Latest / Chris Thrall's Bought the T-Shirt Podcast / How To Change Your Life & SMASH Your Goals | Amy McCulloch

Transcript

How To Change Your Life & SMASH Your Goals | Amy McCulloch · Chris Thrall's Bought the T-Shirt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hello friends, I'm your host, Chris Thrall. I'm a former
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Ruleries commando. I've adventured for better and sometimes worse, across
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: eighty countries on all seven confidents.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bort the T Shirt Podcast. Hi Amy,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Hi Chris.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: Great to be here.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely wonderful to meet you. Congratulations Amy. Also, I'm
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: just going to get it up on the screen here
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: on your latest book, Runner thirteen. You're a best selling author.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Please don't be humble. You know, as an author myself,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: I am well aware that most people don't sell more
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: than ten books. So to get the success that you've had,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I know the commitment that it takes. So well done, friends, Amy,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: best selling author, adventurer, mother, all around great person. And
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: I just want to needle a few things out today, Amy,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: so that our audience out there. You know, I still
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: meet people that think running a half marathon is just
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: totally like the limits of human endurance and nothing that
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: they would ever you know, consider, And this is not
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: a criticism of them. I just think, oh my god,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: if your life is that blinkered that you can't walk
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: for thirteen mile, I mean, you know it's not talking,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: was it in the Chairman Mouth's bloody was it the
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Great March under Chairman Mao where they walked tuck a
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: thousand miles starving, And it shows you how damaged people
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: have become in society. So I wanted to start with
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: that point. Where do you do you think your mindset
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: comes from?
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think even if you'd spoken to
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: me ten years ago, you would have been speaking to
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: a different person, I mean someone you know, I'm a
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: writer at heart. That's what I've been doing. I've been
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: a full time author since my debut novel came out
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: in twenty thirteen, and before that. If you looked at
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: me as a child or or through high school, you know,
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: I kind of considered myself a bit of a nerd,
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: a bookish type. You know, I sort of avoided I
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: grew up in Canada. I avoided gym class at all,
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: class you know, I didn't do any much sports, didn't
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: consider myself at all athletic, and i'd kind of, I think,
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: put myself in this little box where I thought, you know,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: sports and outdoor activity or anything running that it just
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: wasn't for me. And so I did for a long
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: time to kind of shut myself off from any of
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: those opportunities, just purely by thinking that I'm just not
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: that type of person. And it actually took going through
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: a big life upheaval, a relationship breakdown, marriage breakdown, where
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: I realized that one of the reasons why the marriage
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: didn't work was because we both just saw each other
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: in this very specific way and didn't give any any
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: space to grow. And I realized that when we went
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: on the Inca Trail, which is, you know, a three
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: day trek to see Matcha Peachus, you have this great
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: reward at the end. And I remember really struggling to
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: kind of climb up this big hill in Peru and
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: just thinking, you know what am I doing? You know,
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: I'm got a healthy body, I've follow this and I'm
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: really just struggling to accomplish this. And I found myself
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: wanting to do more and more walking. Initially, I wanted
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: to see more of the world and what was out there,
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: and my husband at the time was just like, well,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: that's not you. You know, You're not really a walker. You
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: just want to sit and read or something. And it
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: was just a complete divergence of kind of who we
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: thought we were as people and for me, I was
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: sort of in this this phase of growth and wanting
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: to explore and kind of challenge myself more and more
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: and realizing that there was more outside of this like
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: small mindset I had for what I could achieve for myself.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: And so basically the first thing I did when we
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: kind of made the decision that it wasn't going to
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: work was I booked myself onto a solo walk. I
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: chose the Kerry Away in Ireland, which is two hundred
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: and fifty kilometers around the Kerry coastline. Now, it is
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: quite a gentle walk in that you're walking from B
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: and B to B and B, so it's not sort
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: of a harrowing camping experience, but it was the first
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: time I'd really put myself with to the test where
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: I was walking sort of twenty five to thirty kilometers
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: a day, and you know, going through this big emotional upheaval,
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: you know, going through divorce, processing all these big emotions,
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: and I realized just how good doing that physical activity
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: was for my mental health and how it was helping
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: me process all these things emotions that I was going through,
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: and also how at the end of the day, being tired,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: being you know, having exhausted my body enabled my mind
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: to rest and to recover and to really start to
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: think about my future in a different way. And from
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Ireland I went almost straight away to Nepal because I
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: wanted to again do more of these kind of long
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: distance treks that I'd kind of read about and heard
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: so much about. And it was there that I kind
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: of saw my first big mountain, Menaslu, in fact, is
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: the first big mountain you see on the Annapurna circuits,
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: the world's eighth highest mountain in the Himalayas. And I
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: remember seeing that and just being odd, just totally odd
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: and filled with wonder at what there was out there
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: in the world that I hadn't seen, or that i'd
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: close myself off from, and that might only be visible
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: by using my feet. You know, you couldn't, You can't.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: You can't fly to the top of these places. You know,
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: you have to you have to get there under your
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: own steam. And from there it was kind of I
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: just kept thinking how much further can I go? Can
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: I go? Can I go? And yeah, it just kind
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: of all steamrolled from there, and that's only been I
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: would say in the past, Well, that all happen in
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. So the past eight years and I've gone
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: on a sort of meteoric extreme endurance version and kind
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: of been amazed by by what I've been able to achieve.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: And I just think if I hadn't had that mindset shift,
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: if I hadn't just even questioned or began to question
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: the kind of box that I put myself in my
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: whole life, then you know, I would never have, you know,
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: written these books. I would never have you know, seen
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: the things that I've seen and done. The things I've.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Done absolutely amazing. Yeah, it's funny. When I joined the Marines,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: I ran a mile to just you know, just to
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: kick things off. It almost killed me. When I ran
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the London Marathon, I ran probably about my first training
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: was about a quarter of a mile just around the block.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: I was a smoker, massive drinker and part partier back then,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: and to say it killed me is an understatement. And
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: yet six months later you'll run in a sub for
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: London Marathon. So I'm just reiterating your point that who
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: cares how hard things are or just just get involved,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: do it at your pace and have fun is the
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: main thing. Have fun, can't wait to come on and
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: talk about marathon Discabler. I think we've also both expedition
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: to the Antarctic Polar Circle, so we can chat about
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: that as well. And yes, what are I mean if
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: we can just peel back a bit to child here?
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Childhood here at Amy, I always trying to sort of
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: make some links. I had a really turbulent, traditional kind
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: of turbulent upbringing, and I can see really how much
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: that's affected me. Even now at fifty five, I still
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: have coping strapes to make sure my mental health stays
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: tip top. Do you think there's any sort of connection
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: there between you find in this adventurous spirit and this
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: will to not give up?
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I think my parents when I started, especially when
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: I was climbing eight thousand meter peaks, they sort of
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: questioned whether I'd been swapped at birth because they couldn't
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: really imagine that one of their children would end up
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: doing something like that. But that's not to say that,
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: you know, there have been other members of my family,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: my uncle for one of them, who have had a
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: long history of sort of being a bit more on
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: the adventure's side, and so of someone I looked up to.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: But my parents themselves. I mean I had a very
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: loving childhood, but I would say I had a childhood
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: that wasn't very focused on physical activity, you know. You know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: they provided me with everything and lots of books. Obviously,
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: I was hugely into reading as a child, but neither
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: of my parents are athletic in any sort of way.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: It wasn't really a priority for them. And they were
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: both healthy, but not definitely not. Neither of them were
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: kind of sports people. I mean, my dad played golf
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: or things like that, but nothing, you know, they weren't
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: runners or kind of even former athletes. But my mom
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: is Chinese, she came from you know, my grandparents were
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: refugees from China to England, and there is definitely a
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: kind of intrepid spirit there. I mean, they weren't conquering
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: mountains or climbing running through deserts, but there was definitely,
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: you know, a kind of determination and kind of focused
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: spirit that I definitely think, you know, has sort of
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: made its way through to me, and I think they
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: they sort of they they also were not though when
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: I started doing these kind of things, I was grateful
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: to them because they weren't discouraging, you know, they didn't
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: They didn't try and put plant fear into me, which
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: I have seen from other parents. You know, oh, you
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: can't go, especially when I was climbing, you know, in
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: the extreme high altitude mountains, which you know do have
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: a death rate. You know, there are dangers associated with
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: all of these things that we do. But they kind
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: of were They kind of let me get on with
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: it while while dealing with their own kind of personal
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: worries and fears for me. I remember my dad distinctly.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: I had the opportunity to call him on a satellite
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: phone when I was at Camp four of manaslu So
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: into the death zone, already about just over seven and
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: a half thousand feet meters, sorry seven and a half
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: a thousand meters, you know, just we'd be setting off
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: for the summit at midnight. But about seven pm I
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: was able to call him and was telling him everything
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: was good, you know, I was feeling okay, and we'll
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: be going for the summit, and you know, they were
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: very kind of encouraging on the call and sort of
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: wish me luck and everything. But I found out when
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: I got back safely to base camp that my dad
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: said he'd had the worst night of his life, just
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: waiting to hear, you know, just wondering what I was
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: going through and what I was putting up with. But
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: they never imposed that kind of fear on me and
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: I and I appreciate that, so I can I can
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: see why why they both think I'm a bit of
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: an outlier from our family. But also you know, they
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: they they're very proud of me and the things I've done,
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: and I appreciate the opportunities that they've given me, and
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: that that my grandparents and you know, my ancestors to
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: put me in the position that I'm in.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely times changed. Don't they think about your
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: you know, your ancestors, and they didn't have all these
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: guccy high tech carbon fiber, you know, gore tech equipment
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: and then they can jet off around the world and
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: do these crazy adventures. Amazing, amazing. What what? What do
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: you think then? In general, when you look out at
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: society with the experience you've got, what do you what
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: do you see? Do you see people hesitant to fulfill
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: their dreams? Do you think for example, or second part
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: of the question, is it worse for women?
