“Action Beats Intention” Mindset Lessons From Running Across America | Will Goodge x Rich Roll

action will always be any kind of intention when things get tough especially in Ultra or in life in general I'll think in my head like can I take another step and you absolutely basically always can there's very few moments in life where physically you can't take another step so if I can I will if you think about that really deeply you can when you think of an ultr Runner what usually comes to mind is is a certain look a certain lifestyle you know the guy who lives in a van down by the river with the Epic beard or the Glorious mustache well suffice it to say that William gu stands quite opposite this archetype he's clean shaven and always perfectly groomed he's a former model who Sports a uniquely muscled physique which is rather uncommon among endurance athletes and he's a guy who simply isn't isn't afraid to rock a Prada manur and you know what will gu is 100% Unapologetic about any of it he is always authentically himself and I got to tell you I just love that about him his resume speaks for itself recently will ran across the entire United States quite Fleet footed covering the distance in a blazing 55 plus days which is a feat that very few can best and along the way somehow made it look fun he's also completed 50 marathons in 50 days he circumnavigated Lake Cuomo and he's run from lanen to Jon o' groz every effort in honor of his mother who passed away too soon from cancer and every event a campaign to raise funds for cancer research so today we get into it we dive into his story we talk about his Unique Style his motivations his big achievements and the lessons learn learned along the way including the ins and outs of the controversy that swirled around his transcon run blw here from England to debunk that we're doing you're somehow not running it publicly will has become a good friend he's definitely a fun hang and uh I think you're going to relish his unique lens on Sport and [Music] life good to see you man thank good to see man I'm uh I'm excited to talk to you about this it's been really fun getting to know you over the past couple years mostly at a distance um but we had a couple moments in London I just knew uh you know the minute that you were going to do this transcon thing that when it was all wrapped up that you had to come in and share some stories from the front lines and there's a lot to share about this experience there's a few stories along the way first of all how are you feeling recovering I mean that was in the spring so you're how many weeks out from completing it uh it was five almost 5 weeks ago I finished mhm so not that long a time but the that 5 weeks has gone incredibly quickly it's been a bit of a blur yeah having a good time yeah maybe not the best recovery techniques but mentally though maybe optimal yeah right I allowed myself space after such like a a big effort I was very conscious along the way that afterwards I was going to allow myself some freedoms to enjoy things afterwards so there's been no moments of like oh no like should I have done that I not done that I've just been given myself ultimate space and I feel very free and fortunate to be in that head space yeah well you're not one to shy away from a good time right which speaks to a larger very interesting um conversation around you as this very unique manifestation of an ultr Runner like you you are one of the things I love about you is you're just 100% unapologetically you and and I think whereas most ultr Runners adhere to a certain let's call it archetype personality or identity like a sort of dirt bag Lifestyle the beard the mustache the you know living in the mountains or you know in a van down by the river you describ R I know we are yes I'm speaking to you directly Robbie um and he's like your best friend we're going to get into that it's a very interesting friendship but you uh William are a very different sort of lad mate um a guy who who you know I guess and correct me if you think this is unfair you live a bit of uh Beyond The Velvet Rope type of Lifestyle um you fancy a posh hotel suite and a nice breakfast and the Michelin star restaurants and a good party and front row seats at Paris fashion week which is where where you were last week right like you know you're not the normal ultr Runner guy which probably Ruffles a few feathers which we can get into um people who maybe have a hard time understanding why you want to share your skincare routine Etc but I love you for that and I think there's a freshness in your approach uh that brings that breathes a little bit of fresh air into a rather cloyed kind of subculture so how do you think about yourself in the context of that broader kind of Eco system or do you not think about that at all and you're just you um I I can consider it but like you said I am just doing kind of what I want to do and Ultra came to me well it was like five and a half years ago so it's relatively new in terms of my sort of adult life and what I've been doing so I've just continued doing what I was doing before but added ultra running into it and I've kind of been shaped from uh a big loss in my family and I'm very conscious of the fact that tomorrow is not promised so I very much live that way in every day of my life and that can be it can be good and it can be bad but I'm trying to squeeze as much out of life through experience travel eating nice food seeing interesting things as I can and it might not as you say adhere to the the typical ultr running space or I'm I'm not running 100 mile weeks normally but like my biggest asset I would say is my mental space and when when [ __ ] gets tough like that's when I'm really ready to go so all those side things that I do become irrelevant at the time when when they need to be but where does that come from speak a little bit about you know how you define that for yourself that that mental Advantage uh well seeing my mom battle cancer three times only knew twice but she passed away it was five sorry four and a half years ago she passed away um seeing her fight cancer for me imprinted something in my brain where when things get tough especially in Ultra in life in general the way I think about things is if someone's fighting for their life they haven't chosen to be in that position they are quite literally fighting for your life if you're outside running doing a 100 mile race I'll I'll think in my head when when it's getting hard like can I take another step and I and you absolutely basically always can there's very few moments in life where physically you can't take another step and I'm relatively healthy I'm young and everything I do is in her memory and in her name so out of respect of her and trying to make her death mean something more than just a sad story I will always always persevere and take that extra step what was it about your mom and the way that you she raised you and your relationship with her that has made her such an indelible um presence in your life even after her passing she was the best version of everything you can imagine she was the sweetest kindest person person to everyone in life but when it came to family she'd be very protective as well she'd always put herself second or third or fourth whoever whoever else is around she'd always put them in front she was happiest making other people happy um and for me she was the first person I'd talk to if I got the best news in the world and she'd be the first person I'd talk to if I got the worst news in the world so losing losing her would if if I had to choose the number one person not to lose it would have been it would have been my mom most definitely so when she passed like I was 23 bad time to W bad time to lose a parent anytime at 23 I was sort of mature enough to have my own life and be able to make my own choices but not very mature in terms of like what I'd been through so there was these contrasting things it was like I kind of want to forget about what's going on here and people said at the beginning I dealt with it too well um it was obviously a mask but I could have gone one way of trying to numb it out with drugs alcohol parting that kind of thing but there was just like a there was a very poignant thing in the back of my head and out of respect for her that I had to I couldn't I couldn't waste it away even if it was for a year or two I had to had to persevere straight away and I didn't know what the [ __ ] I was going to do by the way running just kind of came to me and we can get into that but yeah I think should be other than being concerned when I do the biggest stuff she'd definitely be proud of what I've made of it my sense is that the early phases of your running career which hasn't been that long of a career what like three years or so since you started when you first laced up right um that experience was born out of confusion and grief and trying to make sense of of this loss um perhaps a little bit of anger as an outlet um a healthier Outlet than drugs and alcohol and partying and the like um but the fuel source being those challenging emotions as opposed to the more sustainable fuel of of Joy or pursuing a goal or unlocking potential like those are things that came later yeah I was definitely very angry at the start um I lived a very fortunate upbringing we were middle class family in the UK in a small country town there was always food on the table we went on a family holiday every year parents were were still together never really argued like if I had to choose a childhood for eventually when I have children I'd want it to be like that like it was absolutely perfect no no like luxuries or Thrills but I couldn't have been happier growing up do you have siblings one older brother yeah mhm yeah so what does he make of all this what does he do what's his story he's um he's in construction he was in he was in farming and agriculture before so we we went on different tangents like can I remember growing up we both played rugby but when rugby ended for him he went more Agricultural and like shooting and things like that and I went more like to the S Urban I went more urban way I started doing modeling and things like that so that took me on a different path but we get on very well we're we're we're different but similar at the same time um and it's it's been interesting for him and my dad as well of me of them being within the story as well because obviously them seeing their son or brother do some of the things I've done like it's sometimes confusing for them but it's I I think it's helped them deal with the process as well yeah it was fun to see your dad in the audacious report videos that Reese made um sort of baffled you know but like amused by the whole thing and and and you know present but also not sure what he was supposed to do while he was on the road with you guys like absolute Legend and and like a character yeah he get him and Robbie get on real well cuz they're just always looking for the next Pub and ironically he came in the Navajo Nation where it's yeah not a lot ofs a dry state so yeah but um yeah for him it's I can't imagine what it's been like for him with the pressure of having two sons as well um and I remember when I did Jon o great Salan end he came up at really that ruined me entirely that was like my rebirth I think um but he came up at a bad time where I was I'd been taking coding a bit too much I was a I was a moving zombie um and yeah he's he's had difficulty understanding why I do it but he's grown in confidence as I continue to do it the first time he thought I was on a self-destruction path which I kind of was um but I guess with the success is it he still doesn't quite understand why the hell I do it but he's more at peace with it now it feels like you have a healthier relationship with you're running now though yeah for sure it's more of like a celebration and in some ways when I started I didn't I didn't know well I didn't have a plan I still don't really have like a a plan of where this is going to go but I've started achieving things that have given me confidence to maybe push on and and try and do other things or be more competitive in in the races I do enter or do so around the time that your mom uh was diagnosed with cancer you're living in London and pursuing modeling were you playing rugby at that time or you had just been a former rugby player yeah I was playing rugby at the time and I was spending a lot of time here in La as well cuz my ex-girlfriend was here so yeah I was splitting time a lot when I could I'd finish a game and might fly here for a few days and during summer and the like the winter break I'd be here as well so yeah and then she she gets ill um how long was her battle well she F she first had it she had had it for about a year before she went into remission and this is probably the origin story of why I got into running and why I do it if I had to pinpoint the happiest moment of my life it's very clear in my head it was when I came here nine nine months before she actually passed away I was in Santa Monica and at the time by the way I hated running running was a punishment I I was playing rugby the contact sport like you're going to score a try you're going to tackle someone really hard your teammate's going to go do something good it's like camaraderie running for me was a punishment it's like if you [ __ ] up in training or was late go and do some laps so the thought of going for a run for me was I didn't understand why anyone would do it but upon this time coming back to LA it was to meet who my ex my who was going to become my girlfriend for the first time so I was excited about that uh woke up at like 4:00 in the morning I like [ __ ] what am I going to do just wait for this chick to wake up the jet lag I was like if there's ever a time where I might enjoy run might it's probably now I'm in a really good mood I'm right by the beach I'll probably I'll run up to Malibu I'll run along the beach wait for the sun to rise and then I'll go back so I did do that left my shoes at reception which was an interesting choice I don't know why I did that and then I ran ran Santa Monica went down onto the boardwalk it was the wooden one at the time and I ran all the way to the