The ‘Ordinary’ Man Who Did 105 Iron-Distance Triathlons in 105 Days

There’s nothing I love more than tales of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things. But nobody who achieves the extraordinary is ordinary—and while upon first glimpse this real-life Forrest Gump may present as an everyman, he is anything but. Not only did today’s guest dare to best one of the world’s most impressive endurance records, he downright decimated it—and somehow made it all look ‘easy’. In 2021, the Iron Cowboy James Lawrence completed 101 iron-distance triathlons in 101 consecutive days—a record I both witnessed and couldn’t fathom being broken in my lifetime. And yet not too long after, Sean Conway, a dad of two young kids from a small town in Wales by way of Zimbabwe, proceeded to complete 105 consecutive iron-distance triathlons, claims he could have kept going, and believes he could have done 200. In case you don’t quite grasp the enormity of this feat: Sean swam 2.4 miles, then proceeded to ride 112 miles on his bike, then ran a full marathon—26.2 miles, repeating this routine every day without missing a single day, for 105 days in a row. Moreover, Sean didn’t even begin his endurance career until age 30—a career in which he has quietly eclipsed more records than most realize. Today we unpack Sean’s extraordinary accomplishments, his 'terrier mindset', the 'ten pillars of endurance’, why he doesn't celebrate small wins, his unique lens on failure, and his reasoning for never, ever having a backup plan. Sean is quirky, totally authentic, and chock-full of ludicrous stories lifted from a life that prioritizes adventure over security. My hope is that his example inspires you to transcend self-imposed limitations and craft a challenge that is meaningful to you. Because we’re all capable of transforming our lives from ordinary to extraordinary. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Momentous: LiveMomentous.com/RICHROLL Peak Design: PeakDesign.com/RICHROLL Timeline Nutrition: TimelineNutrition.com/RICHROLL Roka: Roka.com/RICHROLL AG1: drinkAG1.com/RICHROLL BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com/RICHROLL Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout. You're a guy who, from the outside looking in, positions himself as the everyman, the non-athlete, the ordinary dude, but that's really not entirely accurate.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  I'm quite proud now to actually have gone from this unhappy school portrait photographer to

• 1:22Rich Roll?

  Sean Conway.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  An iron-distance triathlon every day for 105 days. People have asked me, what do you think is the reason you do these things? And I sort of don't wanna know. It's an unpopular opinion now. Everyone sort of says, "Oh, it's all about the journey." And I'm like, "Pssst, not that."

• 1:43Rich Roll?

  Sean, so nice to meet you. Thank you for doing this.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me, Rich.

• 1:47Rich Roll?

  Although it may look a little bit like my home studio, we are in London recording.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52Rich Roll?

  You made the trip down. You're wearing your kit, so I thought, did you just, did you run here? Did you ride your bike here?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I was gonna cycle. I was gonna cycle yesterday and do an all-day, it was 220 mile, which... Normally for me, I would just do on the spur, but I thought, right, let me, could I do it? Could I do it? And then yesterday I just got a bit busy. And then the, the sort of the terrier in me, cause I'm two characters in life. I'm a monkey and a terrier and I've got to feed both animals. The terrier in me saying, do something, do something, cause it's been four weeks now. And even though everyone's telling me to do nothing and just sit on the sofa and Netflix. Uh, I can't, I just can't. So tomorrow.

• 2:26Rich Roll?

  It's not in your nature.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  It's not, I just, like, even, so I came down on the train with my mate Chris and, um, you know, like, and he's like, mate, stop fidgeting. What are you doing?

• 2:34Rich Roll?

  You're looking out the window, thinking about why.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  So anyway, tomorrow, so I'll be at Car Fest on Friday. So tomorrow I got the day off. So I thought, well, sixty mile, hundred K to Car Fest. Could I run it? And it's, it's quite an easy train line. There's probably a train station every ten miles. So if I'll just bail if I can't do it. So I will, yeah. I just got to do something.

• 2:54Rich Roll?

  That's cool. So, so sixty miles. So you would leave what at like four in the morning?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Probably five, yeah, probably five AM. It'd probably take me fourteen hours, fifteen hours, I think, maybe. Uh, as I said, I, I really should not do this. I'm still nursing the hip thing. But I thought, let me crack out the one oh five kit one more time. And before it lands up on a frame in my, in my garage, actually. Um, and then, uh, yeah, so that's why I'm in this, got my running kit.

• 3:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm getting a ride to Car Fest. So if I'm driving by, I'll either wave or, or pull over.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll give you a banana. You can just throw it out the window.

• 3:30Rich Roll?

  Are you? Um, that's interesting. The terrier and what is the other animal? The monkey. Is that sort of an alter ego type of situation? Like you, you try to channel that energy and transcend yourself in the way that the iron cowboy has the iron cowboy. It's a different personality or David Goggins has Goggins. Like these are ways to get out of your own mental loop and, and do extraordinary things by being somebody else altogether.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there's definitely. There's a part of me that now looks back at everything else I've done and goes, is that like, that's not you. Like, there's the imposter syndrome part of me and the person, the little kid who was never picked at school for sport. And, you know, I was in the seventh team rugby at my school. I think there was only one other school in the whole of South Africa that had seven teams. So we only had one match a year and, you know, I was terrible at sport growing up. I'm quite short now and I only grew after school. So I was tiny at school in South Africa, which is very macho. And, you know, if you're not good at rugby or cricket, you're a nobody type thing. Um, so really my, my belief, which is so ingrained in me now that I'm, I shouldn't be able to do these things. It's, I think it's still there somewhere.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  So the person who then goes off and does a hundred full irons, even now I'm sitting here going like, is that, was it like, was that like, that can't be me. Like, I'm not that guy, you know? Um, so the, the monkey terrier thing is, is more I've, I've noticed over the years. I've got to feed both those animals in certain ways to make me like my, for my mental health mainly, just for my wellbeing. And the monkey is what I am mostly, and I love being a monkey. I'm inquisitive, I break things, I fix things, I have to do things with my hands, whether it's gardening, fixing things. I'm into woodwork, knife making.

• 5:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you fix old cars too.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Old cars, yeah, I've got old cars that I'm sort of messing around with. I've always got one on the go and then just about to sell the one I've just finished now and find another one. And, um, yeah, so that's the, the monkey. But then the monkey gets frustrated if, if, if the terrier doesn't get fed. And every now and then the terrier just needs to chase something. It's one task, simple, chase it. And then what I've worked out is, and that can be little things. So it can be, you know, fixing these projects or learning something new. Or the latest thing I'm chasing is yoga. I've always poo-pooed yoga, but this last week I've got, I did my first yoga thing on YouTube and I was like, man, I am rubbish at this.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  And I was all of a sudden, right, I hate being rubbish at something and I, it doesn't dissuade me from trying to do it more. So now I'm all in for yoga. So every morning I'm up at five twenty nine, I do half an hour of yoga before the kids wake up. And it's changed my world, honestly, right? I, cause I've, I've done everything. I've got an ice bath at home, a sauna. Tried all the different herbal things for sleep like um theanine and magnesium.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  The human protocol.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've done all of that. You know, I do the salts in my glass of water in the morning. But certainly the getting up at five thirty and doing half an hour of yoga or Pilates. I haven't done Pilates yet, but it's definitely I feel has the biggest impact in my life. But anyway, the terrier.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  For me to satisfy the terrier for the longest period afterwards, I try and do these long, really long, difficult challenges. And I find I'm I'm a better husband, a better father, a better mate. I'm more satisfied in life. I'm healthier, fitter, eat better. So, yeah, once I worked out those, I then stopped feeling guilty for being a monkey. Yeah, monkeys are annoying, right? You know, and and I was annoying, you know, because I was always. I remember as a kid, my parents going, just stick to something, you know, because I'd have a hobby every five minutes. And I started sort of feeling like there's something wrong with me, like for having all these different interests every five minutes. And and it even extends to, you know, when I'm doing one of the cars, for example.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  I'll do half a job and then run out of screws. And then most normal people go to the shop, buy more screws, come back and fix that. I'm like, no, I'm gonna go on a move.

• 7:45Rich Roll?

  You're done with that.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Do the wheel now and then do half the wheel. And then, you know, so when we're doing, when we bought our house, we bought it off a ninety year old guy. And it just needed some tarting up. But Caroline was so frustrated because I'd do half the living room and then half the bedroom. And none of it was finished until all of a sudden it was all finished. And that kind of works for me.

• 8:03Rich Roll?

  That's so interesting because the terrier would not allow something to go uncompleted.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  Right? The terrier latches on to something and doesn't let go. But the complementary nature of these two essences of who you are are very cool. And to be able to identify that, understand it and and know what needs to get fed and how they kind of interlace with each other is is a really kind of beautiful model. The monkey being the guy who's tinkering with the puzzle pieces, especially with these huge projects, right? There's so many variables, there are so many things to think about, pieces moving all over the place, how do they all fit together? That's the problem solving part of your mind. And then the terrier is the tenaciousness and the single-mindedness to attack something and complete it all together.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And then the terrier is, is, once the terrier is engaged, it's red mist blinkers on.

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  Nothing else.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Honestly, like, and infuriates Caroline because every now and then the terrier creeps in in normal life. For example, you know, there'll be something I'll remember in the veggie plot, like halfway through dinner, like, oh, I've not done that thing for the, for the pumpkins for Halloween. And if I don't water them now, I'll forget. And I'll literally get up halfway through then, I'm like, I have to do it now. You don't understand, like, I'm like the opposite of a procrastinator. It's just, if I can't not wait, it's just, I have to do it. So for doing these long challenges, I found it's just for me, that destination is all that matters. It's an unpopular opinion now, everyone sort of says, oh, it's all about the journey, not about the destination. I'm like, sod that.

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  No, I, I appreciate your, your candor and honesty around that, like, no, I'm going for the record.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  No, I'm going for the record.

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, we can drape it in a charity and all of that, but you know, that thing where you get the email and your friend is going to be running the 10K or the marathon and it's like they're raising money and it's like, okay, that's great and that's important. And there's certainly, you know, something to be honored and all of that, but let's be honest about what we're really doing here, right? Like, you want to go run this thing and accomplish that, why are we embarrassed to say that?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and for me, it's, I just have to do it. I can't not go for the record. I just get no satisfaction out of it.

• 10:19Rich Roll?

  What's, what's behind that though? Like, part of me thinks when you have to get up from the dinner table and go fix that thing, there's some, like dysfunction around control operating there?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:32Rich Roll?

  Maybe growing up in all these different places or feeling like your life was out of control?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went to boarding school quite young when I was seven. Would come home on the weekends from seven till nine, then nine hours proper boarding school. People have asked me, what do you think is the reason you do these things? And I sort of don't wanna know. Like, it's working. Like, I don't wanna be fixed, actually. Like, there's obviously maybe something wrong.

• 10:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  And maybe there was a childhood trauma that I'm trying, and I'm trying to.

• 10:59Rich Roll?

  Every high achiever says this. They feel like if they really delve into that, that they're gonna lose their superpower.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You know, I was speaking.

• 11:06Rich Roll?

  It's a lie, though. You know that, right? Like, that's an illusion. You'll actually be probably more fit to do the things that, that you're trying to do.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I'm glad you said that, actually, cuz it's, it's sort of been at the back of my mind the whole time. Like, oh, should I find out, you know? But what if I found out and it's a horrible story?

• 11:23Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Which I don't remember. And then I find out and then I'm like, oh, no, I found this out. And, you know, A, now I've gotta deal with that.

• 11:30Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, you'll, you'll have to grapple with that. You're gonna have to, you know, reckon with it. But I think ultimately, on the other side of that, there's always greater freedom, happiness, and, and, and, and sort of liberation for yourself. If there is something there that's being repressed out of some defense mechanism, there's a survival, uh, you know, kind of dynamic operating there. But at some point in your life, it will likely surface, or perhaps it's already manifesting in unhealthy ways that you're unaware of.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Rich Roll?

  I never hear about people who undergo that process and come out the other side and feel like it wasn't worth it, or they're not better for having done it.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  But I understand what you're saying.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  That's good to know.

• 12:14Rich Roll?

  I understand what you're saying.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Well, I might, I might look into it, actually. I might look into it.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  No, it's true. It's true, because there's certain things in real life. I, like, I don't sleep well. I've never slept well, ever. Although, since I've been doing the yoga thing, I've been sleeping quite well.

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  You have to go out and, and do an Ironman every day so you can sleep at night.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Well, weirdly, I did sleep well quite a bit at the beginning. The first month was horrendous. I had hot sweats and my average heart rate in the first week, sleeping heart rate, was eighty-nine. That was my average for sleeping time. I had a, I wore a whoop for the first week and then threw it away. I was like, I don't wanna know. My recovery is one percent every day.

• 12:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  I don't wanna know that.

• 12:51Rich Roll?

  You're starting out at one percent every single day.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, so.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you had to go through, I mean, James said the same thing. There's that adaptation phase until your body kind of settles into what it's doing and understands it. So let's get into that. I mean, first of all, like, how long has it been? It's been like two months now?

• 13:09Speaker 01

  So four weeks last Sunday.

• 13:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, four, only four weeks.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Four and a half weeks.

• 13:12Rich Roll?

  Wow. So how are you feeling? How is the body doing?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  The first couple of days after, I felt amazing. And I was like, damn it. I knew I shouldn't have stopped.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  And then, and then the third day, oh, I just crashed. And then, but it wasn't a bad crash. I was just like, obviously, my body had gone, right, well, we're not doing this again. You can just relax. And then I thought that was the bottom. I thought it would be a sharp drop off. I'm at the bottom, and I'm going to slowly get better over however long, a month, two months, six months, a year. But actually, I then got worse the next week. And then the third week was really bad. Like, just, I was sleeping a lot, but I had zero. It was like a permanent bonk, like walking up the stairs at home. I was like, wow, this is tough. Even though I went on a few bike rides and my figures were okay.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  The power was okay, and the heart rate was okay, but I just felt awful. I just couldn't. And the motivation was there. That's the other good thing that I've been surprised by. I've been motivated to keep the fitness. But I just had nothing in the tank. No matter food wouldn't do it, sleep didn't do it, stretching, doing the yoga. And this week.

• 14:29Rich Roll?

  That shouldn't come as a surprise, though.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  No, I know. But the Terry and the monkey, they're throwing thoughts in my head and like, you know.

• 14:36Rich Roll?

  I have this amazing base. I can't squander it.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  I've done 90 hours. I've done 90 hours a week of zone one and two training.

• 14:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  For three and a half months. I'm like, that's gotta be worth something. I don't want to lose that. Like, I'm never gonna do that again. So, yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm, wanna keep the fitness. So which is why I'm now gonna try and do a run tomorrow. But I'm good enough at micro analyzing everything.

• 15:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  There's, and we can go over this. There's 10 pillars of endurance that I, and every day, on everything I do, that's a multi day. You've got to tick every single box. So it's planning, experience, fitness, health, nutrition, hydration, sleep, muscle management, mindset or motivation, and community. So if you nail all 10 of those every single day, you're gonna be able to nail multi day endurance challenges. And, and, you know, it's, I did that every single day, doing the 105.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  And I sort of want to get back to a place where I'm now, you know, if I did that now, surely I'm just gonna get, you know, get over this fatigue. But I know it doesn't work like that.

• 15:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it doesn't.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  And in the past.

• 15:48Rich Roll?

  You realize, of course, intellectually that, uh, that you can't persist in hitting it hard like that every single day, that you have to give yourself this break. And the sense that I'm getting from you is it's actually easier for you to get up and do an Ironman every day than it is for you to sit down and be with yourself and, and allow yourself to heal.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, just thank goodness I have kids and an amazing wife and that has kept me busy. I think in the old days, all the other things I've done, other than the Europe record where I was with Caroline, um, I've been single really, and that's then my, yeah, I don't know, I've, I struggled a little bit because I didn't have my mind to focus on them. And, you know, there's a part of me, you say, well, why do you do this? I have, I have this sort of picture in my head of my kids as teenagers trying to learn the guitar and moaning about having sore fingers. I was like, you don't know pain, boys.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you don't want to be that guy.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. The hundred and five is actually the, the third longest thing I've done. It's not even the longest. And the other one, so I cycle around the world a hundred and fifty something days. My length of Britain swim was a hundred and thirty five days. And then my longest continuous triathlon, which is three thousand five hundred mile, that was eighty five days. So I've hovered around this long stuff for a while. Um, but definitely this one's been way harder to recover from.

• 17:09Rich Roll?

  But I think you're doing pretty good.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  All I can do is compare and contrast your experience with that of James's.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:17Rich Roll?

  Um, and I know that James in the wake, there's a lot of differences in the way that you guys kind of approached this and, and how it went for you guys. But James, you know, famously had a very difficult time. And then in the aftermath, his healing process was very protracted. And it included not just fatigue and depression, but cognitive issues. Like he went and had to do like brain exercises, like he couldn't think straight. I know you said. Um. A few things around memory, but that was like during

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  The Ironmans, but mentally you seem very clear. You seem present and your energy feels pretty solid. Whereas James was really kind of having a hard time and it took him a very long time to kind of crawl out of that hole.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  So I I've thought about this a lot because I knew people would be comparing the two of us. And I think there's a couple of things that I did different that suited me better. One is, well, I didn't get injured. I didn't get a severe injury like he did. So, you know, knowing that he had to do that marathon with the brace, with the poles, fast walk. Like, walking a marathon is way harder than running it with a good technique.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  You know, his probably cortisol levels were really high because he knew that that was at the end of the day. He was, I think, about two hours slower than me each day, which meant he was getting less sleep.

