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#38_ Running Across the World: One Marathon at a Time · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: My name is Nick Butter. I'm an endurance athlete, an
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: ultra runner, and motivational speaker. January sixth, twenty eighteen, I
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: leave the UK on an eighteen month expedition to set
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the world record for running a marathon in every country
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in the world. That's one hundred ninety six marathons, one
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: marathon in each of the one hundred and ninety six countries.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: All right, so it's now five o'clock on the sixth
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: of January twenty eighteen. The trip starts here. I'm nervous, excited,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and let's see what the next few weeks brings.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Five Yeah, Day two, twenty thirty, one eighty.
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  Speaker 1: Seven, one hundred and fifty six, two hundred and six,
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  Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty five, two hundred and sixty seven,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: three hundred and twenty, three hundred and forty five, three
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty nine, three hundred and seventy five, four hundred,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: four hundred and twenty eight, five hundred and seventeen, five
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty. I'm doing this because my friend is
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: sadly dying. Kevin was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: was given two years to live. keV said to me,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: don't wait for a diagnosis, get out there and do
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: something nice to finally meet you. Man.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, you too, Thank you for making the trek out here.
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  Speaker 1: No, no, totally, I mean he wouldn't.
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  Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing I was thinking. I was thinking
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: about you this morning. And part of the inspiration for
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: this whole adventure is this encounter, this friendship that you
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: struck up with this guy Kevin, And you know, this
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: mantra that kind of repeats in your head, that loops
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: in your head about the fact that life is short
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: and life is precious, and you didn't want to look
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: back in old age and have regrets about stone's unturned.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: And here we are, two days from you know, Kobe
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: crashing and you know, nine people perishing in a helicopter
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  Speaker 3: accident literally about close by it, yeah, very close by,
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  Speaker 3: like a mile and a half that close as the
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  Speaker 3: crow flies like, it's literally right over the hill over here,
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  Speaker 3: you know, in the wake of that and the sadness,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: and you know, the reflection on a life very well
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: lived is a global conversation about the preciousness of life
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  Speaker 3: and how short it is and how how how fragile.
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  Speaker 1: It's just such a shame and the same for keV.
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  Speaker 1: Really that someone has to die or be told they're
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  Speaker 1: dying in order for the conversation to start, you know,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: hopefully through a bit of the running that I've done,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: maybe we'll keep talking about it, you know.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so congratulations, thank you. You just completed this whole
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: thing in November, right, so it's still very fresh, this
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: two years of being out there and the many years
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: leading up to it of preparation and logistics, Like, it's
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: just I can't even wrap my head around what you've accomplished.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: And it's a It's a feat that has come up
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  Speaker 3: a couple of times on this podcast because I know
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  Speaker 3: it's something that Dean Carnazis has always wanted to do.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: And the last time he was on the show, I
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: was like, come on, man, what are you doing? And
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: then it was like Nick's out there doing that. I
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: think you were just about to complete it at that point.
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  Speaker 1: And so I've literally just spoken to him two years
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: ago in London. Yeah, oh yeah, what did he say?
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And he said he said, he said, tell Rich that
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: I a bowed down to you, and I said, I said,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it really should be the other way in which we
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: swapped and I bound. But he yeah, he's you know,
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  Speaker 1: he's a legend, and he will do it. I know
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  Speaker 1: he will, and he'll smash it. It's just I know
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  Speaker 1: how long it takes to plan a effect. We did it,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: but it's a bog job. You know, when Deane does it,
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  Speaker 1: it won't be quite.
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  Speaker 3: How I don't think that anybody could do something like
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  Speaker 3: that without there being just you know, countless things that
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: come up, unforeseen obstacles and cataclysms that throw you off course.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just too you know, enormous of an
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  Speaker 3: undertaking for something like that not to happen.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just I'm just pleased we got to the end.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how many times we genuinely believed
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't gonna happen. You know, it wasn't a case
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  Speaker 1: of oh no, we'll be all right, we'll just throw
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: some money at it, or we'll just throw some people
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  Speaker 1: at it. You know, every possible option you have which
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  Speaker 1: gets you through most things. Ah, we we just we
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  Speaker 1: just came so unstuck so quickly, and then it was
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  Speaker 1: just this kind of snowball effect of things going wrong,
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  Speaker 1: and then the multiplying of not having enough money, not
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  Speaker 1: having enough time, and then, you know, six weeks from
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  Speaker 1: the end, we had the first of many phone calls
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: from my dad, who is a legend and has managed
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: to do everything for me on this journey in terms
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of flights, so he was responsible for took the job.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I think I pushed the job onto him, really, for
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: booking all of my flights and to getting me from
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  Speaker 1: A and B and C and D and then all
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the way through. And he called me and said, we
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: can't do it. You know, this was six weeks from
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  Speaker 1: the end of the trip. He said we cannot do it.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And we were angry, we were crying, We were you know,
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  Speaker 1: we've come this far and I was just thinking, oh
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  Speaker 1: my word, what are we going to do? And and
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  Speaker 1: it went on for a few more weeks of saying
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  Speaker 1: we can't do it.
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  Speaker 3: Despite the many years leading up to the undertaking of
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: all the logistical preparations and all the you know, I
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  Speaker 3: can't imagine how many phone calls with bureaucratic agencies about
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: getting visas and permissions and all the like, and you
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: think you've got it all sorted and stuff just happens.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Well, I imagine that before we left when
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: we got to the start line, as you would with
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  Speaker 1: most races or events, you'd prepped to the point that
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you're ready, but it was not that. Right. We got
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: to the start line and we thought, well, we're probably
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: okay for a good few weeks, you know, and we
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: had as many flights as we could booked, and we
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: knew what we wanted to do, but we really had
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  Speaker 1: so much up in the air. You know, we didn't
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  Speaker 1: know how we were to get into certain countries. We didn't.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: It was just hope.
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  Speaker 3: You couldn't get that sorted out in advance, like figuring
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: out how you know, the visas and the PREMI I.
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  Speaker 1: Mean, I know it's tricky.
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  Speaker 3: There's certain countries where you know they're just going to
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: say no or you know it's going to be close
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: to impossible to get in there.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: And the problem is is really volatile. So you know,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: if we could which is it isn't possible to do
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: it all in one go at the beginning, right, even
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: if we could do that, what's to say it won't change,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: you know, and the amount of times we've had oh yeah,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: know that visa will be fine for years. You know.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: It was on the list of green it was. It
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: was one of the places that we thought we wouldn't
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: have a problem, and then we did.
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  Speaker 3: And that was right because of some political skirmish or
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: something like that.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: That happens politics, violence, protests, flight cancelations, airlines going bust,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: you name.
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  Speaker 3: It, and you don't have room for error when you're
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: trying to do I mean, let's just break it down.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: You're trying to do essentially two to three marathons a
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  Speaker 3: week in two to three countries basically to stay on pace.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we said we're going to aim for three
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: countries a week every week, knowing that we were going
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to have slip ups, and so you know, sometimes I
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: was doing five a week because we were making up time,
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes we were doing one because I couldn't get
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: off an island for example. Right, you know, it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: just it wasn't just yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you left the trickiest countries, it seemed like
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  Speaker 3: until the very end in the Middle East, right, Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: That was I'd love to say that was by design.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, I actually had a bit of a
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  Speaker 1: view that I wanted to leave some of the dangerous
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  Speaker 1: ones towards the end because if I was going to
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  Speaker 1: get kidnapped or killed or locked up. At least I've
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  Speaker 1: seen a lot of the world beforehand, and seriously and
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  Speaker 1: I thought, well, you know, I don't want to go
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  Speaker 1: and do these ones and tick them off and have
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  Speaker 1: the relief to then you know, something happened. But also
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't a case that we we just couldn't get
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  Speaker 1: access to those places at the right time, And had
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: we got access and something gone wrong, then it would
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  Speaker 1: have screwed up the rest of the flights along the line,
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  Speaker 1: and that would have had huge financial implications. So it
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  Speaker 1: was tactical on one part and kind of just wanting
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  Speaker 1: to see the world before anything happened.
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  Speaker 3: So Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Israel, I would imagine all
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  Speaker 3: of those were super tricky, especially you kind of have
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  Speaker 3: to leave Israel until almost the end exactly right, because
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  Speaker 3: if you go to Israel, then you can't go to Lebanon, right,
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  Speaker 3: They're not going to.
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  Speaker 1: Let you in. You're on the you're on the money there,
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  Speaker 1: exactly that. We left it till the penultimate So the
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  Speaker 1: final one was in Athens in Greece, obviously home of
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  Speaker 1: home of Marathon and I we went, we went there
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  Speaker 1: on the November the tenth, and the one before that
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  Speaker 1: was Israel, and when I set foot on Greek soil,
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  Speaker 1: we still didn't know if they were going to be
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  Speaker 1: okay with me going to Israel, because yeah, you think
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  Speaker 1: it's okay, you don't know.
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  Speaker 3: Lots of lots of like Rgo esque experiences, you know,
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  Speaker 3: when you're trying to board a flight or get through customs,
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  Speaker 3: where you're biting your nails thinking are they going to
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  Speaker 3: let me in?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, I would say, very argus, but slightly less glamorous
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and more kind of just hard, being in dirty clothes,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: not knowing really what time of day is. And I
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: cannot tell you how many times I've got to a
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: country and I don't know which one I'm in. That's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: how quickly they went, you know. I was standing at
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: an immigration booth over and over again and they'd say, so,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: where have you'd flown in from? Yeah, and I couldn't
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: answer them, you know, just because I was so exhausted.
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  Speaker 1: And then you get either put in a cell or
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you get questioned for hours, even in countries that are okay,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: because I've got visas in my passports that don't make
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: me look particularly innocent.
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  Speaker 3: I you know, I certainly haven't undertake any undertaken anything
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  Speaker 3: you know, as vast and incomprehensible as you.
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  Speaker 1: But I have had some experiences in.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: The Middle East, one in particular, trying to get into
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Pakistan that was, you know, it was it was like
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: you feel like you're in a Jason Bourne movie, Like
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: it's very strange. Like I remember being greeted before I
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: got off the plane in Karachi and before I even
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: got to customs or baggage, I was greeted by two
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: soldiers who didn't speak English, demanded to see.
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  Speaker 1: My passport, who just stopped me.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: I was the only Westerner on the plane coming in
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: from Dubai, and they're like you basically saying give me
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: your passport.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And You're like, this is one of those month like
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: is this okay?
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Like once they have my passport, I don't know what's
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: going to happen. They take me down to customs and
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of you know, sort of bickering in
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: a language I don't understand, and it's it's super nerve wracking,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: and you think what is going on here?
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: And you feel like cargo, Yeah, you feel good, You're
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: not you know, like what did I do?