end where you couldn't go any further I think it's a Pacific Highway and sure becomes mountainous then the only way to get back was to turn around and run back when I got back I had like blood blisters all over my feet why did you choose to do that Barefoot cuz I assumed like I might run on the sand I didn't um she was quite beused but I got back and that was the first long run I've ever done so I think I checked like N9 months later it was maybe 8 Miles definitely way further than i' I'd ever ran when I got back into the room I was just in like this buoyant mood I was like what's going on maybe it's cuz I'm seeing this girl for the first time whatever whatever and then my mom actually called and she had been to see a doctor and she she was in remission so that that moment there day was just a encapsulation of so many good things happening at once and yeah the cancer came back what probably two or three months later and then she ended up passing away in the January January 15th 2018 um and yeah I at the time I'd had to take six weeks off from rugby because I kept I kept getting knocked out I kept failing the return to play protocol had head scans I was okay but not well enough to go back and she was always like my champion at rugby she's always on the sideline she' travel away gam should' be everywhere and when I tried to go back to that I was having a real hard time and like my the team understood and like management and said just take as much time as you want um and in that time I just found myself running I didn't actually know why might be 3:00 in the morning I'd be really [ __ ] pissed off or I'd be or I'd be crying uncontrollably and I'd find myself just getting my shoes and I'd do the the same route I was in the family home at the time small town in Bedford sh I'd run and do this 5K Loop over and over again um and upon self-reflection and obviously figuring it out along the way and doing things I've done I realized I've been trying to get back to that moment at the end of that run and here in La yeah that's that's an interesting self-awareness that experience lodged in your brain like a sliver in your brain mhm like the first time you do heroin and then it's just about like trying to recapture that first experience I'll let you know how it goes yeah how's it playing out you're chasing the dragon pretty hard my friend and then on top of that some brain injury it's all it all makes sense now like I'm now I'm getting a clear picture of the whole thing um yeah but clearly running steps in almost on an unconscious level as a as a coping mechanism as a defense mechanism for dealing with challenging emotions and that you didn't know how to process in any other way yeah it's very true and yeah I was I was searching for something and I didn't know what it was but at the time all all I knew was whatever when I went for a run and came back I'd feel a little bit better than I did before and I might start sprinting when I'm out there and crying down the road whatever but when I got back I was less of an in a destru Ive that's an experience I think a lot of people can probably relate to I'm sure it's not that uncommon but what isn't uncommon is you at some point making a decision to you know tackle some pretty large challenges like that's a leap so where does that come into play like at what point do you decide this is not enough now I need to go do something super hard and why it was after my first marathon so she passed away in January and the following December Christmas time Christmas was I was not looking forward to it you know how when you when you lose someone very close to you every very special occasion suddenly becomes one you want to avoid or not so special or something's missing so I was actively trying to get out of Christmas any way I could but do it under the cloak of it being accepted rather than just like hiding away or whatever I had been running a bit so I thought well what better opportunity to do my first marathon than Christmas day I'll avoid most of Christmas and then afterwards I'll be too tired to be involved in it so so yeah I decided to raise money for McMillan cancer support as well they're charity in the UK they offer support to cancer sufferers family friends whatever like if you can't afford to get to your doctor's appointment they'll book you a taxi they've got a 24-hour care service so if you got any questions you can call them up they have nurses so the McMillan nurses personally cared for my mom when she was at Bedford Hospital so I wanted to do something for them cuz they' had been so brilliant us and the family um the route was from my family home to Bedford Hospital where she actually worked as a nurse as well and had a load of her treatment around like her family homes she grew up as and then back to ampor around all our family homes or the ones we lived in that in that town raised like £20,000 M and all of a sudden I had this very positive feedback from something I was using negatively and that really solidified as soon as I did that like I was broken my first marathon was really hard like it is for everyone yeah um but as soon as I did that I just I had the seed was planted in my head I wanted to do something bigger and better and the first thing I could think of was running from the top of the UK to the bottom not even what everyone does Jon gr lend or lanen to Jon o gr I literally drew a line from the top of Scotland That's how little you knew about that's how I knew legy of these sorts of events yeah I didn't know anyone that was doing it that's actually that's actually how I ended up meeting Robbie along this journey of starting to run the length of the UK but yeah I had no anchor no knowledge it was just I knew I needed to do it and wanted to do it and it kind of just got bigger and bigger as I went right so talk a little bit about that that Jon o' gr's experience like you you kind of just launched into it not really knowing anything and just gung-ho hoed it right like yeah and where does Robbie come in it was concerning actually thinking about it's concerning like I remember like 10 days before I started one of my like brother's closest friend who's like a family friend anyway called me and asked me all these questions like just a list of have you done this I was like no you done this no have you done this no he was like okay I'm going to come help you cuz he works in event marketing so knew at least something he knew what he kind of knew what to do but yeah that's that's how I've lived my life I've got a little bit better but not much better but when I announced I was going to run run the length of the UK I was coming back and forth to La cuz I was still with my girlfriend at the time I went to this random cryotherapy place and the guy in there said you should follow Robbie Ballinger on Instagram he's running across the US and I was like I absolutely should follow that guy I actually called him Robbie Banger at the time and I I watched him from like day seven to day 75 when he finished and I was obsessed like I said a minute ago I had no anchor I had no I had no knowledge I didn't know who like Dean kazis was I didn't know David goggin was didn't know Kil and J had no names all of a sudden had Robbie banger and I yeah as I said I was obsessed I sent a few messages along the way like watching what he was doing and then I waited till I think it was like 10 days after he finished cuz I knew there might be loads of loads of [ __ ] going on I just sent a message saying like what I think you've done is incredible I gave a brief backstory of myself and what I was about to do and just asked I was like can I send you some questions via email or can we jump on a call and yeah he got back pretty quickly and was just like yeah absolutely free in the next few days whatever so we get on a call I tell him what I'm doing he's down to help and yeah they say the rest is history but in one of when I was training I went out to Colorado with him he took me on a 10mile trail run of Boulder as soon as I arrived from the UK as well by the way I'd flown to La slept for like 2 hours flown to Denver he' picked me up and we'd gone straight to Boulder altitude I had no experience altitude and he takes me on [ __ ] mountain goat takes me a 10 mile trail run around Boulder which was horrible that's a lightning bolt moment though to go into a random cryo place and just have some stranger tell you you should look at this guy like had you decided not to go to that like what would your life look like like you have no idea well you do now but how lucky you were to have found this incredible Angel this spirit that is Robbie the most giving like open gracious um service-minded person you know imaginable like the perfect kind of Sherpa for you yeah I don't actually want to think about that not happening it's in it's insane like everything he's done for me he's been on every challenge I've done yeah he's been there in a big way he's like um I mean that guy shows up he knows how to show up for the people he cares about yeah I have a different connection with him than anyone else in the world like we understand each other in a different way whereas like even with my dad and my brother they're still like what the [ __ ] are you doing which is interesting because you are very different people yeah we are but we get on yeah we get on super well and I think we have the same I think we have similar tendencies in you know pushing pushing the boundaries of stuff whether that be physical or mental or both or yeah he's had an interesting past and yeah for sure he wasn't was he on site for the Jon o' grz run yeah he came for he came for the whole thing when we were in um when we were in Colorado and saw him for the first time he shows me this Excel spreadsheet that had been done by is um his father-in-law and mother-in-law of like every single day detailed how many miles he going to run What mileage the shoe was in what food it was going to eat how many calories it had for serving and I was there going I don't have an I don't have a spreadsheet yeah did you realize maybe you were in over your head yeah I had a route I had a rout from what was her name I forget her name but she had just got the record as the fastest British the fastest woman to do Jan's end I think it's since been taken but I messaged her and she was like yeah here's my route so that's literally all I had right and that evening when we were looking over things he just stopped for a second paused and he was like I think I'm going to come help you and I was like what I had I have I had a real hard job understanding why someone would help me in kind of anything I did I I liked helping other people but I found it very difficult to accept help I don't know what that comes from or just trying to be like a man like I have to do everything um but yeah he was like I've just been away for a few months so I need to check with my fiance at the time Shelly now wife um he'd get back to me so yeah he came for the whole thing and what was that experience like like what did you learn well I learned in your first you know tackling your first really big thing um I learned not to take coding yeah that's not smart it was this I'm basically saying how stupid I used to be this is an insight into my part of being an idiot but I was very naive and to be fair actually to back myself up a little bit the crew knew I was doing it so let's give them some of it but but the idea was like to numb out like whatever pain you were feeling but then you're like getting you know mentally you're it was insane checking out so in the buildup I'd done three marathons one of them Christmas Day and then two other madeup ones and I'd done two Ultras and I'd never ran the day after doing any of that stuff then all so MDS you did MDS before that no after the the first Ultra I did was London to Brighton which is 100k or 62 Mi and then I did one a few months later called the war which is from car in the UK to Newcastle that was 111 so about 67 miles and then I said I was going to go and run the length of the UK I think I said 14 days which is how many miles uh I averaged 55 in the end but I think it needed to be closer to 60 but that's my naivity so that shows why the ironic thing was the coding I took was Mom's pain medicine I also had liquid oramorph which is um what's it called whatever it's like heroin oh wow liquid oramorph is morphine it's liquid morphine sorry so I I didn't actually take that but every day I was taking for the first nine days eight coding pills I read the outside of the packet said may cause drowsiness and in my head I'm like I'm running 16 to 18 hours a day Onin this thing I'm going to be tired anyway so a little bit extra tiredness for the painfree or at least a little bit painfree might be a good idea obviously it turned out not to be didn't Robbie try to talk you out of that it was it was funny because my girlfriend at the time messaged I think it was on day nine and she was concerned cuz I hadn't been responding like at all I was in total zombie mode I wasn't sleeping at night I was hallucinating most the day when I got into bed at night there'd be one position that hurt more than another but I'd I'd be dreaming when I was awake I can't really explain what the hell was going on but I'd wake up in the morning and felt like you were on opioids dude that's what was going I'd wake up in the morning and felt like I did a good job or a bad job in in the night which obviously doesn't make sense so she had seen that I wasn't looking my normal self and she's messaged a group saying or messag Robbie saying it looks look like Wills on some like strong painkillers like what's going on I think that's when the penny dropped with the crew and they were like oh [ __ ] so Robbie didn't even know no Robbie knew I was doing it but he wasn't I think he hadn't thought about it the way I I hadn't thought about it like we just we were doing it unconsciously it was just a decision I I told them I was going to do it and they were fine with it they weren't concerned in any way shape or form on day nine they gave my brother the job of telling me so I think it was a I think it was about halfway through the day when I was about to have a nap I didn't usually have naps on this