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Do you think that's interesting? Because I because I've got
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: two sides to this, because I've got the obviously the
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: adventuring and expedition side, and then also the creative side
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: and the sort of novel writing. You get people who
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: you know who are desperate to be authors or who
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: have a dream of writing a book, and then you
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: get these people who you know would love to get
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: out there and do do more adventures and you and
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: you sort of wonder what's holding them back. I think
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: what I've found, what I've found frustrating, Well, maybe this
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: is the thing that I've had to that I felt
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: like I've overcome. And I can see, you know, in
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: some of my peers and people that I relate to
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: that that that they're still kind of in that place.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: I feel like we're very quick to want to label
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: and identify ourselves or sort of put ourselves in kind
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: of boxes. You know, say, oh, I'm I'm this type
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: of person. And even if it's like I'm as simple
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: as I'm an introvert, or I'm an extrovert, or I'm
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: an outdoor person an indoor I'm a reader, I'm a runner,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: you know that we kind of want to so badly
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: to kind of give ourselves labels as to who we
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: are when I think, actually, the reality is that we can,
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: is that we're sort of if we're open to it,
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: we can be growing and changing and adapting all the time.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: And you know, I might say, I mean, the thing
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: that I'm kind of interested in the moment is is
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: sort of potentially doing some swimming or like so longer
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: distance that kind of thing. I've never been a particularly
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: good swimmer, And I could say that to myself. I
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: could say, oh, I don't like the water, I don't
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: like swimming. I'm not a good swimmer. Or I can
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: maybe try it, and you know, take that seriously and
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: give myself the opportunity and as you said, have some
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: fun with it and kind of see where it takes me,
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: and just try not to kind of cut myself off
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: from anything in particular. You know, I've hear so many
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: people who tell me, oh, I'd never run a marathon,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: I'd never do this, I'd never do that, And I think,
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: what is the what is the word never? So it's
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: so differ finitive, and it's so so it definitely does
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: restrict you. And I think just trying to, I don't know,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: trying to keep that growth mindset of keep an open
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: mind about yourself and who you are and who you
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: potentially could be. I think is you know has well
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: for me. It's definitely opened up doors that I never thought,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: never thought would open.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes, So let's come on to some specifics end
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: in no particular order. Marathon discablers, very famous historic race.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's in its what thirty odd kind of year.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: It's coming up to the fortieth next year.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Sorry, fortieth year. I think I did the thirty eighth edition.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Do you remember which one you did?
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: I do because I turned thirty six on its thirty
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: sixth edition, so as thirty six, so two years before you.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Was yours the one that was hit by the terrible
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: stomach bug?
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: It wasn't so I was the one that was four
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: months after that. So that they ran that one in
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: November or something was. It was in the autum I think,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: which was unusual because of COVID. They'd moved it and
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: then we were the next spring, so we were March
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: March twenty twenty two.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: I had a lot of guys in my bivouac who
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: had done that that race, and they'd all been on
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: trips to get to the end. They everyone had this
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: horrendous parasite, and they said, you know, everyone was just
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: dropping their pants wherever they were, literally you know, right
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: out just because you know, things were exploding. Let's say, well,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: very sadly.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Someone also passed away on that edition, which is you know,
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: quite unusual. And one of the people that I spoke
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: to had been the doctor on so he was actually
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: a runner, but he his day job as an emergency
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: doctor and he was on the scene trying to resuscitate
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: this man who had passed away during that addition, so
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: it kind of put into perspective kind of the dangers
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: and the you know, of the race.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: For me, yeah, I was stood outside I say tent folks,
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: tent is they call it a bivouac, but berber tent.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: I was still outside the tent after the first day
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: of running, so we'd done our marathon for the day
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: or whatever it was, and the guy in the guy
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: in the tent obsoumely just dropped dead and everyone started,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: you know, things were getting heating up. And the next
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: thing and medic turned up was just jumping on his
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: chest and I think they managed to revive him. Because
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: we didn't hear of a you know, a fatality. But
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: I did question that one because the reports that came
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: back was it wasn't just one person that had died,
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: it was three people. Right now, they were saying that
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: the marathon disciblers were trying to cover it up because
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: they'd insisted that everyone had the medical procedure. It was
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: for that reason that I refused to do it. I
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: waited until they didn't insist on that, so I to
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: wake what it was waiting like two years and two
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: years in the end. It's interesting when you see the
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: forums or the Facebook groups. People really do worry about idiosyncrasies,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: don't they kit and food and calories and this sort
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: of stuff.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, definitely. You can get really technical and geeky
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: about it all.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, did you how did you go back getting your
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: equipment together? Because it's god is fairly specialized, isn't it.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: It is? It is definitely specialized. I so I actually
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: put the word out on one of these Facebook groups
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: because I mean, after the mountaineering and everything, I've accumulated
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: so much gear it's unbelievable. But that being said, none
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: of it was that appropriate for marathon. To sabine, you
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: need a very lightweight sleeping bag you need very lightweight
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: or you know, everything has to be you're carrying it
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: on your path back, so you have to take into account,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: you know, every gram it feels like. And I've put
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: on this Facebook group whether there was anyone who had
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: run the race in the past who might be able
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: to pass on that their gear, and that put me
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: in touch with a woman who ended up being one
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: of my my tentmates on the on the race, and
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: she and her husband had run in the in the
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: race the time before, which had been a disaster. Her
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: husband hadn't finished. She she did finish that, but they
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: were kind of coming back this the year. I did
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: it to kind of redeem, redeem themselves or you know,
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: so that he could get the chance to the opportunity
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: to finish finish the race. But I remember going to
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: the Expo, which is held in London, so they run
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: a sort of miniature day long convention kind of thing
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: where people who are experts in the race, and you know,
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: the British kind of team leader. He organized these sort
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: of speakers and kind of samples of food and things
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: like that so that you could could try it out
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: before you ran. And I found that was quite helpful,
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: if sometimes also a little overwhelming, you know, because they
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: also had people who would test your salt levels and
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: things so that you knew how much salt you needed
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: to take in, and all these heat acclamation specialists. And
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: I mean I ended up only just going to sit
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: in like my gym sauna to try and acclamate to
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: the heat because it's also quite an expensive endeavor to
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: go about it, and you know, to pay out to
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: go to Silverstone or something and sit in a proper
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: heat chamber. It was just a little bit out of
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: budget for me, so but I didn't like that stop me.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: I tried to do as much as possible, you know,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: with what I was capable of doing. And yeah, obviously
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: tried to test out as much of the gear as possible,
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: sort of on training runs and things to try and
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: get comfortable. Did make some mistakes, but that made me
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: think if I was ever to go back again. And
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: it's funny, I kind of thought I'll never do it again,
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: but I also think, oh, maybe I do want to
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: do it again. Although the race has changed a little
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: bit since then, you know, there are some mistakes that
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I would change. But I think one of the things
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: the lessons that I learned from mountaineering was this phrase
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: called be bothered, and that has sort of really stuck
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: with me. It's a phrase I've used in my novel
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: about mountaineering, Breathless. But it's all about, you know, being bothered,
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: to take care of the small things that are irritating
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: you so that they don't turn into big things later
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: on down the line, and that's very important in mountaineering.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, we'll come on to that, and I'm going to
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: be getting all the tips off you for my upcoming
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Everest Everest climb. Yeah. It's a funny. One marathon discables
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: that the year I did it was officially the second
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: toughest year ever because the time of year they changed
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: it and it was fifty two degrees. There's a big
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: difference between running in thirty degree heat and fifty two degrees.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: And I made it quite difficult for myself because I
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: only did thirteen weeks training. So most people have they've
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: done ten years training and they'd probably do another ten
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: years if they wanted to get it perfect. I was
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: on a massive alcohol binge and marathon disablers was getting closer.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I thought I've got a cost sort of life out here,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: and so put my running clogs on, did me quarter
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: of a mile around the block? Is to make a mark.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: And then I thought, right, thirteen weeks to train for
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: the toughest race on the planet, with all these ultra
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: professional runners, what can I do. The first thing is
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: our water fast, so I lost. I lost about a
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: stone and a half a weight, so I didn't have
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: to carry that across the Sahara desert. Second thing to
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: make people laugh. I booked into a tanning salon and
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: I used the sun bed a couple of times a week,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: just just so that I didn't have to worry so
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: much about the sun cream and all that stuff, because
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to be in that bivouac at night sunburn.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: That was that to me would be just let's tick
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: that one off the list. And I got my my
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: son's you know those little step up things they have
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: to reach the sink. Oh yeah, tommy tiptoe, I think
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: they called them or something. I put that in. I
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: built a sauna and I put that in the sauna
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: and then I was just doing step ups for an
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: hour in the sauna and I ran. I ran about
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: ten three milers just which is my sort of local route.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: I ran an eight miler, a couple of eight milers.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I tried to run a seventeen miler, but it was
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: too odd. So I just called my girlfriend to come
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: and picked me up and that was it. That was it.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: I was off to the toughest race on the planet.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: But I don't care about that stuff. I just know
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: it's all in your head and if one person can
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: do it, I can. I can sort of do it.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I wouldn't recommend that for most You want
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: to at least try and get a bit fit. Yes,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: And it's it's stunning, isn't it. The Sahara was stunning.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, and you and you really felt like you
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: were accessing places that you wouldn't There was no other
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: way to see what you could see other than by
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: doing that.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: How did you get on with your tent mates?
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: So I was really lucky, As I said, I sort
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: of connected with this woman who'd lent me some gear.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Her and her husband were just I mean, they were
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: quite inspirational to me because they were parents three boys,
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: and they had when I went to their house, they
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: had these pictures of them in the poll and I'd
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: only just come back from the poll, you know, with
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: their babies kind of in the backpacks doing this trekking.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: And it showed me that you didn't have to you know,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: that having a family didn't have to prevent you from
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: going out and doing all these things. You know that
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: sometimes people warn me, all, if you have children, you
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: won't be able to do as much, you know, and
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: they were sort of proved, proved positive that that that
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: wasn't the case. And she was a you know, she
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: was an incredible runner, or she is an incredible runner.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: She'd done the Comrades Race in South Africa a few
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: times and and he actually had been a bit injured,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: so he wasn't the most well trained in the lead
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: up to the marathon s well his second attempt. But
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: again he had that same same sort of thought as
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: you as you know, you've got the mental resilience, and
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: that for me also was what had given me kind
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: of the I suppose the courage or the or the
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: belief that I could do it. Is that I felt like,
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: as with mountaineering, I felt like it was I trained
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: so much my mental game, my sort of mental resilience
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: that I knew that although I did try and train
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: as much as I could. You know, I knew that
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: the mental side of it would hopefully pull me through
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: even if my physical so I wasn't you know, as
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: fit as it could have been, or I'm just now
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: never a great runner. I try hard, but that's just
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: not my you know, I just but I knew that
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: I could. If I had to walk the whole thing,
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: I would power walk the whole thing, you know. As
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: it was, I did sort of a mixture, and yeah,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: it was incredible and it was an incredible experience, and
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: it also introduced me. You know, one of my tent
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: mates ended up being one of the elite women runners
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: for Britain. I think she came second or third for
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: Britain and she so she started a bit after us,
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: you know, so she I got to watch her and
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: all the other elites kind of running through And that's
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: what sort of inspired or helped to inspire the main
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: character in my book, because ultra running is one of
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: those forums where women do succeed and do really well.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: That again, it's sort of the the endurance, the mental toughness,
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: and also over huge distances, you know, it becomes less
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: about physical ability and more about say mental strength, your
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: preparation and you know, it becomes almost not luck. But
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: you know, anything can throw you off when it's over
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: one hundred miles or plus races, these big ultra marathons
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: that people do, anything can kind of throw you off,
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: so you're nutrition, you know, anything. So so it's one
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: of the It kind of flattens the the hierarchy between
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: men and women especially.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Wow, yes, gosh, so much to say.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: Well, you hear about Jasmine Powis for example. She is
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: this incredible female British ultra runner who won the Winter
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: Spine Race, which is this incredible ultra marathon in Britain,
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: which is incredibly difficult because it's run through the Yorkshire
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: Dales in the middle of winter. So you're okay, you
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: don't have the heat of the Sahara, but you have
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: the mud and the bogs and the driving rain in
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: the freezing cold. You know, you have all of these
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: other kind of natural obstacles, and of course the terrain
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: of the Dales is very undulating. You got a lot
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: of elevation to deal with. And she, you know, won
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: that race set a world record against men for men
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: and women, you know, so she and not only that,
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: but at each one of the stations, she was pumping
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: breast milk for her child that had been you know,
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: that she'd only recently birthed. So it was all of
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: these things kind of combining for me to think, Oh,
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: my goodness, this is like so such great stories to tell,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: and you know, in terms of inspiring my fiction, it
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: was definitely something that I wanted to kind of pour
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: into what would become Runner thirteen.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, I'm showing copies of your book here. We'll come
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: on and talk about the process you're writing writing process.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: We had this weird thing where I was back at
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: the I got back to the tent on I think two,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: and I'm sat with two about three or four guys,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: and the tent had about eight maybe nine people in
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: and I said to these two that had run they'd
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: run the race before, I said, well, where are the
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: guys And they just looked at me and went, oh,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: they failed.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: I was like, what do you mean they've they've they failed?