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: I'm just here, And then they took me into a room,
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: you know, and I'm like, well, this could be it,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: you know, you don't you just don't know.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was all fine and all of that.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: But I suppose the beauty of doing so many and
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: so quickly is that you get that so often that
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: you kind of become the sensitive. Here we go when
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: you've got you know, another AK forty seven pointed at
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: you and you haven't got your passport, you know, anythink, oh,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: it's just it's just a Wednesday. But that at the beginning,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: you know, it was terrifying. And then other times I've
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: had people that, you know, these have got their weapons on,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: they have their uniform and they have their back their helmets,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: they're they're looking very intimidating, and they then come over
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and like a huge smile lights up and they shape
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: me on the hand and they know who I am.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And you just think, like all of my preconceived ideas
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: of everything that's come from, You have no idea whether
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: it's going to be brilliant or scary.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, certainly, I imagine it completely, you know, sort of
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: changed your view of the world and humanity. How could you,
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: you know, how could you not be completely transformed after
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: this experience.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And everybody warned me at the beginning, you know,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: this will change how you see things, changed how you
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: view the world. And I thought, yeah, I understand that,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: but I didn't understand that. It was only when I
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: finished do I now have this new world view of
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: everything that's going on. And even, to be honest, it's
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: just kind of compounded my belief already when I started,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and from Kevin's message about we have this precious time
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: that we shouldn't waste, but also the so many people
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that don't have the opportunity, you know, whether it's in Britain,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: in the US, in other countries that aren't as wealthy
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: or affluent, people are miss you know, we are lucky,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: we are the lucky ones, and yet we don't do
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: enough with it. And so coming back, you know, fifty
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: four countries in Africa, more or less all of those countries,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I saw situations which I just didn't realize existed, you know.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, which I'm a big
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: advocate as for as well, our planet is in a
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: really great place compared to how it has been. You know,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: property over in the last twenty years, people living below
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the poverty line has halved, which is just outstanding in
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: my lifetime, the amount of people. But then you go
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and travel and you think, hmm, I'm a bit torn.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: And so this whole, this whole world, of this whole
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: world view has completely changed me. And I've just got
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of things on my to do list now
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that I want to do. Yeah, I like what I
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: want to. So I've started this, uh, this charity which
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: we're we're kicking off now called the one nine six Foundation,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: which is off the back of the Running the World
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: one ninety six trip. And I want to I want
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: to do some more. I want to help in a
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: small ways, not start a whole new charity and make it.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: You know, there's lots of charities out there, but just
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: be able to fund and support some other people that
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: are doing good stuff. And there's that thing, and then
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: there's also the thing that I want to inspire other
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: people to do the same thing. You know. I want
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: people to travel, I want people to see the world.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I want people to have that view. And I often
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: find that it's a lot of hate and negativity comes
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: from misunderstanding and if we see the world and if
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: we experience more cultures or religions or beliefs, then maybe
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: that hate will be reduced. And so when I'm visiting
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: schools now for the next year on my speaking tour
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and trying to share this journey, I want people to
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: realize that, you know, don't just sit behind a computer
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: and live your world through your tiny phone in your hand, like,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: let's go and do something else.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's very easy to just
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: descend into pessimism and despair if you're scrolling and looking
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: at the news and thinking, you know, we're on the
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: version of an apocalypse, and nobody's talking to each other
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: in a productive way, and we're seeing the breakdown of
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: Western civilization unfolding right before our very eyes. And yet
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: there is an indelible truth that.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: That you know, that we are in so many.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: Ways like this is the best time to be alive. Yeah,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: And there are so many great things to celebrate and
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: and beauty in the world.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: And and you know.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: To be able to develop a deeper reservoir of compassion
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: for humanity by virtue of that tactile you know, one
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: on one experience that I'm sure you had a zillion
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: times over over the course of the last couple of years.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, you can't put a price tag on that,
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: so it's almost your responsibility to to share that.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel the same, And you know, I went
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: into it knowing that people said, oh, what what if
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: you know, what if you spend all your money and
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: what if you spend all this time doing it and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: then you don't make it.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: And my view was your banker friends, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: and my.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Friend basically from the pub yeah, telling me you get
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: a risk. It a risk. But the beauty is is
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: that you know when you do something that you love
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and that it doesn't matter. You know, if nobody buys
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: my book, if nobody wants to watch the documentary, if
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: nobody cares about what I'm saying afterwards, I still had
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: a great time in the process. It's not like I've
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: done something that I was earning money and didn't care about.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm using money and it's given me this
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: incredible worldview that I can't properly articulate yet. So I
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: feel incredibly lucky, But I am also kind of impatient
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: to tell everybody else to do something similar.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Right, Well, let's take it back to the beginning.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: So grew up in the UK yep, Dorset, Dorset door set. Yes,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: active kid skier right first, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: mean I was doing I think most kids I lived
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: in the country, in the middle of nowhere, you have
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: to do sport because there wasn't anything else to do.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: My friends lived all over the place, and though it
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: was either cycling ten to fifteen miles to get to
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: school or to my friends. And then started running, but
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: didn't really think anything of it. It was just a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: means of transport. And then I got into skiing. I
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: was in the under nineteen now Sports England team, did
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: lots of bits of racing, did some instructing. But then
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: I had the voice of my dad on my shoulder saying,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: get a real time to get out of it. Yeah,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: come on, you've got to earn some money one day.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: And he was right, because you know, ski careers are
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: very short that you know, you're kind of outdated very quickly,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: even if you're the best, and I wasn't. And so
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: I got a real job finance banking, selling my soul
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: in London. Yeah in London, to be fair. They were
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: based all over the places you know, I had multiple jobs,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: but yeah, London jobs, and and I yeah, I enjoyed
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: it because it was earning money and I was living
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the life where you buy new shoes and jackets and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: you think that's what you need to be doing. And
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: then you know, you look back and you think, oh
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: my word, what was I doing? How long did you
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: do that for? It was seven years? Oh wow, it's
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: longer than I thought. Too long, Yeah, much, too long
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: it was. It was a big chunk of my life.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: And and you know, I don't want to as much
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: as I I kind of damn it in my mind.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: It still earned me money and it allowed me to
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: do things. But if I could tell my kids, my
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: future kids, my unbond kids at the moment, to do something,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't be to do something that you don't enjoy
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: for money. You know, go and do something that you
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: enjoy and if if you enjoy it enough you do
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: it well, then maybe the money will come. Right.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: These pendulums tend to swing back and forth, though, Like
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: the kids the kids of people like like you and me,
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: then they go they go into investment banking, you know
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: what I mean.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: They're like enough of this, like hippie.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: You know, it's all love kind of stuff, like I
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: need to make some cash.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: It's so so true, so true. I'm going to It'll
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: be interesting to see how that plays out.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: You know, our best intentions are are often foiled.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah maybe, Yeah, you're completely right, and that's that's gone
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: through my mind. But all I can do is hope
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and guide a little bit. But maybe that will happen.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And it will happen, you know. I still had that
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: and I'm still in this point now.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: So you're young, so so you're you're you're doing the
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: banking thing.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And that whole lifestyle.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Uh, you know, hammering checks and the whole and the
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: whole thing.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Where does the where does the itch? Like?
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: At some point I would suspect and I'm projecting, but
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: I would imagine like you start to get a little
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: sort of discontent or or you know, a sense of
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: not feeling settled in your path.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah I think, yeah, absolutely discontent, but also not you know,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: you get to the point where you're you know, you're
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: going to die one day, and is this what I
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: want to be doing until that point? You know, I
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: started to think that more and more. And also when
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: you're not sleeping well enough, you're not eating well enough,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and you're commuting and you're in smallgan trains and traffic,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and you realize that your whole life is based around
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: this job that you don't particularly enjoy. You know, I
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: didn't actively not enjoy it, but looking back, it was
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: just just not me. And if you asked any of
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: my other colleagues at the time, they will tell you
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: it wasn't for me. Yeah.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, sitting across from you're looking at you,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: it's hard to imagine you, you know.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Exactly. I don't say I was a lawyer for twenty years,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: like I get it. I you know, I can't stand
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: that life. But I realized that there was definitely more.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: And I think I got into running more and more
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: while I was in finance because I wanted to have
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: an escape. I think so many people do you know,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: you're getting to sports, some people getting into it for
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: fitness or to escape or to improve your mental health.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And it did. And then I realized I was ending
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: up turning down opportunities to go to races because I
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: had to go to work. And then the kind of balance,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: let you say, the Benjamin pendulum shifted a little bit right, so.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: Ultra running at that time, or just five k's, ten
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: k's and that kind of thing.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I think I quickly went from five you know, from
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: five to ten to half to marathon to ulctures pretty
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: quickly because I wasn't very fast. I wasn't a good
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: enough marathon runner.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like two fifty three or something like that.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Right, good memories. Uch, No it's not, but I like
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: too teneric exactly. I need to take another forty minutes
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: off that if I want to be a good marathon No.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And I did some did some early ultures, just one
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: hundred k on hundred and twenty k things, and I thought, yeah, okay,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I can do it. And you know, it's finishing in
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the in the top three, top five regularly. And I
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't really training, you know, it was just working and
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: then driving to a race and getting out and getting
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: your trains on and doing it and you're finishing, okay,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and you're thinking maybe I can do this, and I'm not.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I'm really not a very good runner still, you know,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not. I've done what six hundred and something marathons.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I am not a good marathon runner. I just enjoy
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: it and all the ultra runners say that it's true.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: It's true. It's because we're because we're too slow to
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: run marathons quickly that you have to say that.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: But it's a big leap from saying like, oh, I
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: want to you know, I want to do ultras to
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: I'm going to pursue a career or a way of
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: making a living doing this, especially when you're in you know,
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: this white shoe industry where you're making quite a bit
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: of money. It's not like, oh, you're a barista at
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Starbucks or something like that.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: That's true, it's a there's risk involved in you know,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: real world considerations, and it's not like, yeah, there are
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: the Dean Carnases out there and the people who've been
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: able to kind of figure out how to do that.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: But it's not an easy thing.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're right, really, But then but then having yeah,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: you're right, so you say, how long were you doing
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: that finance job? For the answer is too long, you know,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: because for a good chunk of that eighty percent of
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: that I was wanting to escape. But I think what
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: led me to that cliff, which I kind of call
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: it the cliff of adventure and doing what I'm love.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Is that Kevin, who we talked about earlier, who was
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: my big inspiration. He was just the final shove. You know,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: all the way through my life, I'd had little mini
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: shoves towards that edge. And whether it was you know,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: my head master when I was in school, whether it
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: was a teacher, whether it's a family friend. I've had
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: some really brilliant people around me that have loved the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: outdoors and adventure, and it just is kind of going
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: in slowly and slowly. And then you start to do
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: this and then you have this idea. You know, you
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: meet somebody like Kevin and he says to you he's dying.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: He's told his live for potentially only two years and
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: stay cancer, yeah, terminal pros state cancer. And you have
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: this guy that is incredibly telling you he's dying, and
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: you think, what you know, you don't understand that. I
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: didn't really didn't understand how this guy was so happy
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: and so genuinely positive in life when he was potentially
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: going to live for only two years. And then it
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: dawned on me that he realized that life is you know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: he's doing everything that he loves and life is so precious,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and so that was the final shove. And you know,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: it wasn't a case of right, I'm going to go
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: and run around the world. It was what can I
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: do to raise some money for them? And then I
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: worked out that it had to be big enough to
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: get the attention because I wasn't well known, and so
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: it just kind of spiraled, you know, it was what
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: can I do? And then I realized, after one short Google,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: has anybody done it? And obviously following Dean, he's been
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: threatening to and he hadn't yet, and so let's give
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: it a go. It's kind of amazing that no one
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: had ever done it before. I know, really, I absolutely
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: can't believe it. I feel very really lucky and almost
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: like a thief, like I've stolen it from it, like
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: nobody's looking at me. You feel like an undeserved wearer
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: of the crowd.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, because there's so many great people out there, I mean,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: especially Dean, but others as well that you know, you
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: made it happen. Yeah, that's the difference. I'm proud about that.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: I'm proud that I'm the first person to do it,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm proud that we did it in a. It
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: really was a journey of horrendous lows and fantastic highs,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and so it was exactly what it should have been.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: So, just so I understand the timeline, You're you're starting
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: to get into ultra as while you're still working at
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: the bank, right.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: Meanwhile, you're you're you're banking ultras and you met Kevin
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: at Marathon de Sab, Right, so you're able to like
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: train and compete at Marathon A Saba while you're still
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: working this job.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I was working less then, Yeah, that was I think
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: that was probably.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: You already like got one foot out the door.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: One foot. Yeah, my whole soul was out the door.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: That had been for years. But literally I was a
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: little bit at the door, and I was ready to
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: go for it.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: So the real exit plan is lining up enough support
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: for this new, crazy hair brained adventure that would allow
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: you to train and and you know, do this thing
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: to feed yourself.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, you know what a lot of people have
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: said that to me, The training didn't even go through
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: my mind because I thought that the hardest thing in
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: that whole You had two years from meeting keV to
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: them thinking about it and then coming up with the idea.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: The idea was made, and it was two years from
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: idea to start line, right, and that was mostly planning,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: you know. I turned up in Toronto, Canada minus twenty
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: five degrees c, super super cold on day one. It
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: was January sixth, twenty eighteen, and I got there and
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I realized I hadn't run a marathon for three and
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: a half months because the training.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: You like broke your ankle like four months before you started.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah. Yeah, But prior to that, I mean I
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: read that.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: I read that like, you were putting in one hundred
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: and fifty mile weekends.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, big match.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: You were putting in some pretty that was yeah, epic,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Blocks I didn't realize that it was too epic at
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the time because I was just going for it and
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: my body was right, and I was in really good.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I actually think I was fitter then than I am now,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: just because I was I was escaping from work, you know,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I was constantly running every possible minute I had, And
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: then that two years was just like, oh my word,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I've jumped into this world where I don't know what's
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: going to happen. I need to make this, I mean
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: need to make this trip planned and logistically possible. I
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: know I can run, and then I just forgot to
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: catch up the running bit.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: And so the planning, the two years of planning transpired
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: while you were still working at the bag.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Half of it, yeah, hi, half of it. They were
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: very good to me, and they said have time, and
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: they let me have some unpaid leave, and then I
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: ultimately didn't go back, and I was very honest with them.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: I had some fantastic you know, you have good bosses,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: you have bad bosses. At that time, I was very
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: fortunate a brilliant friend of mine now called Razzi raziahmad
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: He supported me, and he believed in what I was doing,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and he understood that there is more to life than work,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: which isn't that common in that industry, and so he said, yeah,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: go and go and do it.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: So by the time you finally cut the cord and
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: walked out the door for good, you had enough support
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: lined up at that point and you were well invested
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: in the preparation phase of all of this to be
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: able to make it work.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I definitely jumped before we had everything lined up because
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: there had to be so much. I spent a lot
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: of those two years planning it on my own. And
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: then another friend who I also met in that desert
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: in the same tent as Kevin, a guy called Jeff,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: who's a really lovely guys in Everest summitter, and he
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: said to me, you know, you need to really get
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: some people in your team. You need to pay some people.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: And I said, I can't pay people, because I'm going
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: to spend a fortune on this trip. And he said, no,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: you need to invest in the support because you can't
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: do it on your own. And that was my first
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: time I thought, Okay, I probably should listen to that,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and I did, and I spent some money, and I
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: employed an assistant to help me work things out. And
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: then skip forward to the middle of the journey, where
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: we had nineteen people that were working, plus loads of
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: volunteers that were making the trip happen, whether it was psychologist, nutritionist,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: performance manager, security visas. And then we got to the
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: point that we couldn't afford it anymore and people started
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: dropping off and people's lives continue, especially the volunteers, you know.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: And so we went through this whole big cycle of
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: just me planning it, having a little person involved, and
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: then it peaked at a really big team, and then
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: it peted out and I'm just fortunate that I have
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: some really great and as you know, anything that happens
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: like this is not just me. There's so many people
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: that make it possible.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: I can't even imagine like trying to compile the right
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: people to make these doors swing open. It's almost like
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: you need to hire a specialist or like a diplomat
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: with relationships that run deep internationally so that you can
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: kind of, you know, massage who you have to massage
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: to get these feaces to go through.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Like I know you had ended up having to pay
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of bribes.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: I'm sure those were like you know, feet on the ground,
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: like you know, when you're trying to go somewhere or
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: something like that. But just the pure politics of the
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: whole thing unbelievable.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: The politics were difficult. I had a company, so I
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: worked out that I could go with a visa company
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: that would get me all of my visas, and we
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: worked out the value and it was something like twenty
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: five thirty pounds of just just on visas. And then
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: we found this great company called Universal Visas, and they said,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: you know what, we want to support you. We want
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: to help you, and we'll take all of our fees
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: out of it. And it really helped. That's great, But
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: there were such a small unit and when you get
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: little wins like that, you take them when you hold
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: onto them. And Fizel of Mas, who are the kind
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: of the founders of this company, they are still great
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: friends with be now WhatsApp regularly and they made everything happen.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: But it was only because they were working at two
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, on their day
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: off that it was possible. And that was the same
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: for everything. I honestly, I owe everything to these people,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: so I was very fortunate. But in terms of bribes
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: and like you say, massaging my way through all of these.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: You know, when you turn up a boarder. I remember
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: in Chad and I didn't have a page free in
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: my passport and I was getting stamps on the inside
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: page and all sorts of stuff, and they said, you
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: haven't got any room. We're going to have to charge you.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: And it was like four hundred dollars for a day's
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: entry when it would usually be twenty dollars just because
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: you didn't have I didn't have a page to flang page,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: which is you know, it seems that's crazy.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Went in twenty nineteen. It was a piece of paper.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: He put the money straight in his pocket, you know,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: it's do you still have to pay it? Yeah?