one but I needed one when I woke up he was like you're not having coding anymore and the funny thing was growing up my mom being a nurse we would if we had like a headache or a cold or whatever the last thing she'd want to do is give us any kind of pharmaceutical drug it'd be if you really needed it whereas I had the Quick Fix mentality where I was like can't I just have something that's going to like now that's what we want as human beings so that's what a lot of us have learned to be like so when he said you can't take it anymore I was like relax Mom cuz that's what I'd have usually have said when she was around but as soon as I stopped taking it I actually started taking CBD oil instead it was crazy that night I had the first proper sleep of the whole challenge I woke up in the morning and all the inflammation that had been storing up and like my knees and ankles had flushed out I was myself again which was the main thing and then from that point on from day 9 to 16 when I finished I ran over 60 M A Day mhm so that was a big lesson for me I haven't I maybe have taken ibuprofen a couple times but ever since then it's been very few and far between I can probably count on one hand when I've taken a pharmaceutical drug between then which was yeah four years ago and today today yeah so when you did that you'd only been running how long at that point like not long like you're back you're you're going back to back 60 mile days and I know you've said in your adamant that like you're not a talented Runner and you know all the like but you know that's that's impressive especially without years of building a base and learning about how to do this kind of stuff I think is I come from an athletic background anyway like I've always been playing sport since I was a kid to before that moment playing rugby semi-professionally so there was like a foundation there to build from but yeah I lean more on like in in that space of time for me I just I wanted to it was like acceptable self harm I wanted to hurt myself and I needed a way of doing it without raising too many alarm bells and running really far actually started raising a lot of alarm bells for gram my dad but for everyone else it was like but you can get away with it you can certainly hide your pain behind great Feats of athleticism for sure so that's what that was about [Music] yeah the other thing about you is that you know you're a you're not a bean pole like you're a topheavy dude you're [ __ ] cut like ripped strong strong upper body and that is one of the other things that sort of distinguishes you from what people imagine when they think of people that run great distances they tend to be very slight in their build but strength training has always been a key component in your preparation and um I think if I had to guess I would suspect that it contributes to your durability um and makes you more injury resistant I know Robbie has even said to me like man after you know spending all this time with William like I'm going to the gym like I'm he's trying to like bulk up now you know he's looking good yeah as a result and I know you have a whole like training program and and and all of that so how do you think about um the you know the kind of unorthodox approach to physical training like aside from just putting the miles in what you're doing in the gym and how that contributes to your performances I think it's I think it's massive especially for me um I think having a bit extra muscle mass is not really going to help if I'm trying to run a super fast Marathon but in terms of being dur durable and not breaking down I think it I think the proofs in the pudding like what I've shown I can do being a a bigger athlete or whatever whatever label you want to put on it um I do I generally think it makes me very dur durable um and a lot of the exercises we're doing in the training programs that we have is all like single leg based um loaded everything's in like a a lot of movements in a split squat so we're we're trying to get a lot of the weighted positions in running spe specific um areas as well so all of those bits on me that used to break down quicker than anything glutes hamstrings everything around there as soon as I started strengthening those areas then that negated the the the rate at which I broke down mhm so I'd say it's such a huge part of my huge part of my training and will always be the foundation for it and then I'll add running on top so in your leadup to the transon what did the the functional strength gym workout routine schedule look like always three times a week um there'd be an element of pretty much everything in it so there there'd be legs on all three of those days but then there'd be some upper body stuff again in in a split squat thing so we're training a lot of core at the same time making sure the Lo the load is going to challenge you in those those running positions um and some of it's aesthetic as well cuz it's just it's what I've it's what I've always done and I have to enjoy what I'm doing to want to carry on doing it well you got to be catwalk ready too big for the catwalk at the drop Dude too big for the catwalk as well that's why I watch the shows now instead yeah did you like where did the modeling stuff take you did you get like are you still doing that every now and again uhhuh um yeah it's few and far between like I'm not going to do a day in the studio because I just don't want to anymore but yeah if it's a like not cataloges but not catwalk either yeah just like campaign stuff so yeah I've spent some time in New York I've been done some stuff over here Italy France Switzerland I've kind of that was a a fun part of my life like I really enjoyed it traveling around the world doing this kind of stuff but at the at the same time it was just another thing in life that was going okay that to the outside world looked looked better than it was so doing all this traveling being in La New York whatever as a 20 something going back to my small town everyone would think like they were just like wow what you're doing so amazing I'm like yeah I'm racking up credit card bills just like living the life and yeah living paycheck to paycheck so yeah it's one of those things that looks amazing on the outside and so there's a lot of [ __ ] on social media but sometimes is still a challenge so you do the J of Gro run you learn a few things along the way uh and where does the motivation to step it up from there come from just continuing to build on this enthusiasm for pushing your limits yeah I think that cemented where I was in life and where I wanted to go with it um like you said it's like chasing the dragon again it's once you've got a taste for it immediately afterwards you're like nah I'm never going to do that again and then a few days later I was literally figuring out what I was going to do next now I didn't know what that was going to be um and afterwards I was still pretty destroyed so I was going to take some time off but the first thing I started looking at doing was running a marathon in every country in Europe so there's 45 countries in Europe but then coid happened mhm so travel obviously stopped so I had to think of I had to think of another thing to do that meant I could stay in the UK even though I wanted to like expand a lot of what I do in life is visiting new places and doing new things but I was restricted so a random Google search I was like in the US you have 50 states everyone knows it everyone's proud of it in the UK no one knows how many we have counties how many counties there are like if you asked anyone on the street they would probably be like 25 34 like no one knows so I just Googled it and there were 48 um it being close to the 45 countries of Europe I was like okay well that make sense that I'll do it next because there's not going to be limitations on travel like I might have to figure out if if Co comes back or if we get shut down in any kind of way I'm going to have to figure out what it looks like but it was the best option at the time and it came two years after I finished the length of the UK so yeah the second one was 48 marathons in the 48 counties of England in 30 days and ironically um people think it's the most amazing thing when they hear it and for me of all the things you've done that's the thing it stands out because it's so easy to understand running the length of the UK what who knows it's 875 miles but no one's going to split that into marathons but 48 marathons in 30 days very easy to understand and whilst it was amazing I was kind of annoyed at the end of it cuz it didn't didn't get me anywhere close to what the run of the UK did not even close interesting and you made like a documentary out of that yeah and it was it was cool and it was a a nice it was a very good experience to I've definitely ticked off running in the UK now it's definitely done but it was a nice way to see that you could run the the perimeter of the circumference I'm not doing that I think did Nick butter try to do that do you know Nick butter yeah yeah yeah yeah I think he was doing I think he did do it I think he did yeah yeah cuz there was also the guy I can't remember remember the rebel guy that swam around it uh Ross Edy insane yeah yeah no I'm not do talked about that afterwards that was crazy yeah but like the last one which was which was interesting the 48th marathon i' pbd on my fastest marathon of all time I it was at London the official London Marathon which was a very special way to finish and I did a 306 which was at the time my fastest marathon but that showed how much had left in the tank cuz it was so regimented it was either 26.2 m a day or 56 or 50 52.4 mhm and I was having enough rest in between to just kind of go and do it to pop off your PB on the on the very end of that whole experience to bookend it that's impressive but that's how that's how my head works at the same time I had to I still had to leave it all out there like I had to I had to feel like it was it obviously still was a challenge and I had some low days but for the most part it was it was just kind of like clockwork I just did it mhm but you finished that feeling like oh I haven't even really approximated the the extent of my capabilities yeah after the transcon run I I think you probably still feel that way yeah right yeah like here's the thing watching you run across the country and watching the videos that that went up every every every week and all the social media posts um you made it look I'm not going to say easy certainly didn't look easy but there was a lightness to most of it there were low moments of course but for the most part it all seemed kind of breezy yeah and it felt like as hard as it might have felt to you from an the way that you kind of reflected that experience outward you were always very conscious of keeping it positive trying to make it fun um making sure that the crew was happy and by the time you completed it it it was pretty clear to me like oh this guy's got a lot more to give here like you it's not like you just collapsed you know in Central Park and that was the most that you could possibly do like it all seemed well within your capacity it's it's very interesting because it's totally the unknown like the 4830 was 1250 miles this was close to 3100 so I was entering a totally new space and obviously when we started out we were aiming for 64 days it was 50 m a day it was like um it was a good a good thing to aim for mhm but at the same time I still had no idea what I was what I was capable of but there was still a point in my mind that was like my ESA visa for the US you get 90 days and we did Robbie speed project before and set up all the vehicles so I knew I had 7 Days extra I could have got to 71 days and I'd have had to pissed off immediately otherwise your government wouldn't be very happy with me but yeah it was it was very much the unknown and it was also hard to push myself as hard as I did on drag Land's End one because I've come further as an athlete but secondly because it's so much bigger there's risk that if you push too hard at the start then that might cause an injury or cause you to have to slow down or go less but yeah my my week one was the lowest mileage week of all of them other than the last one cuz I finished I finished on the Saturday but yeah it was it was an amazing experience but yeah there was still those questions at the end of how do I get it's it's interesting that I want self-destruct that's what I'm seeking but along the way I also figured out how I what I need to do to do that what was the preparation and training like leading up to running across America we didn't know it was actually going to happen until I think it was late January I started in April so the first thing I did was I went on a 5we training camp in Cape Town I was there for December cuz my friends live there anyway and all I did was continue my strength training as usual and try to up the mileage so I was doing anywhere between 50 and 70 miles a week which compared to 300 not a lot it's not a lot even in like a a marathon runners regim if you're actually very good at it you're going to be 100 mile weaking sure and I was not but that was more a foundation to build from so I did that came back for a bit and then when we got the green light I decided to go out and spend some time with Robbie and he was in cider in Colorado now so that's at 7200 ft um the highest point on transcon is Angel Fire which is in New Mexico at 9,000 ft and fortunately there's a mountain range right by where Roby lives so we did some I was there for 10 days and we we did we did 140 mile week that week so closer to it but yeah generally my mileages weren't that high but again there's I don't know if it's I don't know if it's self-confidence or me just trying to get away with doing less than I should but the way I looked at it was you can't train to run 370 odd miles a week you can get a little bit along the way but if you if you go too far then you may as well be doing the challenge or you're going to injure yourself so asides from my strength training which is locked in I just built up mileage gradually did some elevation training and then started I mean I don't think that that sounds irresponsible at all like you have