on the vision is like you have to paint it to paint a good vision you've got to be working with something that's powerful and um that's you know that's i think what project africa was if nothing else it was a powerful opportunity to make a wave in a in a space that you know hasn't been done before do you think um bit of a tangent but do you think that you referenced the istanbul piece where you were like we're willing to die for the cause to prove something to people do you think you've proved it to them yet i think that in the process of trying to i realized that proving myself to other people is not actually the goal to go for but for me I think I had to do all of those things to realize that um yeah I think at some somewhere along the line I stopped getting pushed by my ego as much and started getting pulled to do something that I felt could have a good impact um so I don't I really hope and I can't be sure on this but I really hope that I'm not trying to prove myself to other people at least as much as I was when I was younger I don't think you are and I think I'm more giving you props for where like for the person I'm not talking to and I'm kind of getting I'm getting that rub that like I said I always look for it's like you just never were in the environment where you could show that natural tendency to you know to show your leadership qualities or to to galvanize people or to make them feel something in their pit of the stomach to follow you know to follow you um and i don't think right you know you need necessarily need to run along along africa to to get to that stage but it's obviously help it was the vehicle that gave you the platform yeah but all the little bits the daily consistency of showing up the ones and twos the slap in the tarmac like all these little bits that's actually you right it's not africa didn't bring that to you is that's the personality kind of coming through yeah um all Right, so these boys have put the vest on and they ran around the track and they're in, so they've made selection.

48:13There's three of them, right? Yeah. Fine, so you get£10 ,000 and you rock up to start in Africa. Yeah. Obviously, I think it kind of makes sense. You're sort of going, right, are you budgeting the money? You're going, right, this is for petrol, this is for this. Yeah, yeah, basically. I worked out that we had about a month until we ran out of money. And, you know, at that time it was like, right, our get out of jail card here is social media. and we'd spoken to enough brands at this point to realize that yeah don't get me wrong i've had some amazing brand sponsors over the years now that and and people have really like stuck by me and and facilitated a lot for me but you know brands at the end of the day they need eyeballs right that's what they need um it's marketing you know they need to sell their product to keep their business functioning totally fine and it was really just clocked to me pre-africa i'd speak to brands they'd be like oh it's a very high risk mission we don't even know if you're about it like that and you haven't even got the social following to know that we're going to get an immediate kick off this so it's really tough to get people in so i was like at that start line you know don't get me i was thinking about right i need to box off these 50k days but i was also thinking we need to hit it on social so that we can get some money and finish this project um so that was like almost number one focus really was like how are we gonna how are we gonna get people invested on this in this through through socials it's a lot to like juggle to juggle yeah to bite off right thinking about running 50k you've got this budget you need to manage yeah and you've got to now start to think about social media strategy yeah i'm guessing you just decided to be yourself and document it pretty much i was like yeah you know i think there was some bit there was some bits of it that were intentional I was like let's just hit as many as we can so we did the YouTube episodes the vlogs every week um I did the you know I thought of this this uh this those reels I did where it was like day one of day one of running the inside all of that jazz I was uh so I thought of all that I was like I think I feel like that would be a good format that could work um and then from there it was like right the you know the conditions are set the that's the most beautiful part about Africa it was it had the natural all the natural components of an amazing story in built into it start off I'm not an elite athlete I'm a normal lad got no money and we're trying to achieve something mental and we're going to have to go through some of the most like sketchy dangerous places that are going to trip us up all along the way to make it happen so it was less of there wasn't an amazing amount of strategy it was just like this should make pretty good content so let's just film as much as we can and document it as authentically as we can and hopefully people will buy in and I just believed in that as a process and I kind of worked in the end so it's all right did the money just start rolling in obviously you're running every day who's managing those those connections me I was managing all of it I've got all of the I think all of the sponsorship was negotiated and brought in by me just on the emails from last time I was running sick yeah the uh the team then was there any rest of time when you're gonna fall out with any of them a couple times i think um oh mate you can't live in a van i can't name three blokes on planet earth that i could live in a van with for a year and not fall out with at some point um i think uh what really helped is that we were all bought into that vision so that top line of like we all wanted to make this happen um which really kept us going through the moments where you know maybe we've got a bit of a disagreement about this thing that thing ultimately we're trying to pull in the same direction which meant that even if you've gone off here and I've gone off here we're both trying to head there so we're in both of our interests to to pull back in.