• 18:41Rich Roll?

  Rest.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  And um, and also I I read, and I don't know how much of this is accurate on a daily basis. But he said he was doing three hours of physio a day, which was just taking away from sleep. And for me, of those ten pistons, sleep, sleep is one of them. And it's almost number one priority for me. Like, I knew I had to get fast enough to do a full distance on in zone one or two, for one, because I couldn't be, I needed to be at a hundred and ten heart rate all day. And if that made me fast enough to then still get eight hours sleep, that was the goal. And that was, and that happened at around day thirty something.

• 19:17Rich Roll?

  And that came as a result of experimenting with physio and sleep

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:22Rich Roll?

  To find that ratio that would work. And I think you're correct. I think James had a massive team and he had people who were working on his body and he needed that, but it did eat into his sleep and you discovered that you were better off if you prioritized the sleep and then worked in the physio when you had a little buffer of time.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Exactly that. So the first month, I think, I can't remember the exact day I stopped doing daily physio, but it was around day thirty, let's say. I was doing about twenty minutes of physio between the bike and the run. And then I was doing half an hour of physio in the evening. But there's a bit of faff time around each side of that. So I was losing an hour a day of potential sleep and I was slower. So, for example, on day two, I nearly missed the seventeen hour cutoff. I did sixteen hours fifty-five, I think. Day three, sixteen hours, forty five, uh, cause I picked up a knee niggle uh on the bike from day one. Um. Completely my own fault. I, so the new bike I had built, I chose shorter cranks um and I totally forgot.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  So when I'd I'd done my my bike fit on the old bike, which had longer cranks. And I put the short cranks on and just totally forgot. So I just measured. All messed up. Measured from bottom bracket up to seatpost and like, well, it's millimeter perfect. I'll be good. And then forgot I was like um ten mil off or something crazy. And then in the in the chaos of day one, you just never, I just didn't pick it up. Right. So I was super slow. Then I was having the physio, so I was only getting, you know, six, five hours sleep, maybe. Six hours sleep. And then this, it sort of hovered around, you know, seven hours up until thirty. And then I. I remember once the knee thing was manageable, cause I was taping it and wearing the patella bands. And then the ankle, the right sort of ankle shin.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  That had sort of calmed down a little bit. And uh, I thought, right, I wonder if I could, let's try. Going for sleepover physio. Let's just see, cause I can always just call them if I need the physio and it's not working. And I did that and it was a game changer. If you look at all my splits on my website, like as soon as that happened, I was, you know, I was A, a little bit quicker. But B, my mood was better. I felt like I could push it a little bit harder and I could sustain a faster pace. Which would then result in me being able to do, you know, have more sleep again. Right. And then you you're on the front of the way. Yeah, yeah. You land up on the front of the way. Compounding that interest. Exactly. Whereas. Yeah. James would have, A, had the injury to deal with, so the cortisol levels and the pain and all that stress.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Uh, and he was a bit slower and then he was having to do the physio. So of course he came out of that feeling like completely ruined. Um. Because I knew.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  I knew it was doable without a major injury. You know, I've, I've done my marathon a day for forty four days, the longest time I've done a marathon a day for pretty much, you know, I've done, when I was cycling around the world going for that record, it was two hundred miles a day, one hundred and eighty to two hundred miles a day, every day. When I swam the length of Britain, I was doing four and a half hours on, seven hours off, four and a half hours on, seven hours off with the tide. So, and that again was day after day. So, at least in my head, I was naive, naive enough to go, well, actually, I think this is doable without getting a serious injury. And, and the run really is the one that will DNF you, absolutely.

• 22:38Rich Roll?

  Right. Unless you have some kind of devastating crash.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. Because, and that's the other thing. I look at all, what will DNF me? Getting run over on the bike, getting a serious injury, which is most likely going to happen on the run, as in a repetitive strain injury, like a compression fracture or tendon tear or things like that. Um, getting really ill, COVID or something worse. Uh, and the last one was, um, you didn't want to think about, but a family member, tragedy type things. So, I had those awkward conversations with my parents and my sister, because I was like, where's the line?

• 23:11Rich Roll?

  Right. What, what would, what would have to happen for you to pull the plug? Where the terrier would have to heal?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, well, I did have to pull the plug, didn't I, on the previous attempt?

• 23:21Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  And yeah, I'd love to talk about that disaster.

• 23:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, let's just, uh, we're well into it, but, and I'm sure I'll say this in the introduction, but for clarity purposes, uh, Sean completed a hundred and five iron distance triathlons in a hundred and five consecutive days. Uh, at the outset, the goal was to eclipse James's record of doing a hundred and one by doing a hundred and two. Um, and there's so many kind of interesting, um, similarities, points of overlap with James's experience, but also many departures, right? On the one hand, you're a guy who, from the outside looking in, sort of positions himself as the everyman, the non-athlete guy, the, the kind of ordinary dude

• 24:07Rich Roll?

  who's going to go out and do something extraordinary. But that's really not entirely accurate. We can go into the backstory and how you got into this stuff. I think there's some super interesting stuff there, but.

• 24:18Rich Roll?

  The other perspective is that you actually had a lot more experience than James did with these extended multi-day adventures that gave you not only a level of confidence going into such an audacious goal, but also a sort of a library, a copious amount of experience to rely upon knowing that you could get through difficulties and how to kind of navigate the training leading up to the experience, but also the day in, day out, kind of grind and determining, you know, in the monkey part of you, what's important, what's not, and how those puzzle pieces fit together.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And you're right. I sort of, I am, I was the everyman because I just came, I was a school portrait photographer until I was 30.

• 25:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're gonna get into all that because that's nutty, some crazy stuff.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, but you're right. You know, there's, there's two parts to me as well that go one, you know, you're the everyman, Sean, how could you be doing 105?

• 25:17Rich Roll?

  Who's this guy? He's not gonna break James's record. Like this guy's got a little paunch belly. He's got a beard. He lives in the countryside. He thinks he's just gonna go out and like beat the Iron Cowboys record?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then a part of me is going like, have you even looked to my website? Like, honestly, I can do this. Look, I promise.

• 25:33Rich Roll?

  I didn't know. You know, when I first started paying attention to you, I mean, I kind of knew who you were and I knew you had done some other stuff, but I didn't know the extent of your resume when it came to adventure endurance.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  No, exactly. And then so part of me is like, honestly, guys, I can do it. Please believe me. Look, this is, this is what I've done, you know? And, and you're right, you know, I'm quite proud now to actually have gone from this unhappy school portrait photographer to, you know, someone who's got quite a long CV of doing multi-day stuff. And, you know, if it's under two, if it's under seven days, I sort of don't even count it as an event now. I've probably forgotten about it on my website, other than the cheese rolling, which was 23 seconds or whatever. But, um, yeah. And, and, and yeah, you're right. It's, it's, is that juxtaposition. But I don't want to stop people. Thinking I'm the everyman, because I am and I've been tested. I went to a human performance lab,

• 26:29Speaker 01

  you know, the one that the Brownlee brothers go to and everything. And I remember secretly going there thinking, yeah, there's something about me.

• 26:34Rich Roll?

  Right, I got some crazy VO2 max.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  They're gonna write papers on me forever. And I did all the tests. I did the same test that Jensen Button does with all the cognition and the, and your reaction speed, all the tests in the heat lab, sweat, power, VO2, like everything, threshold, lactate threshold. And it was a couple of weeks later and I go back and then a different person who did the test, looked at the papers and there was, you know, they printed it all out. There's about 20 pages and we sit down, he's all excited. He's going through and I could just see his expression dropping right. And he's like, mate, actually pretty average. And in fact, you've got a disadvantage because I lose 3.4 grams of salt per litre of sweat, which is almost twice as much as most people. So I really have a salt deficiency. So I have to really work on that as well in the hydration

• 27:20Speaker 01

  pie chart of this. So, uh, yeah, no one's writing papers on me for a while.

• 27:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but actually it makes it more aspirational.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 27:29Rich Roll?

  To know that you're not some kind of physiological outlier.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. And I think so too, because you're right. I mean, you've talked about outliers in the past. A lot of people will look at you and if they presume you're an outlier, they think, wow, well, I can't do that because he's this, he's got lots of money, he's a millionaire, which I'm not, or he's got biological advantage, which I don't. Um, and that's why I put on my website, the hiccups bit, because I

• 27:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have a whole section of all your failures.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  All the things I've messed up. I almost fail the first time I do everything. Because actually I have no, I really don't care about failing. I don't, I don't feel guilty. I don't feel like I've let people down. I'm just like, oh, that didn't work. I'll try again. You know, and that's in just my nature. I don't know why I've not had to train myself to do it, I guess. Um.

• 28:13Rich Roll?

  Maybe that's your greatest gift.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Maybe, yeah.

• 28:16Rich Roll?

  That's what makes you an outlier.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Well, we were

• 28:18Rich Roll?

  Well, it's true. Like, you can't succeed if you're not pushing the envelope of your capability, which means you're gonna fail.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:25Rich Roll?

  That's the only way that you grow.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I also have a very short term memory. It's brilliant. You know, like all those miserable days and all this, when it didn't, didn't work the last time, I'm like, yeah, whatever. Um, to the point of actually, there's some things that I Sort of did on the irons now where I'm like, I worked this out 10 years ago. Why have I forgotten it? You know, like little food hacks, like drinking the cream, for example, and to keep the weight on, because I only lost three KGs over the whole time. And I lost that a KG a month, which I was pretty happy. I was expecting to lose more, hoping to lose less. Started at 70, which I didn't want to put on weight, because I didn't want to run heavy. I wanted to run at a good weight to start with. And I thought,

• 29:08Speaker 01

  let me just nail my nutrition and calories at the start. And so, yeah, it's sort of trying to get on top of all of that, which again, comes with the 12 years of experience and all the different things I've done.

• 29:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that that one could form the mistaken belief that you just sort of barrel into these things and figure it out as you go. And what I've learned and discovered about you is that there's a much greater granular attention to detail preparation and the daily schedule than one might imagine. Because if you go to your Instagram, like you have that before and after photo. And the before photo, it looks like, well, you were out of shape and you just trained your way into this thing. But that's not the truth. And I heard you talk about the endurance science aspect of this in a very intelligent

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  way, which is this notion that people have mistakenly that, look, there's only so much training you can do. So you're going to have to kind of go into this fresh and get fit as you go. And I think that was in part, some of James's mindset going into what he was doing. And your point, which I agree with entirely, is that's a huge mistake, because then you're creating that downward spiral, right? If you're not fit enough where you can't, you're not able to go out and do. An Ironman, an Iron Distance Triathlon in Zone One and finish in time to get an adequate enough of sleep, then you're gonna dig into your ability to recover and you're gonna just

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  precipitously decline every day. If you're able to do that Zone One and do it in an adequate time period, then you can recover and you can get more fit from that. But you've gotta be able to do that every single day without your heart rate exceeding like 110.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:06Rich Roll?

  And there aren't very many people that can do that, right? So you have to have the endurance base, the restraint, the efficiency, the mitochondrial density, all of that going into it, such that you're putting yourself in a position to succeed from the gate.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, absolutely. And James says, you've got to be, it's 100% mental and 100% physical.

• 31:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  And I went in probably 75% physical. So I started in April. I was plagued with illness. All of January I had off because I had three or four different chest infections. I had a good couple of weeks in February. Then the end of February, we went on holiday and I did a bit of training on holiday, but not enough. And then beginning of March, I did a bit and then it was taper. So I really dropped because what I should have done is I did three sessions of everything a week. And bearing in mind, I'd failed last June.

• 32:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you started in June and you only got like, what, six in?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  So seven. So I got, well, yeah, let's talk about the failure there. So on day, well firstly, my route was terrible. I was doing an open water swim, which, forget the cold because it was a bit cold. I was losing 45 minutes in admin because we'd have to get to the gate, unlock the gate, drive on this bumpy track through a ford, through a river, you know, do the swim. And then halfway through the swim, I needed the loo. I'd have to come out, wet suit, port a loo, cold wet suit back on. It was just, it was a terrible decision. And actually, I had moved to a pool by day five anyway. So I would have, I made that transition. And then the same with the bike and the run. The bike was too hilly, the run was too hilly. And then on day five. I was cycling a bit up a real steep gradual gradient.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh, I'll have some food now because I'm going slow. I put my left hand in my jersey back pocket. And I my front wheel went in a long, thin pot hole.

• 32:58Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  And then I was holding on the the elbow pad for your elbows go on the tri bars. And then in that sort of, I tried to overcorrect and I just steered left right into the bush. Went over the handlebars, hoods bent completely. And so it was a proper stack. Uh, but the the biggest issue is my left leg stayed clipped in. Uh, and I got up and I shook it off. And I actually thought my left knee was was done in. And I was like, oh, that's it. But I'll be fine.

• 33:22Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  And actually, the rest of the bike was okay. The run, I felt it. So it was the tendon that goes from the top of your that your shin down to the top of your foot, the one that used to lift your foot up. And the run was like, mm, okay, this is dodgy, but let's see. So day six, I woke up and I actually felt okay. Swim was okay. Bike was okay. Run. Disaster. I mean, I think I did an eight hour run that day. It's like, oh, this is not looking good. I'd already, I'd already gone over the seventeen hour cutoff, which is an unofficial one, by the way, the the it's midnight to midnight that you actually have, but the internet wants it. And I think it's, I think seventeen hours shouldn't be the goal anyway. So I've gone over that. Um, uh, then day seven came and I nearly missed the midnight cutoff. I got in at eleven fifty two or something. And then I just, I knew it was over.

• 34:08Rich Roll?

  But are you thinking, well, this is kind of what happened to James? Cause he was about six in or so when he had his. Was he? Yeah. And he figured it out. So I just have to stay in it?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:19Rich Roll?

  Or or uh, or I'm, you know, wimping out in comparison.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a little bit of that.

• 34:24Rich Roll?

  Renting space in your mind.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Sort of. The way I saw it was there was two analogies in my head is one. You know, I'm in, I'm on the ship. And I've not even left harbor and we've got a hole in the ship. Like, do you cross the Atlantic when you're still in the harbor or you've just left the harbor? Or do you go back and fix the hole? Um, and so in my head, I was like, I know I can do this and not get injured. I know it. I just believe it inherently. That I can own this. And I felt like I was doing myself a disservice. Limping it and and I, because I just knew I could do it and like thrive on it. Not thrive, because you're never gonna thrive, because it's miserable. Um, and also.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  I was just so slow that I probably couldn't have, I'd already gone over the seventeen hour cutoff anyway. So that was.

• 35:09Rich Roll?

  Was only gonna get worse.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  And it was, and it definitely got worse. I, I couldn't walk. I was in a brace for a while. But the, the main thing is I, I have this, I had this oil painting version of how Iron One O Two was gonna look. And, you know, on day five, someone cut a hole in the canvas and I'm like, oh, let me just go home, get a new canvas and start again. And work out what I did wrong. And as I said, I have, I really don't care for failure. And I, I really wanted to do it the way I had it pictured in my mind, which was gonna be difficult. Yes, it was gonna be a slog. Getting up at four twenty nine every morning, um, going all day, like all that stuff I was prepared for.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  I, I didn't want to just limp through and just scrape by because I felt like I was doing myself a disservice. Um, that said though, had it happened on day like eighty, I probably would have sucked it.

• 36:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Sucked it up, then just done with it.

• 36:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  But so early on, I was like, you know what? It just wasn't in the car. And there was a couple of other issues with, with crew. I, I sort of had crew rebellion really early on as well, which I haven't really talked about. Um, you know, Caroline caught one of the crew guys looking for a job on day four, like on his phone, like at home on the laptop, like, oh, what are you doing? I'm looking for jobs. So like, they didn't believe in me.

• 36:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  You know, so, yeah.

• 36:27Rich Roll?

  That's a problem.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  It was a problem.

• 36:29Rich Roll?

  Whereas James has his really good buddies, that those guys were never gonna leave his side.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 36:34Rich Roll?

  Um, I've said many times, and I still believe this to be true, that, that what James accomplished with his fifty in fifty states in fifty days. And then the hundred and one, I think those are two of the most extraordinary, uh, examples of voluntary human endurance. And I feel like they still to this day have not gotten enough attention or credit for what he achieved. And then I see you go out and do it. And listen, I was, you know, with James on the 50th day of the 50 and I showed up at the 100th day. I mean, I saw the whole thing and like, I was right there when he started

• 37:16Rich Roll?

  to fall apart, like literally less than, I don't know, maybe a mile or a mile and a half from finishing that 100th day and the strain that it had put on his body and what he was kind of enduring. And I was mesmerized and, and, and just really impressed with how he completed all of that. And then I'm watching this unfold with you and I couldn't help but think, this guy's making it look easy. And I'm not saying that it was easy or that that was your experience, but there was a, a difference in tone in the way that you were holding all of this. Like, it seemed not effortless, but there was a sense of ease

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  around it. Whereas with James and what he was doing, there was, the word I would use, I guess, would be intensity.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I think, I wonder if it's a British thing. Like, there's definitely the keep calm and carry on attitude in, in Britain where we don't sort of, we just, you've chosen to do this, mate. Like, crack on, don't moan.

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, I guess, well, I'm thinking of Ross Edgley, like, always cracking jokes, no matter what. And there's a, there's a lightness to the whole thing.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then there's also that this tall poppy syndrome is quite big in Britain, where if you get a bit above yourself and, you know, come back, come back down to it, mate. And, you know, all the people that came and joined me, who were just random as, you know, I didn't have anyone as part of my crew who, who came and paced me on the bike or joined me on the run. I was just relying on people.