to have some form of a base but you want to go into the experience as fresh as possible and understanding that you're going to build into it and develop Fitness as you go and if you're conservative on the front end of it your body will adapt right the mistakes get made when you show up overtrained or not rested enough or you're too aggressive early on and you end up with some kind of injury like Ned Brockman you know in in Australia right like he has that epic you know issue that almost derails the whole thing um talk about a guy who went into something before he knew what he was getting into he's my kind of guy yeah I know right um uh so I mean it sounds smart to go in fit in that way and to have an adequate amount of confidence to do it yeah and I've got I've got more self-confidence in knowing myself through doing this as well so sure when I do something next time like I'll increase the mileage and training but it worked at the end of the day at the end of the day it worked so yeah so the idea was 50 mil a day that will take you 64 days to cross the US you end up doing it in 50 5 actually 56 right if you if you adjust for the time changes right you were right on that edge there yeah the hardcore is going to say it was 56 5 55 right um uh and it seemed like you you had some low moments but you got stronger as as you went along yeah and that's there's a lot of Kudos that needs to be given to the team as well when you're out there literally the only thing I had to be worried about was running that's the best well running and wiping my ass is the only two things I did basically so when you have that confidence in the people around you it makes you be able to push yourself to your perceived limits will push further than you normally would because I'm quite I'm quite a controlling person in life usually but the trust I had in the people around me Robbie and Pete Ree and James doing the content as well allowed me to just concentrate on the running side of things so yeah a lot of credit goes to them but also I remember them saying the start was between Robbie Ballinger and Peter John the first few weeks they they almost wanted to hold me back like a dog on the Chain which which worked well because I was I was still going further than I needed to anyway so every with every week I was doing I had this cushion just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until we got to a space where it was like okay now we're confident that you probably won't derail or you're far enough along the way now let's push and see how much how much faster you can go in the 64 days and obvious obviously we did which was which was amazing and yeah if you'd have told me at the start that it' been 56 55 days or whatever I'd have been like something would have had to have gone really right for that to happen like it was outside of my yeah you so far eclipsed the goal that you set for yourself yeah it was an interesting daily schedule breakdown also so the idea was every day you would get up get out as quickly as you could out onto the road and Bank 30 and then take a break and then a new calm nap right we talk about newal um and then finish the day with uh like an easier 20 with like some of the pressure off right and then once you completed that you would do a Beer Mile y did you do the Beer Mile every day every day other than maybe two or three talk about the the rationale behind that the Beer Mile is to celebrate the day and what you've done and it's a a disconnect from what you're doing and you're getting an extra mile so may sound stupid like drinking a beer it's probably not the best things for recovery but for me so much of so much of it is the mental side of things and also the period in when you're resting to disconnect yourself from what you're doing and try and take any moment of normality as you can and the BMR was the start of that so it would be a fun moment in the day it' be something for me to look forward to at all points as I said I would walk I would walk from a mile with a beer with one of the crew just chat [ __ ] and have a good time and then finish and feel really really drunk at that at that point one beer will hit you pretty hard and yeah it was the ultimate disconnect and then I'd get back to our van I'd have a shower and then we'd have dinner together as a crew and that was another really big thing where you might say well you shouldn't have had the beer M and once you got back you should have had dinner and bed and gone to sleep immediately but it was it so good for morale for me and I think for everyone else and you can't you can't understand how powerful that is over a big period of time to have those moments of normality and what it can actually do and if I feel good I'm going to run further simple as right but if you're just going to hit that day's goal that extra time spent doing that I think is sort of a you know a genius technique to reboot the mental health aspect of this whole thing like the iron Cowboy when he gets asked like is it physical is it mental what's he's like it's 100% physical and it's 100% mental right and we understand the physical piece but I don't know that many people optimize for the mental piece because they are focused on you get the day done you get into the van you get fed as quickly as possible you you know you wash yourself or whatever and you get to sleep as quickly as you can because you need that sleep right but to stay fresh day after day after day with the routine and just the kind of bludgeoning you know schedule that you were keeping to have a little bit of levity and to kind of feel connected to your crew members and allow them space to enjoy themselves with you feels like it's something that would and in your case did like pay great dividends yeah it was otherwise it' just be [ __ ] basically all the time all time like it's it's hard enough what you're doing running 13 14 hours a day whatever but just to have that moment of like a celebration it just it makes it just makes everything feel good like the thought I don't know if it's being giv something to look forward to British whatever but the thought of like having a beer with your mates it's one of the one of the best feelings in the world so I got to experience that every day did you ever have a day where you did the Beer Mile but then you felt good and then you wanted to run after that yeah there were there was a couple there was a couple of times there was one where I I had to run further and I I can't remember why I think it's cuz I messed up where the where the campsite was for the night they' told me one thing and I was obviously like Pete would go ahead and start preparing the van and the the meal and whatever um and I got the distance wrong so I think I had to do like another three or whatever but I was I was fine with that I was skipping down the road what was the the lowest moment or the hardest piece it was day 17 it was the only day I didn't reach my distance that did 47 A2 miles and it was kind of a it was kind of a mashup of things one of the one of the things that was more on like the physical side was it was the first day we'd fallen off on nutrition nutrition was is such a big thing you can't do you can't do this kind of thing without it as we were saying every 6 miles I'd see the crew I'd reup my bottles I was taking this stuff called scratch I didn't know about before but even from that alone I was getting 20 I think it was 2400 calories I was aiming for 7 7,000 so a lot of my calories came from just what I was drinking which kind of tastes like slightly flavored water but on this particular day when when you're in these things for me anyway I don't have an appetite I can eat a lot but if you ask me what I want to eat I'm going to be like I don't know cuz I've been eating everything all day for the past two weeks already so there's nothing that's like shouting out to me and on day 17 along the way when I got into a stop they' be like what do you want and I'd be like I don't know anything and I'd just grab snacks rather than we trying to go really Whole Food based as possible that's where I got really good energy from and and I felt good and this particular day from about halfway I was just I'd go in and have some crisps and some nuts or like a bar or whatever and that really fell off um but also there had been like a buildup of this guy who even before I started had been messaging me like asking me about what I was doing and questioning some of the things I was saying about it um and it had just been getting more heated and more heated and whilst it didn't really affect me personally what what he was saying basically when it before it started I'd put out that I was attempting or I was going to become the fastest Englishman to run across America um he'd looked at my power of 10 which is some website that Runners look at shows all your fastest times events you've done Etc and he said that it sounds really good what you're doing but an athlete of your stature should probably be looking to do it in 82 days which would be really respectable and also the wording on your van will become is very insulting to the guy that currently has a record Bruce Tuller anyway I looked at that message and I was just like [ __ ] whatever mate like I'm not I'm not going to give you a response um and then he proceeded to hit up everyone involved in the challenge in one way or another including sponsors um he says he said like I was faking it said the most the funniest thing he actually said was I was Raising half a million dollars for cancer Chari is that I was going to steal so the guy's a little bit deluded um but he'd obviously been messaging a lot and it got to Robbie the most Robbie Robbie took it quite personally cuz he was basically questioning not just me but himself and everyone involved in the challenge so we've been talking about ignoring it bringing it up like publicizing this guy had been harassing us blah blah blah and on this day in particular I'd kind of been more in a [ __ ] you mode about it like I was I was angry because it was affecting Robbie so that alongside the nutrition falling off alongside it being quite an emotional day the day before I was thinking about my mom a lot it was a beautiful moment but I was quite emotionally fatigued as well just kind of compounded to me having one [ __ ] day but in the same vein when I got to 47 and A2 miles St 17 I was already I don't know what was that I was probably 50 mil ahead of where I was supposed to be anyway so I just had this very Frank feeling in my mind I was like I'm so far ahead the fact that I'm going to stop now and not get to my daily Target for the first time is fine and let a go yeah and the next day I came out and eclipsed 52 and a half so it's like I still made it but it was T it was tough in the moment to to deal with there was there was a lot going on but yeah that was definitely the lowest point but in the grand scheme of low moments on an epic adventure like that there's a lot of things that could have gone wrong that didn't like that's not that low of a moment right it was your low but being so far ahead and then bouncing back and then working your way back into the black you know more and more and more as you headed into New York I mean there's a momentum to that yeah there's always going to be low moments on this kind of thing but as you said earlier like all I ever want to project is like the positive end of things I don't I don't want to go out there and be complaining about [ __ ] all the time which is very very easy to do but it doesn't make me feel it doesn't make me feel good like if I'm out there looking like I'm having somewhat of a laugh or like enjoying the moments it's going to be it's going to be a lot easier for me to deal with it's such a big arduous task but just life man like try try and enjoy the little things like I was I was always very conscious that I was so lucky to be there doing it like it's not every day you get to do that opportunity and raise money for charity do it for the reasons you're doing it and being surrounded by some of my best friends in the world having this [ __ ] adventure to talk about for 50 years when I'm in the pub and have nothing else to talk about as far as the controversy goes so this guy who was sort of a Protegé of the record holder guy who actually wasn't the record holder guy right there was another guy who had gone faster yeah so there's it's probably our fault but when we were looking there's not this isn't very well documented when we were deciding like how fast I was going to do it in I said originally I wanted to do it in 66 days don't know why it just sounded good it was close to 50 Mi and then I was like I wonder who's who's the like we knew um Pete kck's the fastest to do I'm not getting close to that guy he was like 42 days or something I think it was 77 miles a day like sure I did better than expected but I'm know that's to be from my point of view that's the only record that matters but I needed something for aim for to aim for and so I asked Robbie like do you know who the fastest European is do you know who the fastest Brit person British person is so we found out the fastest Brit or at least this is what it said was Bruce teller um it was 65 days so I was like okay great let's shoot for 64 makes it a round number we've s since learned that there was a guy that power walked it in was it 52 days yeah he power walked it and he went from like the fastest route is to go from San Francisco to New York yeah I think it's more like 2900 miles so he'd done that in the '90s but again it was just something to aim for for me but this this irked this guy cuz he was he was close with the guy who he you guys both thought held the record yeah and he's a running historian and yeah a running well also like sort of a uh a running sleuth who has committed himself to outing people that he think thinks are are sort of unfairly claiming titles that they didn't earn right and he does this by going on message boards like let's run or whatever and and creating a curfuffle and creating momentum and and interest in other people in what you're doing and so there was a little bit of a ground swell of people who were like what's going I mean I got DMs like people were