52:07Had you played on any team did you understand team dynamic at that stage were you kind of learning? No I was learning on the job I think that so I'd actually be really interested to hear how you've managed this because you've obviously got a big team and stuff now but for me at the start my how i went into it was i didn't really want to have much of a hierarchy i was like i want to give everyone their responsibility and and let them have as much freedom with their sort of responsibilities as possible and just trust them to handle the process um and when i found out that running something like in in that way was going to be a problem was when i identified one of the team members before we'd even started the project that I um and I knew she wasn't she wasn't going to be right um I it was just a personal evaluation that I made that she wasn't going to be able the right fit for the project she wasn't going to be able to make it and I made the call to her and said listen really appreciate everything you've done so far but I don't think you're right and I'm gonna have to leave you and then when I did that everyone started kicking off like all the teams started kicking off going you can't do that blah blah blah that you know this isn't right you know all the loads of stuff right and it was at that moment that I um I realized that you do need some kind of hierarchy and people need to respect the hierarchy to a certain degree you know don't get me wrong I have no interest in being sergeant major out here get barking orders to everyone like it's not my kicker don't want to do that but I knew that that was the right call and they not everyone could see it but I also just had to I had to have the authority and responsibility to make that decision because you know it's my it's basically it all comes down to me at the end of the day um so then it became a bit of a process of like trying to manage this balance between being friendly with everyone which is kind of what i'll naturally do i'll become really pally with everyone but then also keeping this doorstop that's like but the decision does stop with me and you do need to respect that you know which i found I still struggle with it now I found that really difficult how do you negotiate that because I'm sure you've had to over the years yeah and we're kind of going through it right now we're constantly evolving you know we call it the organisational structure right we're constantly evolving the org chart because as the business matures and there's you know we run multiple businesses inside one business so there's there needs to be a layer of it's more an accountability you know structure right so hierarchy is maybe one way to look at it but it's like who is accountable to it who is the single ringable neck for that decision yeah who's cocks on the block because if we can all just point fingers in different directions like we can't get accountability and we can't move forward we can't make decisions and i think in this instance though as you spoke about no one had the cv where they're like you know i've got a proven track record that i've taken this person from one country to another yeah by foot or i've got a proven track record i can drive through dangerous countries or i'm someone that can run and gun with a camera whilst running through the fucking desert like no no one had that cv so you're the only person who had a real understanding and somewhat some experience of what it was like to travel through environments that you weren't familiar with and i think you handled it perfectly and again like to a large extent these kind of things like it is business and so i think you do want to try and create a team dynamic where everyone fills his trust and there's there's a relationship we can call people out but equally um you know you've raised money at this point you're doing it for charity that there's a job at hand um you need to make tough decisions yeah that was out of a lot of the things that happened in africa those types of decisions were the ones that would weigh on me heaviest they would be the ones i'd be thinking about them all day when i'm running i'd be am i'm already doing the right thing could i be doing this better that that would be the heaviest ones for me they would be heavier than any running load any you know knife pulled out anything like this they would always be the ones yeah because again i don't think you hadn't been exposed to any about making those yeah you're doing all that stuff for the first time yeah so you're always going to question i did what was that decision the right decision but again it's not like you're you guys weren't playing here yeah across africa and everything you mentioned about the the serious nature of it's many decisions of life and death you need to have the right people on the team yeah um okay so at what state we talked about the story about when you got kidnapped.

56:43I don't want to talk too much about all the stories because I think they've been well documented. You spoke very fondly of them. But I heard the one, I think you were on Stephen's podcast when you were sort of unpacking it. Yeah. For real, you've been kidnapped and you're going to get... Why aren't you getting killed at that stage? So I think I didn't know that I wasn't going to be at the time. I think ultimately the reason that we ended up coming, I ended up coming out of that all right is one, because we were willing to give money to them. And two, I don't think that they were as like malicious a group as what I might've originally thought.