• 38:47Rich Roll?

  Whoever showed up.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Falling on sex every day at the pool.

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  And it all was, was quite contained. I mean, with James, it just became, it metastasized. And like, every day there was more people until you get to the final day or two. And there's, there's thousands of people there and you're ending up in a high school stadium. And there's like pomp and circumstance. And part of that's fantastic because it was all these people who came from all over the place to celebrate and to also share how much that had impacted them. Like, I was running alongside people who were sharing their story of how they were so inspired and lost this weight and started, you know, like, that's an amazing. Um. Aspect of the social media world in which we live. Whereas with you, it was just like a ragtag group of a couple of people every single day.

• 39:33Rich Roll?

  And it kind of felt like it stayed in that consistent zone. Was that by design or was that just the way that it unfolded?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  So it sort of unfolded that way, but I was also very aware that we couldn't have too many people join me, especially on the bike.

• 39:49Rich Roll?

  You had a very narrow lane in which you were riding.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  It was super busy, public roads, British, you know, roads.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  We had eighty nine junctions on the course, seventy five of which I could have stopped to zero. Like, so it was a lot of stop start, you know, on the days where I was maybe tender. I think the most I ever had excluding the the one oh two day was maybe twenty riders. And even that was too many cars were getting annoyed.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  There was a couple of close calls of people passing trucks, big trucks. When they would take one of the corners would, you know, automatically cut the corner. And then you're trying to look over the hedge to see if anyone's coming. And we were very nervous that if it got too big, something was going to happen. And we had three crashes and one of them, a guy went under a car in the wet. But luckily the car had stopped in time. And the other two in front of me just overlapped wheels, you know, people that weren't fit enough to actually do the the course quickly. Because we were doing a good pace, you know, we were doing a six, six and a half hours really, which, you know, unless you've a good rider. I mean, that's, that's a decent pace. And some people would take their chance and go, oh, yeah, I could do that.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  And then they would just head down, not looking where they're going, hit a pot or overlap a wheel. And then I'd be behind them and I'd have to swerve around to the crashes. And luckily, you know, I was unscathed, but there was certainly an element of nervousness to. Let it get too big. So actually, I think even in the nineties, I took down all the information of how you could join and figured that actually if people wanted to join, it means they were they were super keen and they would go and look at my Strava.

• 41:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're they're sort of passing a test just to get there.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:34Rich Roll?

  And I think at one point, didn't you you rode like a five something and it scared off a bunch of people?

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember this, actually. This was. So I remember James saying, yeah, the first 10 days are going to be horrible, but day 10, it's all going to get better. And on day nine, a couple of riders came, Adam and Ben, and we blitzed it. And I was hanging on for dear life. And yeah, we did like a 558 ride time. And I remember going, yeah, it took me nine days, James, you know, it took you 10. Yes, I'm one day up. And then for the next week, I was ruined. But yeah, I had to sort of say to people like, please come, you know, come and join me on the bike because that's not our normal pace. And in the whole 12,000 miles, whatever I rode, I think I only did about

• 42:22Speaker 01

  200 on my own, you know, the longest time I did it on my own was day two. I did 120K, so 80 by 80 miles of it on my own. And then someone joined. And then I had a few other sections where I did about 30 or 40 miles on my own before someone would just turn up on their lunch break and do a stint. And that was the benefit of doing a lapped course. So it was sort of 10 mile down, a couple of 30 mile loops, and then a 10 mile back each roughly, which meant people could do just the morning bit before work or one lap or two laps or come at the end. And it's sort of encouraged. Whereas if I did a long out and back, he's sort of committed to the whole ride, really. So.

• 42:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What was your communication with James like?

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  While this was unfolding?

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Oh, it was great. So the first attempt, he was like, oh, where are you? I want to come and join you. And it was amazing, you know, like, because he inspired me. So that there is what would James do?

• 43:13Rich Roll?

  Oh, WWJD on your kit.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, because what would he do, man? You know, like, he super inspired me.

• 43:18Rich Roll?

  Well, on day six, when you, you know, when you had your thing, he would have kept going.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. I didn't have this printed on that kit. Um. So, cause the backstory about me attempting the hundred is I, when he did the fifty, I was just blown away. I was like, whoa, this is amazing. I wonder if I could do a hundred because it seemed the next step in my, my CV of, of triathlon. So I'm the only person still today who have, who swam, cycled and run Land's End to John Groats, which is the length of Britain. I also then had the record for the world's longest triathlon, four thousand two hundred miles, which is sort of like a quad decker continuous, but the bike leg was shorter. Uh, and so this was sort of the next thing. And also of the four types

• 44:04Speaker 01

  of world records you can do, which is world's first, furthest or longest, fastest and the most of, it's the one I didn't have a record in.

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You didn't, you didn't have a most of.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  I didn't have a most of. I had a record in the others, but I didn't have a most of. So in 2018, I thought, actually, I'm going to have a crack at a hundred. And I thought of a route. So I was living in the Lake District. I was going to swim in Coniston where I lived. Uh, and then I worked out a bike leg down to sort of Barrow and Furness and Alveston and that. Um, and then you could run up the quieter side of the lake twice and it was exactly a marathon. And then hindsight, it was all, would have been terrible, all of it, but I'd thought of it anyway. And then I got married and kids and COVID and so I just parked the idea. And then when James did the hundred and one, I was like, oh, yeah, it is doable. Right. Let me revisit that. Um, and then that's when I revisited it last year and then obviously it went tits up, but.

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're doing it, you're making it look easy, at least to an outsider looking in. Um, and you're creeping up on the record. You meet the record, you surpass the record and you decide to keep going.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:13Rich Roll?

  James sneakily snuck in the hundred and one and didn't tell anyone, which was great.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:18Rich Roll?

  Uh, which meant you had to do a hundred and two. And then after that, feeling good, you're like, well, do I keep going?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So I.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Part of my process is to go into it believing wholeheartedly it's a done deal. Like if I just turn up, I'm gonna do the hundred and two, like that's it. And I have to believe that.

• 45:41Rich Roll?

  The terrier.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and I do things in I put things in place to to make myself believe it. So for example, I printed numbers up to a hundred and twenty three. So I printed caps and and race numbers up to a hundred and twenty three because in my head I was manifesting this concept that not only am I gonna beat it, I'm gonna go way past it. And it's just part of my process to go, well, it's a done deal. I just have to turn up and do it. Um, and so I knew I was always gonna go longer. I knew I was always gonna do a hundred and three. Cause I wanted to see what it was like doing it, not having to do it. Like I just wanted to see would my body just go, whoa, what are you doing? I'm giving up and I don't make the cut off. Or would I thrive? Would I be like, oh, the pressure's off. Am I gonna enjoy this?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Uh, I had spoken to Caroline a week before and I was like, I feel like I can go on. Like I genuinely, I really do. It's horrible and it's hard, but like I feel like if I just turn up, I could, I could have rolled this out. I really think I could. And just, I remember the look on her face, like the words that came out of her mouth were very supportive, but the look at her face was like, don't do this to me, man. Like I'm solo parenting here.

• 46:47Rich Roll?

  Or like.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they told me this was the guy that I was getting married to.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And and we sort of had a conversation. She's like, right, well, if you need to go more, you you're never gonna have another shot at this. Just go more. So.

• 47:00Rich Roll?

  And for context, your wife is self-employed.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Self-employed.

• 47:04Rich Roll?

  And you have like a four year old and like a.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Under two year old.

• 47:08Rich Roll?

  Two year old. Yeah, just under two.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  So life was hard. Yeah.

• 47:11Rich Roll?

  And she's doing it all.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  She's amazing. Yeah, she was amazing. And she was coming running a marathon every Sunday with me as well. First time she'd run a marathon since having kids. So yeah, she's, I won the wife lottery definitely. And uh. So then I'm thinking, right, well, I can carry on. But then there's other things to consider like, I'd be moving Christmas Day, you know, and like the crew, the riders who joined me, everyone's like so focused on one oh two. And that's what I've told everyone. And if all of a sudden you go, oh, actually, no, that's not the end. The end's like two weeks later. Everyone's like so invested in this day. It'd be like moving Christmas Day. And I was like, well, I can't do that. But I tell you what, I don't want to quit either. The Terry and me doesn't want to be the one that gives up. So I definitely will do a hundred and three, and then I'm gonna let the internet decide a hundred and four. So I did a hundred and three, and actually it was such a good day.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  I felt really good. The pressure was off. Um, my times were a bit slower, but I sort of didn't, didn't mind. Um. And then I thought, right, let the internet. So I went on Instagram and did a poll. And then obviously seventy one percent of the internet hates me. Yeah. And they said, carry on, of course. And because I thought I'd maybe just got getting the internet to decide. But then after it was seventy one percent.

• 48:18Rich Roll?

  Well, they're always gonna tell you to keep going.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, I sort of didn't really think about that. And I thought, right, well, from now on, I'm just gonna flip a coin. Because then if the coin says stop, it's not me telling myself to stop. It's me just the coin says stop. So that's good. So for to do day a hundred and five, I flipped a coin and the coin said, carry on. Uh, and then on a hundred and five, I flipped it again and I would have done a hundred and six, but the coin said stop. And um. Yeah, that was emotional, actually. Yeah, I remember flipping that coin.

• 48:48Rich Roll?

  Was it harder to not do it that day?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I the hard, the way I can think about it is imagine having a job that no one else in the world has. And no one else gets to have, and I have it. And it's blimmin hard, and it's difficult, but it's so rewarding. I'm getting goosebumps, actually, goosebumps thinking about it. It's so rewarding and the community that's been created around it is

• 49:15Speaker 01

  sorry, that's got me there.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just, would you give it up? Yeah. Wow.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just didn't want to give it up.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Because everyone that came and joined me, like, I think that's the thing. You know, all these people that took time off work and everything. Phew, didn't think this would happen. Um, you know, it was so amazing. And yeah, I just, I didn't want to let go of it. Yeah, so, um.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  And that's why, yeah, just I knew as soon as I gave up, gave up, I just would be getting, you know, I wouldn't be doing something that no one else in the world is is doing right now or gets to do. And yeah, that was, um. Yeah, that was, uh, that was hard, but also it was time to give up because I remember Monty, my eldest, going, Daddy, Daddy, is your challenge finished? Can you play with me now? And oh, that just cut to me, you know, so, um. Whoa, excuse me.

• 50:21Rich Roll?

  No, it's great. I mean, I think there's, there's two, two competing things here. One is this sense of specialness and this honor of carrying this mantle forward, like you were very present and aware of the fact that this is a special set of circumstances. And for whatever reason, you're in this position, you've been chosen, or you chose yourself to, to do this thing. And there's, there's a responsibility to show up for that. But I think if I had to guess, what provoked you emotionally is the fact that it was meaningful for other people.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 50:59Rich Roll?

  And that it cultivated community. And in that, I, I hear and see somebody who understands the power of, of what these challenges can represent. In terms of it being about more than yourself.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:15Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:16Rich Roll?

  And that's the true like vein of energy to tap into. Like if you want to keep going, right? That's the energy fuel, the source that will always give more and more and more. Because it's a benefit to something that's so much broader than you and your goal and like the terrier.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, absolutely. And it took me ages to work out why these guys were waking up at like five in the morning and coming and riding with me. And but then slowly, you're right, I heard about each one had their own little challenge. One guy wants to cycle 12,500 miles this year. You know, Clive wanted to get white shoes and you only get to get white shoes. If you do a hundred miles averaging 20 mile an hour, then you can buy your white cycling shoes. And he did that with me and and and everyone, some, you know, one guy lost two stone, which is, what was that? Forty pounds, you know, coming to cycle with me every day. James, he called him because he came almost every single day, either on the bike or the run. Cause he did shift that allowed it at work. And yeah, it was just, it blew me away that camaraderie.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  And we still have a WhatsApp group now of everyone. And one of the regulars actually did a 24 hour bike ride on my course just this last weekend. So I went and I did a shift from 1:30 in the morning till 8am as he finished that. And everyone's got another one of the guys did 300 miles on Swift as well. So it was, yeah, it was really, really amazing. And and and I just didn't want to give that up because I was feeling okay. Don't get me wrong, it was tiring getting up every day, doing those 14 hours a day, not seeing my kids, coming home. And Caroline, even though she was super supportive, it's hard solo parenting, you know? Shout out to all the solo parents there in the world. It's really tough and.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  But I knew I could just turn up and and do it because like this is what I'm good at. And I I like being good at it and I like the reward from it. And the money coming in for charity was great and like just everything about this unique experience that no one else in the world could ever do. I just, it was hard to to let that go, really.

• 53:25Rich Roll?

  I'm sure you get asked a lot, how many do you think you could have done? And I did hear you say

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:33Rich Roll?

  on another podcast that you felt like you could do 200.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could have. And on the route I had in this country, 200 is probably

• 53:45Speaker 01

  probably doable with the weather. I think once you start, so I started in April and that was the earliest I could start. It was snowing like two weeks before and the weather was terrible in April. It just, the wind was horrible, like, oh, it was the mud, the conditions, you know, you've, you've going across loads of farmer's tracks with like muck and cow shit.

• 54:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, why don't you just go to like Ibiza or something like that where the weather's great?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Well, I know.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  The most, the flattest, most temperate climate, like, I don't know, Phoenix or like, you know, Dubai or something.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  No, there was thought of doing it in America. So I've cycled as part of my round the world bike ride. I did Miami up to Missouri, down to Arkansas, Texas, up Kansas, down Oklahoma.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Where did I finish then? Then New Mexico, Arizona to Phoenix. And then stopped at Phoenix because I was, I got run over in Arkansas. So I was a bit delayed on my flights. And then I've also done, I did the Route 66 Bike Race in 2016. And I love cycling in America. And, and I think if you were going to do longer in America and you also wanted to play the tailwind game, you could find a town which just had a spider web of roads, do the swim in there, do the tailwind game, run at the end, go back each night. And I think that would be sustainable to do this more and more. And, and actually, because there's two things that people will do now. Someone will possibly do 106 solo with no outriders.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Or or they'll go longer, much longer, so two hundred or maybe a year. Cause in America, you if you wanted to do a year, you have to get very lucky with a lot of things like injury and illness and and that sort of thing, but you could do two locations. So one in the south in the winter, one in the north in the summer.

• 55:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  It's doable. It's doable. And in fact, a part of me is like, damn it.

• 55:36Rich Roll?

  This is the monkey.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  I'm the guy to do it. Like, I'm definitely the guy to do it, but it's just the wrong time in my life. It just wouldn't be fair. But if no one's done it like in ten years time, I'll revisit it. But no, I think I think you could. I think once you get to a stage. And, you know, if you look at all the people who do deckers and double deckers, you know, the real, the really good people are doing ten hours. You know, so if you look at, so I've done a hundred and five, James done a hundred and one. There's a Latvian guy who's done sixty, and he was doing ten hours, eleven hours. I don't know why he stopped at sixty. Like, if you go online, you can see his data. Then there's a French guy who's done forty one. There's a bunch of Italians who've done thirty, and then all the double decker crowd.

• 56:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think that's an interesting

• 56:24Rich Roll?

  thing to explore from a scientific perspective because it it it sort of puts to the lie the idea that the people who are good at this are just the real slow Forrest Gumpy plotters, you know, the the fourteen, fifteen, you know, minute mile guys. But if you're really fast and you're incredibly fit and efficient, you're actually in a better position because you're you're gonna get like hour hours extra every single day. And the compounding interest of that is.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  I remember when you did, when you did your five around Hawaii, remember the sec, the before the last one, you said you had eleven hours sleep or something.

• 57:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  You felt amazing, didn't you?

• 57:01Rich Roll?

  We got a little day off and then, I mean, I felt better on that day than I did on the first day.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you've had the sleep and the recovery.

• 57:07Rich Roll?

  With the flights and the, we were, I mean, we didn't know, it was like, we were getting, I got like no sleep at all. So you, it felt like we were just pulling all nighters and doing this stuff.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  And so that's my point. When you don't have the sleep and you don't have the recovery, you're having a rough time. Whereas you get, if you say, as you're faster, you get more sleep and recovery, you're on the front of the wave. Let's say slower people choose a continuous decker or double decker because the cutoffs are a bit more lenient and you can sleep whenever you want. Whereas if you're really slow and you try a decker. You know, you've got to be at the swim at six AM. You might, you know, you might only get in at three AM.

• 57:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Once you start and then you've only got three hours sleep and then

• 57:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Eventually you may just not even make the swim. So you're right, that you want to get to a point where you can do a for me with, because I had forty minutes in a car every day. I had ten minutes to the pool and thirty minutes back home from the run.

• 57:56Rich Roll?

  I Oh, there's lots of room for improvement there.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, except I live in the hills. So I had to go down to the flat bits. Um, but if you, if you, if you lived right near the pool and you finished your run near the pool, I think fifteen hours is your bare minimum

• 58:08Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  each day. For me, it was fourteen hours, fourteen and a half, but call it fourteen. So as long as I could do fourteen hours in zone one, then it was, it was sustainable. And I didn't crash on the bike and, and didn't do anything stupid and manage all the little niggles. So, you know, of those ten, ten pillars of endurance, muscle management is one of them. And, and I'm very good at that, you know, this, the smallest thing that's happening, you know, I've got a grain of sand in between my toes. I take my shoe off straight away.

• 58:38Rich Roll?