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: They said, oh, they well, they haven't made the cut off. Chris.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: I was like, what, well, what do you mean what
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: there's a cutoff? They were like, oh, yeah, there's a
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: cutoff time every day and these guys have and that
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: was it. That was the harsh reality that I just couldn't.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: But I find these things weird that the next morning
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: there was this massive queue of people going right down
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: through the camp. We're talking like best part of a
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: hundred people, if not, if not maybe three hunt I mean,
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: I can't remember exactly. And I said to the guy, Oh,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: what are they queuing for breakfast or something? I thought
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: we have to feed ourselves after, you know, day two,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: and they went, no, they're going home. Chris, I was like, what,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: why would you go home? It's seven pounds for crying
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: out now, you know you wouldn't. I was just thinking, Amy,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: you know, I'd have to break a leg to go.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: There's nothing. But it's funny, isn't it. I think I'd
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: almost guarantee those people just giving up in their mind
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: because the injury you get, I think you can get through.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean when we didn't have the extreme heat
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: on our edition, but we did have a seven hour
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: sandstorm on the day too, And I remember we did
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: have a cut off, and this in our case, we
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: had a cut off in the middle of a stage,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: so you had to reach the base of a Jebel
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: and if you hadn't reached a Jebbel as one of
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: these Moroccan mountains that you kind of climb across over
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: over the course of the race, and if you hadn't
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: reached the bottom or the start of this climb, then
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: you were going to be you were going to be
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: the race. And I hadn't, you know, I hadn't been
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: flirting with the cutoff times. But as soon as the
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: kind of sandstorm came in, the advice that they give you,
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: the official advice that they give you, is to kind
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: of wait in place and hopefully the storm will pass through,
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: because obviously you're navigating at the same time, and you
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: don't want to lose your bearing. But I've been lucky
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: that one of my tent mates had given me a
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: kind of refresher lesson in kind of compass, taking a
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: bearing and kind of reading your compass and following the map.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: And I decided, you know what, I'm not going if
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: I stay in place for too long, I am going
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: to get cut off, because you know, I'm going to
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: run out of time. And so even though there was
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: I had everything. I had my buff all the way
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: up to my eyes, you know, my sunglasses, then my
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: cap could barely see anything. You know, it was like
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: huddled against the wind. It was sand blasting us, and
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: you know, I couldn't see I couldn't even see my
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: hand in front of my face, but I could just
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: about see my compass bearing. And I remember just thinking,
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: you know, in fact, I was I was kind of
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: laughing because I was like, this is this what you're
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: throwing at me, Sahara Desert, you know, is this what
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: you've got? You know, this is the test that you're
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: you're throwing at me, and I'm gonna I'm gonna pass it.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: And I just kept on kept on going. I was like,
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: as long as I can still put one foot on
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: front of the other, and I feel like, you know,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: I've I've got this bearing and I'm gonna follow it
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: and it's gonna take me to the right place. I'm
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: gonna keep going and to keep marching. And I did
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: have to have to do that for hours, hours on
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: end until until finally, yeah, getting over at the top
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: of the jubble and then finally entering the next bivouac.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: And I remember meeting everyone because I was I was
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: the slowest in the tent, so everyone was back before me.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: But like kind of the cheers and the camaraderie, you know,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: when I made it, it was so great, you know, really
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: gratifying to feel. And yeah, I was just like, nothing,
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be defeated myself, you know,
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna try everything to get to the end,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: even on the very very last stage. So the final marathon,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: I was passed by an eighty year old man. That
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: how slowly I was going. But but you know, as
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: long as you keep putting one foot in front of
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: the other is not in these races. It's not about
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: how quickly you're going. It's not about it's just about
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: doing it. It's just about getting across that line, you know,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: finding your way to the finish one, no matter what
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: it takes. And and that's sort of what I was
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: focused on.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The only thing that was slowing me down. I was, Yeah,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I was a plotter. I wasn't you know. I'd love
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: to have won the bloody thing, but I don't think
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: that was going to happen. I was happy to, you know,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: to plot it all. But the thing that was slowing
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: me down was the amount of people passing out. Oh right, yeah,
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: you know, going up to the jebbil and the guy
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: in front of you would just clap claps unconscious, and
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: obviously you couldn't just leave them. You had to then,
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: you know, go and give them first aid and then
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: try and find one of their buddies and then get
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: the chopper in to chopper them out. And that was
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: And because I'm that sort of guy that I'm quite conscientious,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't ever run past some No I'm not saying
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: you should, but you know, there were times where there
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: were three or four people stood around someone. I could
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: have gone, oh, he's being dealt with, but I still
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: felt the need to say, do you guys need a
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: hand with? You know, do you want me to run
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: ahead and get someone or whatever? And then you'd find
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: they they'd say, oh could you just do this? And
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: next thing you're thinking, oh my god, this is like
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: the third person I've stopped to help my times. All
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: adding up, I thought it was pretty easy really, to
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: be honest, it was just that the heat was the
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: hardest that not just the hardest thing I think I've
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: ever had to experience in sport. I mean, but the
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: distances was fine. Even running two marathons in the desert
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I thought was pretty tame. It was just the heat.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: It was that feeling that if someone came up with
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: an ice bath, now I'd give them three thousand pounds
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: just just you know, I borrow the money. There were
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: cars parked on the route, weren't there, you know. Occasionally
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: you come across a sort of not a checkpoint, but
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: someone standing watch for some reason, or.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: A photographers and things.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you went to the other side of
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: the car away from the sun, it was all people
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: leaning up again against it, and I was like, oh, guys,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: room for one more please, And it was amazing how
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: much cooler it was just to get out of the sun.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: But then you didn't want to leave. The other thing
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: that didn't go in my favorite amy was I had
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: stomach infection from day one. Oh no, yeah, I couldn't
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: hold Basically, I threw most of my rations away. I
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: couldn't really eat anything, took some of that stuff that
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: blocks you up. Yeah, just that that would be my
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: I don't I don't want to go and inks myself
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: and talk about Everest, but you know what, you know
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: what I'm thinking.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I didn't eat much on my eight thousand
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: me to peak. I couldn't couldn't hold anything down. But
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: your stomach, your digestive system is the first one of
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: the first things to go when you know, when you're
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: in high altitude, all of your blood is being redirected
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: to your brain and your tomb's stomach just gives up.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: For a bit.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I remember Nims, so I climbed with Nims
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: dye and Manaslu is part of his Project Possible, and
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: I remember him saying to me, if you don't eat,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: you're not gonna go any further. So I would be
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: eating and then I would have to turn away and
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: kind of throw it up basically. But yeah, it was
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: just impossible to keep anything down. But yeah except tea,
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: lots of tea, water, hydration, just trying to keep keep
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: that up as much as possible, and and yeah, take
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: in anything that I could stomach. Yeah, amazing.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yes, let's move on then to your mountain mounting climb.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: What's the height then of Manaslu eight.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: One hundred and sixty four I believe.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Gosh, so it really is an extremely high mountain up
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: up there.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: With the world's eighth highest.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Eight highest and what made you choose that one?
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: Well, so I had. I had done the Annapurna circuit,
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: which obviously is just a trek, and seeing Manaslu, that's
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: the first big mountain that you come across when you
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: do the kind of traditional circuit, and it does look
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: very impressive because unlike Everest, it kind of stands on
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: its own. So Everest is surrounded by when you go
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: have you been to base camp?
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah? No, So even when you go.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: To base camp, you'll see that Everest has got, you know,
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: some enormous other mountains around it, Lotse Natzi, and the
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: kind of peak of it just kind of peeks out
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: from behind. But now Manasa kind of stands on its own,
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: so you get the kind of sheer bulk of it.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: You know, there's nothing quite that height around, so it
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: kind of it's very impressive from that point of view.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: And it was, as I said, the first eight thousand
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: that I had seen, and I never it never even
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: crossed my mind that I would climb it at that point.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: But when I got back from that trip, I've been
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: up to you go over a pass which is about
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: five and a half thousand meters, and I found that
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: I at there were all these high altitude altitude AMS warnings,
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: you know about altitude sickness warnings as you were going up,
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: and a lot of people were struggling and suffering, and
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: I found myself actually getting sort of stronger as I
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: was going higher. I realized I had quite a good
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: tolerance for altitude. And so when I came back from Nepal,
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: I kind of thought that I wanted to to see
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: test myself and climb a mountain, and I ended up
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: going to Tubecal, which is in Morocco, highest mountain in
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: the Atlas Mountains, and I climbed Tubcow, which is very
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: I mean again it's not really much more than a trek,
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: but it is. We summited on New Year's Day in
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: the morning, you know, sun rising over the Sahara Desert,
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: and it was kind of this magical experience that I
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: had that kind of gave me what they call sort
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: of summit fever.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: I wanted to see more of that. And the guide
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: on the trip was a man called John Gupta, who's
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: the youngest British Man to Summitt Everest from the north
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: and the south side. So he's a very experienced mountaineer,
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: and I asked him what it would take for someone
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: like me, who at that time, you know, I'd only
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: climbed Tubcal, I'd only done a track. I'd only kind
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: of even begun to enter my fitness or you know,
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: sort of endurance journey the year before. I said what
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: would it take for me to climb Everest one day?
