#875 - Nedd Brockman - Pushing The Boundaries Of Mental Toughness

Speaker 1 Ned Brockman, welcome to the show. How are you, mate? Good.
Thank you for coming last night.

Speaker 2 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 It was a fun night. I didn't know what to expect, as I told you last night, but it was a, I feel like a lot of people felt a lot in that room.

Speaker 2 When I saw you, it felt like all the energy was on you. Like, it's quite an intense, I think, environment, that stuff.
But yeah, it was really cool. I loved to hear all the questions and the answers.

Speaker 2 It was great.

Speaker 1 Fuck yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about what you've just finished doing recently. This is the first time you've actually got to sit down on a podcast and talk about it since you completed everything.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm a bit traumatized, to be honest. So it's a bit,

Speaker 2 it's good. I'm excited to talk about it.
It's been, as you said, I've just haven't really chosen to do it because I'm,

Speaker 2 I guess I wanted to process it a bit. But yeah, I ran a thousand miles around a track

Speaker 2 in what was hoping to be 10 and a half days, but ended up a bit longer than that just due to a few

Speaker 2 probably being a bit under ready for it, but still completed it in 12 and a half days. Fastest person to ever do it since I've been alive, which is a pretty cool stat.

Speaker 2 I've only been alive for 25 years, so as a few guys did it before that, but

Speaker 2 yeah, I ended up 130K a day around a 400-meter athletics track for 12 and a half days.

Speaker 1 Why decide to do that particular event?

Speaker 2 A culmination of a few things. I ran across Australia two years ago

Speaker 2 and kind of

Speaker 2 felt this like

Speaker 2 desire to want to keep doing these things and push my body that, you know, the more discomfort you put yourself through, the

Speaker 2 better of a person or, you know, more of a person you become.

Speaker 2 And off the back of that, I knew I wanted to do something every one or two years and

Speaker 2 thought about running across the length of the UK. Because I hear a lot of people have done that.

Speaker 2 Bit too hilly for me. So I chose stupidly a thousand miles around a track.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I didn't really think too much about it. I don't really think too much about these things.

Speaker 2 I feel like anyone who takes these on are usually a bit older. They're usually, you know, 45, 50, have done 25, 30 years of running prior, only started three and a half, four years ago.

Speaker 2 So I think my naivety and stubbornness kind of go hand in hand.

Speaker 2 But yeah, then

Speaker 2 got to the start of this year and went, well, I'm going to do this, going to lock it in.

Speaker 2 And I do a lot of stuff with homelessness and wanted to align the two and ended up, yeah, ended up finishing it in 12 and a half days, which throughout the period, throughout that time, I don't think I've ever felt as much pain as I did in that 12 and a half days.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about the training preparation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was

Speaker 2 a lot of people ask that, like the, what's the physical side of things versus what's the mental preparation? I think, you know, obviously, as I said, I didn't get the record. So I didn't

Speaker 2 probably wasn't physically prepared enough, but I don't think I will be for another 15, 20 years. And that's why.

Speaker 1 Accumulating an awful lot of time and attention to this.

Speaker 2 Of course, of course. And that's like, that's the game.
But I feel like at 25, you're somewhat relatable to younger people and also older people.

Speaker 2 And it's not really running for me. That's the thing.
It's just running is the tool I use to feel what I feel. And I have almost an ability to get people to watch, I guess.

Speaker 2 And so I can then push what I want to push by doing that. And so whether that be through helping homelessness or getting people up and moving, inspired to do something.

Speaker 1 It's like a social change organization masquerading as a fitness pursuit.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 exactly yeah because

Speaker 2 i don't like

Speaker 2 even before the os run right the run across australia i didn't really know why i was doing it i just wanted to i wanted like i wanted to feel what it would feel like to run across australia i wanted to feel like what it would feel like to run 100k a day um

Speaker 2 and i'm not willing to just sit back and go oh wait till the right time because i think in life there is no right time i think you just have to start these things um

Speaker 2 and so yeah off the back of that i didn't really know why or what was going to come of it.

Speaker 2 And then I saw off the back of the Oz run that there was so many people just in Oz, I guess, that went, I was so inspired to run my first marathon or to speak to someone on the street or to whatever it may have been.

Speaker 2 I was like, I want to give people something like tangible to be able to put that inspiration into after I do something.