  Immediately, rather than just, oh, it'll be fine.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I'm really good at that. And, and if I feel like a little thing in my hip, I'm like, right, go back into my memory. Has this happened before? Yes, right. What did I do that time? Right, tennis ball here, stretch this, do that, tape that. If it's not happened before, right, physio, what's going on? And I had a couple of new ones where I was like, well, what's going on here? So we, we did some stretching and physio and that sort of fixed it. But I get on it super early. I don't let it get to a point anywhere near tendonitis, anywhere near stress fracture. You know, I try and nip it in the bud. Um, I'm always looking at my technique in my head, like where am I landing on the run? How's, am I stomping on the pedals on the bike? What am I doing with my shoulders on the bike, you know, on the hoods, try and vary between the hoods, the drops and the tri bars.

• 59:26Rich Roll?

  But more important than any of that is what's going on in between your ears, right? And you have some pretty interesting um, mindset techniques and, and tools.

• 59:39Rich Roll?

  As you mentioned earlier, James famously says it's 100% mental and 100% physical. On the mental side of things, this notion of disabusing yourself of any plan B, I think is really powerful. So talk a little bit about that.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  So when I go into something, A, I mentioned earlier, I go in wholeheartedly believing and I really do believe it's a done deal. I just have to turn up.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  And then it puts me in a mindset of like, right, well, I know I can do it. I'm low, I'm gonna do it.

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  Where does that certainty come from?

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  I don't know. I've just always been like that to the point of, and that's why I fail. Like my first attempt at running the length of Britain got injured, failed. My first attempt at my across Europe cycle record got injured, failed. First attempt at this got injured as well. And that's, yeah. And it's probably because I have this sort of ignorant side to me, I go in probably a little unprepared.

• 1:00:34Rich Roll?

  You go in completely half-cocked from the get-go. I mean, you're a guy, I want to get into your back, let's just take a little diversion to talk about your backstory a little bit. You are born and spend your early years in Zimbabwe.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  You then moved to South Africa. Your dad is a big game conservationist.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Rhino and elephant conservationist, yeah.

• 1:00:57Rich Roll?

  So you grew up as a little kid with like elephants running around and stuff.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we, my mom used to get annoyed because every day she'd wake up and the elephant had drunk all the water out my paddling pool in the garden. For years, for like weeks, she thought it had a hole and she's like, where's this blimmin' hole? And then got up early and there was an elephant.

• 1:01:13Rich Roll?

  So, I mean, that's a pretty unique childhood that connected you with the natural world in a way that I imagine is probably more meaningful than even you consciously know.

• 1:01:27Rich Roll?

  Then South Africa, then you end up in the UK. And I get the sense that you're a bit of a rolling stone. You don't really know what you want to do or who you want to be. But you seem kind of content to just roll with whatever with, you know, less than a dollar in your pocket and just figure it out as you go.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. I mean, even coming to the UK, I remember the reason I came. I'd done a year at photography college and then they asked me to be an assistant lecturer for the following year, just helping out in the darkroom and various things, helping out the, because it was only a one-year course. And then I finished that year and all my South African mates were coming back after their two year visa ran out going, ah, Britain was amazing. I loved it. We got to travel here, here, here and here. And I'm at the bottom of Africa going, whoa, that sounds cool. I can't do any of that from here. Uh, I got an Irish passport. It's just like a free train ticket. Um, let's just go. I didn't need a visa or anything. And I think three weeks later I landed. I pretty much sold everything. I managed to scrounge around to get a hundred pounds uh, back in two thousand and two, which wouldn't have lasted long even back then. I'd found

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  out about a job in a salad making factory in Cambridgeshire, which is the one when you buy salads in a bag, you know, which you shouldn't do. But, you know, it was that factory where you cut the lettuces and put them in the conveyor belt and it all gets fixed. And then I started working in a photo lab, did that for six years, cut those days down as the photography grew. And in the early days, the photography was great. I photographed Prince William, a lot of the sports stars, had jobs in India and Morocco. I worked on the Harry Potter films and the stills department, helping out the main stills photographer, Murray Close. Um, so it was all going well. And because the dream was to use the camera as a passport to travel the world. So I was going to work for National Geographic.

• 1:03:14Rich Roll?

  It was the adventure that was calling. It wasn't the art of photography. Not that that wasn't important, but the real motivator was you had this drive and desire to see the world.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And the camera was going to be that unlocking key for all that. I remember as a kid, taking all the pages out the National Geographic magazine and putting them all around my bedroom. And, and then I got to London and then the reality of paying rent and buying food. And I landed up living in a room not much bigger than this with seven of us. There was a bunk bed and I was on the bottom bunk, a double bed in this corner and then three people on the floor. It was so small, the one guy's legs were out the corridor. Like, it was tiny. We were just like, it was almost squatting, but the landlord knew we were there and we were paying him rent. And he was like, well, I can't kick him out. So I was charging him like thirty quid a week, whatever it was. And, um, but I just did it. I lived out of a suitcase for a couple of years, just couch. I moved, I moved twelve times my first year

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  in London, you know, just trying to get more photography jobs. And then I remember there was a point where I was going to go down from, so I was working five days a week. And then just thought, well, I might as well work six days a week, earn a bit of extra cash and then I can buy more kits. I was trying to save up for more cameras. I just got to a point where I got some new kit and was cutting my days down, I think from yeah, back to five. And then my flat in London got broken into and everything got stolen, absolutely everything.

• 1:04:35Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  And I was like, ah, so I went back to my boss at the photo lab. I was like, hey, Simon, can I go back to six days a week, please? And then it took me another year of working to buy more kit and, you know, so I I was working in that lab for six years, cutting my days down. But then on the side of that, you know, I was getting some creative jobs, but they really were terribly paid. Um, but they were creative, but the twenty two year old in me was like, well, I need to earn more, of course, because I was chasing the money. And I found out that photographing um school portraits at nursery school level just paid quite well. You know, you sell the pictures to the parents and they all buy the pictures and

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  and I did that. I did one school and I was like, wow, that was quite a good earner. And then I was like, well, let's do this. And I I had a business partner, James, and him and I just were like, right, let's go all into this. Thinking if we earned enough money from the schools and we got photographers and to shoot them and people in the office, we would have more time, but actually we had less time.

• 1:05:30Rich Roll?

  No, then you're just building the business and.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  So then we eventually had an office. We had seven staff. We had like four photographers, two people doing Photoshop, um, and one salesperson getting us. And we were, we we did nurseries up in the Midlands, around Birmingham, all around London and the Channel Islands where James was from. And uh, yeah, got to the point where photographing ten thousand kids a year and and that was the goal, more just a number like it's ten thousand this year. It needs to be twelve thousand next year. And it just was, we knew each kid was worth X amount of money per child photographed. And yeah, eventually I turned.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  This is a far cry from the National Geographic.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Well, exactly, yeah. And then, you know, there's the part of me that goes, and it's just like, just suck it up, just deal with it. It's rubbish, but you're putting food on the table, mate, you know, well done. Um, get on with it. And then I turned thirty and I was just miserable. So I went to James. I said, mate. I'm out, like I'm out, like can you buy my shares like I walk, can I walk away? And then he was like, yeah, sure. And going through looking, doing 10 years of accounts. And I'm thinking, ka-ching, you know, a little bit here, not a lot, but enough to sort me out a year or something. And he said, I'll give you a quid, mate. That's take it or leave it. I was like, yeah, fine.

• 1:06:40Rich Roll?

  You built this, I mean, that's a pretty robust, stable, big business.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:45Rich Roll?

  And you're a partner with one other guy.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:49Rich Roll?

  And you walk away with a dollar?

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I bought, I spent three quid on a frame, sorry, four quid on the frame to frame the pound. So you gave me a Jersey pound note. It's the only part of the UK they still have pound notes. Um, I've got it in my office at home now, so I've spent four quid on the frame for this one pound that I gave. Yeah. So I was minus three pounds from table. But you know, for me, it was.

• 1:07:09Rich Roll?

  But to reclaim your life.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  And it was, you know what it was? It was me going, right, this is my symbolic gesture of A, keeping my friendship. Cause James and I are best mates. He was best man at my wedding years later even. So it didn't ruin that. And I'd known him for 20 years.

• 1:07:24Rich Roll?

  Such a good friend though. He couldn't, he couldn't give you an equitable. Is this a guy, is he a good friend?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, part of it, he, he sort of thought I was dropping him in a little bit. Cause I was mostly the photographer, the creative, and he was the business guy. And if I left, he would all of a sudden was like, well, what about, I don't know how to do this. Um, so there was a part, and we had some loans that needed repaying. And he also sort of didn't like it either. So he was going to shut the thing down anyway. Um, but then the other part was me going like, I'm not doing anything purely for my financial gain ever again. Like, and it was symbolic, like I'll take this pound and this is it. I'm going to moan about it and talk about it on podcasts forever. Um, but then, so then I had this, this sort of like, right, what am I going to do? I wanted to go traveling, but didn't have any money to go traveling.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  And also like the traveling wouldn't have scratched the, the terrier, which I hadn't quite worked out this concept yet. But I thought I just needed to do something. And then I thought, well, what if I break some sort of record that has an element of travel to it? Maybe I'll get a sponsor and they'll pay for it.

• 1:08:29Rich Roll?

  Right, this idea of seeing other people who were traveling the world on someone else's dime. And, and, and that being draped with this world record attempt. And you're like, well, why don't I go after a world record? Get somebody else to pay for it.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Rowing the Atlantic, climbing Everest, they all had like logos of companies.

• 1:08:48Rich Roll?

  Just like you do, you have a lot of logos on your shirt right now.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  And that, because all sport relies on sponsorship from every level, right?

• 1:08:54Rich Roll?

  But you had, you had done nothing. You were in no position to ask anybody for money or, or to back you in any kind of feat.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  I had a site called.

• 1:09:06Rich Roll?

  Given a resume that had zero experience on it.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  No, I know. I got, I, uh.

• 1:09:12Rich Roll?

  Like, nothing?

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Nothing, no. But I got lucky. I, um, I found a company that supported a charity. And I went in with this sort of idea that, well, what if you support my? So the thing I thought of was the round the world record.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  Right, riding your bike all the way around the world. Was that like a low hanging fruit record in terms of time?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Sort of. Um, it was still, you had to do a hundred and sixty seven miles a day. So it's, it's still hard, but the current guy who's got the record did two hundred and forty miles a day. Fully supported, Mark Beaumont. Um, so Alan Bates had the record, uh, and Vin Cox. So Vin Cox had the record, but only for a few days because him and Alan Bay were actually going together. And then Alan Bay took his record, but Vin Cox thought of this concept of like, well, whoever wants to go for the next record. Why don't you all start at the same time? And he made it a race called the Global Bike Race, started on the. Uh, twelfth February two thousand and uh twelve.

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  And the idea was start at Greenwich, come back in time for the Olympics in London. It was an awesome idea. So I was like, right, I'm gonna enter that. So entered that. Then went to this company who I knew supported a charity in Africa. I said, well, if you support me, I'll raise money for you for that charity. And who knows, I might raise more um for the charity. And and yeah, they would, they just liked it. Uh, they liked the idea, the oh, the CEO loved cycling.

• 1:10:38Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  And that's how I got funding. I was like, I couldn't believe, I mean, it's.

• 1:10:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  It was so rare for just a novice to sort of get a funding for such a big trip. And I, I'm eternally grateful.

• 1:10:48Rich Roll?

  But you did, did you even have a bike?

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  No, well, it's so, I had a bike, so I had cycled Lands End to John O'Groats.

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. You did it in like twenty five days, like, yeah, like a very casual.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  It was, I remember if I did sixty K or something, or, you know, thirty or forty miles, it's like, whoa, I did a big day today. So I had no, I had the adventurous spirit, I guess, but I had no physical ability. You know, I remember my first bike ride. So once I'd sort of got an email from the company saying, right, I think we're in. Um, I thought, right, well, I'm gonna get my bike out of the shed. Which A, I then suddenly realized I'd done Lands End John O'Groats on a sixty two frame and I'm a fifty two. So I was, I was like this.

• 1:11:26Rich Roll?

  That's a massive frame.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Bike. Um, I try, I tried to cycle London to Brighton, which is sixty miles. And I got to Crawley, got a puncture and didn't know how to fix it, had to get the train back home.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Um, and um, yeah, so I was really at a base, but I had the fire. I had the fire, I had something for me to chase. And all of a sudden, I knew that if I just put in the hours, I could get to a level. Cause I'd looked at Mark Beaumont and then Cox and Alan Bates and James Bothorp and Julian Saraya, all these other people had done the round the world thing. And I'm like, they were just normal people with jobs and things. Um, none of them were professional athletes. I thought, well, if they can do it, I'm surely I can. And I'm just gonna have a crack and then train forty hours a week for six months. Yeah.

• 1:12:11Rich Roll?

  How did you ramp up to forty without getting injured?

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  So twenty of that was on Saturday. I'd get up at four, four AM, five AM, cycle through to midnight. Um, and yeah, just slow base, base zone one, zone two, cranking out. I was thirty.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  So yeah, twenty twelve, yeah, thirty. So I was still young enough to not pick up all the niggles that I'm picking up now. And yeah, just worked really hard. And eventually I got to a point where doing something like two hundred miles daily, as long as it's not too hilly, wasn't really sort of unthinkable.

• 1:12:47Rich Roll?

  So you set about this attempt to cycle all around the world and misfortune visits you in the United States.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I was doing really well. I'd done so from, so the rules are you got to do eighteen thousand miles and you got to pass two antipodes. And because there's so much ocean in the southern hemisphere, you've got Wellington and Madrid or a place in Malaysia and a place in Ecuador. And those are the two I chose. So I, and you can fly in between bits as long as you make up the miles and don't go backwards on yourself. So I went down, flew to Spain. So I did a bit in London, but it really started in Spain, went down into Morocco because I wanted to do a bit of all the continents except Antarctica. And then flew to Santiago, did Santiago to Lima through the Atacama. Again, doing hundred and seventy, hundred and eighty miles a day, flew to Miami and did Miami all the way up

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  into Missouri. And then it started getting a bit cold, so I started turning back down. And then when I was in Arkansas, yeah, unfortunately, someone just ran me over.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  They were speeding, they admitted speeding and they were on their phone, I believe. And I actually don't remember anything. I went to bed the night before and woke up on the side of the road. And I remember going, how's my bike? And they said, yeah, it's pretty total, man. I was like, what? Just lie to me, you know? Tell me it's okay because without the bike, you can't carry on. It was actually one of the rules. You had to do it on the same bike for some reason.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  So the record was off and I was going to come home.

• 1:14:13Rich Roll?

  Were you in the lead in this adventure? You're not racing side by side with people.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  No, a guy called Mike Hall, rest in peace, he unfortunately got killed, sadly got killed in a, in a bike race in Australia years later. And he was one of the best in the world. And it took, took the wind out of my sails for ultra cycling for a while, actually. He was in that race as well. And he would have. I would have beaten the record, but he would have beaten me. Yeah, he was, he was amazing. Like, he was just so inspiring. Again, just a Yorkshireman with a belly and, but it was just a machine on the bike. He, he won, I don't know if he still has the Tour Divide record, but he, he, he won the Tour Divide a couple of times. He did, he'd won the Transcont uh across, the Trans Am, sorry. He set up the transcontinental race now. It's just been, um, yeah, really amazing.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  So he probably would have beaten me, even though I think we were neck and neck. His route was slightly quicker because he went east and I went west. Um.

• 1:15:09Rich Roll?

  But you get hit by this car.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Rich Roll?

  And it's not a small thing, like you fracture your back, like you're in bad shape.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, uh, you know, I, I, I would say to the guy who ran me over, like, it wasn't his fault. Like, I was on a road you should never cycle on, but I'm just following a line on a map. You know, he's, he's a baker, I believe. He's done this road every day of his life. He's probably never seen a cyclist at five A M. And then there's this idiot, you know, and, and it was raining and there was some traffic lights ahead. So I think my rear red light and the red light reflection off the water in the road. So, yeah, no, no hard feelings was just one of those unlucky things. But, yeah. I just woke up with a compression fracture on T eleven, chipped tooth, concussion, um. Legaments like knee and right foot, because they stayed clipped in, uh, sorry, yeah, right.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  Because that's, I must have swerved at the last minute because I landed on the grass. Um, and he hit me in one of your big pickup trucks, you know, the ones you, you don't get here in Europe. Uh, I went straight up, hit the windscreen. My helmet did what a helmet's meant to do and, and compressed and took, took the pressure. My rear wheel, like, it just was trashed. The frame was bent. Um. And it was, it was game over really for the record, even though I thought I could carry on. The doctors were like, nah, it's not happening. And it turns out that the doctor on duty, Martin Carey, was Welsh. And he's like, right, don't stay in the hospital, come to my house. And they, the, the, the Cares, Martin and Missy, I just, oh, I owe them everything. They just looked after me.

• 1:16:38Rich Roll?

  So you're in Arkansas.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:40Rich Roll?

  And you go to the hospital.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  And it's a Welshman.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, what a bit of childhood. Yeah, so I mean, I owe them everything. And they took me home and they bought me a new bike. They phoned the bike shop here in the U K and said, remember, Sean, can you send us a new bike, please? We'll pay for it. Yeah, they were amazing. So. I was, of course, this is so before they bought me a bike, I was going to come home. Um, and then I remember going through my kit and I came across this little Olympic torch at some kids at a school. And yeah, the Olympic Village in Greenwich made me. And the idea was we're going to take this torch around the world, back to London for the Olympics. And I'm looking at it going, oh, man, these kids are going to be so disappointed. Um, that I don't take their torch around the world. And then all of a sudden, the terrier had something to chase again. And I was like, right, I'm carrying on. But then I sort of had this.