57:33Very hard to know in the moment. that's why your mind starts spiring in um what do you think when you're about you think you're gonna get killed um so because i guess at the time you're like well i'd die for this course maybe yeah and uh i i remember at the on the back of that motorbike i had that thought of like said i was gonna die for the game and we might be about to find like i was like honestly you might be able to find out now and i think this might this might have been the start of a bit of a switch mentality wise for me where um i started what i started thinking about on the back of the motorbike was like my relationship my parents hadn't really been fixed at this point so i'd not really had a very good relationship with honestly but about 10 years at this point um and i remember thinking about not fixing that before I die and thinking how like deeply sad and upset and that was to me that they would have to live with that and then um I started thinking about my girlfriend at the time and all these plans that we'd had to like get married and have kids and how excited like genuinely excited for the first time thinking my life to be like I can't wait to have a family man I actually cannot wait.

58:54It's going to be so sick. And then thinking, okay, that's not going to happen. Think of the state you leave everyone in now by getting killed. And I just felt deeply ashamed, man. I felt so like I'd let everyone down. And that was like my final act of like on this earth. I let everyone I cared about the most down. And it was just so upsetting to me. Was that the point where you, the notion of dying for the cause changed when it's like staring you in the face? Yeah, I think I really, I think maybe I just unlocked a deeper level of thinking about that because. And I've realised that saying that you'll die for the game sounds cool and all this shit, right?

59:44But like, if you've got people that actually love you, it's not cool to say that or do that, is it? You're a dickhead. like so i think that was the first kind of time where i felt the obligation that me being around is more important than just for me it is love people as well um it's almost kind of you know now i say out loud now i'm like it's kind of silly that it took me that to realize it you know yeah it's power man it's power I remember when I was hearing it you talk about that situation and put myself in those shoes and obviously it's very difficult to put yourself in those shoes were you thinking were you thinking like headlock people punch people like yeah all of that did go through my mind when you're thinking you're about to get killed by someone are you conforming when they're saying you know go in that they tell you to go in some tent or some shit yeah yeah sweet at what point are you thinking hang on i can't just like submit i've got so i was caught i was constantly trying to feel the situation out and i was just as best as i could read everything that was going on so i remember when i got on the motor so i got on the back of this motorbike that's just for a small bit of context yeah you're running yeah they've pulled up on you yeah um and originally you know they're speaking lingala with small bits of french which i don't understand but i'm trying to basically piece the puzzle together and originally i'm thinking that they might be bringing me to my friends um but i'd also thought in my head i was like um if they if i'm not with my friends in half an hour then then something's gone wrong and this isn't what i thought it was because i knew that they could only be a maximum half an hour away so it's basically just this thing as time goes on i'm realizing that the pit is getting deeper and deeper and deeper after about 45 minutes probably i've got off i've got off the bike and been like what's going on where are you guys taking me and they're they're like very dismissive they're just i'll just get on the bike just get on the bike sort of thing and i'm like and then i'll get back on the bike and i'm and i just then i start thinking all right game plan game plan game plan what we're doing here and i just started thinking about all the all the options so i could get off the bike and run to a nearby village and then i was like okay these guys are local i've been you know and i don't i i never really want to slam african countries too too much but like drc was hostile from the start almost everyone we'd met had been pretty hostile to us so i was like so it's really important to understand the context of the country that we're in because if i was in other countries i probably would have done i probably would have hopped off the bike and ran for a village but in drc i knew that it was a bad idea because the chances of me getting greeted well in a village were pretty slim and these guys were local so i was like even if i made it to the village these guys probably know these guys and then it's and then i'm for angus games anyway so then you know i started thinking about that and I was like, well, maybe I could just go into the jungle, camp overnight and figure out a game plan tomorrow.