like you need to look into this and I was like listen man I know Robbie I know ree I know I don't know you that well but I know you well enough and I just just the fact that like Robbie is there like there's no [ __ ] way like Robbie has a zero tolerance policy for anything that isn't in Integrity I know that about him there's just no [ __ ] way that anything is untour about this or going sideways so but just the fact that people were pinging me about it you know I sort of looked into it more than I probably would have liked to and then the fact that this guy actually flies from the UK and shows up like in Oklahoma right yeah determined to root you out yeah as soon as we've arrived so we' literally crossed the border and also Shelly Robbie's wife had just arrived as well so we knew he was coming I didn't know exactly at what point he I think he' I think he'd put in one of the things that he put some really lame [ __ ] message like about James Bond I can't remember what the exact quote was but that he was coming to like he said he was James Bond and I was the bad guy which is kind of funny um but yeah he arrived and obviously at as soon as he arrived there's some bitterness there's some Choice words shared um but we understand he's going to be around for a while so like what ever um and I was just finishing that day and I think it was it was a good day I think that might have been my biggest it might have been 70 Mi that day or at least it was definitely a 60 mile day so it' been a big one and then the next morning he shows up at the start and then drives a mile ahead while I run a mile he's he comes out of his car and he's he starts running backwards and forwards we don't know why he was doing this if he was just trying to log his own miles or trying to figure out what his heart rate looked like compared to the ones he'd seen online of mine cuz this is his whole thing like your heart rate data was out of whack from his perspective were you wearing a chest strap or was it wrist heart rate no so I started off this is classic me as well when I when I started I didn't have a watch so I borrowed p p Gar so you're doing trans G you're not even like wearing a a Garmin or a or coros or anything no but I did have a whoop on the whole time which has been great because they've published all of my rate data they it's not a GPS tracker no so that was his issue we had a Tracker in the van and really that was for entertainment purposes so you could log on the website and see where we were but I wasn't wearing a Tracker I didn't see why I needed to so the so the heart rate data that that activated him was going off of the whoop no it was off of so in the end I had a choros but it was the beginning it was the scarman watch apparently it was wrong um and had looked back into the past at my juggle effort as well and other runs I've done basically called all of it [ __ ] um yeah his main thing his main thing was the heart rate and when you were when you had the coros did you have a chest strap or you're going off wrist heart rate with that wrist again so anything wrist heart rate is [ __ ] like it doesn't matter what watch you're wearing or what device like it's just not an accurate way to to track heart rate I agree if you're on an ECG you're going to get it right but and even from another point of view like was his mate Bruce wearing a heart rate monitored does anyone from the past have data or anything to show that they truly did anything who knows man I mean exactly the thing is obviously he had some kind of relationship with with that guy and you making an audacious statement got him energized right and then on top of that you being you and not looking like you know what people expect you to look like and not you know coming from a certain sort of tradition probably was sort of fuel on the fire to all of that you know one of the weirdest things that happened out there as well um I don't know if it was on the second or third day he was there but as I said he'd been driving a mile coming out and running like back and forth and then getting back in his car sometimes he'd like give me a wave after a while he was actually being really friendly which was kind of weird but one of the times I just knocked on his window and said do you want to like walk with me for a minute and just talk like there's no cameras around I don't have my phone or whatever like you just want to talk about it and my purpose for doing that was I want I was just I wanted to understand where his where he was coming from so I was like do you know the reason why I actually run and he's like yes it's cuz your mother passed away I have a similar story my mom did too when I was 20 I was like oh my God like I'm so sorry about that and he said no it was a good thing she was um she was an addict she was mentally unstable and basically said he hated her so that kind of that's a whole new dimension that's a whole new dimension and it it made me I I felt sorry for him for feeling it way whether it was just or not but then I also understood that asides from me not looking or acting like most Runners my reason for doing this kind of stuff is fueled from the love I have from of my mom and everything she gave me in life and the power that comes from that whereas his story which is somewhat similar in terms of age and losing his mom was he was happy about and he hated her now someone's doing something raising up that person I can understand why he might look at that and go well definitely not understand it for for another reason so you weren't reared in a tradition of ultr running you're more you know somebody who came up in a different strain of of the fitness world and as somebody who has a presence on social media and Instagram and also knows how to provide sponsor value through the efforts that you're making like I think that um the way in which you represented newal was like really of value to that brand and other people who are trying to get products and services on board to support them in whatever goal they're trying to accomplish should take note because most athletes will approach a brand and say will you give me money or will you give me Product I'm doing this really hard thing and I'll put your logo on my shirt whereas the way that you did it was almost like branded content like the newom the use of newom was integral to the whole journey itself and telling the story about how that worked within the context of how you were approaching each day became seamless with the effort itself in a way that I would imagine really benefited that brand and was also organic and authentic to what you were trying to do well I I certainly hope that it boosted everything they're doing because it was totally integral to what I was doing and I would never push something I didn't believe in anyway and the reason I had confidence in it before this already was ironically again this is the story of my my running journey and eventually running across the US is so connected to here but after I did JN great the land's end I went to New York I think I had work there and when Robbie finished his run he went to this place called recover doesn't exist anymore since Co but they had infrared saers norm tech boots that kind of stuff but they also had newom when it was this $5,000 medical grade device so you you put these I don't know put these stickers on your neck that were attached to electrodes still had the headphones and IM mask and it did the the same thing but that was my first experience of it and then by the time I did 4830 it was then in an application on your phone and part of the reason why 4830 went so well I believe was because I was using newom so at that point it wasn't like a sponsored deal I just used them anyway and after every every Marathon I'd finish I'd have some food and then I'd do newom for anywhere between 30 minutes and 60 Minutes in the in the on the journey from going from one County to the next to start the next one or if I had one one day I'd finish and do the same thing and I'd listen to it overnight but for me what newal does is it's like hitting the reset button on any day so it's neuroacoustic software basically takes your brain frequency from awake stressed whatever down into the the lower frequencies which are REM sleep deep sleep at the beginning it's sort of like a meditative state that it gives you just by pressing a button listening to their binal beats and shutting your eyes and basically having Darkness um and in doing like a 30-minute track it's like getting 3 hours of normal sleep it's that's what it does at the touch of the but button brings you down so I had such a good experience on 4830 that whether they were sponsoring the run across America or not I was still going to split up my day in a similar way to what I did on 48th a like I had confidence in it so as you said earlier anywhere from mile 30 to 42 it'd be a big stop I'd come in have a proper my biggest of the day other than dinner and then I'd narm for 30 minutes and that would take an hour basically I'd have a timer I wanted to that big stop to be an hour Max and the way I facilitated that in my head as well was every every other stop between the six miles I didn't get in and really stop it was more of a walk through switch out bottles mm have food and take it on the go as quickly as I could cuz if I'm doing if I'm do just just say 60 miles for example if I'm doing 60 miles I've got nine stops if I took 10 minutes at each of those it's an hour and a half if I took 7 and a half it's like an hour so if I didn't do if I didn't stop at those stops it gave me that big one in the middle as as free MH and I doubled down on that by using newom as well right and you get this full reboot so basically as I understand it um it's it's like this binaural audio that um activates your brain in a certain way but it also is different from different binaural beats applications in that the the the beats are always changing right because your brain will will will adapt to it over time and then it loses its efficacy yeah so that's that their technology is patented so as you said it's always slightly evolving even though I'm not that intelligent and it's hard for me to get this across my brain would pick up if it was listening to the same patterns over and over again so it basically is always effective uhhuh it's uh and you are very effective as an ambassador of that because I Robbie was singing its Praises forever and they sent me a kit a long time ago and it sat on my desk forever and I never used it and then I'm seeing you use it and I was like I'm okay F I'm going to do this and it is like it's really helpful I just feel the best thing about it other than like feeling I've hit the reset button like it's a new day is I feel so calm like waking up in a stressful environment thinking I've got 20 more miles to run cuz and I've already ran mhm 35 or whatever usually that wouldn't feel that good but I would wake up and just be ultimately at peace with things and just it'd be like okay I've got this left to do there's a lot of hours of daylight left like let's just go and do it and it was yeah incredible really um one of the things that that's interesting about you is given the fact that you you do come from a different set of Life Experiences you have the ability to connect with and communicate with an audience that lives out you know far outside of The Cloister ad ultra running Community I think I even said to you like you should get Vogue magazine to like sponsor the run or whatever and like do dispatches for like a fashion magazine you know like because that would I actually think that's cool because it would introduce this world and your experience to people who or aren't seeking that kind of information you in a and interes as as not a mouthpiece but as a living example of you know finding a healthier way to live but also being somebody who enjoys those types of things in life yeah it's interesting how many people in my life and in my other world have got into running with it be a marathon or even ultramarathons as well so that's what I think that's my favorite thing about doing this it's when someone comes out with you and achieves something for themselves that they never thought they were going to do it was really apparent on JN great salon's end I had 11 friends and family members come out and run either a marathon or an ultra marathon having never run a 5k before because they're in a space where they feel like they're helping you and you're obviously pretty thrashed already it's an environment where other people can Excel with knowing that they're going to and being part of that Journey or popping cherries as I as I like to call it is it's it's incredibly beautiful and you've obvious you've of almost given them a gift as well of being like well I just did that kind of off the bat what more can I do now and it's it's been cool to see friends and family members push themselves in in this way as well yeah this ground swell of running enthusiasm amidst the fashionista yes it's it's crazy but it's it's cool it's very cool um what was it like as you as you were coming into New York City and there was more and more attention you know on what you were doing and excitement about the impending finish and having people kind of come out to run alongs side of you yeah it was it's very special because when you're out there and you're in your own world like sure you'll see you get messages and stuff but when you see real human beings being there and explaining to you how you may have helped all their Journey or they've been through something similar is is very humbling and also gives you some more positive reinforcement for what you're doing so yeah there was I don't know like 50 people at the end waiting on the George Washington Bridge to run in with me we pissed off a lot of cyclists on the way in and I do not apologize to that oh come on no I'm a cyclist too so but yeah it was it's it's it's crazy it's emotional it's it's a shared experience there that's what the the best things in life are so so yeah I I understand that people would have got something from doing that um yeah it's it's hard to it's hard to basically take that many like compliments as you go I'm not very good at it I'm just