• 1:17:25Rich Roll?

  Not for the record.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Not for the record, to raise money for charity.

• 1:17:28Rich Roll?

  Experience.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Experience, get this torch back to the kids. I had to convince my parents and I was like, this is going to be a hard sell, you know, like, and then I thought, right, I've got it. So I remember phoning them and saying, hey, mom and dad. You know, statistically, no one gets run over twice. Like, I've had my turn. I'm carrying on. See you, bye. Which in my head still makes sense, but um, it was the only way I could justify carrying on in my head and feeling like, right. Well, I'm not going to get run over again and I've got this torch to get back to the kids. So I did slightly less mileage. Uh, I think I was 2,000 miles short of the 18,000 in the end. Um, and a slightly different route in Australia. But yeah, I got back to the Olympics, sort of.

• 1:18:08Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  I can't remember.

• 1:18:09Rich Roll?

  Completed that.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Completed that.

• 1:18:10Rich Roll?

  Completed that.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:11Rich Roll?

  So this is a very circuitous uh route that we've taken for me to arrive at the original point that I wanted to make, which was. Twofold. On the one hand, back to this mindset thing around no plan B, the terrier. You latch on to something, it's going to happen no matter what. So much so that you sell your business for a dollar. You talk a sponsor into underwriting this adventure uh that you have no experience in whatsoever. And despite being hit by a car and fracturing your back, you still find a way to complete this thing, which I think is unbelievable. But beneath that is this.

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  Minimalist sensibility, like a dollar, I'll sleep in a, I'll sleep in a room with seven people. You're, you've designed your life and it seems like even though you're married and you have kids now, you keep your life lean enough such that adventure always remains within your grasp, right? Like it's all about having a baseline so that you can go and do all of these amazing things. Like there seems to be a lot of intentionality behind that construction.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. I tried to lead as simple a life as possible. I lived on a boat for three years on a canal in, up near Worcester. I bought an old World War II gunboat that, that Harland and Wolf made, and they also made the Titanic. So that was a concern, but it was, it was this beautiful wooden, wooden hull and a lovely arch and it was used to rescue Spitfires in the war. And when I took the front paint work off, it still had the roundel from the RAF roundel. It had the engraving with the, the RAF in the back of the boat and, and the stern, I should say. And, and I love boat life. It was super simple. You didn't buy that bigger telly because you couldn't. You didn't buy another sofa because you didn't fancy the current one because I had a built in one.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  And yeah, it was just, I didn't have a garage to do my, all my, my hobbies and that. And that's probably the biggest reason I moved off, off the boat. And also it actually randomly, sort of this, how I met Caroline was just a whole series of circumstances that if one of them had not happened, I would never have met the love of my life. And one was getting injured on Route 66. I then was going home to the boat and it was really flat. I was like, damn it, I need hills in my life. So I literally the next week moved to the Lake District just for six months to finish writing one of my books and to do some hill training. And a friend of mine was going to come and climb Scarfell Pike, the highest mountain in England. And she bailed on me like last minute, which means I had the weekend free.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  So I went to the Kendall, Kendall Mountain Festival and met my wife. And if any of those hadn't happened, I would never met Caroline. And then once I'd met Caroline, I sort of knew that moving back onto the boat was never going to happen. So then I tried to keep it, thought I could maybe get it up to the lakes, but it was, it was 60 foot. It was long. So I eventually sold it, which was a shame. But yeah, going back to your point, I do try and. Live a simple life as possible without too much distraction around what I want to do in life and what, you know, gets me going. But it is hard when you have kids and family and responsibilities.

• 1:21:29Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  All these sort of things.

• 1:21:30Rich Roll?

  There's, there's compromises because you have competing values.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:21:34Rich Roll?

  Um, but you have on your website, in addition to a whole section with all your failures, um, you also have a section on dreams.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Rich Roll?

  And one of the dreams that, that you have publicly announced is to live on a deserted island, basically. So you, you have this Forrest Gump sensibility, the beard, Forrest never stops running. Um, but here you are, like, channeling another Tom Hanks character.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, Cast Away.

• 1:22:00Rich Roll?

  You also want to be Cast Away? Like, I feel like, yeah, you have the terrier and you have the monkey, but you also have Tom Hanks as like a talisman.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  I actually have a tennis ball called Wilson.

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do?

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  For massaging.

• 1:22:11Rich Roll?

  I feel like you need to meet this guy. There's some kind of energy, you know, exchange here. Um, but this idea of living on a, on a deserted island, um, satisfies that, that part in you that, that just wants to be connected to the earth and, and free or liberated of the trappings of the material world.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Rich Roll?

  Which, which I think is, is operating as part of this desire for adventure and exploration, right? It's like, how can I live in a more natural, primal way where I'm experiencing the world?

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Rich Roll?

  In the most tactile way possible.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I mean, Caroline and I talk about it all the time, you know. Our oldest is, our oldest is just starting school in September and it's, we do, you know, we conflicting with like, should we just take a year off and go and find an island and live on it?

• 1:22:58Rich Roll?

  Or just, I could see you on a sailboat with your family sailing around the world and raising your children like wild animals or, what's that Diego Mortensen movie where he's got them in a school bus?

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That's a great film. And, um.

• 1:23:11Rich Roll?

  Until it's not, until it goes nutty. But anyway, go ahead.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's true. We've talked about the boat thing. I, I just get terribly seasick. Um, cause I, I have the land.

• 1:23:20Rich Roll?

  You have a sailing record?

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  I have the sailing record for Lands' End, John Groats as well. But I was sort of the T boy, like my mate, uh, two of my mates, full sharp, Alex Alley, proper sailors, you know, fast boats and everything. And, um, yeah, I was just there to help out and, but yeah, we did an 84 hours. I think we still have that record. I'm not sure. But yeah, I was seasick for 50 of it, you know? Um, yeah, that was terrible. I think since Swimming Britain, I've got. Tinnitus as well and I I was getting into paragliding at one point and I've had to bin that off because I just get really bad motion sickness. So the boat thing is just, I know that feeling of being seasick for days and weeks and um but no, you're right, I would it it's it's probably going to be the thing that I regret not having a crack

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  at at one point and Caroline's the same and but then we've got responsibilities as parents like is it is it a good idea to take a kid out of school and make them leave the life you want to leave?

• 1:24:14Rich Roll?

  You can play that game all day long like you don't know. You have to live your life according to your values and raise your children in the manner in which you feel is is is in their best interest. But I think whether or not however that plays out, nonetheless, you're this person who who who has been to many places and connected. You didn't just, you know, drive around in a tour bus and fly to places like you've been boots on the ground, traveling at a very slow speed through amazing swathes of planet Earth. And I think one of the one of the beautiful things is that you can come back and tell the rest of us what you discovered, right? So of all the places you've been, of all the people

• 1:24:58Rich Roll?

  that you've connected with and the things that you've seen, like, what are we not appreciating or understanding? Or what what can we learn from from what you've experienced that could maybe shift something in how we perceive our own lives?

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  One thing that I whenever I travel, I'm probably not a great person to ask this question to because I'm mostly heads down, not talking to anyone and living out of service stations. But when I do meet people and chat to people or or chat to people afterwards, who maybe I cycled across Russia and they saw me and then, you know, messaged me on on Facebook, is that we're all pretty much the same all over the world. We all just want to get up and do a job and have holidays and all these sort of things. But also I've realised that how important it is to have some sort of physical goal in your life, like anywhere in the world, I think anyone should just have something to work towards that has a physical element to it. I think we're all way better for it if we

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  do that. And I know if I don't have some physical goal, that's difficult. I'm grumpy. And and all the people I meet all the way around the world, they're all exactly the same. We're all the same. We're all humans on this planet, leaving. Yeah, we have slightly different circumstances and and, you know, some people live in easier countries than others, of course. But inherently, I think, you know, we're all pretty much the same and we should treat each other all the same and we should all have a physical goal.

• 1:26:25Rich Roll?

  Right. Empathy, empathy and connection. But as for the physical goal piece, articulate why you think that's so important. Explain that to the person who's working two jobs, who's never done anything physical, but their life is hard enough as it is. Why do they need to build something like this into their life?

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Because it's, you know, for me, it's the same as just breathing oxygen. Like, I think you have to do it. You know, you have to just do it. Because I think you're also just missing out on life. Because there's a whole aspect of life that you're not experiencing by not engaging in something that that has a challenging element to it on a physical side, you know, like when you changed your diet, you've untapped this whole new world, right? That you just didn't know existed. And I think the same thing is is there for having a physical challenge. And it doesn't have to be going and doing an Ironman. It

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  can be literally just trying to do a 5K. My my wife's mum has been doing couch to 5K all year. She's still doing it. And it's great. You know, she's just got this thing. She's got this drive now. She gets up and yeah, it's hard. But she's getting there slowly.

• 1:27:40Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  I would also say is don't be in a rush for it. Because I think that's also and I am, I definitely am.

• 1:27:47Rich Roll?

  Take your own medicine on that one.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  You know, have the goal, but, you know, be prepared to do the steps to get there and don't get disheartened when you're not achieving what you think you would achieve. Because you're just gonna burn out or get injured or, you know, if you push it too hard and and do stuff for the fun of it, you know, I'm into mushroom foraging, so I I'll go for a run without

• 1:28:09Rich Roll?

  Why is that not surprising? If I had to like draw a picture of somebody who's a mushroom forager, I'd probably look a lot like you.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and actually, near me, there's porcini's.

• 1:28:19Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Porcini's are like the gold of mushroom foraging, and I know where all there are are near me. So, uh, you know, sometimes I'll just do it for the for the fun of it. And I think that's also important to not not always realize that there is a fun element of of exercise and sport and challenging yourself.

• 1:28:36Rich Roll?

  I think it's important to link those two things together. And I think beyond just the idea of embracing doing hard things, it's the cascade effect that occurs when you put yourself in that position. Because whether you succeed or fail in the pursuit of that goal, you're building self esteem, you're raising the ceiling on your own sense of personal capacity. And that spills over into every area and aspect of your life beyond just what you're capable of physically.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, like you're just pushing that bar higher and higher. Yeah, I've got a twenty two month old. He tripped on the pavement the other day, burst out crying, thought he was dying. You know, we don't cry now when we trip on the pavement because we know you know, I'm not gonna die if I trip on the pavement. So our bars are really high. And I think it's by putting yourself through those difficult scenarios and creating a bit of hardship in the form of physical activity. Will, as you say, lead to all other aspects because the next time something else happens in your life, you go, well, that wasn't nearly as bad as running a marathon. I can definitely do this, you know. So I think that's definitely an element in that side of things.

• 1:29:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, back to the mindset stuff. So this whole aspect of the conversation was kicked off by talking about this no plan B idea, which resonates throughout your life. Like you're someone who can pick up on a dime and go do something else without worrying about like a safety net, essentially, right? And carrying that into these endurance pursuits, talk a little bit about in the context of the one oh five, how this idea of not having a plan B became kind of a reliable default mantra.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  It was interesting, actually. A couple of close family members actually sort of sit me aside and they go, Shaun, like, what happens if you can't do a full a day? Will you start doing halves a day? I'm like, uh, no. What are you on about? They're like, well, instead of just quitting if you get injured again, what if you just dropped it down to doing halves a day? And did a hundred and two halves instead? I was like, oh, absolutely not.

• 1:30:49Rich Roll?

  And then when that gets hard, you can go down to Olympic distance.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, Olympic and then sprint and then eventually doing a 5K. And then it's just running or something. Um, so, no, it was, I was sort of offended. I was like, it's just never gonna happen. I'd rather fail and go back to the drawing board and start again, trying to do the falls every day, then reduce my, my bar or make my ambitions lower. Like, I don't get any satisfaction about doing halves a day. Zero. Absolutely zero. You know, I could do a whole year of halves. It would be less satisfying for me personally. It wouldn't feed the terrier because the terrier wants the falls.

• 1:31:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  So, and.

• 1:31:29Rich Roll?

  On some level, the terrier is sort of like a mad alcoholic though, who's developing a very high tolerance.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Rich Roll?

  And needs to be fed even more and more and more and more.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  This is a concern.

• 1:31:39Rich Roll?

  This is the, this is the hungry ghost.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, at some point.

• 1:31:42Rich Roll?

  Nying on your soul.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. Cause at some point, I, the terrier will never be satisfied.

• 1:31:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Cause he'll have achieved.

• 1:31:50Rich Roll?

  And you, you attempting to satisfy it is a, is a, is a lost pursuit.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  No, I know, I know. But I'm like, la la la la la.

• 1:31:56Rich Roll?

  Of diminishing returns that will slowly drive you mad.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, and I'm only 42 now.

• 1:32:00Rich Roll?

  Till your wife leaves you.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. I've got another 40 years of things to fill. I don't know.

• 1:32:05Rich Roll?

  Keep telling yourself that you're running towards something and, and start understanding or appreciating what maybe you're running away from.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:32:13Rich Roll?

  I'm not accusing you of anything.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  No, I, I, I am obviously running towards and away from something. I don't know what it is. Um, yeah, I, I can't answer it. I wish I had an answer. At the moment, I'm just winging it. I'm winging, winging it and see what happens. I think.

• 1:32:30Rich Roll?

  Cause no plan B.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  No plan B. Exactly. I'll just, at the moment, I'm good at something. And I'm good at being miserable, cold, wet, hungry and tired. And I'm good at doing multi-day stuff and I'm good at nailing those ten pillars of endurance. And I'm going to keep doing that until I can't anymore. And then when that does happen, then I think of another plan A.

• 1:32:51Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  That's something else. And maybe it's being a P E teacher at school. You know, I, I really, I'm, I'm, youth sport is high on my agenda now. Um, since I've had kids, I've just noticed how hard it is to, to try and get facilities, especially in North Wales where I'm from. And so now that's my focus. I even got a letter from Prince William.

• 1:33:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  I did, yeah. On day sixty something, he wrote, we got a letter through the post with the Kensington Palace stamp on it. We're like, what is this? And it was like, dear Mr. Conway.

• 1:33:18Rich Roll?

  Am I being knighted?

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Rich Roll?

  Is this the O B?

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  What's happening, yeah. So it's like, dear Mr. Conway, congratulations on your one O two. And then he wrote a lovely paragraph and, uh, on the importance of youth sport now. Cause he's the, the Prince of Wales, of course.

• 1:33:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Uh, and then said, good luck with the rest of your challenge. And then just a signature. And it doesn't look like anything. So we were like, first we were like, who wrote this? We're like, it must be the janitor who's just got a letterhead. And then we Googled his signature and it come up and his signature is just Willie. It just says Willie and, um.

• 1:33:48Rich Roll?

  But this is what True Venture Foundation does, right?

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  They, they all, all, it's, at the moment, it's North, North Wales based where, where they have, through the money we raised, are going to have a grant system for clubs, youth clubs and for athletes individually, youth athletes, that they can just apply for. So all the money I raise is in a pot at the minute and soon we'll, they'll be putting it out. And I'm, I'm working, I'm volunteering with them basically indefinitely. Ryan lives near me, who's, who set it up and we go. I went to a youth triathlon event just this last weekend and did the prize giving. It was the final event of the year and we're just trying to get more kids. Cause in North Wales, only thirty nine percent of kids do sport outside of school.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  Sixty six thousand fewer kids in Wales alone do sport outside of school since COVID. Um, and then we hope to expand a. Into the rest of the UK, split first Wales, then the UK. And then also expand the types of sports we'll support. But at the moment, it's it's triathlon, swim, cycle, run and a couple of smaller ones. Like, there was a club who couldn't put a youth volleyball, water polo in together because they didn't have the small balls for the for the kids. Because no one would fund it.

• 1:35:00Rich Roll?

  So you were able to come in and figure that out.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  We'll give you some support, you know, so.

• 1:35:03Rich Roll?

  Isn't, is Garret Thomas from Wales?

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  He's Wales, yeah, he's south, he's from South Wales. So South Wales is a bit of a divide between north and south because south has Cardiff and they've got 50 meter pool. There's no 50 meter pool in North Wales, for example. And all the other pools are sort of council pools, so you have to, there's a slot and things like that. And yeah, so a lot of the North Wales kids having to drive all the way down to Cardiff for a gala.

• 1:35:29Rich Roll?

  That's pretty far, isn't it?

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  It's four hours plus hotels and everything. And it was never, never anything up in North Wales.

• 1:35:35Rich Roll?

  But you live pretty close to Wrexham, right?

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  I live pretty close to Wrexham.

• 1:35:38Rich Roll?

  So Americans know Wrexham for one reason and one reason all my life.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Ryan Reynolds.

• 1:35:42Rich Roll?

  So talk to me about the Ryan Reynolds effect on that town, like where you live.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  That's amazing. So I'm, I'm probably half an hour, 40 minutes from Wrexham. But yeah, since him and Rob bought the.

• 1:35:54Rich Roll?

  They bought the football club.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Bought the football club and they've invested good money in it and.

• 1:35:59Rich Roll?

  They're very emotionally invested in this.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  And it's been amazing for Wrexham. And I've fully, I don't, I don't really watch soccer, football. But I have jumped on the Wrexham bandwagon, absolutely, because they're, they're local to me. And a lot of the riders and runners.

• 1:36:13Rich Roll?

  Created like just a resurgence of, of interest in the football club or kind of local pride and all that kind of stuff? Or are they interlopers from the outside?