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: And his suggestions were there were three things he said
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: to think about. Well, for one of them is finances. Obviously,
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: Everest is an expensive expedition, so you have to have
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: the money to be able to do it. Second one
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: is to test yourself at altitude. So I'm not saying,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: I know, Chris, you're having quite an unconventional journey to ever,
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: but the traditional, I suppose recommendation is that you see
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: how you do at maybe five thousand and six thousand
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: meters and then go up to Everest and see how
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: your body can handle altitude. And then the third one
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: is how you like expedition life, because it is going
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: to be a month plus. I think Everest is actually
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: close to two months living at base camp in Quite,
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: you know, I mean there are some based camps at
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: Everest that are quite luxurious. Now that I've seen pictures
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: of but that's a bit too Instagram for me. But traditionally,
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: you know you're living without running water, you know very
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: basic food, you know, no showers, you're at high altitude
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: for a long time, and you're with people that you
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily really know that well. So it's how well
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: you can handle yourself on a long expedition because it
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: is hard on your body and hard on your mind.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: You know, you're away from family, friends, work, or the
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: traditional comforts of home. So my first attempt then was
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: to try mountain called Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: in the America. And because I had had this goal
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: of Everest in my mind, I wanted to trek to
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: climb Aconcagua with a Napoli company because I felt like
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: if I could use the same sherpa or get to
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: know the guides beforehand, then, especially as a young woman
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: kind of climbing on her own on Everest, I wanted
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: to feel like I at least knew who I would
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: be climbing with before kind of just jump straight away
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: jumping on the expedition. So that's how I came across
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Nims at the time. He hadn't done his project possible,
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: that was still just a dream of his. But he
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: had just started his mountaineering company and he's this for
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: people who don't know. He was a former kind of
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: gurga and SBS soldier, but who is from Nepal. So
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: he's got these kind of dual backgrounds of Nepal and
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: British and he had been making his mark on Everest
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: and building his guiding company and I kind of reached
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: out to him and I said, I'm looking to do
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: Everest one day, I see that you're running expeditions to Aconcagua.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: I'd love to join, and he said, yeah, please come along.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: So I went with his team to Aconcagua and we
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: summited that in some of the most extreme conditions that
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: NIMS has ever seen on Aconcagua, because again, Aconcagua is
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: not a technical mountain, but it is a big mountain
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: and it faces extreme weather, wind, cold, It can be
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: very brutal, and the summit rate can be quite low
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: because of that. So even though it's not technically difficult,
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: it can be very challenging and it is very high,
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: it's almost seven thousand meters. But NIMS being nims and
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: having that kind of you know, SBS mindset. He was
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: determined to get us up to the top, and we
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: and we did. You know, we sort of marched through
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: this incredible wind and cold and made it to the top.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: How did you, Amy, how did you manage your layers
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: up there? Because obviously it's difficult to just whip off
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: a summit suit and put on another thermo or whatever.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: Well, we were very lucky to have the summit suits because,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: in fact, because I had had Everest as a golden mind,
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: I purchased a summit suit for a Concagua, even though
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: I would say traditionally that's probably overkilled for Aconcagua as
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: a mountain. They don't really suggest that you need a
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: summit suit. You know, you just need an extremely warm
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: down jacket and trans But if that's the only mountain
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: you're going to do, they don't suggest you're buying an
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: eight thousand meter suit for it. But for the day
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: that we summitted, if I hadn't been equipped to that level,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't have made it. The summit suits, you know,
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: for a Concagua, I was lucky. Well, I you know,
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: I was basically wearing that and just a base layer,
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: so I was able to kind of they're full of ventilation,
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: kind of zips and things that you could use to
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: keep it open. But really the thing that helped me
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: help prepare me to the top when not everyone in
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: our team made it all the way up. Some people
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: did have to turn around too much. But it was
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: being able to keep on top of my of myself
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: because even though you're with guides, you're with serpas. You know,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: you need to manage your own nutrition. You need to
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: know when you're flagging, You need to know when you
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: need to stop and have water, or when you need
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: to refuel or anything. And you're responsible for that. No
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: one's going to tell you now's the time to eat,
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: now's the time. You know it's it's it's not you're
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: not babied up there or you shouldn't be. And so
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: for me, it was being able to manage myself. As
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: you said, I mean, even a sunburn wind burn up
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: there is really important to making sure you're still applying
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: your sun cream and things that at various intervals, and
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: small things like that that can make huge difference in
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: the long rung because if you do end up burnt
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: it can just sap your energy and you can just
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: find it more and more difficult as you're getting higher
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: and higher. But mostly it was kind of taking inspiration
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: from from kind of the from Nimbs and the other
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: guides who are who were kind of pushing on ahead,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: and I thought, you know, if they're still going, I'm
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: going to keep going. And uh, it ended up being Yeah,
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: I had an incredible time. Really, it was amazing experience
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: on that mountain, really challenging, but beautiful and brilliant. And
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: when I got down, nims was telling me all about
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: his project Possible and how he was the next year
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: was going to try and Summit break this world record
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: and summ at all of the fourteen mountains above eight
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: thousand meters in this record time. And he was really
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: struggling with raising money. He talks about that quite a lot,
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: but really struggling to get anyone to sponsor him because
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: it was too it was too wild an idea. And
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: so he was going to bring clients on some of
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: the mountains, and one of those mountains was Manaslu obviously
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: to help support his expedition. And he said to me
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: at the end, he said, well, why don't you come
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: out and join my team on Manaslu. And so I thought,
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: you know what, even if I don't make it, you know,
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: I'd never really thought I would go out and climb
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: in eight thousand do that quickly, only, you know, a
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: year and a half after summitting my first mountain ever.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: And I thought, well, you know, even if I don't,
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: I'm going to have this historic I'm going to be
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: there for this historic occasion. I'm going to witness something amazing.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: I'm going to put myself to the test. And I thought, yeah,
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: let's give it a go. So off I went that
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: same year. Later on that same year to Manaslu.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: Wow. Yes, Nims is just showing up. Nims came on
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: the podcast a while back after he'd done his climb.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: I was I think I was the first person to
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: ever read his book, because I got sent an advanced
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: copy a really really good book as well. I mean
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: it was, it was spot on. And then of course
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Christin Harrilla came around, this very petite Sami girl from
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: the north of Scandinavia, and she Nims climbed in all
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: the world's fourteen highest peaks in six months, which is
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: just incredible and then she came along and did it
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: in two months or.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: So.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: Just going back to what you're saying about, you know,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: girls excel at some sports. I think altitude. Altitude is
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: one of them.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Well, it was kind of one of that I found
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: quite incredible is I was speaking to the Himalayan Database
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: after I climbed Manaslu and they're the people who keep
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: track of summits in the Himalayas. And the year that
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: I climbed Manaslu, I was the youngest Canadian woman to
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: do so. But not only that, I was the only
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: the sixth sixth woman Canadian woman in history to do it,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: and only the sixth British women depending on which passport
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: I use, But only six women previous prior to me
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: had ever done it ever. And that to me kind
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: of blew my mind because I thought, what other sport, whatever,
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: what the other activity adventure can it be? Whether you know,
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: so few women have ever done it. And I have
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: to say, you know, with the rise of social media
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: and the kind of advent of Everest and the popularity
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: of it, and obviously Nims's documentary and all the documentaries
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: in Kristin and everything, you know, there are far more
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: women entering and it's incredible to see. But yeah, I
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: remember thinking at the time, just like, wow, you know,
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: this is still quite rarefied air, you know, not just
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: thin air, but quite rarefied air that I'm breathing up here.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: You know, not many, not many people, but not many
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: women especially have been up here, and it was it
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: was quite incredible, and it was one of the reasons,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, my novel Breathless, which kind of came about
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: after I climbed Manaslu, It came about mostly because I
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: realized that base camp is kind of the perfect setting
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: for a thriller because it's you know, it's isolated, it's dangerous,
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: it's full of interesting characters. But also I realized that
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: I wanted to put more women in fiction, in in
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: those kind of arenas. So that's why sort of that
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: my main characters are always sort of women in these
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: sports because it kind of you can't be what you
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: can't see, you know, It's one of the things they say,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: And it's sort of having more and more stories, movies, novels, plays,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: whatever it is about women doing these kind of things
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: helps to encourage and kind of show what's possible.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, do you feel amy. Are you sort of pleased
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: that you've you've had you've done all these adventures and
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: now you're you're doing motherhood is.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, I mean, but I also don't want necessarily
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: the adventures to stop now that I've I've become a mother.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, obviously things do you do change and your
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: you know, your body changes and your priorities change, and
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: you you also you have dependence now, so there are
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: you know, there are other things to think about. But
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: also I think it is important. I mean, I'm having
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: i have a son, and I've got another boy on
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: the way, and I think it's important for them to see,
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: you know, that their mom is still out there pursuing
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: what is what she's passionate about, and what and what
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: makes her happy. You know, happy mum is equal to
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: happy children. So I think I think it's important to
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: still kind of prioritize things that make me feel good
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: and that you know, can show them that there's how
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: much there is to life. So much so that when
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: my toddler was one, I took him to Seville with
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: me where because I was learning how to skydive, So
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: he was a little drop zone baby. And I think
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: some people question my sanity on that front, but I thought,
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: you know, he's gonna look back on that, or he
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: won't remember obviously, but he'll see see photographs of me,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: you know, learning how to skydive as he's sort of
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: toddling around and show that you know, he hasn't been
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: you know, you know, he's not responsible for holding me
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: back in any way. And also I am never you know,
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: I'm never going to hold him back either.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it's amazing. That's another thing we've got in common, then,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: is skydiving. Yeah, that is. I watched a film Point Break,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: the original Point Break with Patrick Swayzee and Keenu Reeves.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: I just knew I've got to do this one day.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: And what I've always done amy and I suggest anyone
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: do this is I never I never say no to anything.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: In my mind, I say, okay, I might not be
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: doing it tomorrow, but I am going to do it.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: And everis was the big one obviously and over the years,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: just by simply having this mindset that yeah, it's on