1:03:03But I'd already ran 50k, hadn't had water in about 30k, so about three, four, five hours. I was so dehydrated, I was starving. And it was going to be night in the jungle, the conglis jungle, you know what's rolling around there, it's not good. So I was like, okay, that feels like a worse option as well. And then he's like, okay, well, I don't know what's happening on this bike. I have like very bad feelings about it and I can't imagine anything coming out of this is going to be good but maybe I've got to sit tight on this right now and just pray that something happens that means that this is going to be all right um so yeah then sat on that motorbike for seven hours and the third man on the bike and I was just you know the amount of brain power that I was trying to rattle around to think of exits and think about i'll get this guy in a show called here steal his bike blah blah blah you know but um how far away do you end up from the support vehicle by the time they start yeah i mean so seven hours on a motorbike it's it wasn't a huge amount of distance but you know there's no these aren't tarmac roads these are these are cross-country mud tracks single tracks did they know you had money or anything to give them at this point so i think they thought i might have had some money but even if even if they thought i didn't they knew that i was a white man in the drc i was the first white boy in this village for 10 years and for lack of a better phrase like if you're a white person in africa in drc especially it can't it means money to them you're from Europe you've ended up in the DRC you've got money or access to money so I think that's kind of you know what they really thought was like basically if we get in so they know that something by the time it's because it's a long drive seven hours yeah on the bike they know that something's coming at the end of it yeah yeah and then when you know when I got there I was in oh man i was shitting myself so bad um in this mad little village and then they they put me in this room and then the talk is all about money i can tell by like body language and how they're just talking money money money so when i was able to like basically communicate something that we'll bring you money then you know everything after that was pretty all right to be honest it was it was still a bit sketchy here and now i had to get like patrolled around this village with like all of the top dogs of the village like parading me about but it was much more settled after that do you have any like um we use the word the term ptsd but i don't want to offend anyone by yeah by saying that but do you have any sort of like is there any trauma from from those experiences um

1:06:03probably yeah probably uh there's i know i still get um i still get little moments it will actually trigger off a bit when i'm running at night in like a wooded area uh if anything it's more like i'll get confused where i am for a moment um sleep i struggled with for a while um waking up in the night things like this but

1:06:30chalked it up to the game man fuck it is that the worst it got that night yeah yeah yeah the other part of this mission obviously like most missions like you know not like this because I don't think anyone like I say is sort of attempted this but when I think about the peers I know it yeah there's there's um there's a fair amount of order that can come to this I'm going to run for x amount of time I'm going to eat and I'm going to try and sleep and I'm just going to repeat that this to some degree didn't seem to have i mean you yeah 50k a day was the thing but like you didn't know where the next meal was coming from you're eating snakes you're getting food poisoning like you couldn't control any other variable other than like trying to run 50k pretty much yeah i mean we tried to control as much as possible and i did try to get in as much of a routine as i could but especially to compare other sort of projects i've done or cross-continent runs this was uh very much and make it work with what you've got and what you've got on a day-to-day might be far cool to be honest um but like back to what i said before it's like i knew that uh if you put everyone in the best conditions possible and go right who's going to run the fastest run the whatever i was like you know that's not i'm never going to compete with these guys but if if you make the arena totally fucked and then go who's just about it until the bitter end and i'm like bruv i'm just i just am i do that's what i was like this is my arena um you know send me in with the pissing blood and the what we eat today call like gravel omelets off the side of the road yeah all right can't get into this country we'll figure out a plan for that you know that's where that's where I'm at.

1:08:18Did your mindset, because you talked so beautifully about the realisation about your parents and building the bridges and your girlfriend at the time. Did your mindset when you woke up the next day or when you get back with your mates and you're like, fucking hell, that was a close shave. Did that change the way you approach anything? Obviously, you're still in the DRC at that point. Is that changing? Is there a slight edge that's been knocked off you? Yeah, a little bit of a tweak. I also, you know, and I wouldn't really, I don't even really want to say it because I wouldn't want to recommend it necessarily to people, but I just buried so much of that in, like, as much as I could just instantly because it was the only way to get through.