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  No, they've, they've, they're amazing because they're, they're putting money into the town and now the stadiums are full and they're selling all tickets. And it's good for the community and they've gone up a league as well. I think they've got four more if they want to get to the premiership, but that's a long way off, but still. Yeah, it's been amazing. So anyway, because I cycled down quite close to Wrexham on my website. I was trying to get Rob or, or Ryan to tattoo the Wrexham Football Club on my ass. For 25,000 to the charity.

• 1:36:51Rich Roll?

  That sounds like something they would do though.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  But I don't think they've ever thought about it.

• 1:36:54Rich Roll?

  I mean, he's a marketing genius.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  I thought that would have been great. So anyway, that never happened. It's still open, so Rob or, or Ryan.

• 1:37:01Rich Roll?

  We'll see, we'll see, we'll see if this makes any impact on, on whether we can make that a possibility. No Plan B, right?

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  No Plan B.

• 1:37:09Rich Roll?

  You're all in, you're committed, just like they are to Rexxlum.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  I've put the space on the bum cheek right now already.

• 1:37:14Rich Roll?

  The other interesting mindset tool that I want to hear a little bit more about is this counterintuitive notion of refusing to celebrate small wins. You would think in the pursuit of goal, a larger goal, that you have these stepping stones along the way and emotional engagement and staying fresh with it involves allowing yourself to have those little wins to celebrate along the way.

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:43Rich Roll?

  You feel differently.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  No, very differently.

• 1:37:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  For me, if I celebrate too many small wins in my pursuit of the full cake, at some point there could be a situation where it's going badly. But I go, oh, well, I'm not doing so well, but I got XYZ from it. So for example, once I got to 21, I had the British record. I could have gone, yeah, I'm the British record winner. Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, make a big fuss out of that. Then once I'd got to, which I thought was 42, but it turns out it was 61, I would have got the European record for the most number of continuous, sorry, day by day, uh, fulls. I could have celebrated that. I could have celebrated, um, oh, there's a couple of other things that sort of I did.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  And then, yeah, I don't even remember them because I didn't celebrate them. But the worry is that, let's say I'd done all those little mini, mini micro celebrations. Let's say on day 80, something bad happened. The worry for me was, oh, well, I'm already the British, the European record and the British record holder. Oh, I'm happy with that.

• 1:38:47Rich Roll?

  Easier to quit.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, well, I can be happy with what I've done. And that was not good for my headspace. I needed to be, again, it's all or nothing. No Plan B. I'm doing the 102 or, and if I don't, it's, the whole thing's a failure. Like, I'm not ever gonna go and start doing the talk circuit going, well, I'm actually the British record holder. No, it's.

• 1:39:06Rich Roll?

  Who gives a shit?

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for me, absolutely, yeah. A bit the same as like, oh, why don't you do the most number of halves? Cause I think the record for halves is less than the fulls anyway. Um, I believe, I could be wrong on that, but, um. Uh, I think it's in seventeen.

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  But there could be, you could create a record for anything.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:23Rich Roll?

  So it's like, how meaningful are these records? It depends upon, you know, how, how incredible the challenge is, I suppose. How does that square with being a leader of a team when you have a crew of people and your reliance upon the support that you need to accomplish the goal, right? Like, you may feel like it's not in my best interest to celebrate these stepping stone goals, but I have all these people and I have to keep them excited about what we're doing.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Rich Roll?

  And I can't expect them to adopt my mindset and, and have them show up fresh and smiling every single day.

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think I failed on that.

• 1:40:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  If I, if I'm honest, I think I didn't quite, uh, cause I've never really done anything with crew before. So I had a crew when I swam the length of Britain and, you know, we were stuck on a boat. So they sort of couldn't leave. And also that really was sort of something, you know, doing a world's first where no one's even attempted swimming up the West Coast. That was enough to sort of keep them excited, but I, and, and also I had days off on that one. It took a hundred and thirty five days, but I had a good forty days of bad weather where I couldn't swim.

• 1:40:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  So we got to go to the pub and, you know, relax and have days off and things like that. So I think that kept them sort of interested, but again, I failed there. I think just motivating them, I'm, I'm not very good at compliments, receiving or giving. I feel like I'm very self motivated and I sort of half expect other people to be motivated enough. If you've chosen to do it, just be motivated and do it. And I think I, uh, and I, you know, apologize to the crew now. I'll openly say that I'm sorry for not potentially coming across visually and verbally as appreciative as I was, because I was, every day I'd wake up and be like, these guys are amazing. Like, so, cause that's the other thing I did slightly differently to James, I think, is I think his crew were doing all day with him.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  I can't quite work that out because I saw pictures of both of them at the end of each day.

• 1:41:24Rich Roll?

  They would come in and out, you know, I mean, they had, you know, they had different roles. Their job on the bike was to protect James and because there were a lot of people riding, especially at the end, and it was very dangerous. So their job was to insulate him and I think they would, they were taking turns with that similarly on the run. But those guys, I mean, they were indefatigable, like they could just, you know, incredible athletes, super committed to James, but I think James, to his credit, really understood leadership and team building in a way that maybe to your own admission, maybe, you know, there's some room for like growing and learning.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just not, I'm not very good at like going to someone and going, mate, you're amazing. You're doing an awesome job. I love you. I'm just like, I'm bad at that and I should be better and I apologize to them because because what I did differently, I guess, is I had a morning crew and an afternoon crew.

• 1:42:20Rich Roll?

  You can't be in Castaway and Forrest Gump and also be a CEO.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I should have been, you know, and I wish I'd now, I wish I'd given them more attention and shown them more appreciation. Because the morning crew would do the swim and the bike and then come one o'clock, which is when my bike ended usually roughly. That's them done for the day. They go home, they can do whatever they want. That's zero to do with it outside of going, doing a bit of shopping as well and setting up for the following swim, which of course took time. And then the, so there was the two Chris's, they did five days on, five days off. And then Phil did everything and he would do all of the run and then he would do the bike maintenance. So that's bike swapped out so that I just had a fresh bike each day and nutrition and things like that.

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  And then again, so he would, he had his morning sort of, of course, he had stuff to do before he arrived and the bike maintenance and all that. And, but you're right. I, if you're doing something like this, your crew will feed off you hundred percent. And if you're like, oh, I hate this. This is miserable. Why am I doing it? That energy is going to translate.

• 1:43:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have to, you have to take responsibility for setting the tone.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  You've got to be in a good mood and, and tell them that. And it's hard when things are in pain. Cause there's, there is pain every day, all day with, with doing a back to back irons. You know, your shoulders are sore on the swim and your back a little bit. On the bike, it can be neck or wrists, um, uh, knees, a little bit on the bike for me. And then the run, everything hurts, you know, all, all legs and everything. So it's hard to then be like, hey, guys, good going. Well done. I love you guys. Thank you so much. Um, and I, I definitely failed on that. And I think if I did it again, or someone else is doing it, like you just need to really show your crew how much you appreciate them because, you know, I, they were so good.

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  I genuinely didn't have to think about anything like the food was there. I got, I got my nutrition dialed in. I nailed it. I would do it different, uh, cause I, I, and you'll hate me, but I had almost no vegetables on the whole time.

• 1:44:26Rich Roll?

  You're like eating.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it was.

• 1:44:28Rich Roll?

  Full fat cream and eating meat.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  Meats, milks, nuts, fruits and grains. Um, and half of, I think I'd get three thousand calories a day. I was doing about eight thousand calories a day. Three thousand of that was in the full fat cream is like insurance, insurance calories, just in case. Which kept me at a, a okay weight. I went from sixty, I went from seventy at the start down to sixty seven. Um, sixty eight's a good weight for me. The sixty seven, I felt like was a bit too light. I lost a bit of muscle there and, and my pace went down a bit and that sort of thing. But, um, the crew knew everything, you know, once we'd had it dialed in, I just had to turn up and everything was ready and laid out and they were, they were incredible, absolutely just the best, you know?

• 1:45:12Rich Roll?

  Was there a dark moment of the soul in this adventure? Like what was the hardest piece?

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  So it was around day thirty, I wrote a piece about it on social media where. There's a series of things that happened. Um. So one of them was I got the total that we for charity. And I think it was less than a thousand pounds, but on day thirty. And I'm like, what? Why is it so low? Like, there's like, obviously, no one cares. Like, obviously, I've I've missed the ball here. No one cares. We're never going to raise what we wanted to raise, which was a hundred and two thousand. And then Caroline was having a rough time as well, you know, that just that particular day, the kids were kicking off and they were ill. And they just were like not wanting to go to bed and not wanting to eat and just doing being kids, basically. And then, so, you know, I'm coming home and she's having a rough time. I'm like, well, why am I doing this?

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  It's like, we're not raising any money for charity at this point. Caroline's having a tough time.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  You know, and you it's hard not to look at social media and see how many likes you get and all this. Because in my head, that would hopefully transcend to raising money for charity. That that wasn't as as high as we thought by this point. And I thought, well, have I missed the ball on like socially, you know, what people do now? And like, does anyone care about, you know, just this guy who's, you know, can just go off and, you know, he's he's leading such an easy life. He has to create this hardship for himself just to feel fulfilled.

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And there's also a sort of point at which, oh, another guy's going off and doing something crazy. Like, there's always somebody who's going further, longer, farther, you know, and you kind of begin to have this immune response to it.

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So and of course, it was a personal challenge that I wanted to test myself to see if I could do it. But at the expense of A, my family and B.

• 1:47:00Rich Roll?

  Like, what are you actually wagering here? And and what is what is the why?

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 1:47:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you want to achieve this goal. Yes, you want to raise money. That's not really the why. Like, what is the deeper why?

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Well, I have to feed the terrier. It's like I have to feed the terrier.

• 1:47:14Rich Roll?

  Right. But yeah, let's go beneath that.

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  Gosh, yeah, I have no idea. I.

• 1:47:18Rich Roll?

  Like, what is that drive all about?

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. Maybe it's social acceptance. Maybe it's trying to like, I wasn't very good at sport at school. Maybe I was bullied. Uh, you know, I maybe I've just got this inherent need for social acceptance. You know, I was a bit of a loner and and I thought I was happy being a loner, but actually, you know, doing something and beating my chest, because all mammals need to beat their chest, right? Maybe I need that more than I thought I needed it. Um. Yeah, it must be that. It must be an element of me trying to go, look at me. I'm good at this stuff, man. I have the best, I'm the only human on the planet to have ever done X, Y, Z. Um, it's gotta be, there's gotta be a little ego there.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  That's fueling this fire and which I think is fine. I think it's unhappy that it's there. Maybe, you know, maybe it's something just trying to be cool for my kids. You know, be a cool dad, although I've reliably been told that that never happens, but.

• 1:48:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't happen. I also think that's bullshit. That's sort of like, oh, I'm raising money. It's, it's, I'm doing this for my kids. I want to show my kids. It's like, no, no.

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  Probably not that, yeah.

• 1:48:25Rich Roll?

  Kids don't care.

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  No, they don't care.

• 1:48:27Rich Roll?

  Your kids are too young, first of all.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:29Rich Roll?

  And by the time they're old enough to appreciate it, it'll just be that weird thing dad did.

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you'll be like, the record's five hundred now, dad, shut up.

• 1:48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I don't know.

• 1:48:38Rich Roll?

  But in that, on that day thirty, though, and you're, you're sort of confronted with that why.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, you know, I wasn't getting maybe the social recognition. I wasn't getting the people going in their pockets and giving money to the charity. You know, Caroline was having a tough day that day. Um, yeah, so there's probably a lot of those little things. That, well, it was played on my mind. And then I'm just like, what's the blimmin' point? You know, what is the point? I'm just, it's just sport. All I'm doing is trying to do a few more full irons than what other guy did, you know, and

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  yeah, it hit me that day.

• 1:49:14Rich Roll?

  And is it, is it worth cratering your marriage and threatening your relationship with your family, all these things?

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  And then failing at a potential other goal, which is all part of the jigs one. I know the charity thing wasn't, as you say, the be all and end all because I, I needed to chase the record. But it's certainly something.

• 1:49:33Rich Roll?

  Well, something you cared about and also created another layer of accountability.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, it's dangling all the carrots, you know, like what are the carrots you've dangled in front of yourself to keep you going forward? And certainly the charity is one of them and. And you know, the ego side is having a cool pub story and you know, coming on a podcast, you know, all these, being able to write the book, you know, I love, I've written seven.

• 1:49:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you've written a lot of books.

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  There's one we don't talk about, so.

• 1:49:59Rich Roll?

  Why is that?

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  It's crap.

• 1:50:02Rich Roll?

  Well, these, these 10 rules of endurance are clearly your next book.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  I think so. So I'm going to weave in the sort of my experience in iron 105 plus all the other stuff I've done into this sort of experience book of, of, of the 10 pillars, I think. So, and that's part of it. I love writing and I love, all my books are in the downstairs toilet. So whenever I go for a pee, they're there and they're reminding me and I just love having them there. Um, it's ego thing as well, I guess. Um, although you do keep the copyright to your written word for like 70 years after you die. So I love the fact that like my great, great grandkids are going to get like two quid one month from dad's book sale, great granddad's book sale, go to the pub.

• 1:50:41Rich Roll?

  Books even exist.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:50:43Rich Roll?

  At that point.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:44Rich Roll?

  But back to this dark night of the soul, the reckoning with the why, trying to figure out or, or find a, you know, a place to plant your flag and, and continue forward. How did you get to the other side of that? What did you do mentally? What did you rely upon to,

• 1:51:04Rich Roll?

  to transcend that setback?

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  I don't think I did anything like practically. I just was like, well, okay, this is how I feel. I feel that this is potentially a waste of my time and no one cares, but I've committed to doing it. So I'm going to get up tomorrow and do it. And then I got up the next day and I felt a little bit better. And I got the next day, I got a little bit better. And then within a week, we'd had a little bit more money. The kids were a bit better. Caroline was having a good time. She came and joined me and ran a marathon. Cause I think it was around then she started doing a marathon a day with me, uh, sorry, marathon a week every Sunday. Um, and then, and a couple more new riders came because around day 30, we're all of a sudden more, more riders started joining me on a regular basis. Um.

• 1:51:52Rich Roll?

  It's sort of a don't quit before the miracle.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:55Rich Roll?

  Lesson. Like if you stay in it, these things.

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  And also a bad day today definitely doesn't mean a bad day tomorrow. That's one thing is I've learnt in all the things I've done. If anything, a bad day today means it's more likely to be a good day tomorrow, I think. And the same as the other way around, a good day today doesn't mean a good day tomorrow.

• 1:52:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Like you've got to.

• 1:52:14Rich Roll?

  It goes both ways.

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, because you can, I remember when I cycle around the world, I, you know, bits in America where I'd have a massive tailwind. I'm like, this is easy. And I'd take my foot off the gas and I'd just coast because I was pushing less power and the heart rate was down and I was still floating along. And then I'd get to a town and I'd say, oh, well, I've had a good day. I've, I've done 200 miles, two hours quicker than normal. I'll just rest up. I've done a good day.

• 1:52:37Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  And then the next day I'd only do 120 miles. I'd be like, because I had a headwind. I'm like, damn it, why didn't I capitalize on that good day and just do what I normally do? Just, just do the time and, you know, on a good day you'll go further. So I've definitely learned that as well, you know? A good day today can mean a bad day tomorrow and vice versa. So.

• 1:52:58Rich Roll?

  So Sean, the everyman, ordinary guy with the, the numbers in the lab that are super unimpressive. We have this person, right? But on some level, there is a talent, there is a uniqueness. What is that talent? Like, what is it that makes you distinct or, or, or different? Or an outlier? If you had to identify your strength?

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  I mean, I've.

• 1:53:24Rich Roll?

  Is it tenacity? Is it the terrier?

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  I think, I think wanting it, because I think there's definitely a more, there's at least three people who join me who I think can break my record. You know, local, local guys. There's a guy called Decker Dave, who had the British record for the most number, uh, for a double decker. And he was doing 11 hours for, and he was 57 years old when he did it.

• 1:53:48Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  Um, so he had 20 and no one in Britain had ever done more than 20.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  He's 64 now, so even he admits that he's, he can feel his numbers going down a little bit. So, but you know, there's, there are people out there who could physically do it. But it's whether you want to do it for one and whether you are, you know, I don't know who said it, but someone said be ignorant, ignorant enough to start and stubborn enough to finish. Well, naive enough to start and stubborn enough to finish. And there's definitely that element of, of just wanting it so much that you're just gonna sacrifice anything to get there. But then there's obviously all the experience that you need that goes with it and that takes time and energy. Um.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  I think, I don't think I'm an outlier. I think there are more people out there than you, maybe we think who could do these things. Um, they've just chosen not to, or they don't want it enough. Um, or they're not experienced enough to deal with all the little niggles that happen and dealing with the headspace and that, and that comes with time. There's no way. So when I did my world's longest triathlon, twenty sixteen, that was the last time I've been at my fittest. So between twenty sixteen and now, I've been almost the unfittest I've been because

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  I did my Europe record in twenty eighteen and that was okay, but that was only twenty five days and it was cycling only and I lost all my fitness after that. But I still think, even though I was really, really fit after the, the, the long triathlon, I still couldn't have done the hundred and five then, even though I was super fit, because I didn't have the experience in all the other things that go around with it. So uh, I would love for someone to have a crack at the one oh five. Like, I have no business in holding this record forever. Absolutely none. What's our line? Ten percent. Ten, ten percent of me goes, oh, yeah.

• 1:55:49Rich Roll?

  Oh, it'll get, it'll get broken, but I, but I like, I really like the fact that you're encouraging it to be broken and you're holding on to that very loosely.

• 1:55:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Like, email, like, send me a message, I'll help you.