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: the back burner for the time then, but it will come.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: Life's just giving me all these amazing opportunities, skydiving being one.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it's the most phenomenal fun skydiving
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: is yeah. Yeah, And yet I didn't come from a
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: sort of privileged background or anything like this. We were far,
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: you know, we were poor grow growing up. Really, both
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: my parents had to have two jobs to sort of
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: make you know, ends meet. That's when they were together.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: They very often weren't together, my parents. And so everything
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: I've done as an adult across eighty six countries has
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: all just been come from this thing. And it's not
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: about money either, because I haven't really and it much.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm not one of these people that earns
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: like thirty pounds a year and all this kind of stuff.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Life's just giving me, you know, what I want through
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: mindset really. So let's just talk about the summit bid
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: there because Everest is famous, isn't it. You get up
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: to Camp four, if you're going from the Nepalese side,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: you get a shout round about nine o'clock in the
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: evening and it's go time. Then you're going to be
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: climbing from anything. You know, as a sort of average climber,
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: you're going to be looking at anything between five hours
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: and I'm guessing ten. Oh yeah, I mean, two o'clock
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: in the afternoon is the cutoff, isn't it That that's
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: a lot. That's a long time, isn't it. That would
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: be nine in the evening till nine in the morning,
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: would be twelve hours, and then you're going for another
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: five seventeen hours. I won't be doing seventeen hours, Amy,
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: I tell you that.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: No.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, I suppose on Everest it depends with your
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: weather windows. It's so dependent on weather window. And if
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: you're up there with a whole bunch of people who
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: are standing in line waiting, that's the that's the key.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think I find those I mean, Nimbs
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: took that famous photograph of the kind of queue, but
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: even he and I were talking about it, and it's
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: sort of a little not misleading in any sense, because
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: obviously it was that. But the whole idea is it's
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: not like that every day. It's not like there's a
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: queue op to Everest every single day. It just happens
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: that when the window opens, you know, you've got to
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: go for it or it might not open again. You know.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: That's the kind of the philosophy behind it. Obviously, you
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: have to trust your your if you're being guided. You
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: have to trust your guide's instinct as to whether that's
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: the time to really make the move on things. And yeah,
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: I mean Manaslu's is interesting. It's kind of similar to
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: Everest and that there's an ice ice fall to get across,
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: so there's a bit of technical climbing. And Manaslu is
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: also for a long time had a reputation of being
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: one of the more dangerous mountains, purely because there's nowhere
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: to camp on Manaslu that is safe from avalanche danger.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: So most of the time if you're in this I
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: think it's the Southern Comb up to Everest, most of
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: the time, if you're camp there, you're protected from avalanche danger.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Even if you've got avalanches coming down on either side
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: of you, or the earthquake or anything that happens, most
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: of the time you're pretty protected. But on Manaslu they've
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: had historic years where avalanches have wiped out the entire
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: kind of camps while people are sleeping. So the death camp,
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: the death camp on that mountain is extremely high, you know,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: to the point where some of the I think it
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: was ed Vest years. You know, one of the top
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: mountaineers in his novel, or not his novel in his
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: in his memoirs recollection would say, you know, he he
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: he sort of despised Manaslu for that reason because he
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: never felt really safe when he's on it. You know,
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: you just wanted to get up there and down as
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: quickly as possible, and that is sort of the that's
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: sort of the way that you try and climb it.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: I mean so for me on Summit day from Camp four,
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: we left at midnight because it's not as big a
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: summitt day as Everest. Obviously it's it's still seven hundred
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: meters shorter than Everest, but you leave at midnight. And
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: in fact, I was, as I said, I moved quite
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: for some reason, my body handles altitude quite well. I
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: was moving quite quickly. I was on oxygen as well,
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: but I was moving quite quickly. And my my Sherpa,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: my lovely sherpas, told me, you might want to slow
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: down a tiny bit because otherwise you're not going to
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: You're gonna summit in the dark, which is, you know,
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: it's fine, but it's you know, it's not as magical
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: as summitting instead of seeing the incredible views around me.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: And thankfully we did. We summitted almost exactly at sunrise,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: so it was quite incredible to watch the kind of
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: sun come up over the mountains and then over the
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: clouds and you're above the you know, you're above everything
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: up there. So it's it's truly, you know, it was.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: It was an experience. I mean, it is magical, absolutely incredible.
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: But I made it all, you know, all the way down.
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: I made it all the way down to base camp.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: And the thing was that at we got back down
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: to Camp four, my Sherpur and I and there was
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: someone having a medical emergency, so someone having a hypoxic attack,
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: and unfortunately she ended up passing away, a really tragic case,
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: someone who was a very experienced mountaineer having cerebralodema. They
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: managed to get her down as far as Camp two
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: before they were you know, because it's quite exhausting obviously
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: rescuing someone. That's why they put the they put the
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: warning out that at these kind of altitudes, rescue is
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: not guaranteed, although obviously it's improved so much, but you know,
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: it's such a it's such a physical and difficult thing
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: for even the most powerful and strong sure bus to
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: deal with the climbers to deal with. So anyway, they
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: managed to get her down to camp two, and then
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: she seemed to recover a bit, because obviously you recover
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: from hypoxia the lower you get, so she seemed to
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: recover her faculties senses a little bit. They decided to
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: rest at camp two. In the meantime, any of us
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: who were healthy were and feeling good. We're bombing it
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: down to base camp. And my sherpa had left to
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: help this woman, So I was actually on my own,
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: like totally on my own, trying to navigate down and
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: is you know, anyone who's the mountain you will tell
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: you actually coming down, getting to the top is one thing,
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: but you've got to get all the way back down
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: safely as well. And that's you know, after you're already
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: exhausted because you've been climbing for five or six days,
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: you know, to get to the summit and coming down,
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: you know, that's when mistakes are made. That's when you
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: know you slip, fall, injure yourself, or lose track. You know,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: you have to try and maintain as much focus as
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: you can until you are properly safe and down base camp.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: But anyway, so they stopped at Camp two, and we
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: found out the next morning that she had gone outside
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: of the tent for a toilet break in the middle
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: of the night and didn't come back inside, and they
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: found her. She had frozen to death outside the tent.
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: She's never made it back inside, So obviously really serious stuff.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: And obviously, you know, as I said, this is someone
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: who'd climbed. She's done Everest, she's done Anna Perna, she's
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: done some of the biggest mountains in the world. But
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: you just with cerebroladema, with with altitude sickness, you don't
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: ever really know when it's going to affect you. So yeah,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: it's kind of perspective definitely.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: When I expedition to Antarctica, I particularly specifically picked an
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: expedition that did scuba diving.
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: Oh wow.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: And in our very first dive, the girl in the
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: boat opposite me was a Japanese girl and I looked
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: at her she was having some sort of challenges. But
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: when you're down there, you're you're quite focused on keeping
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: yourself together because, yeah, you you for a start, it's boutic,
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's freezing the then you've got the you've
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: got a dry suit on. Then you've got a huge
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: amount of equipment, then you've got a different set up
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: to your to your breathing app racist than you would do, say,
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: scuba diving in the Bahamas or something. And anyway, me
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: and my buddy was sort of kicking up and we
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: were checking each other and and I didn't realize I
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: was the last person to see this girl alive. Basically,
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: I didn't understand to the full extent that she was struggling.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: And she shouldn't have been struggling, because you don't go
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: to Antarctica to scuba dive unless you know how to
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: do it, and you've got all the safety covered you
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: need to know what to do. I mean, I got
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: down to eighteen meters on one dive and suddenly I
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: just started breathing in seawater, full lung of it. And
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: when I went like that, my respirae was gone. It
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: wasn't in my mouth. I just had the rubber clench
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: bit that you have between your teeth, and in that
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: extreme cold, the little plasticuff that they put around the
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: rubber to hold it to the to the to the respira,
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: I'm calling it a respirat. I can't even remember the terminology,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: but it had shattered. So I was eighteen minutes down
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: and I knew the first thing you do is you
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: arm over the shoulder. In fact, no, there was no
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: point doing that because it had shattered. No, I knew
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: the first thing to do was go to the octopus,
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: to the spare, and I grabbed it, and I remember thinking,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: if it doesn't work, this is it. And I just
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: had an immense sense of calm and I just took it,
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: blew some air out, some blew the water out of it,
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: and then I wasn't hesitant in tapping my dive buddy
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: and saying, let's let's just let's call this one. I'm
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: not you know, I'm not feeding it now. But yes, serious,
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: serious happens. I've been on three trips now where someone
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: has literally died in front in front of me, So
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: I kind of take all this serious. I take the
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: safety one hundred percent. But also I've done this for
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: so long now, I've had to face so many people
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: telling me I'm mad, that I'm crazy, that I'm going
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: to die. You know, I rowed across the Atlantic in
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: January with my mate. People literally wouldn't have anything to do.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: They were like what you haven't trained for like ten
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: years for that. I'm like, no, We've been out in
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: the boat a couple of times, you know, I can
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: tell you Amy. By the time we left Grand can
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: Area to row to Barbados, we was on point with
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: all of it. Radio procedure, safety procedure, GPS coordinates, the
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: weather applications, map, breeding navigation.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: How did you know that was on my bucket list, Chris.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the other thing is we were meticulous about
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: clipping on. Yeah, because you've got the best float in
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: the world there. That boat's never going to sink. It
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: can't sink. It's got air compartments in it. So long
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: as your clip to it. Yeah, then you know there
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: still things that could go wrong. Technically you could get
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: held under the boat and then you've got to cut
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: cut free. And but but there is that thing when
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: I ran the length of the United Kingdom one time,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: so I ran nine hundred and ninety nine miles in
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: thirty six days, doing an ultra marathon a day sleeping
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: at the side of the road, and I'd like really
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: respected ultra runners saying no, no, you shouldn't do that.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: You know, you need to train for this. You need
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: a specialist medical team, you need a nutrition it and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: I'm like, no, fuck off, And just I didn't even
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: do any training ever. I just got a flight to
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: Johnna Groats. My compass pointed south. I went right, let's go.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: And you know what's the worst that's going to happen.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: You've got a mobile phone, you've got a bank card. Yeah,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: you know, I have my tent and safety equipment on
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: my back. Worst thinking happened was I'd have to flag
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: down a car and say, look, I've got myself in
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: a bit of trouble it could you give me a
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: lift to the next town, And actually did that. At
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: one point I had to hit chike back on myself
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: a bit due to the weather. But have you experienced
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: that amy the negativity?