I'm just doing what I'm doing I don't think too highly of myself at all the time so yeah it's a it's one I actually feel kind of uncomfortable with when so many people are there and wanting to be a part of it cuz I I you feel like you have to you have to take responsibility for making sure that they're enjoying themselves while you're also trying to achieve this goal yeah somewhat and cuz it's I cuz it's about me I know I have I know I have to do it but when something's so much about me I don't actually really like it I prefer Christmas to my birthday put it that way I'd prefer sharing everyone having a good time then yeah it been all about me but comes with the territory I guess when I had Robbie here to talk about his transone and I asked him what so some of his most U memorable moments were um he wanted to talk about the Navajo Nation so talk a little bit about your experience traversing that part of of the country incredibly beautiful there was just a different feeling in the air from even when I arrived um very calm very beautiful and just the the people make the place right um there was a lot more interest all of a sudden like people would stop and see the Vans and ask what was going on I had people running with me um when I run I face traffic it's just a a smart thing to do for safety if you can see the traffic coming towards you you can see that it's not going to move around you then you can get out of the way but I'd always put my hand up to thank someone that went past and there it wasn't like a a nod of an acknowledgement or a finger it would be like like a big wave they were yeah everyone there was was so welcoming I had guys come out out and run with me and I had this guy Jackie came out one day he was a runner from the local era and he he he bought me a bracelet so I wore that wore that for the whole time but yeah it's it's it's different it's different to anywhere else I've been in the world and I'm looking forward to getting back there what was it like when you finally finished in Central Park the whole day was like a dream from waking up to being there to finishing everything looked and felt different it was almost like watching my watching myself in a dream or being part of it it was a release of emotion at the end as you can imagine um and it was it's probably probably the best time of my life to be honest it was it was it was insane and I had so many more people there at that time like my brother was there my dad was there so many of my friends had flown over and yeah to get there at the end and people running with me it was it's to totally surreal totally surreal it's crazy that you your plan was to do 64 and you finish in 5556 um that's [ __ ] Elite dude like I think only like five or so people in the last decade have done it more quickly than that yeah it's not that well documented so know it's like who [ __ ] cares like honestly you know but it is I just want for the audience to understand like that's it's not like not that many people run across America but most of them that do aren't doing it at this pace and just for context like that's very fast what you did very few people have done it more quickly than that um but we're still talking about a 12-minute pace yeah that was what that's what I was shooting for yeah yeah it's it's that's 5 miles an hour and in terms of what that looks like over a day asides from taking my hour break in the middle to get to 50 Mi I knew if I did 5 m hour it's 10 hours think how much rest you have after that so my relationship with time and Pace changed a lot you don't know how much you're going to get into mathematics when you're out there but that's what I was living by I was living by the pace on my watch obviously I was kind of present with what I was doing but I was I was so into time distance splits like on on another level and also understanding just how far or how much you can do in a day 24 hours is long time I was running for 133 and after 55 days I'd crossed America which is absolutely insane and still hard for me to still hard for me to process but I don't think we I don't think we give ourselves enough credit or or enough leeway to push ourselves to our limits or find out what's possible even in doesn't have to be in endurance it can be in business or the Arts whatever but yeah I feel very I feel very lucky in those moments that I get to explore a new space of of seeing what I am capable of doing you have this Mantra that you even have on your socks which is emotion is energy yeah so what does that mean why is that your kind of Talisman well from the the beginning obviously I said I was very upset and angry when my mom passed away which makes a lot of sense um but for me heightened emotion being good or bad can be channeled towards energy a positive output so if you think about the most basic way I can think of it is when you're a kid if you imagine the H like the happiest day of your life like if you got that really good Christmas present you got a BMX bike outside like how much excitement you had at that time and how much like energy you had that can be Channel towards something on the flip side of the coin when you were super angry you maybe didn't get the BMX bike or when you're a kid and something bad happened you'd go up to your room and you'd punch the [ __ ] out of your pillow like again that's that's energy from emotion but the best thing that's ever happened to me is to understand that and be able to channel it and do you feel like you've gone from a place where at one time the emotions were controlling you or channeling you in a direction that was sort of out of your control to a place where now you're the master of that and more in charge of how you deploy that emotion in the direction that you want to move definitely and what was how did you make that transition from anger grief confusion to one of you know purpose and inspiration quite honestly I think I had to destroy myself to rebuild myself up which was what JN great Salan end was I was I was so seeking that self-destruction that I had to go through through it to I didn't know what the outcome was going to be but I had to bury myself to then realize those lessons of okay you're still going to have these emotions at certain times I think going through what I went through and dealing it with the way I did even though it was maybe negative has then become something very positive so now now it's more like of a celebration as I said I'm still going to get sad and upset at certain times in life but it's it sounds strange but Mom passing away gave me purpose for the first time in my life and purpose is the best thing on planet Earth to achieve anything if you and what is and and how would you define that purpose for yourself the purpose for me again asides from making my mom's death mean something it's finding the line and then Crossing it it's finding that that new space of self-discovery of what you never thought was possible becomes possible and then the best thing about that is it's a never- Ending Story because once you've crossed that line and got up from the next step on the ladder the ceiling raises exactly the ceiling raises and it's something we probably hear all the time but exper experiencing it for yourself changes you on a cellular level beyond anything you could have just gone to therapy say that to you I got told this and I was offer it but yeah um I'm glad I've gone on the path of having figured the stuff out because life is amazing and my favorite times are probably the worst physical times it's it's growth and doesn't matter how successful you are how intelligent you are where you're from your background money in Money in the Bank when you push yourself that much physically you can only get that experience by doing what you've just done not because of any of those out of things I just mentioned before and anyone can do it you don't need the resource you just need to give it a shot there's an interesting conundrum that comes with that statement and your resume of of accomplishments which is you start out on this exploration and you're achieving things you didn't think were possible for yourself and you're continuing to raise that bar with the goal the motivation the purpose the intention of inspiring others to rethink their own limitations but once you get to a certain point where you're doing extraordinary things um that that really push other people's imagination of what's possible you sort of pivot away from being somebody who is relatable to being this outlier and it's much easier for somebody to dismiss you as just some freak of nature well that's will that's what he does but he's not like other human beings and suddenly all of that kind of accomplishments that you're building towards trying to create like a library of experiences that that can be helpful for other people works at Cross purposes because you've almost done too much right it takes you out of the position of being somebody who can be a source of aspiration to one who is a source of inspiration like Michael Jordan is inspirational we can't be Michael Jordan no but we can see the every man go out and do something just outside of our grasp and and be be and and and we can aspire to that in our own lives but once you run across the country you go from aspirational to inspirational and that changes the way that people interact with you have you noticed that or are you aware of that kind of dynamic at play kind of but the hardest thing I ever did was J grat Salan Zen which is is still big a bigger challenge than what a lot of people might try and seek in their life but every s every single thing I did the first marathon yo that was so hard and now I could go and run a marathon now no issue but you just have to understand that the process starts at day one it's not you don't have to look at me running across America and be like I'm never going to be able to do that if you'd have asked me after I ran across the UK If I could have done it I'd have been like absolutely not you're insane so every time I do something new obviously it's going to go out a little bit further and a little bit further but if you're just starting out I don't think I'm inherently special gifted talented whatsoever at all I don't even look like I should be an ultra Runner but my mission and my reasoning behind it will always always push me to to keep going as I said at the start seeing someone fight for their life especially someone so close to you has changed me unequivocally and I will always want to push the boundaries to to find out what's what's next in life and what's bigger and better and I will always take another step what have you learned about mindset that has trickled into other areas of your life outside of running um there's there's definitely more of a tenac tenacity to me than there was before everything everything is mindset and everything is pushing the limits and when you have experienced things physically and gone beyond the Realms you thought possible it certainly frees up the difficulty of the rest of life like sending that email or like I've had corporate jobs as well Everything feels a little bit easier because you can you can lean on those experiences where you were at 1% battery life left whatever and you carry on going and then all of a sudden you think you're complaining about having to work for another hour or send a few more emails like it it brings it makes everything smaller and more manageable for sure but it's earned it's earned you can't manufacture that So for anybody who's listening or watching you have to step outside of your comfort zone and stretch yourself in order to develop the capacity to have that perspective definitely there's another trap that I see happening with a lot of ultra athletes which is they start to form an identity or an unhealthy attachment with all of their accomplishments and then in in you know to your point of like chasing the dragon it just becomes about the next craziest thing and then just topping that and topping that and always trying to top the thing before it and that generally isn't a great like Life Plan like it's cool to go out and do hard things and I encourage everybody to do that but at some point you have to have a ballast in your life that lives outside of those Feats so how do you how do you make sure that you're anchored you know in in in meaningful ways that have nothing to do with running probably because I love so many other things aside from running yeah I I'm not seeing this as a problem yeah this is not this is not a a pothole for you I don't think well un uninterestingly I'll use Robbie as an example so much cuz we're kind of similar but very different at the same time and he's my anchor for this kind of [ __ ] anyway when he wakes up in the morning he can't wait to run when I wake up in the morning I don't want to [ __ ] run I'm not like I don't wake up and go yippy I can't wait to get my miles in today I'm like like really do I have to do that which kind of might be hard to hear considering what I do but I do it the reason I do it is I'm raising money for charity I'm expanding life experience I'm pushing myself to another Lev level so whilst running is my vehicle right now I don't think it's always going to have to be where I push where I push everything and put all my chips into there's so many areas of life outside of that that I love and I get enjoyment from and I can push myself in so whilst even when I was running I still had some other ideas it's not I don't think you're going to see me in I don't know but you're not going to see me in 20 years having done another 10 challenges like trying to one up what I've already done cuz I probably don't actually have enough time what is the next thing that you're thinking about doing I had an interesting one well first and for the first one I thought of was I believe I could get the record for running across Australia think distance-wise Brockman alert yeah what is the record it's whatever it is it's 6 60 mil a day I think it's is it 48 days I can't remember can't remember but that's what Ned set out to do we had some chats along the way when I was doing transcon as well I love love say like I was in Australia recently and I was with Ned and we tried to FaceTime you