• 1:55:59Rich Roll?

  I'll tell you how to do it.

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  I'll tell you how to do it.

• 1:56:00Rich Roll?

  And I know you want to set up a woman for the woman's record. What is the, what is the female record?

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  So there's someone who's done twenty five in thirty five days, so, uh, in America. Um, there's someone in the UK who's done twenty, uh, twenty continuous, not a one a day. So I can't, I don't know. I don't know what the woman is, but Caroline, my lovely wife, she's, um, she's interested.

• 1:56:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  Which would be amazing. How cool would that be? A husband and wife. So I've, I've, uh, I've taken the horse to water with her. And she's, she, because she's a really good swimmer. She used to swim competitively as a teenager. She can run. She's doing a marathon a week with me and, and we met cycling, so she knows how to cycle. She would just need to get a bit quicker on, I think, the bike and the run. Certainly the bike. I mean, I needed to get quicker on the bike as well. But I've got the course. We've got the crew, we've got everyone.

• 1:56:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  We're isolated.

• 1:56:54Rich Roll?

  And it's your turn to be, to be a single parent.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  Daycare, I know, absolutely. So I think, I think if a female did a month, thirty one days, I think that would definitely be, be a record. I think it's probably twenty one, but I think thirty one would be a cool number because you've done a month of them.

• 1:57:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  Because if you look at all my data, it definitely doesn't favor, this record doesn't favor

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  a male biologically. Like, the power is, when you, with a group of riders, your power is not crazy high. The run doesn't have to be fast. The swim, the swim's easy, but like, as you know, it's, triathlon is very skewed away from swimmers.

• 1:57:35Rich Roll?

  And, and even if you're not a great swimmer, it's still a way to recover from the day before and limber up.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  Oh, if, if triathlon was the run first, multi-day, day after days would just be a whole different game. Because when I woke up in the morning, I was like, I can't walk down the stairs. I, I cannot do it. But I knew, once I was in the pool, once I was a couple hundred meters in.

• 1:57:57Rich Roll?

  Get the blood moving.

• 1:57:58Speaker 01

  Get the blood moving, it fixes everything. So I knew the swim was my safe space. I loved it. And even though I wasn't super fast, I wasn't slow either. I was an okay. I was doing about a, I did a one oh seven swim time as my fastest, and then a one

• 1:58:15Speaker 01

  twenty, I think was my slowest, but I was hovering around one twenty total time each day. About one fifteen swim time, five minutes stopping to eat and that sort of thing.

• 1:58:24Rich Roll?

  It's nothing in the context of.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  Whereas, and on a good day and a bad day, you're losing ten minutes.

• 1:58:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  Whereas on a good day and a bad day on the bike, it was hour and a half, two hours, same on the run.

• 1:58:34Rich Roll?

  Back to this notion of what distinguishes you. I think, yes, the, the, the desire, the wanting it is important. I think there's this tenacity, this determination, the terrier spirit within you. But I also think

• 1:58:52Rich Roll?

  there's something to this propensity to action that you have. Like, you are willing to leap before you look. And, and that's the naivete piece, right? Like, not being intimidated or afraid, and not being paralyzed by the unknowns, which I think is something that a lot of people get overly caught up with. So much so that you decide you're gonna swim the length of Great Britain.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Rich Roll?

  And you have like no swim training.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:59:22Rich Roll?

  You have no idea what you're getting involved in, right? Like you don't really have a background in this. You're not trained up. You hadn't swum more than, I think I read, three miles.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:31Rich Roll?

  Was your longest swim.

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  In a pool.

• 1:59:33Rich Roll?

  In a pool before doing that.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:59:35Rich Roll?

  So that's insane.

• 1:59:36Speaker 01

  Bad idea as well.

• 1:59:37Rich Roll?

  And the world's longest ultimate triathlon, or whatever you you call it. You kind of went into that without really training for it or understanding training.

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, none of that.

• 1:59:48Rich Roll?

  So so there's a there's a bullheadedness piece to that. There's a stupidity piece, but there's also an audacious kind of boldness to it. That I think is the tip of the spear that opens up these doors. And when you pair that with not being afraid to fail, it creates an equation that allows you to do amazing things as long as you stick with it and stay in the game.

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, absolutely. You've you've nailed it on the head there. With the swim, especially that one, A, I didn't live anywhere near the ocean, so I couldn't do any sea training. I had zero money. I got sponsored, but there was an accounting error. So the money that was gonna pay for it landed up paying for about half of it. And then I crowdfunded the rest of the swim. I only got it like seven days into the swim. So I, the closest, I had a pool near me, but I was so consumed with all the other aspects of trying to pull that swim off. Because that one really, no one believed was possible. You know, 900 mile swim up the West Coast. I was putting stuff on yachting forums, saying, oh, you know, I'd like to know about tides.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  And everyone was just hammering me down like, dude, whatever, like sailing, it's difficult in a small boat, like it's not gonna happen. Waves are too big, tides are too strong, there's killer whales in Scotland, like I got everything. So people were very cautious of trying to help because they just thought it was a waste of their time. And that took all my time. And I knew that actually, so I could swim, I knew how to swim. I'd done, have you heard of there's the the biggest open water swimming event in the world? I think is called the Midmar Mile in South Africa. 15,000 people.

• 2:01:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know about this.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  It's a mile across the lake. 15,000 people do it every year. Our school did it. So when I was. I think eight, no, I couldn't, I was about ten or eleven, I swam this mile, I've done it twice. They do eight, eight um uh waves of swimmers. And one year I did, after I swam Britain, I did what they call the eight mile club, where you do all eight. So you swim it, they take me on a boat back, you swim it back. I swam it with Kerry Anne Payne um and Lexi Kelly, she's American. Um they uh, yes, so I knew how to swim, but I just was unfit and my technique was crap. So when I did the cheese rolling in Gloucester, you must have seen it on YouTube, where they roll a cheese down the hill and people chase the cheese.

• 2:02:07Rich Roll?

  I don't really know about this.

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  It's a two hundred year old tradition in Britain where it's called the Gloucestershire cheese rolling, they, and it's vertical. They roll this cheese down, you run after it, head over tail, whoever gets to the bottom first wins the cheese. Anyway, I did that two thousand and nine and just fully ruptured my cap cup shore on my left shoulder. So when I swim and I get fatigued, I drop this shoulder and I push like that and then so I just have a terrible left hand technique and it actually played up a little bit on this because also from when I swam Britain, because of all the waves, I did and because I didn't want to get neck chafe.

• 2:02:45Rich Roll?

  Right, you didn't want to get rhino neck like uh like Ross.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, it was crazy and I, and then I just, again, I'm micro managing everything and I'm very good at that, like. I never let it get anywhere near what he got because I nailed it early. I started, I wrapped a buff in Vaseline and um lanolin, so I did a Vaseline and lanolin mix in the microwave, mixed it all together, rubbed it all over this buff, put it under the wet suit uh to stop the little chafe. And then it was flushing a bit and cold, but at least I didn't get chafe. But then I eventually got to this technique where I would just over roll, like it's to breathe, I would just be doing that rather than doing that. And it was terrible, but also with all the big waves, I'm sort of breathing up in the sky. And if you look at all the pictures on this swim now in the pool, I'm like, my head's up, I'm over rolling, I'm over rotating, my legs are out like this.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  But I knew I would get fit on that swim and because it was, there was no time element other than trying to finish before winter. I knew I would make it like I just I knew I just swam a mile, you know, two miles. I can do it as long as I did about ten miles a day. I think in my head, I was like, right, I'll get into Scotland before winter, even though I was hoping to do more than that, but it landed up being much slower. I thought it was gonna take me two and a half months. Took me like four and a half or something. Yeah.

• 2:04:02Rich Roll?

  But who cares?

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did it.

• 2:04:03Rich Roll?

  Right? This propensity to act like you threw yourself into this thing and figured it out as you went. And as a result, you've accomplished things that you probably couldn't have imagined for yourself.

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:17Rich Roll?

  So I'm trying to, I'm trying to like mine the lesson from that. And I think it's that courage to kind of liberate yourself from this social, um, this imprint, uh, this imprinted kind of social expectation or, or attitude that we have around safety and security and like always knowing like where each step is going to lead you along the path. And, and you're just kind of bouncing around like a ping pong, ping pong ball. Like, I'm sure there's more conscious intention behind it, but I see somebody who's acting on instinct and, and really driven by this sense of adventure and is, is kind of just

• 2:05:02Rich Roll?

  going from one thing to the next and not spending too much time worrying about what the larger plan is here, like trying to be really in the moment with who you, who you are.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's true. And I think once I think of something, it's just like, well, that's what I want to do now. Like, I'm just gonna do it. Right. And I'm not prepared.

• 2:05:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And that is like a Forrest Gump thing. Like, I'm just, okay, I'm gonna run now. And then like, okay, I'm done.

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  No, exactly. And, and obviously where, where it sort of bites me in the ass a little bit sometimes is there's, there's weather windows and, you know, so last year, for last year's attempt, I thought of it in December, because I had this other idea, which I can't talk about, which I was gonna do, which you know about, but that just kept getting delayed and delayed.

• 2:05:45Rich Roll?

  Why can't we talk about it?

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  Well, I don't want someone else to do it.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  If I go, someone else might go, I'm gonna have a crack at that and then make my life harder.

• 2:05:54Rich Roll?

  I'm sure somebody else has thought of it.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 2:05:56Rich Roll?

  Knowing what it is.

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  Well, no one's done it since nineteen ninety four.

• 2:06:00Rich Roll?

  Now you're giving clues.

• 2:06:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. But I then, in December twenty twenty one, I decided, right, I'm gonna go for the hundred and two. And then I looked at the training. I was like, right, maybe six months. It's cutting it fine, but I can't really start later than July. Because then I'm running into October, November and weather and all that sort of thing. So that was also partly the issue with the previous attempt and also kit, like I getting kit with the supply chain issues, getting a bike was possible.

• 2:06:36Rich Roll?

  You and James both like out doing it in freezing weather and like, what are you guys doing? Just relocate this whole thing.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  He had more, I think he had more variation on temperature, but I just had the rain, you know, just the rain. Just made cycling on the roads with potholes, you know, that all the water just covered up all the potholes and you couldn't see them. And luckily, you know, within a week, I knew every pothole by name pretty much. So that wasn't too bad. But it was slippery and taking corners, you had to slow down. I was, on a rainy day, I was easily half an hour slower, just because it was raining, you know, because your glasses are covered up with all the muck off the road and things like that. Um, so, yeah, what was the question? I'm sure there was one.

• 2:07:22Rich Roll?

  Being present with who you are and not getting caught up in the security blanket.

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:07:29Rich Roll?

  Sort of narrative about around how to live your life, like the guiding principles around how you're living and how you're making decisions about where to invest your time and your energy. As opposed to the 401K or the, you know, the upwardly mobile career path. You're just like, well, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I think I'm gonna do now. And that's kind of it.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  Pretty much. I know. It's, it's gonna.

• 2:07:55Rich Roll?

  And is your wife different?

• 2:07:57Speaker 01

  Oh, she's, she's terrified of the future.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Um, no, it's, again, even sitting here, I can't even genuinely give you a reasonable, sensible answer because I don't know, because it's just not how my brain works.

• 2:08:12Rich Roll?

  But I think the, the, the bandwidth of your life, like the horizon of your life, is obviously quite large right now. You're writing books, you're traveling around, you're giving talks, you're speaking, you're doing all these things that would probably really impress the young photographer who had dreams of being a National Geographic fellow, right? So when you think back to the aspirations of that person and reflect upon your life today, what is the message that you tell that, that young person with a dream?

• 2:08:50Speaker 01

  Just don't be scared to just wink, like have a go, you know, and I think that's what I do. I just think of something that I would potentially regret not doing. You know, that's quite an important thing and I think that's quite common. But to action it, I action it to like, I will 100% regret not having a crack at this. You know, like the 102, when I failed the first time, there was sort of talk about, yeah, well, you know, James Lawrence is a pretty impressive guy. Like maybe you don't have it in you, buddy, you know?

• 2:09:21Rich Roll?

  And I saw him on day 100 and, I mean, he was delirious, like he struggled, man.

• 2:09:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:09:29Rich Roll?

  You know, so who are you to think?

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  You know, I've never done an Ironman, the event in my life. I've never done a triathlon. In fact, I've, I've done three, I've done three one day events in my life. I ran the London Marathon for the Scouts. Uh, I did a Tough Mudder and I did a 50K Ultra a couple of years ago. It was literally, other than training, of course, I'm doing one day training and things. But actual events, that's all I've ever done. I've never done any triathlon, not once. Uh, not done a, a proper running race. It's just, it, one day events have never excited me. Um, so you're right, you know, the, once, when I failed last year, there was a huge part of me and. People I know and the internet going like, who is this guy? We're like, what's he gonna do?

• 2:10:11Rich Roll?

  Not so easy, right?

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  Not so easy. Like, come on, man. Like, you know, and, um, and of course, as I said, like,

• 2:10:18Rich Roll?

  I plead guilty to that, by the way.

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, no, I mean, I, it was, I remember you messing when I, when I announced the attempt. I remember you saying,

• 2:10:24Rich Roll?

  We'll see.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

  Snap, shots, shots fired.

• 2:10:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, shots fired. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:28Speaker 01

  And I suddenly thought.

• 2:10:28Rich Roll?

  And then at six and you had that thing, I was like,

• 2:10:30Speaker 01

  I told you.

• 2:10:31Rich Roll?

  Maybe not as, no, not in like a schadenfreude way, but out of like a respect for just how, how difficult.

• 2:10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, and yeah, a huge part of me maybe didn't take it seriously enough. There was that time window where I sort of knew that six months wasn't enough, but I thought, oh, I'm just gonna have a crack anyway. Otherwise I'm waiting a whole another year for the, for this, would have, would have been this year. Cause the sensible part of me would have been like, when I thought of it in January, I would have started in April the following year, which is what I said this year. But of course I'm like, well, I don't want to wait 14 months. I can't want to now. And I think I can get there. And I was wrong. I was, I was wrong, you know, I,

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  the route wasn't good enough. I was a little bit down on fitness, although even day seven with the injury, my, all my times are a little quicker. So my swim was quicker. I think I'd done the fastest bike on that day. Um, my run was slow, super slow. So I was sort of on the right track.

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  But yeah, I, I wouldn't have made it because I just didn't, I, I, I just winged it a little bit too much this time. Um, and I, I don't regret it because it became fuel for my fire the next time. It was like, right, well, I've, I cocked that up. What did I do wrong? I'm gonna do it better. Uh, I'm gonna train a bit more. I'm gonna work on a bit of my bike, um, my speed. Cause I can go forever, but the, with doing the full a day to get the sleep, you've got to be fast as well. So I had to bring in some speed work into my training. So I did that, worked on a better route. Um, got, you know, the, the crew, uh, got a different crew. Uh, so yeah, everything I just did a bit better.

• 2:12:13Speaker 01

  That I'd messed up the time before.

• 2:12:15Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  Um, because let's say I even had got to a physical level. I potentially would have still messed up because of other things had I not done the seven.

• 2:12:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  And actually, so going back to getting to the start line fully fit, there's three things I would do differently if I did it again. One is I would still do my three sessions of each thing a week for six to eight months. I think that's how long I did it, eight months. Then I would do a week long bike packing ride about two months out. Morning till night, two hundred miles a day, just cycle. Find out anything that's weak, you know, you'll pick up all the the little weaknesses and tendons and muscles by going day after day on the bike. I then would have taken a week off and done the same on the run. And done a week long run with a backpack, fast packing, a bit like what I've got here to run. But I'd have thrown a tent in there as well. Done that for a week, seen what niggles I picked up, because that would have picked up

• 2:13:10Speaker 01

  my weak knee, for example, and maybe my weak right ankle, and maybe this hip thing I've got now. And then I would have done five in a row. And I would have done a five in a row about six weeks out. And that's controversial because and and the reason I didn't is because I thought, well, what if I get injured? Then it's ruining my attempt. But then if I get injured doing five, I'm getting injured doing a hundred and five.

• 2:13:32Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. You're just, you're just.

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:35Rich Roll?

  You're basically, you know, creating a situation where you can pull out before you begin. Because you're you're just realizing what's inevitable.

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so let's say I did the five. And I'd picked up this knee thing. I'd have gone, right, why did that happen? I need to work on that. Go work with my physio, work with everyone, so that it doesn't happen on the hundred and five. And so there's a couple of things that happened, not to say that the hundred and

• 2:14:01Rich Roll?

  I love that.

• 2:14:01Speaker 01

  Five was gonna go easily.

• 2:14:02Rich Roll?

  I love that your training block is like, okay, I'm just gonna do these two hundred mile days on the bike. And I'm gonna do this insane run camp. And then I'm gonna do five Ironmans in five days, just to, just in training, to get ready.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  You'd have to, if you want.

• 2:14:15Rich Roll?

  Just your, like, just the insanity of that, like, in terms of how we think about difficulty and what's possible versus impossible, like, now having done a hundred and five, your sense of normal is like so out of whack compared to like the average person.

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:32Rich Roll?

  But you're like, yeah, then you do five and then you do, you know, like, like, so cavalierly, so casually.

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. It does seem normal, if I'm honest. Like, I, I, I'm trying to right now think of someone else looking at this. And I, it still feels normal.

• 2:14:49Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's what I wanna, I wanna, we gotta end this, but I wanna bring that back to the person who's watching or listening, who, who perhaps is losing the thread right now because they're just, they can't relate.

• 2:15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:00Rich Roll?

  Um, so let's get back to ordinary Joe.