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: And you had to go through like ten passports, right,
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: because you're having to send passports to different locations to
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: get them approved for visas, and we're waiting on the
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: return of them while you're also trying to cross other borders.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Like how does that work? Yeah? Yeah, So I now
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: travel with two, and I always traveled with one and
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: the other one would be home, so there was always
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: two in the pipeline.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: And you can have two, like they allow you to
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: have two passports.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't even know. I think it's I think
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: it's common amongst lots of countries. But you you have
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: to have a reason for it, and you have to ask.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: And I had a very clear reason why I needed it.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: But then you have problems where you realized that, Okay,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: so I've missed the country because I was ill, or
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: because I missed a flight, or we've had to redirect
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: for some reason because of the protest, and so I've
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: got a visa in the wrong passport. Now what do
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: we do? You know, and that happened, I'd say close
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: to one hundred times. Wow, And it was I had friends.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: And when you have to like make the two am
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: phone call to the visa people to expedite.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Whatever, yeah, and in two hours, yeah, yeah, exactly. And
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: sometimes they say to me, well, we can't expedite it
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: because your passport's in France or you know, or somewhere
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: else or and they can't physically do anything because they
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: don't have it. So yeah, it was a logistical, absolute
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: logistical nightmare. Passports is one thing, but then you have
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the flights just linking up from You think it's obvious
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: to be able to just fly from one country to
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: the next, even if you have to go around the
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: houses a bit, But it really isn't easy linking up
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the fourteen Pacific islands in two two and a half weeks.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Two weeks it was nine impossible. And when I was
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: speaking to Dean the other day, you know, if he's
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: going to do this quicker, which I believe he will,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: it's it's going to take some serious I mean, you're
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: going to have to have private planes. There isn't a
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: way to do it much quicker.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he should just hire you.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: You're the one person on the planet who actually I've
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: talked about's experience with it. I might be going for
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: a run with him over the next couple of days
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and now I'm here, but I really would love to
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: see him do it, because I quite like to be
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: an outsider looking at the trip, so I don't have
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: the stress that's very spirited of you.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: Were there ever countries where you had to kind of
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: skirt the law and just sneak in and get away
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: with it.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I've got.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: Charlie Angel on the show a couple of times, and
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: he's told stories about, you know, hit their epic you know,
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Trans Sahara run that they did, and I think they
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: got to one border I can't remember what country it was,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: and they just weren't going to let them in and
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: I can't remember how they solve that, but it was
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: another kind of nail bier visa situation.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, lots of those occasions, and so we had two
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: or three visas that were refused multiple times. So that
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: was Iran, Yemen, and Syria off the top of my head,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and they were places where you don't just sneak away easily.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: You know, if you say, oh, well, which border do
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: you want to cross that's illegally Yemen and Syria isn't
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the one you'd be pick. And so we did manage
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: to do it all lawfully, but there were occasions where
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: so for Iran, I went to Kish Island, which is
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: part of Iran, but I felt so intimidated there because
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: you were told you can't come. Your visa was refused
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: multiple times and it was only approved through the visa guys.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: I had no idea how we made it work, and
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I arrive and it's actually valid.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: But I had a moment going through Yemen from a man,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: drove through the night from a man to get to
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: the Yemany border. And this guy, my driver. He was lovely,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: but very dodgy. That's all I can describe him, as
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: he was just appeared and seemed very dodgy. And I
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: was a bit nervous and got to the border at
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: two in the morning, and this was about five countries
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: from the end. This was so close to finishing. And
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: I realized as we were crossing the border with all
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: of these military person now twenty plus armed people surrounding
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: the car that he was smuggling goods into the country
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and using me as a mule basically, And he said
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: to me, you know, just put these under your seat
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: and just sit on these and don't don't tell them.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: And here's me spending four or five years to get
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: to this point of planning and work and effort. And
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I thought, oh, my word, how has this happened? And
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: we were there for a couple of hours. They quizzed us.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: We had everything out of the car. There was lots
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: of raised voices, and fortunately they let us through. He
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: I think, by I have no idea what they were saying,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: but by the looks of things, he paid paid down. Yeah.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: That's terrifying, it is, yeah, because you could have just
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: ended up in some yeah prison somewhere, the key thrown
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: away the government I don't know, to come and get
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: me there. Yeah, there's yeah. Diplomatically, you would be in
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: a world of hurt.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And I had that feeling a few times.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I was locked in an airport in Central African Republic
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: for a while because I didn't have the right paperwork
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: with me and I didn't have any money to pay
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: my way through. I'd used all of my bride money up.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: You know, I'll travel with thousands of dollars just to
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: use as bribes when I can, because you have to,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: especially going overland borders in Africa. It almost feels not
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: like a bribe. It just feels like the dumb thing.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: It's almost it's like giving a tip or run exactly
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: exactly that that's a very good way thing. Yeah. Actually,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: and I was tipping heavily and I ran out of
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: money and I just had to wait until the following
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: morning for them to let me out of those airport. Wow,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: And I say airport, it's just a shed. But yeah,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: so it must have been. I mean, I think people.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Who don't know any better look at what you did,
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: and it's all about like how did you run all
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: these marathons? But like that's like the easy part is
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: so you know, it's just like, oh, it's a relief.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: All I have to do today is like run twenty
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: six miles, like I don't have to worry about all
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: these other Yeah.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember, you know, I remember having those those
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: days in my diary. You know, I look at my
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: diary in the morning and it's either flight day or
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: run day. More or less every now and then you
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: get some more time off flight day or run day,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: and when it's a run days is great. You know. Yes,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: there's sometimes when you're terrified to go out and run
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: because you don't know whether you're get to get attacked
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: or you know, it's mugged, and all sorts of stuff happened,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: But you get to that point where your run day
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: is the best bit That wasn't even love running, I'm
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: a runner, But then you know you don't have to
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: get on a plane or you don't you know, I've
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: had some connections which were eight different planes just to
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: get to another country, and then you have to arrive
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: and it's two o'clock in the morning and you have
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: to run. And the running bit is just the reset.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: If without the running, think it would have gone crazy,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: And with the you know, logistical problems that were continually
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: arising and flights getting canceled and all of that. I mean,
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: every day lost to some unforeseen circumstance pushes you off
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: your schedule and makes it more difficult down the line
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: to kind of you know, complete this thing totally.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so, because that's not a lot of room
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: for error. There was no route I mean at the beginning,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: we were a bit naive because we thought, yeah, okay,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: we've built We built in about four buffer periods of
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: about ten days throughout the trip, and we thought, okay,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: we've got a little bit of time if things go wrong.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: But then we it dawned on us that we'd used
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: that time far quicker than we had planned. That buffer
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: time had gone before we'd got six months bonus points
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: or all the bonus points are used, and this is over.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: Just so people understand, this is over, like what six
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: hundred and twenty four days or something like seventy four
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: six seventy, six hundred and seventy four days. In that
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: period of time, you only have ten days of wigg
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: or room right, or the whole thing capsizes.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, and you know that, And that's that's the
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: scary thing you have. You have so little rigor rooum.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: And we had a moment where I was bitten by
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: a dog in Tunisia, one of my first African Countriesnisia
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: is relatively affluent compared to the other African countries. These
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: five dogs on the beach. I was running with a
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: friend of mine who came out to support Andy and
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I were running along this beach and these dogs just
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: came and bit me, and I thought, it's okay, I've
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: got my raby's jab I'm only two and a half
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: miles from the end, and I just ran lots of
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: blood pointing down my leg and I got to the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: finish and I thought, that's fine, carry on. But I
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: didn't realize that I needed to have ups for my
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: rabies in subsequent weeks and where I was going to be.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: They didn't have the rabies vaccine readily available, and so
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: it meant rejigging everything. And that was just you know,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: and since then, following that bite, I was terrified to
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: get bitten again, not because of injury, but because of
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: ruining the trip. Right, Well, dogs were a big problem. Yeah,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: they were right.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: They were in one particular island of note.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: The Marshall Islands. Absolutely, yes, So I did lots of
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: so I call them like the micro states. So you've
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: got most of the Pacific islands are tiny in terms
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: of where the land is. There's lots of land kind
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: of semi in the water, semi out of the water.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: And you've got Vatican obviously smallest country in the world
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: eighty two laps. I did have some pizza square in
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: the Vatican. How did you get like? Was there some
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: with that?