Speaker 2 And so off the back of this thousand mile run, I wanted to get people allowed to do their own thing as well. So I started Ned's Uncomfortable Challenge, which was like

Speaker 2 giving them their own 10-day thing that they can pick and choose to do something hard and feel what I feel. That was kind of like the hope.

Speaker 2 So the lead up to it was like quite intense because I've got this thing. I'm trying to run this like almost organization that's trying to help people move and raise money for mobilize homelessness.

Speaker 2 But then as well, train really hard for this thing that you can't give anything else but your undivided attention.

Speaker 1 And well, didn't you do, was it 50 marathons in 50 days while you were at work? Yeah, yeah. Not while you went to work and then did the marathons after as well.

Speaker 2 I was still a Sparky, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, I don't know.

Speaker 1 There's something, you're right, there's something relatable about doing it while you've got the other obligations because it's all well and good and very impressive still.

Speaker 1 Ross Edgeley swims around the UK, fucking unbelievable feat, but he slept. Six hours on, six hours off, six hours on, six hours off for, you know, the best part of a year.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And he had a support crew and he had all the rest of it.

Speaker 1 and although it's unbelievably inspiring and obviously the pinnacle when it comes to sort of human achievement for distance swimming another side of you discounts it because you go well that's so different to my life yeah that's not like if i had the support crew and if i had that thing maybe so the relatability i think gets pulled away yeah so although it must have made the preparation more difficult the fact that you've got slack to answer and emails and calls and artwork to sign off or whatever the fuck you need to do i think especially if you're talking about that, there's a degree of relatability because everyone's got to pick the kids up.

Speaker 1 Everybody's got to walk the dog.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's always, that's, that was the biggest thing I learned in the 50 marathons was like I had to go to work for eight and a half hours.

Speaker 2 And everyone, as you said, everyone can relate to the fact that they've got to go to work. And then they get home and they go, right, now I just got to feed and,

Speaker 2 you know, whatever it may be, walk the dog.

Speaker 2 But then I was like, all right, I had to run 42K in the afternoon and then also feed myself, also wash my clothes, also, you know, clean my sheets, whatever it may have been, right?

Speaker 2 So yeah, that kind of, but that was like, I'd only been running for six months at that point. Like I didn't run at school, didn't like, I only played rugby and rode, but I never ran.

Speaker 2 So doing that was like a, that was a whole new world.

Speaker 1 So preparation for the thousand miles. Yep.

Speaker 1 How strategic are you with this? You said that you kind of pull the rip cord and just jump into stuff.

Speaker 1 But I know some of my friends that are training for marathons, there's even free apps online that are like, this is how you break down your mileage per week. And this is how you do it.

Speaker 1 So it's relatively structured.

Speaker 2 how structured are you and sort of scientific evidence-based formalized with your process for this kind of stuff physically it's evolved um very cowboy in the at the start of this kind of four years the os run i would say is still very cowboy like i'll be fine i'll tough it out um and i learned a lot through that especially when i started this i always have a coach dealing with nutritionist um but i think there's something very valuable in just doing it and being

Speaker 2 like having to find out yourself what works what doesn't

Speaker 2 yes there is people who have done the research and they know so it's like you need to lean on them when you don't and haven't found what you can find throughout your own training uh but the physical i guess my lead up the biggest thing i probably did was strength training and a lot of it like you can't

Speaker 2 A lot of people try and run the Ks before the event and realize that they got injured throughout the process or they tried to climb too quick because the almost insurmountable achievement there is like too big.

Speaker 2 We have to make sure we hit those Ks so we know we can do it.

Speaker 2 Where strength training, I think, gives you that time under tension, but then running on heavy legs and running on, you know, sore carves, whatever it may be, allows you to kind of feel what it feels like to back-to-back a longer day after a longer day, after a longer day.

Speaker 2 But nothing can emulate or simulate what running 160k after 160K feels like. It's like

Speaker 2 just

Speaker 2 next level. Okay.
And you can only really feel that after day one.

Speaker 1 All right. So you decide to get to the start line.
And what's the process? You need to break it down if you're going to try and do a thousand over whatever 10 days.

Speaker 1 You've got mileage that you're trying to hit per day. Talk me through what a typical day was like once the races came around.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So the goal, I actually got injured prior to the start, got eight weeks out and I had a bit of a shin overload because I,

Speaker 2 I guess, probably overdid a little bit. The strength was up, but the

Speaker 2 K's, I was trying to hit 200K a week roughly with three big strength training days.