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  I love being non-relatable. I don't want to be normal.

• 2:15:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like, you're like, the average, ordinary guy who also did this cra- crazy thing. Like, what is, what exactly is average or ordinary or, or normal about this? Nothing, right?

• 2:15:17Speaker 01

  No, I like that.

• 2:15:18Rich Roll?

  Um, but to ground it in, in accessible principles as, you know, the person who's gonna write this book with the ten tools of endurance, what do you say to that person who is struggling with committing to the hard thing, or trying to access a new gear where they put themselves in a position to struggle and fail and challenge themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally?

• 2:15:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I don't know if I'm that sympathetic to people with little self sort of motivation. So,

• 2:15:55Speaker 01

  you know, I, I, I actually, I really struggle when I meet people and they go like, oh, I just, I just didn't want to train. So I'm training for a marathon, but I just couldn't, you know, I didn't train this week. I just couldn't be honest.

• 2:16:04Rich Roll?

  I don't have time for people like that?

• 2:16:05Speaker 01

  I really don't. Like, I just, you know, I'm, I'm not the, the goggins who shouts at you and gives you all that motivation. Like, if you don't want to be motivated, man, like, I just, come on. I, I sort of, I don't understand it, I guess, because I'm so self-motivated.

• 2:16:20Rich Roll?

  Well, also, if you're reliant upon somebody else to provide extrinsic motivation, then that's problematic, because you gotta find a way to.

• 2:16:30Speaker 01

  You gotta keep getting it.

• 2:16:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have to be able to instill that in yourself.

• 2:16:34Speaker 01

  No, but like, so practically is, is find out why you want to do it. You know, if you want to run a marathon, or if you want to do an Ironman, let's say you want to do an Ironman, you've never done an Ironman. Why, why are you wanting to do it? You know, and, and.

• 2:16:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you can't even answer that question for yourself.

• 2:16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I want to chase things. I could. No, so genuinely, I have zero interest in doing an Ironman. A standalone event, zero. Although James is, uh, he wants to do a head to head on his.

• 2:16:59Rich Roll?

  You're gonna challenge each other?

• 2:17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, when he's asked me, he's like, come.

• 2:17:02Rich Roll?

  Is there gonna be a day of reckoning?

• 2:17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:04Rich Roll?

  More, more shots fired, right? That could be a pay-per-view.

• 2:17:09Speaker 01

  His fastest is 10 hours. He's done a 10 hour. I think I could do a 10. I think I could do a 10. What's your fastest Ironman?

• 2:17:15Rich Roll?

  I've never done an Ironman.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  Have you never?

• 2:17:17Rich Roll?

  No, same thing. Yeah.

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  You've done all the long stuff as well, so you get me.

• 2:17:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I understand. I understand.

• 2:17:22Speaker 01

  But if, let's say you wanted to do one, you've really got to, A, want it. And, and if you don't want it, don't do it. I think you should do it, but I'm not going to be there sort of setting your alarm for you and waking you up in the morning, like. But if you've decided you want to do it, like, really focus and put energy into the reasons why you're doing it. And write them out, you know, write them on a post-it note, stick them next to your bed. If you're a visual type of person or print pictures out. I remember when I swam the length of Britain, I had a picture of the John O'Groats Harbour. And I printed it out and I had that as my visualizer. Like, that's where I want to get to. Nothing else matters. I've got to swim to that spot. And, um, and, you know, write them out. Why are you doing it?

• 2:18:04Speaker 01

  Or is it to raise money for charity? Is it for ego? Is it for a cool pub story? Everything's just as important as, as, as the other one. And try not to forget it. And if you, you know, and take the baby steps and trust the process. And get other, get advice from people if, if things, if you're getting injured, especially with injury, that's a hard one, of course. Cause there are certain times where injury is, you know, will stop you and should stop you because depending on what you want to do after that, it's.

• 2:18:38Rich Roll?

  Being able to differentiate good pain from bad pain.

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  Yes. You know, there's pain that's just pain and you just deal with it. And then there's pain that will potentially lead to something that will A, have a lifelong effect on you, or B, eventually stop you later down the line. And it's about managing that. But for the most part, from a mindset point of view.

• 2:18:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've just got to think why and what's driving you, what's your motivating factor? And for me, it's a record and it's trying to do a thing at a certain time. You know, I'm doing a hundred K ultra uh at the end of September. I know I will never win that race, like it's just never gonna happen. Um, it's, I've not trained for it, uh, I've not done hills in months.

• 2:19:22Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:19:23Speaker 01

  Uh, however, I really wanna see just what I can do, how fast I can do it. So I'm gonna push myself, I'm gonna look at my numbers, which I not normally don't do and, and just see. So that's, I'm chasing this, this philosophy of how well I can do. Once I've set that time, then, and let's say that time's close to the winner of that particular race. Then maybe the Terry will be like, oh, maybe you can win the next year. You know, I've signed up for the two hundred and fifteen mile run across Scotland for next August. Now that's something I think that the last year's winner was fifty eight hours. And I'm sort of going, well, I wonder if I could do fifty eight hours as well. So that's something that's

• 2:20:04Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:20:05Speaker 01

  Excites me and that's all I need. That I don't need any other external motivation other than A for this, this hundred coming up is how, how quick can I do that? Uh, and then, and then that's all I need. I literally need nothing else.

• 2:20:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:20Speaker 01

  I'm so motivated to just do that.

• 2:20:22Rich Roll?

  I don't care about any of that. Let me tell you what I wanna see from you.

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:20:26Rich Roll?

  I wanna see you and James go head to head in a Mr. Beast type video challenge where, you know, you each have to do something head to head

• 2:20:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:20:40Rich Roll?

  that challenges you in a way that has nothing to do with swimming, biking and running.

• 2:20:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 2:20:44Rich Roll?

  James famously won that competition where he rode around on the Ferris wheel for however many days when he was a kid.

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:20:51Rich Roll?

  That's like his, in the superhero origin story of James's life.

• 2:20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:55Rich Roll?

  That would be the opening scene, right? He refused, he rides it, I don't know how many days or whatever, and refuses to get off and win some prize.

• 2:21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:03Rich Roll?

  You have the cheese rolling thing, like you have this capacity to just endure. On the kind of mental capacity level beyond normal people. So in the way that Mr. Beast makes videos, like whoever can have their hand on the side of this boat the longest wins the boat or whatever.

• 2:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:21:24Rich Roll?

  I want to see you guys go head to head in something like that.

• 2:21:27Speaker 01

  Okay. I'd be up for that.

• 2:21:30Rich Roll?

  I think that would be great.

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  That'd be great. Yeah.

• 2:21:31Rich Roll?

  I feel like we have to figure that out.

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, yeah, let's keep in touch.

• 2:21:34Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like just some ridiculous challenge that really is more about your mind than anything else.

• 2:21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would excite me. That would excite me, actually.

• 2:21:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:43Rich Roll?

  We could figure that out.

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  I want to do, I'd like to find interesting ways to push myself that don't take three and a half months.

• 2:21:52Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 2:21:52Speaker 01

  So, and I think I'll need to just to not be away from the family. And that's why I'm signing up for a little bit more one day races, which I've never done before.

• 2:22:02Speaker 01

  But maybe that's part of it. Maybe there's these psychological challenges that I could sort of kind of scratch the terrier, you know?

• 2:22:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:12Speaker 01

  Maybe that would also scratch the terrier.

• 2:22:13Rich Roll?

  But maybe instead of scratching the terrier, let's, uh, let's, uh, you know, pet him a little bit. Try to understand him.

• 2:22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:20Rich Roll?

  Lock eyes with him.

• 2:22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:21Rich Roll?

  See if we can get a little communion here, a little deeper insight into why the terrier is the way the terrier is.

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  You are right. I'm still terrified that he then decides to.

• 2:22:33Rich Roll?

  There's nothing to be afraid of.

• 2:22:37Rich Roll?

  Self-awareness is power, my friend.

• 2:22:39Speaker 01

  No, it's true. It's true. And, and, and every time I listen to one of your podcasts, I sort of go, right, I definitely need to work on that side of me a little bit more. Maybe my step into yoga is gonna be a start of it.

• 2:22:50Rich Roll?

  I like it. Yeah.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  Now I'm doing the breathing thing, which I poo-pooed for ages and, and, um, but it's, it's really revolutionized this last. So I've only done it this last week. I get up at 5:29, I do half an hour of yoga and it's the most transformative I've felt out of all the other things, like the ice bath, the sauna. You know, diet changes and that thing. The simple thing I feel has changed me the most. I sleep better for it. Um, I feel better in the day. Um, yeah. Caroline was like, wow, you've you've been such a good mood lately. Um, so I'm definitely gonna. But I'm doing the classic sort of boy thing of like, right, I want to get into yoga. Right. Is there a three hour yoga session I can do?

• 2:23:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, more is better.

• 2:23:35Speaker 01

  More is better.

• 2:23:36Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:23:37Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:23:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just such a, it's antithetical to the whole yoga thing to begin with, right? Like, it's hilarious.

• 2:23:43Speaker 01

  And I'm so terrible. I'm shaking on every pose and I love being terrible.

• 2:23:46Rich Roll?

  Being competitive?

• 2:23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:47Rich Roll?

  In your, in your asanas, yeah.

• 2:23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:50Rich Roll?

  Um, well, let's also work on maybe getting a few vegetables in you as well.

• 2:23:54Speaker 01

  So we, I, I, at home, where I'm sort of part time vegetarian, part time vegan as well. Um, don't have a lot of meat.

• 2:24:04Rich Roll?

  And you're growing some of your food and foraging the mushrooms.

• 2:24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, foraging, I've got a big veggie plot as well. Uh, the growing season's a bit rubbish, so you get all your vegetables in like a month, one month window type thing. Um, but yeah, Caroline and I, we will have a Sunday roast on Sundays. But mostly our weekday meals are are pretty much vegetarian. And I really would like, you know, reading, reading your book. Really, every, I've read it twice now and I'm like, damn it, I really need to do this. I really, I really need to just go, go all in. Um, but yeah, it's on my list.

• 2:24:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You versus, uh, James Lawrence, who can sustain a vegan diet the longest?

• 2:24:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I think I could. I, no, I love it. I actually.

• 2:24:46Rich Roll?

  You probably would win that. I don't know. James has tried. We talked about it.

• 2:24:50Speaker 01

  I think it's habit. It's habit more than anything. I think if, so we do this where they deliver all your, the ingredients to a meal every week in a box.

• 2:24:59Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:24:59Speaker 01

  And so that's all, um, I don't think they do a vegan option, but it's a vegetarian option. So we have four meals a week at home that are mostly vegetarian. Um, and, and I love it. I, I, yeah. And I feel better for it. Uh, I also do feel better with, with game meat than, so I do try and only, when I have meat, it's either fish or game. Um, but yeah, but on, on, on the hundred and five.

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just, it's just, I started stumbling.

• 2:25:27Rich Roll?

  How could you maximize caloric density?

• 2:25:29Speaker 01

  Basically, and, and also I wasn't there to try and do a, a sub, you know, sub ten. I knew I needed the calories and I knew I needed to survive the day and I needed, I needed to not lose weight. Um, but food very rarely changed my, my energy levels on, on the one of, cause I was so fatigued. I was so tired. I was in so much pain. If I ate nothing or everything, I was, I still felt the same.

• 2:25:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  Um, so all it was is just minimizing, eventually going off the cliff from a performance point now. Cause eventually at some point I'll just waste away and have no power left. And then I'll be doing a seven hour bike and a seven hour marathon and then I'm back on the wave. So. And once I had a system, cause I, I ate almost the exact same thing every day to the, and at the same time. So I'd wake up, I'd have porridge and cheer in the morning with butter and honey. And I'd have that very liquidy in a liter and have that on the way to the pool. Then I'd have a banana and then I'd have some athletic greens and a couple of multivits.

• 2:26:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:26:31Speaker 01

  Then on the bike, I'd have small cheeses and small bits of meat. Um, then at the, if I hadn't finished the porridge by the pool, I'd have that before I got on the bike. And then there was three feed stations. I'd have a banana, a packet of crisps. Um, every now and then I could do some tomatoes and, and cucumber, uh, just to, cause I, I just fancied them. Um, I'd have something like a, a Welsh cake. I'm, I have a yeast.

• 2:26:58Rich Roll?

  What is a Welsh cake?

• 2:26:58Speaker 01

  Oh, you're not a Welsh. I should have brought you some. It's just like, um, an, an, an, a flowery. Hmm. Like cake with some raisins in it. Yeah. But no, it's more crumbly. Um, like a scone. And if you, if you flattened a scone, scone, scone, um, it's sort of like that. And then I have the cream and then I have, uh, some nuts and some fruit, lots of fruit.

• 2:27:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:27:21Speaker 01

  Um, and I'd have that on each feed station and then during the run. Uh, oh, and I'd also have, uh, rice pudding. I don't know if you get that, but rice pudding. I'd have one of those at every feed station. Then on the run, bananas and, um.

• 2:27:36Speaker 01

  I'd have a pasta meal, two pasta meals on the run, a full meal. So walking and eating with a spoon, a carbon iron or spag bol. And then in my bottles, I had carb powders in the bottle. So I'd have about two thousand calories a day, just in the bottles, maybe three thousand in powder form. And then, yeah, that, especially with the cream, because I'd have two, two thousand a day in cream, which for me was I'd eat, eat, eat. And then literally at the end, I'd just down a bit of cream and then go. And then that was sort of insurance.

• 2:28:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:28:08Speaker 01

  Like if I messed up all the eating, at least I had that as backup.

• 2:28:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:28:11Speaker 01

  And then that, that kept me, as I said, I only lost three KGs over the three months.

• 2:28:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 2:28:15Speaker 01

  Happy with that. I was happy with that. Cause people, I could have lost ten KGs. I could have gone down. I'm only five foot, I'm under five foot eight. So I could have been, I could have gone on to sixty KGs easily. Yeah, from seventy. So I was happy with sixty seven.

• 2:28:30Rich Roll?

  I think what you've done is extraordinary. It's a testament to the human spirit, your tenacity as this terrier. And just inspirational for everybody to know that you've had your blood work done. You've been in the lab and you've been tested and there isn't anything physically extraordinary about you beyond your sheer determination, your force of will, your refusal to give up, your ability to persevere against obstacles. And this proclivity to act, I think is really powerful. And I think for anybody who's listening or watching, who is considering the upper ceiling of their capabilities.

• 2:29:13Rich Roll?

  My hope is that maybe your testimony will encourage people to rethink that. Cause I think it's easy. Like I was saying before, when you start, you know, this new normal around like, oh, a hundred and five Ironmans in a hundred and five days, like whatever, right? Like, oh, we could, maybe it's two hundred, like. Let's just do a reality check here and appreciate the extraordinary nature of what you accomplished, whether it was 100, 101, 102, 105. This is a feat that I think very few people can appreciate just how extraordinary and difficult it is.

• 2:29:53Rich Roll?

  And as I said to James and have said publicly, you know, I think it's deserving of much more attention from the broader kind of, you know, mainstream media than either of you two guys have have received. Uh, I think you're deserving of of much more attention and appreciation for what you have accomplished because it really is something that as somebody who's dipped their toe in this world, I have a hard time understanding or or even having a taste for what that must have been like.

• 2:30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, thanks for saying that. I am, yeah, I haven't really thought about the external ramifications of where this has gone and where it could go and who's, you know, benefited from it and who's inspired by it because I'm still only four, four and a half weeks out from it. So I think it'll take like four, six months to a year for me to probably decompress and work out what actually happened.

• 2:30:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:54Speaker 01

  I have no memory of, because every day is the same. Like when I cycle around the world, every day was different, but this one, every day is the same. So it all sort of went into one big blur of pain and misery.

• 2:31:03Rich Roll?

  Right, and your relationship with time shifts and you didn't know what was going on in the world or, yeah, so, which is strange.

• 2:31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'll be a while for it sinks in and becomes, I think, once I've written the book and I sit down and I.

• 2:31:15Rich Roll?

  It'll force you to confront it, yeah.

• 2:31:17Speaker 01

  This happened.

• 2:31:18Rich Roll?

  And, you know, you don't have to run to CarFest if you don't want to. I think you earned a little break.

• 2:31:22Speaker 01

  No, I want to.

• 2:31:23Rich Roll?

  Okay, good. Um, well, I'll see you there then, I guess, right?

• 2:31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

• 2:31:28Rich Roll?

  Cool. Um, thank you for coming here and sharing. Uh, you are an inspiration.

• 2:31:34Rich Roll?

  Amazing what you've done, and I can't wait to see what you've done next. Not that you need to top it, I'm more interested in how you synthesize these experiences into actionable wisdom for the rest of us through the book you're gonna write.

• 2:31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, very, very kind of you.

• 2:31:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so if people are keen to learn more about you, they can go to Sean Conway Adventure.

• 2:31:56Speaker 01

  Sean Conway dot com or Sean Conway Adventure.

• 2:31:59Rich Roll?

  On Instagram.

• 2:32:00Speaker 01

  On Instagram.

• 2:32:00Rich Roll?

  Those are the two places?

• 2:32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it.

• 2:32:02Rich Roll?

  Cool, man.

• 2:32:03Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thank you.

• 2:32:04Rich Roll?

  Cheers.

• 2:32:06Rich Roll?

  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 richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voice of Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.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 and/or comment. Supporting

• 2:32:50Rich Roll?

  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 richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale 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 Solis. Thank you,

• 2:33:34Rich Roll?

  Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Tractor Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate that. Love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

• 2:34:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.