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: Was there weird permissions like okay, here's the you just
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: run the perimeter inside the wall.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'll tell you what I could have that
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: could have come unstuck really really badly quite early on.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: So Europe was my second phase of the journey and
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: third phase of the journey. And there was a secure
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: guard who came to me and when I was eight
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: miles in and said, you can't run here. And it
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: was only by pure coincidence that this security guard was
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: heavily into kung fu, and my friend who was filming
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: for me at the time, happened to be very heavily
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: into kung fu, and they once again sport winning. They
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: shared their sport sporting moments and he said, you know what,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell anybody, just get it done.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: And how did kung fu even come up? I know,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: I know, and because I you know, in those situations
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: you say and you do whatever you need to to
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: convince them. And I said, no, runner, like this is fine,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I've done it in all these countries. Please help. And
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: you asked the question like you were runner, you sport
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: and he's like, and we got chatting. I tried to
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: be as friendly as I possibly could, because you have
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: to be, and it turned out and I've still got
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: his email address. He was a brilliant bloke because he
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: could have said no, and we didn't have all the
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: right permissions that we needed, which I thought we had,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: but we didn't and I couldn't. He said, go to
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the go to the office, go to the visa office,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: which is just around the corner. But I couldn't leave
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: because I was eight. I was in and if I'd left,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: I would have gone out out of the country. And
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: so he just he was really brilliant. So coming back
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: to those countries, very very small countries, and one hundred
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: and forty laps in Jamaica because of some gang violence
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: in Kingston. And then, like you said, the dogs proved
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: very very difficult everywhere, but especially in the Pacific Islands,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and I ended up doing three hundred and thirty five
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: laps of a car park in one of the most
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: beautiful places in the world, which turned out to be
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: rather ugly. There's just wild dogs everywhere. They just run
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: after you.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so all you need is one, you know, nip
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: on the Achilles in your toast.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly that, exactly that, it's the it's the achilles I
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: was most worried about. You know, if you get bitten
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: in the wrong place and you can kind of soldier
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: on and patch it up, but if it's nipping something
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: that physically stops you from moving at and running pace,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: then you screwed. And I had twenty dogs. I actually
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: think it was more than twenty, but call it twenty dogs.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Big dogs, very aggressive. They have a diabetes crisis in
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: the whole of the island because people don't go outside
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: and exercise these dogs because of the dogs. And I
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: arrived in my hotel and they gave me my room
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: key and a stick and they said, if you go
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: around the corner to the shop, you need to take
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: your stick. And they didn't know I was trying to
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: run a marathon. Yeah, like, how would you have known that?
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Hopefully every now take your stick or a taser.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: And then there was a country where you had to
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: run on a on a like a landing strip.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, good, one of the most hard to reach countries
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: in the world because they have I think there's a
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: couple of flights a week and there isn't any space
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: on the island other than the runway, and so everybody
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: lives on the beach, which is rocky, and you can't
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: you simply can't run there. But to my amazement, not
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: only was I allowed to run on the runway, a
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: live runway because they knew when the flights were coming
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and there wasn't going to be one when I was there,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: but the whole community of this island used the runway
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: as a hub of you know, everybody comes out. It
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: was the most unbelievable site. Thousands of people on this
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: and it was the whole country. You know, literally everybody
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: from the country uses this runaway. And I've got great
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: videos and photos of people playing volleyball and cricket and football,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: hundreds of different games on this huge couple of mile
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: stretch runway. And so I was very pleased to do
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: my whole mat. I don't think there's many people. So
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: did you get a bunch of people there who ran
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: with you? Yeah? So as they I mean, you know,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: you start off, you do first up and down and
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: they kind of look at you like you're a bit nuts.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: And then once you've done your fifteenth or sixteenth time
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: they realized that something's going on. And yeah, everywhere that
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: everywhere was like that people came out. Which country surprised
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: you of them most? Oh, I think I would say
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: nearly all of the countries surprised me. My preconceived ideas
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: of the countries were nearly all the time completely wrong.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: And that's because of the media. It's because of my
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: brain reading stuff and taking it as red, taking it
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: as that's what it is. There were there were some
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: really lovely countries, which I didn't expect. So Sierra Leone
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: was a really fond favorite of the whole journey. The
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: people there are poor, their health and their healthcare system
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: is incredibly poor, and yet everybody there was smiling. And
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: we'd had people, you know, women passing me water bottles
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: saying water is life and they have nothing to give,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: and yet they give you their water, you know, and
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: that just amplified. So I think it's very difficult to
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: say which surprised me the most. You know, going to
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: places like Turkmenistan and North Korea, which are incredibly controlled,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: but you.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: Got the whitewashed propaganda tour in North Korea, right, Yes,
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: like they're just with you the whole time, and they'll
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: show you what they want you to see in the
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: whole thing.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you have to be incredibly lucky to
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: not get that propaganda tour. But what I did see
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: was more or less what I was expecting. It was
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: incredibly clean. You know, there's lots of little aspects to
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: stuff that you think, oh, I wasn't expecting that, or
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you know how they all queue in single file in
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: silence in the in the in the underground, and little
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: things like that, but it was more on a bigger scale.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: The things that surprise me the most is how the
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: correlation between people that are so lovely and have nothing,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: you know, and then I end up spending time.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: But you hear time and time again from anyone and
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: everyone who's traveled with those types of places, they come
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: back very, very struck by that truth. And yet, and
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: I've said this before on the podcast, we get home
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: and we you know, we forget or we reset.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: It's so easy to reset, and I really try hard
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: not to, but I mean I have you know, you
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: get up and you buy stuff, you go online, you
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: get into your rhythm again, and it's really hard to
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: buck that trend unless you I believe unless you move
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: away or you immerse yourself in it. But there is
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: there is ways to do that, and I think it's
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: just it's just be more in touch with it, so
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: see it more and read about it more, and don't
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: necessarily you know, there's the amount of negativity on the
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: news and sadness on the news from stuff going on,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: and yes, we need to know about that stuff, but
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: there's also some brilliant things going on in the world
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: that I wish people could pay attention to. There should
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: be a positive news channel.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: Right, I agree with that, But then conversely, I'm doing
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: my Conversely, you know, there's certain areas of the world
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: that don't get enough attention for you know, what's happening there.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, Haiti stands out as one such place, right like,
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: and I know you had an experience.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: There, yeah, hai, Haiti country number four for me on
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: the trip. It was certainly my first experience of poverty,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: and obviously the earthquake that killed and made a lot
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: of people homeless and orphans, and the violence there really
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: struck me. It was heavily armed people on the streets
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: that were approaching me when I was running, and it
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: was only because I had a guy that was driving
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: behind me at a snail's pace when I was running
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: in humidity to help me with the water, that I
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: realized that there isn't there isn't enough shed. You know.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: You be in places and I'll see something on the
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: news about some horrendous attack, and I'll call home and say, oh,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: don't worry, I'm safe, and they'll say, what, you know,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: we hasn't made it to our news, and it's thousands
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: of people that have been killed or something in either
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: a natural disaster or by human hands, and I feel, yeah,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: you're right, there's just not enough of the right media.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: How many of the marathons were sort of sanctioned races
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: versus you just creating your own course.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, difficult to say because a lot of the most
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: of them were my own course, but most of those
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: own courses were turned into races by people that were
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: supporting me there exactly so I would turn up and
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: not have it resolved.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: It was pre planned enough that the people there knew
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: what was going on.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I had set something up or yeah, yeah,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: So my plan, my default plan is to get to
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: the hotel, look at a map, roughly know where I'm
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: going to run, run the distance, get some witnesses along
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the way. Job done. But more often than not, as
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: the trip went on, as the awareness grew, I was
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: arriving and then met by people and they say, oh,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: we've got this route for you. Is the water stations?
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Do you need any other food? This is the media
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: that's amazing, you know, And it happened all over the place.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I felt like, you know, I was having my own
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: personal run and it was my own personal runs everywhere
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: it went yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: And for purposes of legitimizing the world record aspect of
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: this for Guinness, Like, there's all kinds of rigormarole that
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: get baked into that, right, Like you got to have
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: multiple GPS trackers and witnesses and things like that.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Like, I know, it's a whole thing. It's a pain,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: it's real pain, and they're sticklers, and I guess they
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: should be. Yeah, on one hand, I agree with it,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: But on the other hand, there is a certain it's
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: frustrating me because it's kind of trying to fit a
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: you know, a square box into a round, whole kind
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: of thing. There isn't the rules that apply for a
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: big two year multi trip easily, but I suppose the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: base I had eleven pages of rules by the way,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: you know, that's how detailed they wanted my and I agree,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: and luckily we followed them. And it's been a pain,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: and I've had lots of people helping me to make
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: sure we've got those everything they needed. But you know,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: I wore two different brands of watch, so two different
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: kind of GPS systems. I had a GPS tracker that
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: was just on me that wasn't a running watch. And
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: then we had to get witnesses during the run, and
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: some of them were hotel stuff. But it's difficult, you know,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: when you run in I don't know, in a Portuguese
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: speaking African country twenty months before I finished the trips
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: sign David and they have no idea what they're signing,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: and so we've had to get lots of backups. You know,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: people I've met in airports are on the plane, I say,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: can I just get your email just in case? Just
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: in case? Have they signed off on it? Now? So
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: what is that verting process? Yeah, it's long, it's really long.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: So we need to we need to log the logbook.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: We need to submit an official logbook with all of
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the data in. But my logbook is a little bit
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: difficult because along with all of those witnesses and GPS data,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: we have all the photos and videos four hundred thousand
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: photos and twenty thousand video clips to show because that's
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: what all metadata, and it proves where it was and
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it helped my cause. And so we're we're in the
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: process of sending the hard drive, a physical hard drive
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: with everything on that they can go through and decide
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: whether right.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: So, in addition to the visas and you know, making
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: these flights and all of the travel, you know, logistical
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: nightmares that were continually plaguing you on top of all
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: of this, you know you're traveling in most of these
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: places alone, like more often than not. Right, this is you,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: and you're taking responsibility for making sure that you have
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: the witnesses and that you have you know, your watches
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: are all charged and all of that, and you're trying
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: to film this thing for a documentary, right, you're documenting
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: it for a project beyond that, Like, so just the
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: mental headspace, like, okay, are the sd SD cards wiped?
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: And like where's all the footage and how are you
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: logging that? Like you know I mean, yeah, I mean
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: you've hit. I can't imagine, you know, staying on top
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: of all of that, on top of everything else.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you've hit, and it gives me goosebumps. Actually
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: when you hit me set and when you talk about that,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: because I was I've incredibly proud that I've managed to
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: do that, But I honestly don't know how it happened.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: You know, the amount of stuff the watches you mentioned,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: watches being charged when you're staying.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: Here in some crazy country and they're you know that
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: you have the right adapter and all that kind.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Of stuff, right, yeah, yeah. And also even when I'm
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: in places where there is perfect electricity, perfect adapters, you know,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: I'll get so shattered and I'll have a shower, and
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: I'll lie on the lie on the bed to go
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: to sleep, and I'll fall asleep and I'll wake up
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: at three in the morning thinking, oh, I haven't charged
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: my watches, because if I don't charge them, I can't run.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: And if I can't run, then we're going to have
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: to replan it. Even little things like that were a stress. Fortunately,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I had my my brilliant assistant and a
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: guy called Veton who organized hell of a lot for
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: me and was constantly on my case. But it was
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: the you know, when you go away with people and
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: you decide whether you want to go left or right,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: or whether you want to do something or not do something.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Having that sense check with somebody else was difficult not
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: to have it. You know, Should I be running down
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: this street now? Is it's safe? You know, I haven't
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: got any security in the center of Caracus in Vanna's
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Way there where it's famous for kidnaps. Should I actually
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: go out or should I wait? You know? And having
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: that sense check is difficult. Yeah, Like you say, the
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: documentary filming everything as well. A great friend of mine
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: called Mark Beaumont has cycled around the world, has the
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: world record for cycling around the World's He gave me
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: some great advice before I left, and he said, if
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: you if you're filming it, you've got to film all
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: of the stuff that you don't want to film, you know,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: and and.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: When you're tired and you just like I just want
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: to rhyme, like I don't need the extra hassle to
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: like having to document this and I don't feel like
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: it right now.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And even to the point that I was actively
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: aware of how Fatida was by the fact that my
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: brain didn't want to lift my arm to take a photo.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: You know, when you're at the end of a very,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: very long run and your whole body is to it
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: and any slight movement is a waste of energy. Mentally,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: my body was okay, but mentally being able to get
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: all right, I'll finished and do a video and try
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and convey what you're really feeling, when actually I'm thinking
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: about right, okay, I need to go and get some
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: food now. And you know, all of this stuff that
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: goes on food was this whole big other aspect which
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: went I mean, I think it was more take chet,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: take what you can get, and eat it a lot,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: and always ask for seconds on the planes even if
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: you don't like it, you know that kind of thing. Yeah.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, how many flights total four fifty six.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: Wow, including the flight home. Yeah. And to put it
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: into perspective, we thought we would do two hundred and twenty.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: So that gives you an idea of double from the planning,
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: the ideation to the actuality.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just so many things went wrong, and I
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: believe we planned it as well as we could have
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: with the time that we had and the budget and everything.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: But even if you had all the money in the
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: world and all the time in the world to plan this,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: things go wrong. And that was why we had so
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: many flights. We have four hundred and fifty odd flights,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty twenty visas, nine passports on my tenth. Now, Yeah,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: how was Lebanon. Yeah, Lebanon was when I ran there
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: in Beow Route as the official Lebanon Marathon that I ran.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: That was fine. I ran along the coast and it
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: was beautiful.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: But I've done that Bear route marrit I've been a
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: Bear twice, so yeah, familiar with it.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Along the corniche there's gorgeous, beautiful, it's beautiful and I
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: like that food is great as well. And I I
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: then had to go back to Lebanon to get into
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: Syria and crossing there was a load of protests quite recently,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: only a few months.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: Ago, crossing by ground into Syria.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, across exactly, leaving Lebanon, leaving beir Route to go
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: over into Damascus. And a couple of days before the
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: day before I was due to arrive, I had a
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: call from my dad saying that the tour agency that's
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: supposed to be taking you. Tour agency is you know,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: it's not this big tour company. It's just one man
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: on the ground. Yea said that their driver, the driver
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: that he'd hired to take another group of people to
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: the border the previous day, had been shot and killed.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: There was there had been a real all these protests
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: going on, and the problem was the Lebanese plated cars
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: traveling towards the Syrian border all the other way around,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: and so we had to be careful. And I switched
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: cars halfway through the journey in order to not have
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: that danger. And I remember, you know, I thought I
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: was when I did that journey. We made the decision
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: that we're here, we don't have any other time, let's
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: just go for it. I'll get my head down, let's
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: hope for the best. Had another driver, obviously, because the
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: driver was killed before, and they'd advised me not to
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: do it, and let's just get it done. And I
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: remember asking the driver if I could stop. We didn't
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: be very good English at all, and I said, can
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: I stop? Go for a week? And I need to
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: go for a week, and he said not here, And
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: he was racing through and only by pure luck and
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: that we made it. And we switched into the Syrian
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: plated vehicle and went through the border, and then how
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: is Syria. Syria was a surprise. The center of Damascus
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: is beautiful and actually much less run down than I
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: was expecting. People are lovely, and by pure fluke. Again,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: this happened so many times I would be in a
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: position where things would happen. I was running around the
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: stadium in Damascus because it was safe, very hot, and
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: there's lots of cars and so it was a good
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: easy way to do the marathon. And I had witnesses
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: as well, so it was a win win. And I
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: ran in Damascus in the stadium, and then a few
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: miles into the run, I was joined by the under
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: nineteens national Syrian female football team and they were coming
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: to train and they saw me run and they were like, yeah,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: let's do a few miles with you. Wow. What an
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: amazing thing. And I had these twenty five odd people
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: that were that were all training in their pristine running kit.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: And it's not something that you think of as Assyria,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: you know, and goes back to those preconceived ideas of
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: people expecting me to be running in a war zone
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: with bombs going off all around me, right right.