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: I mean yeah, absolutely. I mean I remember I remember
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: going into the shops to buy equipment for these big mountains,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: and I was going with my now husband, and everyone
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: assumed that everyone in the shop assumed that it was
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: him that was going to be doing all of this,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: so they started to bring out all this stuff and
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: I was like, no, actually it's for me, and they
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: were just looking at me like complete disbelief, like no,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: you're not You're not going to be the one doing this. Yeah,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: but they're not. Only that, they didn't have any equipment
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: for women, you know, nothing. You know, women do have
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: different bodies, different requirements, different needs, and there was nothing.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: You know, it was buy men's stuff or you know,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: or there's nothing for you. In fact, I had to
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: get my summitsuit. Nim saurced it for me from China
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: because there are quite a few Chinese women or you know,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: sort of mountaineering programs. It has been a bit more
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: established over there because they have obviously the mountains on
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: their on their doorstep, and so I had to get
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: sort of specialist equipment in and but all of it
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: is sort of these barriers that get put up, and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: if I hadn't been quite so determined, might quite easily
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: have have sort of put me off. And even when
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: I when I was writing Breathless, or when when the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: book came out, people you know, would would read it
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: and sometimes question, how, you know, how accurate it was,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: especially because I say that my main character, she trains
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: for the Big Mountain just by going up and down
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: Box Hill, which is the only hill in London basically
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: of any decent size, so literally to climb to summitman Aslu.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: All the training that I did was I took the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: train out to box Hill and I walked up and
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: down that until I felt like I couldn't do it anymore.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: Sometimes some days that was five times. I think the
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: most times I did it was maybe ten times, and
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: you know, it was exhausted and I was sort of
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: carry water bottles which I would fill up at the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: stream at the bottom box hill, so I had to
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: wait on my back as I went up hill and
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: then it would empty it out and so downhill was
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: a bit easier and then like but that was all
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: the training I did was box Hill. I didn't go
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: out to the Alps. I did do one session in
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: Snowdonia where I learned about the where you learned how
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: to use the ascender device and all of the kind
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: of more technical mountaineering equipment. And again that was with
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: with John Gupta, who was this very experienced mountaineer, and
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: that's when I kind of absorbed as much information as
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: possible and obviously did lots of reading things about it.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: But I wasn't like one of these people who was
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: out there in the Scottish winters, you know, training for
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: the brutal conditions that I that I was there to face.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: I just did what what was what was possible. And
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: I was also you know, I still had my life
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: to live, you know, I still had to fund it,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: so I was still writing, I still had to you know,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: do all of the everyday so you're kind of fitting
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: these expeditions around that. It's not the sole way that
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: I make my living. I'm not you know, I'm not
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: lucky enough to do that. But yeah, so I think
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: I faced a little bit of imposter syndrome as well
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: sometimes there but and yeah, people who say said that
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: I couldn't do it, But I also had people who
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: were you know, who didn't laugh at me. That's what
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: I think was really important, you know. And Nims was
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: one of them. John Gubtu was one of them. You know.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: They took it seriously. But they didn't ever say to me, oh,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: I don't believe you can do it or anything they like. No,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: they they said, you can do it if you if
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: you put the you know, if you've got the right mindset,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: you know, you put in the time to get your
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: equipment right. You know, you stay focused, you will be
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: able to do it. And I remember when we got
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: to Camp three of Minaslu that was the first time
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: we would start to use oxygen, a little bit of
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: oxygen and so put on. I practiced wearing an oxygen
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: mask before, but I'd never kind of used it properly,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: and I found it quite suffocating. Like so you're it
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: was actually very hot because, as I said, you're in
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: the summitsuit, the sun is bearing beating down on you.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: You've got it reflecting of all the snow all around you.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: So I was sweating and I had this mask on.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: I was like almost hyperventilating. I was feeling quite claustrophobic.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: And I remember Nim's just like stopping me and he said,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: you know, this is the first time you've done this.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: He's like, it's okay, just take take a moment, like
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: take it in, like you know, we just give yourself
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: a bit of a break. And he's like and then
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: one foot in front of the other, like we're going
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: to get up this, so we're going to do this,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: Like but just calm down, you know, this is this
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: is all new to you. This is the learning experience
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: of being on these big mountains and you know, we're
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: going to get you through this, and I think that
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: was that was so helpful to me because I was ready.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: I was ready to say to him, just leave me
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: at Camp three, I'm not going up any further. You know,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: I'm finished, and he said, no, We're going to try
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: try as much as you can if you if you
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: really need to go back down. Okay. But and then
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: by the time I got to Camp four, I have
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: this video that I took myself at Camp four where
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: I turn around, I just think, I just said, you know,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: I'm here. I can't believe it. I've done it. I'm
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: almost at the summit. I was certain I was going
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: to make the summit at that point because the hardest
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: bit was done, and I just said that. I just
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: thought I was this close to giving up. I was
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: so close to giving up, and I'm just so glad
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: that I didn't. And then I just you know, accepted
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: the difficulty because it was difficult. At times, it felt impossible,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: but you know, just taking even just one more step,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: one more step, one more step, it got me there.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: And you know, I ended up having, you know, one
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: of the most incredible experiences of my life.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: So yeah, with amazing. I've already figured out that every
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: train is going to be done on the stair climber
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: in the gym. Yeah. Yeah, it just feels so it
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: really feels like stepping up those those you know, foot
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: those foot foot foot what what's the word I'm looking for?
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: You know where the where you put that you can
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: see the person in front of you where their feet
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: had been in the snow. It really And the other
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: thing as well, My buddy Mitch has just done the
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: longest climb of Everest. He all right, yes, yeah, he
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: swam the English channel that cycle to Nepal and then
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: you know, ran up Everest with his Sherpa.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: And I think Girljen was and she was. That was
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: my s for Manasla as well.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: Amazing. What a small world, isn't it that we're all proactive? Yes,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: And Mitch was saying, and also I'm chatting with this
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: Polish lad that he the Polish lad, did it my way.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: He picked let's just say, a reasonable expedition company, not
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: not one of the big expensive ones. And and I
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: watched his video. He videoed all of it, including this summit,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: and they went up on their own. There was no
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: one else around. I don't know how they did it,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: but he was going up with the rope teams as well,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: helping the sherpas wherever he could. He went to eight
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: thousand meters without oxygen, this Polish lad and when he summitted,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: you could tell it must have been a bit edgy
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: because he was snow bit all over his face. It was,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: you know, the wind must have been kicking up a bit,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: but Mitch said it was scolding hot. It was t
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: shirt weather most of the way until the higher camps.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: And then he said that they'd come up to him
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: and said there's a window now, right after the ropes
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: had just been put in, and so we're going in
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: the morning. And he was like, whoa, oh my god.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: I thought I was going to be hanging around here
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: for months. Yeah, and we're I'm going to be the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: first person to summit this season. And that was it.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: They summitted on their own, and I'm really kind of
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: that's my you know, I don't know how much say
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: you have in these things, and obviously I'm I'm I'm
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: the sherper's no, but that would be my ideal scenario.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: I was just getting a sneaky weather window and getting
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: up there quickly back down is when we rode the Atlantic,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: we had an app called Windy. It was amazing. It
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: could tell you the wind accurately up to eleven days
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: in advance, and you literally knew if you had to
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: say three days with no wind, which was awful when
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: it did happen, or really minor wind, you could say,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: right Tuesday afternoon, two thirty, wind's going to change to
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: fifty knots. Then it's two hours later it's going to
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: be eighty. And it exactly was amy. I was just
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: wondering if you saw any of that technology.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, Everest is his own beast. There's a specific
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: weather station that gets set up just Foreverest, and I
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: think pretty much all the base camp teams received the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: same forecast at once. On NASA, we were reliant on
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: Mountain Forecast, which is against a website. It was fairly accurate.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: We did have to wait quite a while. It was
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: a bit frustrating for a weather window. We also were
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: waiting for Nim's who had gone off to Summit cho U,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: which is another mountain. He had an opportunity to kind
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: of go off and check off one of his fourteen
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: and then come back and obviously we were waiting for him,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: so there were other factors at play, but there definitely is.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: Everest is well because Everest now is so I mean,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: as you I'm sure you know, there's just so many,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: so many teams on there is becoming this own. It's
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: become its own beasts. You know, there are people doing
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: quick quick summits for having just you know, landed summit,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: go low backfly home kind of thing, having trained for
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: the altitude at home and hypoxia chambers and things like that,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: or using different drugs or booster things to kind of
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: get them to the top. So it is, it is
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: its own. But but I don't know personally. I mean,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: but again, it's been six years since I've been on
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: the mountains and it's changed so much since even in
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: that time. But yeah, I mean, I think at the
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: base camp itself is like a miniature city. So you're
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: gonna you'll find people with all of the top technology.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: You have people flying in pizza from Catman do arriving
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: by helicopter. You know, you get all sorts on the mountain,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: which is one of the amazing things about it. I mean,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: it's one of the things that also as a you know,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: as a writer, brings me back to these places because
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: the kind of people that you meet, the reasons why
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: people are doing things, which can be so varied. You know,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: it's very different when you go to the marathon to
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: sab it feels like everyone has like a really compe
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: you know, pretty compelling story as to why they're there,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: what's driving them, their their why, their reason for being there.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: In the mountains, it's in the high mountains, it's slightly different.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: You get a lot of you know, you get a
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: lot of ego on the mountain, a lot of big
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: CEOs or former professional athletes, a lot of ex military,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: you know, people who are really kind of wanting to
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: leave a legacy or make them money. You have a
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: few wankers. Yeah, and especially you know, being a woman
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: on her own in those environments can be very uncomfortable
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: quite often. But again you kind of have to take
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: care of yourself and you're out there. But yeah, but
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: the characters they draw me back.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sure you've incorporated this in your book. There's
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: that thing, this god. Human behavior is so transparent sometimes. Yeah,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: and already I've had people say to me, well, what
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: do you want to climb Everest. For why don't you
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: climb K two? I'm like, maybe because I don't fucking
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: want to climb K two? Is that?
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: Do I ever say in what I do with my life?
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you very It's there's so much silliness around it, snobbery.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: Had someone the other day lecture me that I've got
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: to bring you know, all my rubbish now, well, yeah,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: of course, because it's the law now into Nepal. But
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: even if it wasn't, and I'm not suggesting you know,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: do this, but hang on a sec. Didn't you just
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: fly to Thailand for your holiday and you burnt all
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: that carbon? And where do you think your recycling goes?