1:09:00Like, it's like, cool, that happened. But I've got, you know, 10 ,000 more K to run and I really need to try and not feel this too much. Were you deflated at the time? just fuck it just get me home no i never had the feeling really of like getting me home i was like if anything this means i need to do it more now you know i did i did readjust in terms of so what i so i fell out with the boys quite a lot after it because um i felt that a lot of reason this happened was some some like mishaps on our planning um and then so we had we could if we had probably one of the biggest arguments of the project after just immediately after right i i lost my head i was throwing chairs it's bad um and then in the days after i started thinking like what i've put them through you know i i was feeling a bit like fucked myself but i was like actually what i've put them through is pretty mad and i need to readjust things for their sake so that they could they're in a better position to support me so after that um i chatted to steven again signed a book deal with him and then used they gave me an advance i used the advance to buy four by four and then hire a couple new people so that we could have people on rotation a bit people could swap out go on holiday take a break i hired gus who's like a um ex dutch paratrooper he'd cycled up in africa by himself built like a brick wall absolute machine spoke five languages logistics he just he was on logistics and you know when he came in nothing else really that that bad happened so i i did readjust in terms of how how we're gonna what's the best way we can get this thing done um but the mentality was still like we i just need to get through it was like there is no other way out than through that is the only way out is through and i i knew that in my head so I was like there's no point even trying to deliberate around oh can we sneak around the corner here or can we cut that corner it's like the only the only way out is going straight through the end of this motherfucker I think that's uh again shows some leadership qualities there with obviously you know in the moment emotional front chairs but you know be able to look at the other side of that and and gain the perspective that you needed to professionalize the outfit how many days into the 365 days of you at that stage 102 nice yeah um you said just on the book deal spoke to steven at this point were you starting to realize that back home people were you know the following is going up the deals are coming in do you really did you realize things were changing yeah i knew things i knew things were changing um it never really quite sunk in until i got actually landed home I never really grasped it fully but I knew like brands were reaching out uh I was going on TV and things like this so I knew things were happening but um yeah it's quite a weird it was quite a weird one to grasp because my world is just I'm sat in a van with three boys and I'm running about you know you see numbers on my Instagram catch oh cool you know you uh we talk let's talk a little bit about just like the physical you know effort outside nutrition what have you like we spoke about like 50k a day a bit like the Istanbul thing was like you were running 200k weeks and so 42k a day seems achievable with many of these things like it is a little bit of like marrying physical preparedness with like am I mentally okay yeah what do the voices say and do I quit when things get super tough yeah um because there's a big difference we've seen yeah like you said what you do at 50k a day 365 days versus Gucci across Australia were 110k a day.

1:13:13Did you feel, again, was that just a level of understanding of the sport, the technical side of running, and knowing the recovery to running ratio and stuff? Because you could have just nudged it to 60k a day and finished quicker. Yeah. The original plan was to try and do 60. I was going to try and do 63, a marathon and a half every day. That's what I felt like I was physically top end capable of. and and that was yeah more based off the mileage that i was doing in training how my body was feeling on that mileage it basically just ended up i didn't quite factor in how rough the conditions on the ground would actually be so running 63k a day would have been pretty feasible but when i've got food poisoning i'm pissing blood for five days in a row i had food poisoning about once a month or so where I'd be like sideways vomiting and diarrhea and things like this were you running on those days yeah pretty much all of them um I think there was two there was uh two or three days there was one day I'd piss blood for five days in a row and I was like I think I might need to take a rest day to clear this up and it worked to one rest day and cleared it up was it a doctor uh the doctor yeah the doctor I revisited a doctor maybe three days in he was like you need to take a rest and i was like i'm not going to listen to that for another couple days see how it goes and then i was like oh um and then in mauretania so right towards the end i got real bad food poisoning and i think it was the accumulation of food poison i had my body was basically like malnourished at this point like every time the food poisoning came it would be like an emptying out of like all of the like the essentials that my body was holding on to and it would just deplete everything so the the the later food poisoning's actually got so much worse because i'm already on nothing i'd lost so much weight and and then i'm i'm giving everything else out so it's like really hard to recover from you know when i get food poisoning which doesn't happen very often because i'm obviously not in countries like that you're in yeah you start to become very wary of how that food's being prepared and whether it's cooked enough and where it's come from you're in this like really difficult situation you're fucking starving trying to run across the country yeah and this is all you can physically eat yeah you know you're going to get food poured in yeah what's that oh mate it's horrible it i i ended up trying eating things going i know this is good yeah i'm like i'm rolling the dice with it i know i am i'll try and get out of packets a lot but you're getting shit you're getting shitty food like crackers whatever it is like just trying to eat as much packet food because i'm like if it's been packet if it's in a packet and it's come out of a factory there'll be some kind of um quality control quality control yeah which means there's not a maggot rolling around in it but mate yeah i mean gus was the guy that went and got most of the food and he would roll up to me in an evening have a plastic bag of something you know most of the time i go like let's try not to ask questions are you thinking there again i think all sort of protocols have gone out the window but you're thinking I need to have 2 ,000 calories or X amount of sodium or whatever.