but you were occupied or I don't know what's going on and I was in London and I facetimed you and you answered I was like I can't believe you actually answered you're like out running and you're like we're doing a FaceTime call anyway go ahead yeah Ned's a good guy and I have so I have so much respect for him like that being his first challenge incred I understand why that took him where it took him it's sick and yeah he's a good dude but I think I could get that record so if it stays the same that is I got a lot of confidence from running across the US and I think Australia is about 1,000 km less mhm but then there's another part of me that wants to do something slightly new and I just I had I have this fantasy of running from Istanbul in Turkey where the bridge goes over to Asia basically hugging the Mediterranean Coast all up through where you start going up you go through Greece and then up I can't remember the countries there in the Czech Republic I'd go across the top of Italy I wouldn't go down because that would make it extremely long I probably could but in my head this is what I'm doing and then southern France southern Spain round of finish in Lisbon wow and that's about the same distance that sounds sexier it does yeah yeah that's more it's like the comoo Run yeah this sounds more yeah get a fleet of tians as your crew vehicles and make I can't believe that happened actually we're joking because when you ran around Lake comoo you had Teslas and and tians as your as your crew vehicles that was yeah only you would figure out how to pull that off right yeah but that's what that's where I want this space to be I still want want it to be fun whilst the Australia thing would be amazing it's it's not similar and it is similar to running across the US it's the same country it's English-speaking people not a lot of changes in 100 miles where is when you're in Europe that's the most beautiful thing about living in London for me it's 2 hours you can be anywhere else anywhere well 2 and a half 3 hours you can be anywhere amazing in Europe and imagine exper experiencing that on foot it's my favorite thing to do when I arrive in a new country put my shoes on and go for a run without a route without knowing anything and that's that on a bigger scale and my fantasy for doing it is it's it's not slogging trying to do 60 m a day it's more like maybe doing 30 m a day but actually experiencing the places more yeah like a well if you just did a marathon a day then you have lots of cappuccino time I love capucino time but that's that is the sort of7 Continental version of ultra running like running across Australia it's like all right aside from some hills in wa like the terrain doesn't change that much you're dealing with uh roadkill and what does Ned call them like the the truck trains whatever massive there aren't they yeah and very few sort of Scenic overlooks or places to even get food right like it's just a you know basically a mind-numbing mental exercise yeah but hugging the Mediterranean and going over mountains and all and going into Villages it's like your own William gge tour to France on foot yeah that's that's the dream like I feel very I feel very lucky where I can actually even think about that as an idea um so yeah it builds into everything that I kind of love running food travel seeing new places experiencing culture and it's an amazing speed at which to do it as well how do you think about the storytelling aspect of it how that's going to go down well no just historically like with transcon and everything obviously you know you had Reese on board and chronicling this whole thing and you know basically having a you know a public lens on on what you're doing and and an opportunity in a platform to you know share ideas and thoughts and and the experience as it went like as somebody who is of younger generation than me like this is this is what we do this is you know this is how you kind of make your way in the world in a certain respect right so how does that play into how you think about how you pursue your life and the challenges you want to tackle and how you want to comport yourself publicly it's interesting because it's it's kind it's almost like a necess evil once you're in that space doing it it's like you're always going to have to do it but in all honesty my favorite times are when I'm just alone pushing myself without anyone sort they can know about it but not there being a camera in my face so it's always going to be a battle for me but I also understand on the flip side of me not loving it all the time at the end of the day you've got so much to look back at and how how fortunate are we in this stay in time where you can have an experience and it doesn't just live in the memory bank you can relive it and see it in a different way so I think it will continue to be a part of what I do some people may see it and get inspired by it and try and do something themselves like the amount of messages I get from people saying they're about to try their first challenge or they've lived a similar experience and they're going to try and push themselves like it's it's very humbling to be any even fractional positive influence for someone trying to do something and you will never understand even in your experience as well you'll never understand the scale of which that is like the amount of people messaging you there's 10 20 times the amount of people that aren't so yeah for me it probably always still be there and I don't know if it will ever change as I say I don't really plan too far in my future but yeah talk about Robbie a little bit like what what do you think think makes Robbie Ballinger so special uh this is this is this is your opportunity to send that love letter come on buddy yeah he is he's one of the most outside of my family he's the most special person in my life as I said earlier he understands me and I understand him on a different level he gives me a huge amount of confidence to chase whatever I want to Chase and do it with tenacity and confidence and he's all he is always always there from what as I said from whatever challenge I've done he's been the first to put his hand up and tried to help in any way he could whether that be in a physical way or even even if he wasn't there at the time he'd always be pushing so that guy has given me a 110% since the moment I met him and I've I feel forever indebted to him there's not a lot there's nothing I can do to actually pay him back for what he's done and I would not have ran across the us if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have finished running the length of the UK if he wasn't there that guy has shaped my life in such a positive way it goes goes kind of beyond words and he he as a person is so special as you said he's he just wants to do things for other people and he's also a [ __ ] rock star like he is he is rock and roll he's I want to be Robbie Ballinger when I grew up put it that way well said yeah he's a he's a beast and all the things I see him do punk rock too oh yeah you know he's he's uh channeling a little Hunter S Thompson a little Willie Nelson those are his guys yeah our favorite quote from uh huness Thompson is when the going gets weird the weird turns weird turn pro mhm which is what we feel like when when you really push the boundaries of things and when you're at the upper limits of physical output you know in Ultra you get like the thousand yard stare that's when it gets weird and that's the time to turn pro that's when we do our best work yeah did you have any kind of hallucinations or any of that kind of stuff not on the America not on the America run no there only on Codine only on coding yeah I need some hardcore drugs but that's why where I want to explore next and where I know where the dragon lays is in these 200 mile 200 mile plus races so helping Robbie when he did the Tesla challenge that was what 20 240 248 I think yeah and he did that in 77 hours like he got to that place on at the end of day one and kind of stayed there until he finished on day four yeah that looked like a rough one day three and a bit crazy and then also helping him with the speed project which he did solo he ran 100 miles in the first 20 hours stopped for like two stopped for an hour and 40 minutes and went out and carried on again and we should say that that is a run from Los Angeles to Las Vegas most of it is teams trading off like a relay right there a few sadistic people that do it solo so the and you can choose your route right you can go whatever you whichever way you want to get there that's the coolest thing about it's a no rules race you have a start point and an end point and it's just like how about it but you start like pier in Santa Monica is is that where it started exactly and you finish I don't know where in Las Vegas but it's one of the points it's where the big Las Vegas sign old sign yeah yeah so yeah being on those experiences with him and now having done the US run like I understand to get to those places where I want to be it's got to be a shorter amount of distance but very aggressive mhm that's how you that's how you get to the your upper limitations when it's too long and you have a a time schedule it's like risk aversion whereas if it's a straight SL you're you're just managing efficiency yeah if it's a straight so would you do like Moab 240 and like that that's the one on the list I was listening to the um goggin's latest book on the run and when when he was talking about that when he came back from his injury yeah that 240 mile race and obviously the first year it was when he had to he went to hospital and went back to finish it off but wasn't official right he well he went off course too I think yeah by about 13 miles cuz his Pace had took him the wrong way but yeah that's yeah he went to the hospital and then he went back where he left off and finished it even though it was however many days later yeah but that's where I want to go to that will be the next iteration of what I do like obviously that European run might be a big one along the way maybe in 2 years more sooner I'll be I want to do the big 200 mile races cuz it will also be interesting like as you as you said it's one of the fastest times to run across the country but the way I talk about myself and how I do things is not thinking I'm professional in any real way shape or form but I would like to understand where I I am in that group of people that are doing right the gnarly [ __ ] like consistently and then as I said I don't I don't know where I want to go if I do one of those races and place well like do I want to leave some of the other fun [ __ ] behind and go more that way like I don't know but that's that will be my next experience for sure interesting um in the short term though you're going to do Berlin the Berlin Marathon we were chatting before the podcast and I was suggesting that you do almost no run leading up to that and just do a couple speed sessions and just see how much is in the tank as an experiment yeah which is kind of the approach you're taking right it was like you got to recover yeah it's a it's a tough one because for me the way I'm thinking about it is it's either the best foundation of all time to go and run a fast Marathon having ran 3,000 miles or it's way too close it's 16 weeks after I finished running across the US so I'm probably still fried and won't be able to do it but yeah it'll be an interesting thing to see like I gave myself I finished at the end of May I was giving myself the whole of June to do whatever the [ __ ] I wanted which I've generally done but even now I've got back into training earlier than I thought I thought I would have done just because it's part of my life and I love it and going to parties and fashion weeks all right but I actually don't like it as much as I like normal life asides from traveling so yeah you when is Berlin Berlin is the end of September I don't know exactly the date but it'll be one of the last Sundays mhm so yeah if I so July I'll have 12 weeks so I'm going to get into a training program then and sorry I can't do your idea of just doing a couple of couple of speed sessions but I just go to the gym and get like get jacked yeah get jacked and then just go to the track like twice a week yeah and see what happens but I it will be in I mean listen you have this huge base but you've been you've been running like 10 11 minutes and it miles you know so you got to throw down a little bit yeah we'll see we'll see how it goes but I'm I'm actually looking forward to starting and seeing what that first speed session feels like because I haven't got out of third gear in a long time yeah you got you got to tap back into that yeah um what do you say to the person who's listening to this or or watching it and suddenly feeling inspired but has never really tackled anything difficult like how do you how do you you know prod that person off the couch and and get them into into action on something it's might be hard to take but just [ __ ] do it like what whatever it is you're thinking about the more you procrastinate about it the less likely you are to do it so if it's your first marathon book one just book one CU as soon as you've paid your money for it and it's in six months time that's going to give you some gumption to actually do something about it but we live in a world where there's too many dreams that go missing and you might miss an opportunity to be here doing this [ __ ] talking with you like quite literally four and a half years ago I was doing [ __ ] all I was a semi-professional rugby player pretending to be a model sometimes like nothing was really happening but as soon as I took that first step it suddenly led to the second and the third and the how many steps I've taken since but action will always be any kind of intention you've said that you're not innately super talented no uh but if you had to declare a strength or an edge what would that be like what is what is your advantage what is it that you know propelled you to do these things outside of you know what happened with your mother Etc like what is it about you that's uniquely you that you think put you ahead of the pack here I think that that experience sped up the process