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: It just goes gets put in. Most of it gets
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: put into landfill. I mean, yes, Ebes is a beautiful
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: mountain and it's revered and it's obviously respected as a
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: goddess by at least three nations. But it's just funny
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: people get on the high horse about it. And it's
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: really simple with me. I was aware of Everest as
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: a child because my dad read the Cris Bondington books.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: And even my dad, who doesn't say a lot about
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: a lot, was like these guys you know, this mountain
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: is special, these guys are. And then I read a book.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: It was about nineteen ninety eight and it was about
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: the disaster up there. It wasn't Crack Hours into thin Air.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: It was written by chap called I believe it's called
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: Matt Dickinson, and he'd set out to film a very
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: famous English TV guy, Brian Blessed, on his third attempt
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: to climb Everest, and there's actually a documentary made about it,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: and Brian he was struggling on the trektor base cap.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: It was clear he was going to be a liability
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: to his sherpas and anyone else, and so they pulled
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: the plug on him. He graciously accepted it. But then
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: they didn't have a documentary to make, of course, so
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: they turned to Matt, who was like the director or
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: the cameraman or something. They said, why don't we make
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: it about you? So he ended up unintentionally summit in
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: Everest and coming back down on the very night where
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: all those ten or twelve people perished. Wow, and even
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: reading that, I'm like, I've got to do this, you know,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: the way he talked about he came back Now he
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: was absolutely spent. They got back down to camp for
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: and crashed in a tent. He was talking about someone
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: who had already been in his tent. Half the food
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: was missing, everything was like smashed up. And I was like, yeah,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: I get that. It's a struggle of his life and
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: death up there, you know. And it's that simple. And
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: even as a father, and when I rode the Atlantic amy,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: I was like, the next thing I want to do
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: is with my family. That that's more important to me now.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: But obviously, Everest, you can't take your family up there,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: and it really is you know, it's not something that
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: you do lightly. It's like you said, what do I
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: do Do I stop living my life because I could? Well,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: you know, the potential for something to go wrong is there.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: I don't have that attitude. Goy is not going to
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: happen to me. You know, it's just not I'm not
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: dropping out a marathon, disarbers. No, I'm going to finish it.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: It's fine, I'll row the Atlantic. Just watch me. No,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: I haven't done all that training. And you know, the
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: thing that pissed me off the most ronny Atlantic was
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: a number of people that either went out and bought
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: a rowing machine or asked me if I had one. No,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: I bloody haven't. I hate the things? And why do
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: you want to go on a rowing machine when you're
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: rowing a boat? Is just like two different things, right,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: So yes, as you can probably tell I, it's I'm
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: sort of a bit internally exasperated with bloody do gooders
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: that want to tell you how you should live, you know,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: your life based on their belief sort of thing. If
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: people want to say, is it environmentally friendly to climb
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: a mountain? No, of course it's not. It's hit the
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: carbon footprint, the crappy kit that you go progging in
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: a buy and only used once, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: But you know, when the whole world's going too sodom
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: and gomora. Anyway, I don't know if that's I don't know.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know, mate. Is it selfish yet? I guess
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: I guess in many aspects it is. But it's also,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: as you know, Amy, isn't it. It's phenomenally incredible to
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: have lived your life.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would agree.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: With that, right. I'm conscious of the time I just
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: before we come on to talk about your writing, sure Antarctica?
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, did you fall off the edge of the
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: flat Earth.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I was. Actually I don't know
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: how you've felt about it, but I was. Antarctica really
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: took me by surprise. I didn't know. I kind of
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: went really last minute. I wasn't It wasn't like a big,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: long planned thing for me. I was in Argentina doing
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: this you know, sort of circumnavigation South America and had
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: the opportunity while I was in Auschwia that you know,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: to get on get on an expeditionship and and head
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: down there, and it was at a vastly discounted rate,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: and it was sort of felt again like an opportunity
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: that I couldn't pass up. And at the time I
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: was this is with my with my first husband, who
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: decided that he didn't want to come to Antarctica, so
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: that what didn't interest him, And it was the kind
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: of first moment between us where I thought, oh, we're
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: not the same. We don't have the same vision for
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: what are our lives are going to be? Like you
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: don't want to come to Antarctica. That seems very bizarre
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: to me, But make your own choices. Anyway.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: You seriously got to question anyone that doesn't love penguins.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I will exactly I was. I was, I was
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: shocked and I ended up if I have this moment
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: where I was sort of standing on the bow of
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: the ship, but it was kind of pulling away from
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: the continent, heading into this unknown and just thinking, oh
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: my god, I'm you know, there is this, This is
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: this sort of separation both literal and kind of spiritual,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know, emotional happening at this at this point
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: in time, although you know, I didn't realize that my
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: marriage was going to shortly end after that, but it
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: was definitely a big realization for me that that was
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: that there was something between us. And then I kind
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: of turned my focus to Antarctica and I was just
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: just blown away, absolutely blown away by everything I saw there.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, talking about wonders of the world. I always feel,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: you know, I grew up on adventure, on adventure stories,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: on adventure books, novels, you know, both real and imagined,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: and it felt like kind of true frontier I suppose, uh,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: and the wildlife. I was blown away. I didn't realize
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: I always thought of it was, you know, and obviously
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: the deep Antarctica is desolate, but the parts that you
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: see when you come, you know, into the peninsula, are
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: teaming with life, teeming with life. And I had no idea.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: I wish I could have gone scuba diving. I would
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: have loved that. That sounds incredible. Did you Were you
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: able to see much? Yeah?
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: It was some I mean When I say yeah, what
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: I mean is it was more the experience of doing
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: something that you love in such an extreme environment that
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: you never thought in your life you would get to
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: do this, and using such advanced equipment with professional I mean,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: I was probably the most least No, I wasn't the
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: least experienced. The Japanese girl, obviously, for some reason, didn't
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: have the required experience, obviously. And there was an American
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: girl and she was she panicked and came up upside
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: down with air in her feet, which was, you know,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: the feet of a suit, which is just a big,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: big no no. You need to know how to rectify that, right.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: But it was just the fact you're diving along and
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: your buddy taps you on the shoulder and points and
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: you look and there's two penguins swimming alongside you.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: We we.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: Dived up to a Ukrainian research base, the idea being
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: we did the dive by the research base. Then we
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: went back to the ship, took our kit off, and
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: we went and had drinks at the research base. And
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: as we dived up to this research base, we started
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: to see all these skeletons on the on the floor
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: and they looked like dogs. And I was tapping my
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: dive body or what the what? And then we realized
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: that they've been eating the seals. They were they were
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: like sea lions. That's what what the research base hadly
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: been eating them, which is I'm, you know, not making
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: a judgment here. It was just when you understand the
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: as you know that the the what's the word that
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: the laws down there for protecting the environment. I mean
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: we we weren't allowed to take certain stuff. We had
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: tod you know, our boots every time. Yes, But just
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: going back to so at the beginning, I'm just sort
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: of chuckling there because I know, I think two people
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: now I know that have skied all the way across Antarctica.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: Chap called borge Ousland, this crazy Norwegian explorer. He just
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: rocked up down there on a yacht with his mates.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: He hopped across onto Antarctica, put up a kite, and
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: he kite skied all the way across and got his
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: mates to pick him up at the other side. One
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: person I'm proud to call my friend is the Sarano Finds,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: the greatest living explorer, and he has circumnavigated the whole
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: planet inner line, so sort of straight down through Africa,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: across to Antarctica, crossed Antarctica, gone back up. And it's funny.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: I think I've been the first person amy to ask
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: these guys, are you aware of the flat earth theory?
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: And they've all replied, no, what what? And I said,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: there is this theory that the world's like a flat plane,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: and all to a te they've gone fuck off. And
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: it's because they're not like in the Internet world I
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: live in. You know, they do their they're not aware
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: of the narratives and stuff. And it just makes me
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: chuckle that I've lived, worked, and traveled in eighty six
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: countries across all seven continents. I've sat on many places
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: on the globe with no light pollution and watched the
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: satellites tracking over. I've obviously navigated across the Atlantic Ocean
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: using GPS and a traditional map, not a flat Earth map.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: A traditional map I've seen that the curvature of the earth,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: because when you see traffic at sea, you see the
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: top of it first, so you're literally guessing for half
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: an hour what the hell is it? All you see
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: is a little tip of a mask or a radio antenna,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: and gradually it comes into view. Then you see three
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: mass you think, oh my god, is there like a
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: flotilla of pirates comeing towards us, And then you realize
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: what it is. No, it's an oil tanker with the
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: you know, that superstructure that they have, and the way
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: they move because it's a globe, it's not the way
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: that you you know, you can hardly tell which direction
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: they're going in because of the sort of dynamics of it.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: And the point I'm getting to is, then then I
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: get someone to tell me that, Chris, you really need
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: to look into flat earth theory, and and what can
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: you say? You know what? What? What? What can you say?
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: And I just wondered if people had said that to you, No,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: you can't go down there. It's like, yeah, any anyone
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: can go down there, you know, guj Ausland is case
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: in point.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, thankfully, No, I haven't had anyone say that
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: to me, but I have heard. I am aware of
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: flat earth theory and have heard of it, but I
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: haven't find it difficult to engage.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you writing, then, how did you do? You've
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: always been a reader. I think that makes a good writer,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: does it not?
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: I mean definitely. I mean I think reading obviously gives
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: you that sort of basic idea of how to tell
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: us a good story and kind of gives you that foundation.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: And it helps because I have to read a lot
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: all the time for work, so it's a good thing
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: that it's something that I enjoy. But yeah, I mean
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: I've been I've been a pretty big reader since childhood,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: mostly kind of science fiction and fantasy. So I think
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: there's something in especially science fiction and fantasy as well,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: but something in that that kind of lends itself well
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: to the kind of explorer adventurer side of things and
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: curiosity about the world and what's out there?
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: And how did you land a deal with Penguin because
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: that's no mean feat.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, my first so I've been publishing. I've published
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: my first novel in twenty thirteen. That was with Random House,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 3: so before Penguin and Random House merged, random House was
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: another big, big publisher, and I'd been writing for children
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: pretty much exclusively since that's that point up until Breathless
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: and what happened there is I sort of had this good, good,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: solid career, I would say, writing for young adults, nothing
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: kind of too outrageously brilliant or anything, but enough to
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: sustain me and enough to provide me with some income
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: to do these adventures and things. But when it came
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: to Breathless, it was so totally different anything I'd written
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 3: before that I wrote the whole thing, you know, without
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: telling anyone really that I was doing it. So I
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: had this idea for a kind of murder mystery, sort
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: of Agatha Christie but said on a big mountain, and
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: because of it kind of aligned with my personal story.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: I thought that there was quite a good kind of
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: personal hook and obviously story hook there. So I have
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: a literary agent, so she's someone who represents me to publishers,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: various publishers, And when the book was ready, it went
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: out to a wide range of publishers all across London
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: and ended up in a situation we had a couple
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: of publishers bidding for it, and Penguin ended up being
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: the ones who kind of gave me the most compelling,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: compelling pitch for how they would publish the book and everything.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: So and of course they also bought the book in
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: the US as well and in Canada, and it's been
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: translated into I think eighteen different languages as well. So
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: it's really been my biggest success and has sort of
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: led in to writing more of these thrillers, say Girl
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: on the Ice, which is Antarctica based, and then Runner
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: thirteen which is ultra running in the Sahara, and then
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: next year I have free Fall, which is the skydiving thriller.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: So amazing, did you Yeah. I wrote a fiction series,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: my first one, first in this series called The Drift,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: and it you know, I'm writing I'd written my first
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: memoir boy then and when it came on to Drift,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: I wrote, I thought, I wrote this really, really clever
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: book that is intertwining sort of plots. But I almost
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: think it was probably a bit too clever, because I don't,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: you know, I think it went over a lot of
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: people's heads, is what I'm saying. And that's not a
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: fault with the book, because I wasn't. I didn't want
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: to write a book that everyone went oh yeah, great. Anyway,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: the second in this series, which called The Trade My God, Amy,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: I honestly felt like I had nailed I'm I'm not
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: trying to big myself up. I'm just talking about the
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: incredible phenomena of writing, which I encourage anybody to write something. Right.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: The second one, I felt like I had written at
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: the epitome of a thriller. It was bloody good. The
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: last line in it was just oh yes, yes, just that.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: So did you kind of you know, did you try
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: it this quine a lot to get good or did
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: you find that you was pretty bang on from the
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: from the start?