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: Do you think that the experience would have been different
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: if you were American?
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And I briefly said that to Dean as well,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the amount of I'm very fortunate to be born British
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: and not have those political blockers. But that said, you know,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: we've I colonize a lot of the world and we've
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: had some you know, I've had some lots of frowns
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: and looks to me, but it's a little bit different.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: I think. I think it's more hostile.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would imagine what about Pakistan?
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Were you able to run outdoors? Yeah? There?
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: When I was there, I was in you know, they
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: were like you can't go outside, and and my host
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: was training for a marathon and live there was a
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: Pakistani national and he didn't train outside or if he
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: said he would occasionally run outdoors, but he could never
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: go back to the same spot, like at the similar
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: time of day, like he had to mix it up.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because of concerns. Yeah, I was told that advice.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: You know, if I'm doing it, don't don't post my route,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: don't tell people where I'm going to be just in case.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Lots of lots of countries are like that. But it
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: goes back to this. People say, how can you sum
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: up the whole journey in one word? And I say people.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: And this network of people that had that made it
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: possible was exactly why I really enjoyed Pakistan. I mentioned
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: my old boss, the good boss Razi. He was Pakistan,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: born in Pakistan, and he had a really great friend
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: that used to go to university within Lahore, a guy
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: called Kabir. And he got on the phone to his
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: friend and said, nixt coming to is Lammabad. Will you help?
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: And he did and I arrived at the airport, He
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: picked me up, he gave me a tour, he went
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: for some dinner, and unfortunately it was absolutely absolutely torrential
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: rain and so I was running in about a foot
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: of water, which was and I was running down the
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: central reservation of a four lane highway in Islamabad because
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: it was the only dry place to run, dry ish
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: place to run. But in terms of danger, I had
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Kabir tell me where to be inside knowledge and without
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: all of these people, I can tell you it would
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: not happen. You know, money cannot buy you those connections. Yes,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: you can get people to to be there at the
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: right time and to pick you up and to have
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: a security guard with you. But actually it's the inside
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: knowledge that made all the difference.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: I would imagine there were probably options in certain, you know,
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: dicey countries to do the marathon on like a British
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: military base, right, Yeah, did you ever.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Do that or did you after know?
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: I want to be in the communities.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't do any in British military bases. I did
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. I ran in the UN compound in Carble
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: because we were due to have a five armored vehicle
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: escort up into the mountains, which was unheard of, but
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: they'd approved it, and then it was retracted because there
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: was a blast and a few people killed and an
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: attack the day before I arrived again and so incredibly sad.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: There was lots of gunfire in the evenings when I
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: was there, But it was one of those places that
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: I was in this UN compound and we ran, We
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: ran around all over the place, and there was a
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: brilliant Ultra runners as part of the UN staff and
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: they supported me and we ran with had a helmet
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and a bulletproof vest for some of it, and I
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: didn't want to leave. You know, you turn up to
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: these places terrified and then you make so many great
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: connections you don't want to leave. And so yeah, there
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: was a few. There was a few compound runs, Like
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: in Jamaica, I ran around the High Commissioner's compound because
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: there was sixty seven people murdered the weekend. I was
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: there through gang violence in Kingston right where I was,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and you know, they weren't going to kill me, but
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: I might have been in the wrong place at the
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: wrong time. And so there's lots of things like that
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: which you don't plan. You know, go to Jamaica, you
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: think of beaches and rum and cocktails and stuff like
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: this happens with over the place, and so you have
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: to be a little bit wary. What did the kit
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: look like? Like?
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: What was the bag you know that you were hauling around?
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: Did that change as you figured things out? Yes, I
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: suspect you started with more than you needed, and then
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: as you got your footing that was that it was
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: a piece of luggage, you got a little bit smaller.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, it was a bit like it was a bit
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: like a bell curve. Actually, I started with a big
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: ish pack a rucksack. I was traveling around the world.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Take a rucksack. That makes sense, But everything was just
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: difficult to get into it. I had far too many things.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Skip ahead to the end, and I was traveling with
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: a tiny, tiny bag with like one pair of pants,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: one pair of socks and just washed, like showering in
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: my clothes and washing them.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: And as I went on, that's the good thing about running. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: there's one pair of shorts. You're wearing your shoes already.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I tell you that, and I'm still
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: I still have them with me right now because I'm
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: going for a run later today. The pair of shorts
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: that I wore all the way through my kit sponsors
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: and wearing Deo sport Live. They they gave me some
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: shorts and I wore them every single run and it
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: has a bite mark out of the back where it's
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: bitten by the dog and I still wear them to
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: this day. So you're absolutely right. Frame those. Yeah, I'm
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: going to frame them with my auction them or something.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: I don't and you're good. Yeah, they're pretty disgusting. I
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: think I think the frame would I think the frame
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: would work. And they're really there's some you know, the waistband,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: they're black and as they go down because it's been
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: so sun bleached, they're basically close to white now. So yeah,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: my kit where my kit went up and down. But
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: I also had a bit of a problem with souvenirs.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: People used to give me brilliant stuff like medals with
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: my faces on, trophies made by brilliant sculptors and all
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, but I didn't have anywhere to put it,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: and so I ended up having actually traveling with a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: souvenir bag because I didn't want to have to say
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: no to this opportunity to take something.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you want to have that stuff, it's cool.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: What about the camera equipment? I mean, was this this
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: iPhone or GoPro or like, how are you documenting it?
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Every bit of camera equipment has ever been made? Not quite.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I traveled with a lot. I traveled with some decent
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: lenses for some I love my photography and we're releasing
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: this photography book, and it's just a hobby, but I
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: believe I'm okay at it and I'm passionate about it,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: and so I traveled with a lot of photography lenses
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: just for taking photos. For like DSLRs, like full blown,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: full blown, like right big lenses, so you're running with
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: that stuff too. Sometimes if I had a so frequently
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: i'd have a car or a motorbike or a cyclist
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: that would support me, and so they would have it
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: in the car behind me. And then if I see
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: something I want to take a picture of this a
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: group of kids or something, you know, I take the picture.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: But sometimes I wore my backpack and I ran Osbury
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: gave me these really great Rettle running backpacks which were
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: quite a bit bigger than the other ones, the Summon ones,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: and so they do fit the cameras. But then go pros.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I had three go pros. I had my drone which
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: was confiscated many many times, all my batteries I had.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I think I hadne in Syria. No, I didn't. I
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: didn't take it to Syria. I don't think i'd have
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: got close, but it was, it was. It was confiscated
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: a few times, Cuba, most places in Africa. I don't
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: like it. Hat it was another one. And yeah, I
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: traveled with lots of it, and it was a lot
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: of it was stolen actually in China, and I didn't
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: realize it had been stolen, but my bag when it
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: went through the airport, they decided that I wasn't allowed
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: the camera equipment and so put a nice letter in
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: my bag, all in Chinese which I couldn't read, which
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: I assumed says we've taken your stuff and I never
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: got that back.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: So wow, did you have footage in there that you
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: last that or just very careful with the footage.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: The footage was always backed up.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: Immediately, right, So yeah, you got to you got to
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: finish the marathon, get to the airport, back up the footage.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: Write my blogs, tell people what I'm doing. Make sure
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: that the one because you.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: Did a great job of chronicling the thing in real
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: time on Instagram with beautiful photographs.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: And yeah, thanks, I think so my Instagram and I'll
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: plug it's Nick butter Run. Nick butter Run. I posted
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: it because there's no point. You can't do it after
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: the fact, you know, I can't spend the following two
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: years doing it. But it was difficult and people would
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: often mail me or email me or message being saying
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: are you alive? We haven't heard from you in a day.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I know, I'm in the central Africa.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: I'm in the Congo. I haven't got easy Wi Fi.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: And yeah, connectivity was another another big thing, trying to
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: check in with people and my sat phone being broken
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: sometimes and being able to actually write my blogs, write
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: everything on Instagram and remember it because I was writing
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: notes as well, handnotes for my book, because there's stuff
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: that you want to remember that isn't you know. I
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: can't fit in a in a small small space in
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: an Instagram post. So it's overall, you know, you get
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: an idea of the scale of the trip. It's it
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: was the most amazing feeling to finish, but I feel
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: like I want to go back. It's almost like a
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: big wreki, you know, I want to go back and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: see more of each place.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: There's a cool like sizzle real film on your website
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: that you know, basically gives you an idea. It's kind
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: of very you know, quick cuts of all these different places.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: It reminds me a lot of Casey Ni start to
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: do more video.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: It's very much in.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: That style of like it's so hectic and chaotic and
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: there's so you're just being bombarded with the stimulus of
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: so many different cultures.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: Very cool. Yeah, I know, we like those videos. I
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: was very fortunate that Spark Media put that together. They
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: came to me before the trip and said, you've got
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: to do a documentary and will help And I said, well,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: I can't put any money towards the documentary now because
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: we're spending everything on and everything else. And they said,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: don't worry, you know, we'll just help you put it together.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: And they are now producing the final documentary. Right. How
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: many hours of footage should you come home? I have
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand? We have I think it was eighteen terabytes
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand video clips.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: So tough at it because you know it can't be
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: one hundred and ninety six episodes, you know, Like, how
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: do you craft a cohesive narrative out of such an
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: epic journey without it being repetitive?