but I I have to know I have to know what I'm capable of be that where does that come from I don't actually know I'm not sure what's what's where that is from inside me it's maybe it's growing up like my experience of growing up everything was great but there was a part of me that always so my dad came from a council flat which is government housing in the UK he got into carpentry when he was probably 15 he bought his first house when he was I think 18 or 19 by the time he was 22 he had bought his parents who were in that Council flat an apartment so he'd set his parents up and himself up ready for life as I said no thrills or whatever but he also at the same time as being somewhat not successful and given us the life we have there was always a safety thing about him like he didn't want to lose what he' built and I understand that entirely and I I love him and respect him so much and wouldn't change him from the world for the world but I remember growing up and certain things happening in business where he wouldn't get paid or someone would play him around like a bigger company and I I didn't understand why he wouldn't go and almost attack that angle so for me seeing him going through that and playing it safe and thinking what he could have done whilst I'm still proud of him there's a part of me that I don't like that unknown area I want to know what that unknown area is even if it means that I [ __ ] up everything else before it so that might be where it stems from but yeah we're here once when my man passed away like I said tomorrow isn't promised I'm going to do what I want to do today and I'm going to enjoy it because it's everyone says it and it's cliche but you don't know what's happening tomorrow so please try and please enjoy it and I also have no dependencies like I don't have a girlfriend I don't have a dog don't have children so whilst I can I'm going to invest in experience invest in experience yeah yeah that's that's super interesting about your dad I mean obviously it makes total sense why he would make those choices coming from where he came from um and why you sort of being a product of him and growing up in a bit of a different circumstance would would be interested in another choice but I think on top of that you know I have this this this spidey sense that your mother who obviously I didn't know but I've only heard you speak about in such with such reverence profoundly impacted your sense of your own capacity like this person who clearly believed in you and supported you and wanted good things for you in a very healthy way like um not in a controlling way or in a you know projecting way or anything like that or in or in any kind of enmeshment way but truly from the best place gave you a sense of yourself that led you to believe that you were capable of doing whatever you set your mind to and I think that's so powerful is that does that track yeah I think that's very true as well and I kind of got those feeling free from her even my dad as well growing up like even around exam time or whatever I was never sat down and said you need to study it was like if you're going to study you're going to do it because you know it's good for you but also my mom she W she changed careers quite a lot of times even towards the end of her life like she was a nurse for the most part she was a nurse at school in the police force and then she left and opened up a vintage te- room and our local town she was a very good Baker so she had a vintage t- room and then from there she was always she was always a Kean Garder as well so the time she passed away she was enrolled in uh a college in London for garden design and I think seeing her be somewhat Fearless in career changes even when she could have just kept it comfortable and whatever has led me to feel like if I want to switch things up or try something new at any time I can and I was always I was always told I could do that like I didn't go to university or college when I finished school I went traveling to Australia and Thailand for 6 months and I was almost I wasn't pushed into it but when I when I said any idea to them it was almost it was always let's figure out how we can do it they weren't going to denounce what I was trying to do and say you need to take the normal route of Life which everyone else well not everyone else but most people do wow that's cool this became a parenting podcast it did yeah know yeah I mean you know as being somebody who's older than you who thinks about parenting a lot like I'm always thinking about what the best way you know is to support my kids um and what I'm arriving at is very different from the way that I was raised yeah in so many ways and I think we we all parent either in admiration of our parents we try to we try to live up to the way we were parented or we parent in opposition to you know for whatever needs didn't get met in the way that we wish they had yeah that makes a lot of sense and like your mother I mean it's it's I think it's really powerful like the way that she raised you yeah and it's it's almost like I've kind of understood this by talking to you about it so it's it's cool for me too but yeah I just I always felt like I could I could go and try and do anything I wanted to and that was it's such a beautiful thing and a POS a powerful position to be yeah to feel like you're supported in whatever way you want to direct direct your attention yeah and that's why I've always tried to squeeze the most out of life I've never saved that much I've always I've always been putting it out there for experience but my parents and what they did allowed me that freedom and I I never I always know that I was never going to mess it up too much like I would never push the boat out too far but yeah that that feeling of just being able to give it a go yeah how old are you now 29 I had a tough paper I don't know but 29 29 and look at the breadth of and depth of experiences you've already had yeah it's it's actually crazy and it's there've always been the best and most expansive periods of my life and now everything I do has come because of that mhm and again going back to what we said like purpose is the most beautiful feeling in the world feeling like you have a purpose of something to do and you're also getting something out of it but at the same time might be help helping other people is beyond yeah in thinking about your mom and then in thinking about Robbie the the the the consistent theme is service right these are people who are givers in their nature right but do you feel as a result of being on the receiving end of so much um you know so much so much help and support uh a responsibility to pay that forward and be of service to someone else definitely on who's coming up in in in you know the the shadow of what you've done definitely yeah it's um the best almost the best feelings are the ones that you experience with other people or help other people help other people do so when Robbie did his Tesla challenge when he did this the speed Project M being there and being able to help him achieve that and knowing that he's grateful to you for for that is is incredibly special and being able to shape something someone's life in a positive way is even more special so at this time in my life it's it's kind of just been me about me but that next phase of life it's the same as having a family or whatever like I'm I can't wait for that moment where it really becomes about someone else I want to end this with another quote another thing that I heard you say another Talisman or another Mantra which is if I can I will m yeah that was that was from Robbie as well so the background to that was it was during the speed project um it was on the last day I think there was there was 30 mil left of the race and I can't remember the the lady's name but a woman had won it she' just got into Las Vegas and behind Rob in about 10 miles behind there were I think four or five guys one had been jousting with a couple days before on this incredible section um through these mountains and he was it was like Offroad right like you guys were just like Biv whacking yeah over these I can't believe the cars got up there I was like how is how are you even how did you even figure out that this would be the way to go and that it would pan out and finding someone that I don't know like 140 mies into a race and them racing against each other right shows up there but it was it was funny because we had stopped and Robbie was really down in the dumps like down he was having a nap in the back of the car I don't know if it was an angel Sent From Heaven or whatever but on a random Side Road next to the highway which was a dirt road give even calling it a dirt road is giving it more service than it deserves I can't believe anyone else would be there a guy pulled up behind us and obviously he needed to get past so we had to wake Robbie up and in that time as well um the speed project Instagram page had gone live and they' had shown that the lady had finished finished the race and they had live trackers on everyone so they'd also seen that Robbie was 30 m out but then a group of four other Runners were like 10 miles behind him so we had to wake Robbie up so he wasn't in the car when we moved it prior to that you didn't even know that somebody was on his heels no idea that's another interesting thing about this race you just don't know right so it's me it's mentally like you just have to you just keep going and it can be to your demise or or benefit but when we woke him up I knew at that time I needed to tell him cuz he'd be more pissed off if I didn't and he very quickly switched in his brain he went from being down and out to okay I'm not going to win but the only way I'm going to get out of this feeling proud of myself is if I give absolutely everything from this point on and he was like immed he was like I'm going to need a gel every 3 miles and in my head I'm getting so gassed I'm like this guy is about to go [ __ ] crazy and I'm I'm here for it is like I need a gel every every uh 5K um and if I have to stop before I finish it's going to be because I'm at zero not cuz I'm anywhere above that not one not 2% not anything and I remember along the way like being so buzzing to Crum through this stupid experience of running 30 miles having run 200 miles already in 3 days and just being so impressed at his level of application of just continuing to move Peter John who was with us on the transcon as well he was there and Robbie would be running along and he'd gradually curve over and people would literally tap him and be like can't stand up and he'd like rise back up and carry on running but when I joined them at the end I remember him just saying to me there was this thing that kept going over over and in my head and it's if I can I will that's a very powerful thing it's like how I said earlier of can you take another step you basically always can so if I can I will if you think about that really deeply you can and you will it's profound it's it's funny how a short sentence can mean so much if you tap into it enough but I thought about that the whole way across America as well it was a powerful thing when I was down and out was can I yes I will I think that's a good place to end it sounds good to me is it possible for people to still donate to the Charities for the transcon it was going to end but we can keep it open there no act there's no actual de end why do there need to be an ending there doesn't have to be so name them and we'll make sure that we put the links up in the in the show notes so it will be on a GoFundMe page which I can give you the link to it's Wills run across America and we're raising money for McMillan cancer support in the UK um who helped my mom personally through her battle and helped millions of people in the country there and then the American Cancer Society in the US I wanted to raise money for cancer chariots on both sides of the pond they offer a similar service to McMillan but they also do cancer research as well so two amazing Charities do an amazing thing and I'm very humbled and grateful that I get to represent them and they support me in the way they do as well good on you mate thanksa yeah it's uh it's inspiring what you're doing especially at such a young age and with so many years ahead of you to figure out how you want to Channel all this energy and just you know massive respect dude like what you've accomplished is extraordinary and the manner in which you comport yourself and and speak about and kind of report back from the front lines of your experiences is is really inspiring so I appreciate it cheers [ __ ] good to be than man [Music] cheers that's it for today thank you for listening I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation to learn more about today's guest including links and resources related to everything discussed today visit the episode page at Rich roll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch my books Finding Ultra voicing change in the plant power way as well as the plant power meal planner at meals. Rich roll.com if you'd like to support the podcast the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review Andor comment supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful and finally for podcast updates special offers on books the meal planner and other subjects please subscribe to our newsletter which you can find on the footer of any page at Rich roll.com Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Cameo with additional audio engineering by Kale Curtis the video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director Dan Drake portraits by Davy Greenberg graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel CIS thank you Georgia Wy for copywriting and website management and of course our theme music was created by Tyler Patt trapper Patt and Harry matys appreciate the love love the support see you back here soon peace plance [Music] namaste

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 137,692

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindfulness podcasts, mindset podcast, vegan podcasts, plant-based nutrition

Id: gqjaaQwihkA

Length: 121min 52sec (7312 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2023