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I, like a lot of writers who
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: start out, I did my When I wrote my first novel,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: I faced a lot of rejection, probably you know, I
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: don't know, upwards in the upwards of one hundred rejections
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: is from literary agents. So I tried to I wanted
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: to be traditionally published by one of the big houses.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: So normally to do that you have to get a
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: literary agent interested in your work, first of all, and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: that normally requires writing a sort of short letter where
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: you described kind of the plot of your book roughly
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: and a little bit about who you are, and maybe
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: the first only maybe the first three chapters. So sometimes
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: if you've written a brilliant last line, they don't even
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: get to read that, you know, they only see the
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: very beginning, and then you kind of wait for them
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: to respond to you. And at first it was just
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: rejection after rejection. So I obviously wasn't doing something right,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: and I kind of took a bit of time off
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: from it. And obviously I just graduated from university. I
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: needed to make money somehow, so I needed a proper job,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: so I kind of got a job, but I always
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: had this book kind of percolating in the background, sort
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: of nattering at me, like don't give up on me yet,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 3: don't give up on me. And I happened to go
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: do a big after graduation. I did a big trip
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: where I went to Africa, did traveled from Kenya to
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: South Africa, visited you know, deserts and all those different terrains.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: Just had my eyes opened, basically to the world. And
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: came back after that and rewrote the novel from scratch,
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: so with the same core idea, but just totally with
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: this new experience in mind. And what resulted from that
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: was obviously a much stronger book, which then did land
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: me a literary agent, and then and then the deal
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: with Random House. But the deal with Random House was
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: for just under five thousand pounds, so it wasn't anything
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: that was going to, you know, sustain me living trying
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: to live in in London and start life in England.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: I moved from Canada at that point, so I was
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: it was still a side hustle, still just a thing
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: I was doing as a hobby that I love to do,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: but it wasn't making me any money. And it took
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: me until that book four or five that when I
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: finally started making some enough money that I could consider
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: leaving the day job. And I thought, if I don't,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: if I don't leave the day job, I'm never gonna
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: I might regret never giving the writing a proper girl.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: So I decided to make the leap and do that.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: And I thought at the time that I had this
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: relative safety net because I married someone who was working
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: in finance. So if I felt like if nothing sold,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: I had a bit of a you know, we could
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: he could help support me until I could get another job.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: But then, of course that all went away, and I
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: was sort of left on my own, but I was
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: still able to keep kind of generating ideas, keep writing,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 3: and keep kind of climbing the the you know, I
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: haven't had an and I'm you know, very feel, very
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: privileged and lucky in my career right now, but it
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: has taken you know, it's been a long, slow rise.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: I've published a book a year. I think Run of
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: thirteen is book number twelve, so I've been publishing a
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: book a year for twelve years. So it's been slow
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: and steady. But now, you know, I'm in this great
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: position where, you know, the writing enables me to go
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: out and do these kind of things. I'm not tied
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: to an office or a base. I can, you know,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: work from anywhere, and that's what I really try and
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: take advantage job, and I get to do what I
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: love for a living, and I love fiction. People always
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: ask me if I'm going to write a memoir having
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: done all of these things, and I'm sure maybe in
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: the future it might happen, But at the moment, I
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: love taking kind of people that I meet, the kind
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: of characters, the central ideas, and the things that I
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: learn while mountaineering or running or anything like that. But
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: then taking them to a different kind of level, which
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: fiction allows you to do. So it kind of opens
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 3: up the possibility and you can really kind of take
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: those plot lines to their extreme and not risk offending anyone,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: so but hopefully deliver a really compelling story. Except I
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: don't know. If you go into a bookstore at the moment,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: if you walk into a Waterstones or a Bonds and Noble,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: you'll look at the thriller shelf and it will be packed,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 3: so many books to choose from, so many authors writing,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: so many people doing it. But I want people to
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: know that if they're going to if they choose an
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: Amy McCullough book, there is that hint of authenticity. There's
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: that touch of experience that I've done the things that
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: my characters have gone through. And I think that's my
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: sort of unique, my unique selling point when it comes
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 3: to my writing, because yeah, you know, I've been there,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: I've lived it, and that's sort of what I try
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: and get across while also telling like a page turning story.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah they don't, they say all the best fictions based
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: in fact.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and often honestly, the truth is probably stranger.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: Then you can get away with you know more in
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: the truth. In the truth, you know, then you can
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: in fiction, fiction has to make sense and often the
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: reality doesn't make sense a lot of times.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: And just a personal question, how how is it working
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: with an editor? Have you sort of clashed at all?
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: Or are they generally quite good?
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: Well? When for the first time with Breathless, and I've
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: had the same editors for all my thrillers. The American
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: team and the British team and the Canadian team all
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: bought the book at the same time, So I ended
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: up with three editors who all wanted to feedback on
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: the on the book, and they all had sort of
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: equal investment in this in the book, so it was
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: really interesting. I would have these you know, most of
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: the time as an author, you work with one editor.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: There'll be a primary editor, so whoever buys the book first.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: Normally if you're in if you're in Britain, it's normally
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: the British editor who takes the lead, and the Americans
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: and everyone else just kind of takes what's takes takes
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: it when it's finished. However, so but for me, in
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: my case, I had all three feeding back and now
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: was one of the most challenging but also rewarding, I
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: think professional experiences I've had because they were all very
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: experienced editors, and the best editors never tell you what
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 3: to do to change your book. They'll just tell you,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: you know, what they feel like isn't quite working for
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: them or hasn't quite hit them up, and it's really
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 3: down to you to figure out what it is you
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: need to do to change that. They'll never be prescriptive,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 3: they'll never try and take over your words or anything,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 3: but they'll say, you know what, I wasn't quite convinced
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 3: by that plot along or that character you know needs
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 3: a bit of work, or something like that. And sometimes
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: they didn't agree, but it was up to me to
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: kind of figure out what it was why they weren't agreeing,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: you know, instead of if someone felt something was strong
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: and someone thought it was weak, you know, what can
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 3: I do to convince the person who thought it was
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: weak to make it better? So it was it was difficult,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: but you know, because I love to do difficult things,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 3: and it was very rewarding at the end because they
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: all three of them really just wanted me to produce
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 3: the best book possible and the result is, you know,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 3: evident for me in the kind of reception and the
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: sales and the reviews that have kind of come out
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: after that. So it's quite nice because writing is quite
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 3: an isolating profession and it is very personal. Obviously, you
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: spend a lot of time alone working on these books,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: and so to have people who are so invested in
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: your characters, in your plot, willing to kind of battle,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: you know, battle it out with your you know, figure
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 3: it out with you, is really gratifying. And they are
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: responsible as well for, you know, the success of it
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: as it goes out into the world. Because as an author,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: apart from the publicity and the you know, the talk
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: talking to people and taught, telling as many people as
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: you can about the book, really it's out of your hands.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 3: You know, it's up to the sales teams and the
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: people who get it on the shelf to kind of
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: sell it for you. So I feel really lucky to
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: have a great team in Penguin In the UK, with
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: Double Day in the US and Penguin In Canada's incredible.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, you've done really well. I mean there's a big
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: pat on the back, isn't it to be up there
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: with the best of the rest, with the biggest publishers
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: so last question then Amy, next adventure? What you did
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: hint a bit there? Is it Atlantic you've got your
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: sites on or that is what.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 3: I have set my sights on. So I am thirty
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 3: four weeks pregnant right now, so it will be probably
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: I'm looking a couple of years ahead. But you do
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 3: it over Christmas New Year, don't you. Normally that's the
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 3: best time you do it, So it definitely won't be
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: this year, but I might have my eye on trying
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: to do it another time. But something else I'm interested
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: in is obviously being Canadian. I would love to go
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 3: up into the northern territories and perhaps do one of
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 3: the canoe trips river trips that go through the world
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 3: Canadian wilderness. That's something that really appeals to me. And
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: I have a couple of friends who have done that
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 3: or do it, who run trips up there for a living,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 3: and the adventures and kind of isolation wilderness and kind
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: of beauty that they experience up there really appeals to
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: me as well.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: So something amazing. Yeah, there's also in oh gosh, I
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: think it's somewhere in Lapland. I'm not sure, but there's
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: that there's quite a big ski trek.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, it's.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: Done over the course of I don't know, let's just
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: say ten days or whatever. And you have to carry
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: your equipment in a pulp, you know, so a sledge
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: and I think you camp overnight and stuff. That one
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: really appeals to me.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 3: Amazing. I'm going to look into that.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Amy. You've been absolutely wonderful. It's been
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: great great talking to you and exchanging ideas and stuff.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 3: Likewise, thank you so much for inviting me on the show.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: It's no problem withish you all the best with your book.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: We were obviously going to put a link below the podcast.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: We'll put your social media links and encourage everyone her
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: follow Amy folks because she's certainly inspirational and stay on
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: the line line Amy, just so I can thank you
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: when I hit the button off. But friends at home,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: thanks for watching another episode of the Bought the t
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: Shirt podcast. If you could like and subscribe, if indeed
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: you did like it, that would be awesome. And a
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: massive thank you to the people that support me on locals,
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: the people that support my Patreon, or the people that
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: are very kindly just become YouTube members. Really really appreciated.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: That's it much love, See you soon friends. Thank you
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: for listening to the Bought the t Shirt Podcast.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: Please like, subscribe, and share, and don't forget to follow
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: me on social media. Use the name Chris Throll, Instagram,
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: Chris dot thrall.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Hey there.
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