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, yeah exactly. I think a lot of
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: people would say, well, I ran here, then I got
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: on a plane, then I ran here, you know. But
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: for to me, it wasn't like that, you know, it
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: was it's basically going from one problem to the next
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: and just just articulating in a relatively linear narrative of
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: this is what happened. But the way that we're doing it.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: It's a parallel narrative. We have lots of interviews with
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: my family and friends and team, and that's interspersed throughout
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: the throughout the documentary. But it's the same when writing
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: the book. You know, my book, and I'm plug it
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: as well because it's on Amazon, lug away, it's on Amazon,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: it's running the world.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: Coming out later this year. But there's no it didn't
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: seem to be a specific release date.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: I need to finish it, Okay, that's the problem. And
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: it leads me into I've written almost the word count
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: for this book and I'm only in chapter two. You know,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: how can I cut stuff out? It's it's I want
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: I want people to see the whole journey. It's really difficult.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: I think you your first past needs to be overwritten,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: you know, we get it all down and then you
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: have this big piece of clay that you can chip
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: away at, you know, and and it's so fresh. I mean,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: you just finished this thing to get it. I think
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: it's important, imperative for you to get it all down
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: on paper.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: As soon as possible, and then you have something to
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: work with. Yeah, you're absolutely right, And I'm spending the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: next few days, running writing, running, writing until I go
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: home to more more stuff. But it's yeah, I love it.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: I'm a very very privileged position to be and to
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: be able to moan about having to write difficult to
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: write the book on that's.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: Cool On a very practical level, like how, you know,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: how is the process of of you know, lining up
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: all of this sponsor support and kind of you know,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: making sure that you're serving them as well. I mean,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: this is these are relationships, right, like you like, they're
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: not just giving you money. You have to be, you know,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: a good ambassador for these brands, and you have like
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: forty six brands or something like that supporting you, right, Yeah,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: I would imagine it would have been It seems to
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: me it would have been a lot easier. You just
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: have like one huge company comes in Visa, Nike, whatever
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: it is, writing a huge check and you just you're,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: you know, you have one company, but you're having to
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: work with tons to kind of cobble this whole thing together.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: If you can write to Branson for me, that would
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: be great. No, we did, Mond Richard, Pa, Well you've
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: done it already. Now you just pay me now. It's
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: you're right. Having that many sponsors is difficult, but fortunately
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: there's very very few of them that have any formal commitments,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: and they're people that have come out of the woodwork and said, look,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: we want to help you. We don't expect much, but
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: what you can give will be grateful for. And I
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: think on paper you say forty six sponsors we've got now,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's fifty, just under fifty. And I think
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of the outside world would see, oh, it's
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: just a load of money that people are giving you.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: I spent ninety I'd say, let's trying to get this right.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Eighty five eighty two percent of the trip that kind
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: of number was paid by me and my family. The
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: rest of it, you know, a lovely, lovely brand would
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: give me some socks, right, that's great, great, but it
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't know anything else. And yeah, I need socks,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: but need I.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: Need five hundred bucks because I don't have a page
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: on my you know, my passport to get stamped.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Exactly that, And when you're wasting me. Getting into Bhutan
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: cost US fourteen hundred dollars just because it's it's a
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: difficult to actually I need an invite, so you have
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: to basically pay for it, and so actually funding the
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: trip has to be in the top two or the
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: top three of the hardest thing to do. And I
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: sold virtually everything. My parents and my family gave up
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of money, loaned me a lot of money,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: and at all those suits, Yeah, I actually did. There's
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of shirts that went to
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: charity shops as well, because I thought I've got so
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: many shirts. The irony being is I now need a
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: shirt to wear when I do my theater tours. No,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. I stripped my life back. I allow
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: live in a van. I live in a van, and
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: I travel around doing my speaking to all over the
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: world with just trying to share the journey. And I
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: wouldn't change in for the world. And had I had
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of pounds to spend, the trip wouldn't
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: have been the same, and I wouldn't have felt so
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: invested and so pressured. And all of the feelings were
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: amplified by having everything on the line, you know, being
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: told I wasn't going to do this six weeks from
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: the end, after having everything in my basket, I hadn't
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: not let anything out. It's that motivation. You people say, so,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: what gets you out of the bend the morning when
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: it gets tough. That's one of them. Yeah, you know, I.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: Think I read that the total cost of the endeavor
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: was in access of like five hundred thousand pounds.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, some more more than that. Yeah, I would think
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: it would be more than that. It was, it was, yeah,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: but I mean it's we haven't actually done the final
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: numbers yet because there's a lot of stuff that we're
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: still paying. I would say it was it was close
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: to more, close to a million, But that kind of money.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: You know, there's great friends of the family that I
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: haven't seen for years who just put their hand in
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: their pocket and said, we'll give you, We'll give you
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: a few grand and that made all the difference at
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: the right time.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: Well, if it makes you feel better, you know, a
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: decent documentary budget is about a million. Yeah, so maybe
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: that was the budget of the documentary that you're making.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. I had to do a few
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: other things away. That's a very good point. That's a
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: very good way of looking at it. Just investing in
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: the documentary exactly.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: Right, Come on, spark right now, we've got we've got
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: some good connections with the documentary.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: I'm very privileged and I feel like I just want
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: to go and and physically I cannot. I cannot tell
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: you how thankful I am with people. I almost get
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: emotional thinking about it, the amount of people that have
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: come out. Just you know, a lovely lady called Roena.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: She was listening to the radio before I started, and
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: she lived in Spain. British lived in Spain, and she said,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: come and stay with me. Stayed with her, put me
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: up in a beautiful home in Barcelona. She then drove
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: me to two other countries because she wanted to help.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: And it's that selflessness of people from all over the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: world that made the journey. And I just want to
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: encourage everybody I speak to in this upcoming tour to
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: help to realize that your people around you are at
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: everything that make the world good. Without people, the world
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: would be beautiful, but it wouldn't be as fun.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: What are some of I mean you just kind of
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: said it, but you know the takeaways and the lessons?
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the takeaways a never try and remove
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: those preconceived ideas from countries more and I really mean it,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: more like ninety five percent of the time I was away,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly how it was portrayed in all of
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: the whether it was a guide book or whether it
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: was a magazine or you know, you compile all of
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: this stuff of how you believe a country's going to be,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: and unless you visited it, it's not the same.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: So now, what is it like when you turn on
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: international news and you see some report from someplace that
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: you've been well.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: The first thing I do is text my mates there
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: and say you're okay. More often than not, that's the
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: real reason. And then I get the response back of
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: you it's fine, it's not actually as bad as they're saying,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: or it is bad, or you know. And there's when
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: I see CNN, for example, lots of big disasters from
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: all over the world, or BBC World News as well.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff that needs to be talked about.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: And I believe that by focusing on some of the
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: negative stuff, it actually creates positive stuff because people then
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: come and help. But I wish there could be the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: follow up stories of this is now what's happened in
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the wake of a disaster or the wake of something happening,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: because it because people need to see that as well,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: so I guess the other big thing is coming right
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: back to the beginning message that keV taught me, which
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: is not waiting for not waiting for something to happen
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: in your life to kick you off the backside, to
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: do something. You have an opportunity to do it now.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: And whether you're ten years old or eighty years old,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: you probably have something that you want to do, and
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: you have an opportunity to do it, even if you,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: like me, can't afford it wasn't fit enough really, and
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: so just just go for it. And Kevin, you know
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: who you met?
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: What year was it that you did marathonder salvs?
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Fifteen sixteen fifteen fifteen.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: Was diagnosed with basically, I mean basically a life sentence, right,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: and now it's five years.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: Later, Yeah, five dollars on forty days something like that.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: If he joined you in Athens. Yeah, it was incredibly moved.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: We had a lot of tears during that run and
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: had some laughs and some really lovely chats. So keV.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: keV was forty nine when he was diagnosed given terminal
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: prostate cancer, given as little as two years to live,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: and he describes it at the moment as drug roulette.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: So he's basically taking his drugs and one day they'll
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: stop working and maybe there'll be another drug that works,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: and maybe there won't. And it's that day that comes
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: that we don't want to happen, you know, when he'll
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: drop off a cliff, but and you know in his
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: meds will stop working. But five years on he's still
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: with us, and he still will die from cancer. He
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: who's absolutely riddled with it. And I just wish that
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: we could get the message out there. So I suppose
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: this is a big, a big message of mind that
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going to probably be preaching her out for the
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: rest of my life. Is that if you are a
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: man and you're over forty years old and you haven't
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: gone and got your prostate checked, you have to do
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: it because you could have prostate cancer with no symptoms
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: and you could be literally dying any day. That's the reality.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: If you don't get checked and you catch it late,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: the chances of you dying are huge. If you catch
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: it early, the chances of you living are huge. And
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: so and also if you're not a man, or you're
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: not over forty, the chances are you know somebody who is.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: And so that's the most common form of cancer for
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: a man, right.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, biggest it's actually it's overtaken breast cancer now, so
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: it's the biggest, biggest call. Yeah yeah, so it's it's
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: overtaken breast cancer, and breast cancers obviously had a lot
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: of public awareness and funding. I just feel like it's
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: now time to turn our heads and look at this
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: councer that's nuckling a lot of men at twelve. Just
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: over twelve thousand men die from prostate cancer in the
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: UK alone, that's every forty five minutes. So you you.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: Use this adventure to also raise funds for prostate cancer UK.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Right, yes? How much? How much money as you guys
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: are raised? We on the just Giving page. I have
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: to check it. I think we're up about one hundred
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: and twenty five, but I know we've got a substantial
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: offline that's gone in so I believe it's just over
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: the two hundred thousand pound mark. We wanted to raise
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty and I think we will hopefully
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: with when the book and the documentary comes out and
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: with my So that's like speaking to it. Oh, it's ongoing,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: and I won't stop until I know that that target
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: is in the bank, you know, because there's no reason
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: why we can't do that. It's just it just takes
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: everybody that's listening to this, and everybody that's listening to
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: the things I'm going to say in the future. Just
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: a dollar, fifty cents, a pound, whatever, it is, just
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: a small amount really makes the difference. And that money
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: that we're raising is specifically going towards a National Score program,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: and so that means that men can get access to
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: free and easy checks without having to go through this
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: whole ordeal. And I hope we'll then have enough money
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: to combat the stigma attached to prostate cancer and the
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: fact that people don't want to talk about it because
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: it's embarrassing, which it shouldn't be really, I didn't even
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: know exactly. Yeah, because people men especially don't want to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: talk about it because it involves your butt. That's the reality,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: and it shouldn't. It shouldn't be the case because it's
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: killing people. And so I'm convinced that if it was
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: if it involved a different part of your body, they
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be killing as many people.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: So you got this speaking tour, yeah coming up? Has
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: that already started or you're on the cusp of that.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw Dean just the other day speaking in
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: the National Running Show in the UK. So it's kind
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: of started, but it's ramping up properly starting in March,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: and it's like a.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: Four Like I looked at the schedule, because there's a
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: lot of dates in the.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: UK, all over the UK, and we're now starting to
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: do some in the US as well. And what I've
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: got planned in the future will bring me to North America.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: And so I'm hoping that if people enjoy. Hopefully people
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: enjoy what I'm saying and we'll take something from it
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: in the UK and then I can then do more
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: in the US.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: And what's the message when you get up in front
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: of kids or schools or these groups at these theaters.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the message is to a there's a
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: big message of resilience in this whole journey, right, you know,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: overcoming the stuff that you think you can't do, and
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: when you get out of bed in the morning and
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: it's raining and you think, oh, I can't go everyone
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: it's cold, You know, yes you can. Like there's other
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: stories behind it, but the overarching messages of time. So
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: I preach about this number of twenty nine, seven hundred
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: and forty seven, which is the average amount of days
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: that a British person will live for. Twenty nine seven
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: four seven is the magic number, and I want people
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: to realize that that number is going down every single day,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: and we have an opportunity to live our life right now.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: In the UK alone, we spend on average nine years
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: of our life watching TV, and we spend ninety percent
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: of our life indoors. And so I'm basically standing up
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: and preaching about the fact that yes, okay, you need
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: to earn money to feed your kids and pay your mortgage,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: but you also have an opportunity and a responsibility to
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: enjoy and to live your life as passionately as you
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: can with the stuff that you love, because otherwise it's
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: gonna be too late, you know, you to get to
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: your deathbed and not have done what you wanted to do.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: So when I look at what you've done, one thing
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: that strikes me is is that you.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: Just basically made this decision to do this. Like you
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: you became.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: A runner later in life, it wasn't like you were
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: out winning races, winning bad Water and Marathon to sab
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: Like you're you're you're an enthusiast, and obviously you have
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: a certain amount of talent and dedication because it's hard
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: to run these ultras. But the thing is, like, it's
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: not like you were a name and running and you
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: just took it upon yourself to do this thing that
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: nobody else had ever done and you figured it out.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's easy.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: Like people are a banker and he was, you know,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: I was like, maybe he had a million dollar bonus
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: that he just paid for this thing.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: But that's not the case at all, not the case
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: at all, not the case at all. And you're right,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not a fantastic runner. I like you said, old
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: run and say that, but I'm really not. I'm not
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: even that fit, not even that healthy. You know. I
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: literally just wanted to go and live by what kept
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: said is to enjoy it and to travel and to run.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to continue to run because it helps
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: my mind with my everything that I have in my life.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: So it's running I described, It's just very much my
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: mode of transport, and it happens to be a cheap
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: was a cheap and easy way of getting around until
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: you decide to run around the world. Of course, right.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: And I think it was funny as I was reading
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: some of the media on you and and it seemed
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: like journalists we were shocked that you still like to run,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: like oh, this is like like you're like, I want
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: to get back to running now that people are like, what.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: It's bizarre, isn't it. I don't really understand what that
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: question I get is, So what are you going to
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: do next? I'm obviously gonna I'm going to run, like
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not just going to stop. But at the same time,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: I get the point of I've run so much, now
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: do you want to stop? But I tell you what
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: I am not missing, which is getting on and off
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: planes or having that long snaking Queuan airports to get
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: to immigration. But no running is that you like yourself?