1:16:29It's just like, wherever we've got this going in. Whatever I've got this going in. No calculation beyond the 50k a day of any other year? Yeah, none. It's, I don't know, but once you start getting 6 ,000 calorie burns a day, 6 ,000, 7 ,000 calorie burns a day, and I'm running most of the day, I can't, I'm not doing all that maths. Just like, bruv, I'm hungry as, just, you almost can't eat enough. like I couldn't digest that amount of food a day so there was no real top end on what I could eat it was just like eat as much as you can all the time pretty much power um as your followings growing during that time because I think me and you shared a couple of messages back when the fours you went like yeah is that becoming overwhelming people are messaging you to message back to yeah yeah um yeah i did struggle with actually uh even now i can have moments where i struggle with it a little bit um and not because like it's not a good thing or anything it's just like i just found it overwhelming um i mean you must get this or you just meet so many people and it's like all these people are so cool but it's kind of hard to stay in touch with everyone um so yeah I did did struggle with that um just from an overwhelming point of view yeah and I think I think quite rightly so I think part of what makes you quite endearing though is that you you seem quite accessible yeah to people but when you've got a million followers and you know you're fucking underslept and doing that kind of stuff like it's not always yeah you probably the person you want to be to those people that you can't always be and that's what then ways you're going back to what you're saying about when you made decisions with the team and then you're running thinking about the decision you made it's uh mate that yeah i've definitely struggled with that because you feel if you're ignoring people you feel like you feel like um what sort of big time charlie if i turned into it but at the same time i'm like mate if i you know without sounding like a cock like if i was sat there trying to reply to every message that came in then i'd spend i'd have a bloody 18 hours a day screen time and i don't like i like keeping that lumber as low as possible to be honest I think during those challenges you're in preservation mode right every ounce of energy needs to go on the mission and not worrying about like I said anyone that's unfamiliar or heard bits of snippets of these stories now that's like fucking this sounds intriguing I'm sure you may have hopefully have heard all the stories but go listen to the to the podcast where it's been well documented I want to talk about that because all that posts come down you reach the top of the mountain afterwards like obviously physically you're fucked yeah but like mentally you probably would never have foreseen the following the notoriety the sponsorships yeah all of it like you're probably euphoric but after that how are you feeling i think it's a weird one because physically obviously i was mash up and you can see that on your body like you i could see you know i looked almost like a kenyan by the end of it and i'm like i'm a bit more of a chunky lad like i never normally look like that um so I could see in my body I was like oh no I've been for it you gotta look in the mirror I go for mashup but it's the the psychology you know the psychological stuff it's harder to see and it's also way easier to be like more brutal on yourself than you need to be so for me like I really struggled when I got back and I almost like didn't understand why I was like I didn't even want to accept that I was struggling in my in myself and I felt like embarrassed and ashamed that I was like I just ran africa and like now I'm like why am I you know deflated or why am I feeling really lazy today or like all of these type of things and I think if I could just go back I would I'd be and I had people around me saying this at the time but I would just say like Russ you did everything you ever like dreamt of doing just fucking please enjoy it man and and uh i was actually chatting to the to the to the boys on the icing trip last week about this because you you got you know there's a lot of similar types you know you've got guji out there george heathens built this massive business jake did and loose davis uh alph and and hirk and it's like i remember saying to him i was like isn't it just like the maddest poison chalice that the very thing that pushes us to achieve and go and do all this shit is the same thing that means you can't enjoy it when you've done it it's the same ingredient it's not like you can separate them two things um so it's just i think as i get older and we'll go through this and another time and i'll never get it right probably but i could just just being aware of it i think is just probably the first step of trying to how have you how have you negotiated that same thing bro like i struggle with it and i think that's why and and i'm gonna sound ignorant now because i'm aware of it yeah and people good people around me have always suggested it and there are times where i i can sit and reflect but i think that's why practices that people like you and i maybe find quite difficult you know to journal or to show gratitude and like deliberately sit down and block out a time to actually think about it yeah i think that's why those kind of like those constraints and those practices are how they are because they force you to do that level of reflection.