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's great for if you love it, you
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: carry on doing it.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: Obviously, is there a bit of a coming down from
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: such a huge experience.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: I haven't experienced it yet. I think things have been
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: kind of niggling me in the background, like the stuff
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: that I've missed that I didn't realize I was missing,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: like meeting new people all the time, you know, I
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: was meeting new people and making friends every couple of days,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: and then having this great relationship with them and then
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: having a chat with them on WhatsApp for the following weeks.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: And now I'm very much in the zone of yeah, okay,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: I'm still meeting people in theaters and I'm talking to
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: new people, but it's it's not as intense. And it was.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: That was quite a special two year bubble of my life.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: But I think there a lot of people did say, oh,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to prepare yourself when you come back,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: because it's going to be this. But I've just filled it.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: I've just filled this gap with being busy and writing
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: the books and in the document documentary out and doing
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: the tour. And I think once that stuff starts to
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: die down, and I've finished the book and I've compiled
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: with the photos for the photo book, and I've witnessed
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: the documentary come and go and it starts to fade
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: a little bit, then maybe but other stuff will take
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: its place. Yeah. I think that's healthy.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: You know, there's I know a lot of people who
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: they do some really super crazy thing and then they
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: feel like they just have to keep upping the ante
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: or doing something crazier and you know, it's that's an
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: addict mentality because it's like chasing the dragon, right, like
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: you didn't You've done this incredible thing. And much like
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: I would imagine, you know, a soldier returning from a deployment,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: like there's an adjustment period because you've gone from a
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: very extreme situation to compare you know, running marathons to
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: being in battle. But no, no, the idea of being
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: in something that's that's not of the normal life, that
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: is very tightened and intense, to then being sort of
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: sitting in the countryside and having to adjust to that. Right,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: and there's this this wanderlust or this itch like you know,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: I need that dopamine rush again, and I think people
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: get into trouble with that. But to the extent that
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: you can kind of leverage the experience that you've had
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: and the kind of platform that you've created for yourself
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: to then take that whatever that energy is and pour
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: it into being of service to other people, I think
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: you'll find great fulfillment and that.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope so. And what I've what I've got
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: next is still running and it's just slowed everything down
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: and we're going to go. The plan is to do
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: something similar, but to enjoy it more, not focus on
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: a record or time, and to basically write more, take
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: more photos, and and really, yeah, I suppose just immerse
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: myself in what I'm doing, and what I hope to
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: do is to run, go and run set another record
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: just because it's not been done by running a marathon
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: in all of the national parks in North America. Ah,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: that's cool, because exactly it's cool. It's beautiful, and I've
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: got rather than doing three a week, the schedule that
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: we've roughly planned, and I've been thinking about it for
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: a while, even during the last trip, was it's about
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: ten days. So every ten days I'll do a run
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: and are then breaking it down to do some school
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: talks and to do some other corporate work, but also
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: just travel around in the van. Getting a puppy in
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: three days time, by the way, wow, And so the
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: puppy will start to run with me, and then go
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: over to the US in January twenty twenty one and
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: start trekking across all the national parks, tick them off
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: over five hundred days, and then go up to Canada
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: and do another five hundred days to tick off all
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: of the other national only one border crossing easy, easy,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: and I hope I'm not going to have to pay
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: any bribes to get into Canada.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: I was kind of living in the headspace of Ricky
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: Gates over the last couple of days because he's the
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: most recent episode that I just put up and have
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: spent quite a bit of time thinking about his cross
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: country you know, unsupported run across America, which has parallels
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: to what you've done, but which is also a very
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: different animal because he he's somebody who you know, whether
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: it's running every street in San Francisco or running across America,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: like these are ultra endurance events, but they were really
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 3: about taking your time and connecting deeply with your community.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: And your natural environment and yours.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: Is different in the sense that you're popping in you're
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: running these marathons. You're having, you know, a valuable experience
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: with the people in the landscape when you're there, but
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: then you're out right.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: It's very rapid, rapid, fire too rapid, too rapid, and
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: certainly for anybody that does this kind of thing or
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: the same thing again in the future, whether it's diener otherwise.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: I wanted more time everywhere, and you add one one
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: day to every country. That's another nine months, you know,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: that's that's the kind of length of you can't add
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: another day. But it's slowing things down.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: One hundred and ninety six extra day exactly.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: It's it's intense, and I what I'm doing in the
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: future is just slower, and I want to take time
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: to look around and enjoy what I have. And I
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: also I'm looking to get into a bit of learning
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: about the environment because of you know, our big problem
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: in the West is the environment, despite the fact of
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: all the other problems going on in the world. I
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: want to just learn a bit about it and start
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: to use the trip over those one thousand days to
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: learn and to hopefully share what I then have. I
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: can come back and see you in a few years
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: time and say, well, this is what I now know,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: because I know virtually I don't know nothing about the environment,
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: because I had to do lots of offsetting projects for
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: my trip to make our whole journey carbon neutral. And
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: so this next thing I'm trying is is to learn
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: a bit to share the journey of this trip as well,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: and hopefully get other people into sport.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about the carbon offset thing that's interesting because
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: there is this thing like, oh, it's very self indulgent.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: You took four hundred and forty.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: Five flights and god knows how many you know, car rides,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: et cetera like that.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: How do you offset? I mean that's a massive carbon
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: footprint to off set. Yeah, so we I was trying
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: to find companies that were going to be able to
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: help me offset. And I think the standard standard one
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: that everybody jumps to is when you're offsetting carbon emissions,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: you plant a tree. You know, that's the obvious go to,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: but there are many many other ways to do that,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: and using the carbon credits model, which is through this
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: company called Natural Capital Partners. They very kindly replied to
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: my one of many many emails and said, yeah, we'd
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: love to help you, and they sponsored my offset by
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: giving me four projects in which we would do various
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: different environmental work. So to use an example, Guatemala, which
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: was also one of my favorite countries, as a company
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: there called Ecofilter and they do water filedration and they
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: also create stoves which require less wood, and therefore the
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: people that are cooking on these stoves then have to
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: use less wood and then the smoke is less and
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: so they get ill less and it's also cutting down
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: less trees, right a sense. And so what this company
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: doesn't know. They're a very very big company for lots
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: of multinationals all over the world, and they said, we've
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: put all of your even asked me about my diet,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: you know what kind of diet I had, and how
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: many planes would be taking and how many And they
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: gave me the certificate with which was offsetting forty five
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: tons of carbon emissions. And we're currently an email discussion
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: about upping that just to make sure we're completely covered
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: with everything. So forty five tons was offset which was
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: CO two equivalent, and that means that all of these
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: so we had four projects around the world, this one
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: tomorrow is one of them, and not only does it
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: help the environment, but it helps the communities of people
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: in the country. So I don't know if it's a
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: perfect system, but I think it's a much better way
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: than just planting trees, that's for sure.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: One of the places in the world that I know
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: so little about that it's embarrassing is Africa.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's the same for a lot of people.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: I believe I know a bit now, But what I
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: have seen I like, and I suppose it may sound silly,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I like in Africa similar to
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: the US in the sense that got fifty states and
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: fifty four countries in Africa, and they're very much governed differently,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: different laws, different rules, different attitudes, different races, different religions.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: It's just that Africa currently is less well off. But
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: if you were to read books, like a great book
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: called Factfulness about how the environment and the culture of
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: wealth is shifting to Asia and to Africa, you'll start
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: to see that Africa is booming. It will boom. It's
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: not a case of oh no, they can never be
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: a civilized society. Africa is a beautiful but be has
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: so much potential. And so in terms of the climate
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: and everything that's going on there, I had I think
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: it was an average temperature of forty four degrees sea
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: in those fifty four countries. It was hot. Yeah, what
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: is that like, that's over one hundred fair anherd. Yeah,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: absolutely scorching, and some places, you know, deserts, don't have
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: rain for very long periods of time. And then you
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: learn about all of this, and then you go to
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: somewhere like the Pacific islands which are actually directly under
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: threat from rising sea levels, which I also learned, which
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: you know, is also about the salt water membrane in
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: these islands and how the water is rising and ruining
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: the So there's all sorts of elements. But I'll tell
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: you what. If I could tell anybody to go and
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: visit any continent and spend some time, it would be
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: in places like Sierra Leone and Togo and the Congo
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: where live very very differently.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: What about Antarctica and the Arctic Circle.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good point, could mention it. Well. I definitely didn't
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: need to do any running in the North Pole because
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: there isn't any land. It's just it's just a lot
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: about the frozen water. But in Antarctica technically co owned
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: by seven different countries and so it's not technically a country.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: Didn't need to do it, but it's one of the
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: seven confidents right now, I've got to do it. And
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: so I was talking with a few friends recently about
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: what I could do, and I'd love to run in
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: both the poles, something substantial. But then I have the
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: conflicting interest of the climate, you know, and the environment,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: and should I be should I be traping through these
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: places that are delicate and maybe should be more protected.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it's an interesting.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: Thought experiment because in terms of offset, like, if you
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: can create a you know, an adequate amount of awareness
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: that creates some kind of action in the wake of it,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: does it become, you know, a rational thing to do.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and your guess is as good as mine. And
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: how you know until you've done it? And is it
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: worth taking the risk? And I mean as a as
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: a tourist, as a human of the planet. I'd love
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: to see both the poles and to properly witness them
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: and do a brilliant expedition. And yes, I would love
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: to plan them, but I don't want to. We're in
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: a quite a delicate balance with with with the climate,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: so I don't know how I'll feel about that after learning,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I've talked about this learning period over the
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: next few years. When I do this next trip, I
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: might completely change my mind and go completely great in
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: different way. I don't know. How's the diet we can
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: start there have a conversation about that. Right now, my
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: diet and your diet are probably the opposite. No, I'd
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: love and I will do it get closer and closer
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: to the likes of your diet I have. I'll leave
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: you with a couple of bucks. Yeah, please do please
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: do I know I am. I'd love to throughout this
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: whole trip, But these two two years I actually thought
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: about being vegan through it, through the trip, and I'm
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: so glad I didn't, because I think I would have starved.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: Because yes, there's obviously that you're not going to start
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: It would have added, you know, much pressure complexity to it.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: Although I think you know, in a lot of you know,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: less developed parts of the world, you know, they you know,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: a lot of vegan food is popper food. It's you know,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: it's rice and beans and grains and things like that.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: Like you know, especially you know, I've traveled all over
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: the Middle East, like that's like the best vegan food anywhere.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 3: Places where you think, oh, it's going to be so hard,
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: and it's not hard at all.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: And I don't know enough. I don't know enough as
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I should to make kind of informed decisions. And there's
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: also the occasion, I mean many, many times when you
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: arrive in a country at two in the morning and
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: the only thing next door to you is a chicken
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: house or a fast fast food place, and if I
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: go anywhere else then I'm at risk of either getting
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: into trouble or getting lost or being attacked or whatever.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: And so I think I've made a lot of excuses
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: where I shouldn't do that. But maybe by the time
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: I see you next my new project, Yeah, please Rich
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: do it well. Here, I was like looking at some
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: of the stats on your run. So on twenty two
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: of the marathons you had food poisoning. On four of
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: them you had kidney infections. Yeah, you did one hundred
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: and one marathons on an empty stomach. I mean, yeah,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: twenty two marathons with food poisoning. Horrible. Oh my word.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: The amount of days I woke up and literally would
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: just crawl out of bed to the bathroom to then
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: vomit and then get my gear off.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 3: Because of the water to something you ate in a
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 3: strange land, Yeah, a combination of everything.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: I think it was a knock on effect of not
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: having enough water. So, for example, in Iran, I didn't
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: have water for twenty four miles. It was forty plus
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: degrees and I was urinating blood by the end, it
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: was peeing blood. Wow. And I'd had that several times.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: But in Bangladesh the humidity was huge and had I
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: so I had a kidney infection and food poisoning in
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: in Bangladesh forty odd degrees and I was literally throwing
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: up every single mile. Wow, and you just, you know,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: you think, I'm going to just give us the hardest
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: marathon that one. And qait Or Djibouti, Djibouty in Africa
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: was scorching the hot of the heat. Yeah, and you
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: know I was. I was trying to cover up as
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: well to kind of be respectful in these places, and
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: you just end up absolutely roasting. I remember sheltering in
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: a place in Djibouti which was this tiny, tiny shed
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: of a restaurant, and the air con unit they had there,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: which was a huge aircorn unit, was calling the room
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: to thirty two degrees c. It was. It was, it
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: was so so hot, even indoors, and so those temperatures
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, lots and lots of food poisoning and
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: it got very much like so I was used to it.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: I took lots of supplements to try and help, like
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: probo artics to help my gut and stuff. But you know,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: when you're out on a run and you need to
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: drink from a tap in somebody's garden because you're thirsty, I.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: Would imagine you've got a lot of shots too before you.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, every every literally everything you can have. And that
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: took I think it was three months to get everything,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: and then I was more or less done, and I
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: had to have a couple of backups the following year
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: into year two of the trip. But that was fine.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: I got I felt a little bit ill, and I
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: had I think it was two hundred and something days
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: on anti malarials, which made me feel rough anyway.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: In certain Muslim countries running in shorts, no boy, now, yes.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. Yeah, And there was lots of places where
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: I would turn up and assume that that was the case,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: and then I would ask in reception whether it was fine,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: and they'd kind of give me the look as if
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: to say, you idiot, of course you, of course you
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: can wear whatever you want. And then in other places
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: was the opposite, you know, where I assumed it would
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: be okay and it wasn't. But then did that cause problems? Yeah,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: I'd had a somebody threw a water bottle at me
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: out of the window which was full, and it hit
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: me and it hurt, but it wasn't damaging me. But
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: they were honking one country. It was Central Africa. I
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: can't remember, I'm afraid. No, it was Central Africa. I
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: also then I was hit by a car and I
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: broke my elbow in Central Africa. And I believe that
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: was semi on purpose. It was just their wing mirror.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: But it hit me so hard that my elbow broke.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: But so did you have to playing in a cast?
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: Like how did that go down? No? So I went
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: to see a doctor like that was in the in
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: one of the embassies and they said, yeah, we well
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: if you want me to export it, then we'll have
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: to take a few days out. And I said, well,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: we don't have the days, so we don't know. And
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: then I went back on one of my passport pickups.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: So one of my many times when I've had to
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: go back and exchange passports back to the UK to
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: the UK for like twelve hours and then I went
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: and got my yeah, exactly, and I got my got
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: my elbow looked at so yeah, and so yeah, there
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: was those times when I did have to think about
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: the religion was a really great eye opener. I'll tell
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: you what, even if you do this whole trip just
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: to learn about religion, but I happened to be in
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, in Jeddah the Day of d where everyone
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: gathers at Mecca just the night before, and the families
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: which were having these huge gatherings along the coast. It
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: was just so beautiful to see, and I came very,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: very very kind of almost fell in love with the
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: with the different range of religions that we have in
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: the world. And so again it's another classic example of
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: religions are seen as war makers and bad sometimes when
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: yes they are. But there's also the other side of
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: the coin. I've been running in Jedda, have you. Yeah.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: I ran along the water the corniche, yes, yes, over
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: the bridge and along and you've got the couple of
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: mosques time.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a couple of mass right on the coastline
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 3: along there. Yeah, it's quite nice.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Were you running in day or night? Day? Day? Yeah?
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: And I ran in shorts and that was a place
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: where I got back and they said.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: You probably shouldn't have done that. Yeah. I ran long,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: I ran in long.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 3: Tern and I ran in shortened Riard also and was
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: told afterwards that that was not a good ay.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's slightly more fround upon there.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: And and it was just it was ignorance. Really, I
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 3: just didn't I just didn't know.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: But that's the same. I've been in places where I
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: thought it was absolutely fine, or where I've been running
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: around places during prayer time and anywhere else it would
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: have been fine. But at the moment I was in
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: disrespecting people by not giving them space. And you know,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: you make those you make those mistakes and learn.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: So so now that you're home and you flip on
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: the news and it's Brexit and it's Trump and it's
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: you know, insanity and all of that, like, what is
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 3: the lens through which you kind of process all of that?
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 3: Given the worldliness you know of your adventure.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, worldliness. I definitely do feel worldly. I definitely
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: also feel like I'm not as worldly as I want
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: to be still because in all of those places I've
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: just discussed, there's so much more to be learned. And
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: the alema there for a day, yeah, exactly, be there
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: for a day. I mean, you still run twenty six miles,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: it's still a lot to see, but actually to take
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: into people's religions and what they do at meal times
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. So when I look
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: at the news my lens of this whole new worldview
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: that I have, it's one of sadness on one part,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: because I want there to be more positivity and to
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: show the great things that I've experienced. But then on
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: the other hand, complete elation and joy at how lucky
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: I feel to have seen everything. And then of course
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: you have Brexit and Trump and all of the squabbling,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: the squabbling over things that ah, you know, I wish
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: we could just spend a little bit of time, just
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: give us ten minutes of the news a day talking
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: about the problems that are happening in the Congo or
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: in Sieri leone or you know. And yeah, there's lots
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: of ways to look at it. It's frustration, to be honest.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: Most of what I see is frustration now because I
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: want to do more. I want to be able to
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: shake people and rattle them and go, oh, are you
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: moaning about Brexit again? Or morning about your commute? You know,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: the world has.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 3: Well, it takes some crazy event to rejigger people's you know,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 3: sense of priorities. And that's you know, to bring it
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 3: back to Kobe Bryant, I mean, that's kind of the
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 3: you know, everything kind of stopped on Sunday when that happened.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: It was so shocking.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 3: And and and absolutely surreal. It was an incredibly foggy
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 3: morning here, like you couldn't the visibility was almost nothing,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: so there was if and that's sort of unusual.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: And it was just as bizarre.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 3: There was a weird heaviness where everything just stopped for
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 3: a minute and the whole world like poor witness to
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 3: this thing that had happened, and it allowed us to
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 3: kind of connect with what's truly important. And the question, yeah,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: the question then arises is why can't we make that more,
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 3: you know, top of mind in our daily decision making
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: and how we navigate the world.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: And I hope and you say that, you know, what
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: do people want to get out of my talks when
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: I speak to them that you know, it's it's it's
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: not having something in your life or going to somebody's
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: funeral or seeing something bad happen on the news for
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: you to wake up and realize that every moment that
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: we have of every day is so privileged, especially us
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: in the Western world, in this privileged society, we have
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: so much that we can give and we can do,
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: even if it's just you know, spending more time with
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: your family or saying that to your loved ones that
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: you love them more, or going and doing that pottery
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: coll so that's singing lesson or whatever it is that
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: you're putting off. You know that tomorrow may not happen.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: And luckily for Kobe, he's he's had this incredible life
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: where he's done a lot, but I guarantee there's also
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: things there that he hadn't done yet that he'd wanted
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: to do. Yeah.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: No, I think that there were a lot of things
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 3: that he you know, he had a lot of things
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 3: that he was working on and wanted to you know,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 3: express in his life. And then you know, his daughter
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 3: and the you know, the other people that were on that.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 3: It's just it's unbelievable. Yeah, not to end on that note,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 3: I do want to know what your banker buddy think, Like,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 3: now that you're back, are you still connected.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: With the people that used to work with, Like, yeah,
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of them. How does that? How does that go?
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: A lot of my friends. It's I mean, when I'm
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: turning up to see them now when I'm living in
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: a van.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 3: So that's that's the difference, right, You're like the weird
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: guy down by the river.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: Now exactly exactly there. It's to be fair, I think
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: some of them look at it in an envy in
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: a little way, not just the traveling bit, but just
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: the change that I had, I had the jump, but
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: also a lot of them still think I'm crazy, you know, turning, turning,
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: turning your back on money. And I mean it wasn't
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: it's not extreme, but it's it's there's, there's, there's both
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: sides of the coin. They definitely think about aout. My
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: true friends they know that it was always in me
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: to do it, and so it's many of them. A
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: great friend of mine, Andy, who used to work with
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: he came and did nineteen with me, nineteen countries, nineteen marathons,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: and he was just coming out for the weekend and
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: started in Brazil and we did. We ran in Chernobyl together,
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. Families good, yeah, I find it's good.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: My parents, bless them. My dad shook my hand at
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: the end when we had our little final closing thing
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: in Athens and said never again. He honestly, they have
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: been so great. And my brother throughout. My brother is
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: slightly younger than me, and he's a nurse, and he
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: took six months out of his job and life to
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: convert this van that I'm now living in. So when
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: I returned home, I didn't have to go back into
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: the into that life, and so I could kind of
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: seamlessly progress. So, yeah, the amount of people, and I said,
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: I've said this a few times, I've had got just
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: over two thousand new contacts in my phone from all
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: over the world. And so when there's holidays all over
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: the place or when there's religious occasions happening in the world,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: I get these messages wishing me, you know, from everywhere.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: But it's got to be like, wait, who's this guy?
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: Like what country did I meet him in? Like I've
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: saved people's names with the country next to.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 3: Just because it's the photograph, like you know, you know,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: it would be hard to keep all that straight out.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's great for contacts because I'm now being
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: able to help other people that want to travel.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 3: And so on my website, you could set up a
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 3: whole consulting business around which I'm trying like a fixer exactly.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: I'm a fixer that can't remember where I was. No,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: I've got a lot of great people that can help.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: So I mean along with that, this next focus for
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: me is this year is the speaking to I'm also
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: doing a few little mini runs. We're going to circumnavigate Iceland.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: We're going to run around it's a mini run, mini
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: run one thousand miles a couple of weeks. We're trying
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: to trying to do that. That's going to be beautiful, difficult,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: more enduring, certainly on the bottom. Now there's a cycling
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: race that goes around it. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: a beautiful time out road all the way around, right
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: around the country. And then I'm gathering a few people
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: with with the brand that's been supporting me for years,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: do Sport Live. They are giving me the reins to
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: create a team to take out to Malawi and we're
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: going to run the length of Malawi just for fun,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: just to gather some team that have this. This whole
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: ethos of this brand is exactly what I breathe, which
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: is be set free, similar to yourself of just being
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: outdoors and live this world. So I'm putting that team together.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: And other than that, it's it's speaking to all time.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: So if anybody wants me to speak anywhere, then let
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: me know, because I want to share the journey. And
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: I think, I mean, it's all very well doing this
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: over a conversation, but the amount of photos and videos
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: that kind of illustrate the dodgy moments kind of painted
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: better than I can. Well. Good man, it's all good.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 3: I'm so grateful for you having me on. Yeah, fantastic.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I can't congratulate you enough. I
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: just can't even wrap my head around what you've accomplished.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: It. It's really quite.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 3: Something, super inspiring, and I can't wait to see you
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: get out in the world and share this message. I
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: think it's super important. So my hat's off to.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: You, and I am here as a resource enough.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: Service, so if you ever need anything from me, yeah,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: I'd love to help you out.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you man. No, I'm very grateful, and you've you
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: know what you're doing. I think many people underestimate the
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: power of good you're doing. So I'm grateful. Thanks just
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: for me sitting in my house talking to talk, and
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: it makes a whole lot of difference. It makes a
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: whole lot of difference. And when when somebody else goes
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: and does this record, or whenever something else happens and
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: we can we can share that moment because I'm looking
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: forward to that day.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 3: I like how how enthusiastic you are about somebody else,
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 3: whether it's Dean or somebody else going out and and
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: and and breaking your record, or I.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: Want it to be I wanted to be done. I
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: followed him. I'm a huge fan. I absolutely loved the man,
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: and I genuinely want to watch the trip unfold without
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: having to be in the painful positions of being like, oh,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: he's there, I remember that exactly. No, I hope I
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: can be a part of it as well. Thanks very nice,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 3: So if you want to connect with Nick nick Butter
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 3: dot com at nick Butter run on Instagram and Twitter.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: And in terms of speaking, the whole tour is in
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 3: the UK right now, right you got the whole schedule
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 3: is in the UK.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: We've got I mean, I've got another dozen countries that
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: we're popping to anyway, but the UK is right.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 3: But you'll update that as that stuff continues along book
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 3: coming out at some point, documentary, all good stuff, man,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: So let me know when all that stuff is ready,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: and I'll help push.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: The word out. Thank you very much. I appreciate you,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: all right man. Peace,