1:21:59It's just down to you to be able to prioritise and make it that important to do it. Otherwise, you end up in that vicious cycle of never really reflecting. And of course, after that sort of challenge, there is going to be a period, because as you've said, you've gone to Kenya, you understand this idea of stress adaptation. Now, obviously, Africa was a huge stress and far surpasses what most people should put themselves through. but post that there needs to be a period of of like just like rest yeah as part of that there should maybe be a period of like reflection and all the things you said you go through the realization that building bridges with your family and the girlfriend all these things to be really grateful for yeah um and and sure they're not going to scratch the itch of like doing these gnarly challenges but the next gnarly challenge will be there in time yeah so you kind of have to be able to sit in that quiet time and and appreciate it and by the way i'm preaching here because i can't yeah i do think like being able to verbalize it a little bit more does bring more awareness to it i think that's important yeah i yeah i like that man i think that's like yeah where i'm trying to be easier said than done i think i think what's been it's been made easier for me having kids yeah and having this like um my life not just being around what was just like competing or you know training and competing and then training competing and work but now training and competing work and and my wife and kids it just means that like i've got there's moments where I'm naturally in a literally in an environment where I can't help but sit and be still and eventually smile and just be grateful yeah so it's kind of like forced forced reflection how do you and uh the missus like have you negotiated that over the years because that's not something that happens right away is it it's not like I can't imagine it is anyway it's not like you know you're just like go go go go go go go and then you sit and have kids and then it's like oh, okay, now I've figured it out.

1:23:48I'm going to chill with it now. Have you had your battles with that? 100%. Again, it's like an ongoing process, and I think that's something that's continually being worked on. I think the benefit I have with my missus, and I'm sure it's probably common with most relationships, is it happens over time. So there's like a gradual exposure to different stages of life and a change in the way you view things. And hopefully in relationships of any nature, there's always good communication, and people can call you bullshit when you're not in line with the person that you want to be and you say you want to be in.

1:24:18and then there's also people that can give you the confidence and pat on the back when you are doing things right and like I say I think that relationship with your partner is super important but then also your friendship group and in a business, the people that you work with every day and yeah I'm certainly still a work in progress but I find myself now, I was just on holiday last week completely taken out of the environment that I find myself excelling in which is like a million miles an hour, go, go, go, this is my routine I'm just going to go from one place to another running through brick walls take me to an all-inclusive hotel don't get me wrong it's nice to lie down for a bit in the sun but like it's unnatural and I don't like it but it forces a different part of me to start to like think and just behave a little bit differently so yeah having kids is a good excuse how many kids you got three three yeah that's sick are you going to have any more joking it's actually my daughter's third birthday today and again like that I went home just before after my run this morning and just like sat and did presents with her but again it's just a moment just like yeah Fucking be grateful for all of it.