Speaker 2 And I think I just hit it a little bit, but I was so close to the event that I was like, I've got all these sponsors, this uncomfortable challenge, the fundraising, all these things were

Speaker 2 there.

Speaker 2 And I knew I couldn't pull out. So it was like, never right time.
You must do what you said. Let's just try and work out the best way.

Speaker 2 A lot of physioing, a lot of praying,

Speaker 2 not on my knees because that was sore.

Speaker 1 And then I

Speaker 2 would, yeah, got to the start line essentially, went, had a pretty severe injury from the get-go.

Speaker 2 And the goal was to run 160 a day for 10 days. Ideally, we knew that wasn't probably going to go to plan after about day three or four, but that's what we deal with when it happens.

Speaker 2 Got day one, did it in 16 hours. That was kind of the goal.
Get it 10K done every hour.

Speaker 1 Is that how you tried to break it up? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so each lap, I would, each lane, I would do two laps in lane one, two laps in lane two, two laps in lane three, all all the way to lane eight, come back to lane one. So that would be 12.8K.

Speaker 1 Oh, because you accumulate a little bit more distance by going out to the edge and it keeps variety, which probably mentally

Speaker 2 because just doing 4,000 laps of lane one

Speaker 2 is like almost completely unachievable in my mind, where like

Speaker 2 lane one twice, lane two, twice, lane three twice

Speaker 1 500 laps of

Speaker 1 each eight or whatever. Yeah, so funny.

Speaker 2 It was like that was a master lap. So two laps, lane one, two laps, lane two, all the way to lane eight.
And then back down again. So that was one master lap.
I had to do 125 master laps.

Speaker 1 I know this sounds weird.

Speaker 2 It's much more consumable.

Speaker 1 Yes. I know this sounds funny.
Did you have a favorite lane as you were running? Was the one that you looked forward to?

Speaker 2 Lane four on the way out. Yeah.
On the way back home, like after the

Speaker 2 three-quarters of the way. Why?

Speaker 2 So it was like lane four on the way at the start wasn't good because you still had and like the the the tiny little bit of distance each lane further out adds up so when you're over that and you're heading the way out it's like oh i've only got two in lane five now

Speaker 2 which means i've only got three more lanes which essentially if i just run for like two minutes i've got two laps

Speaker 2 two laps oh cool i'm done and then like at the end of each master lap i would eat or lay down get a rub down um or just quickly turn around and go were you reversing direction every every master lap so i would go that way and then come back It's a really nice setup.

Speaker 1 That seems like a good way to mentally. Break it down.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 But then by like by day four, the master laps, it's like, fuck, why did I choose to do this?

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 I don't know. It was almost like this.
What's the movie with

Speaker 2 Tom Cruise in it, where he keeps getting through and then he dies and he has to restart and go again?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 fucking day after tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Tomorrow will be on something.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I fucking love that.

Speaker 2 You know the one?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he dies he keeps waking up in this yeah that's workshop whatever yeah so i would like finish a master lap and i'm so exhausted like after day three i'll i day two was 20 hours day three was 21 hours of running and then i so and to keep the record i was like right i've got to shift that to 12 hours running two hours resting two hours sleeping and in that two hours resting i was still getting the shower eating so i had like an hour of sleep and i'd wake up and I'd be like, oh, that's right.

Speaker 2 I've got 12 hours of running right now.

Speaker 2 And so that's what would happen. I would get to the physio bed after a master lap

Speaker 2 and nothing would move. Like I'd wake up and it was the exact same theme.
Like I just kept seeing like the my shoes there. Mum hadn't moved.
No one had like done anything.

Speaker 2 And on the Oz run, what was nice was like, you'd see a different scene. You'd see different cars.
You'd see different people. But here it was like, I'd wake up, I'd see a blue track.

Speaker 2 I'd see like the physio table where it was, the food hasn't moved. And I'm like, I'm in a fucking loop here.
What is happening?

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, you are.

Speaker 2 I was like, how do I get out of this? And it's like, the only way out is through. Like, the only way out is to get this thing done.

Speaker 2 And the only way to get this thing done is to put one foot in front of the other. But when you're like day four and you've still got a thousand kilometers to go, that's like terrifying.

Speaker 1 So talk me through the degradation of your body and legs across this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I felt quite strong up until about day three.

Speaker 2 Daylight savings changed.

Speaker 2 So we went forward an hour, which really my head up oh fuck so we lost from daylight savings yeah on day end of day three so that was like oh no we've lost an hour even though we hadn't yes obviously

Speaker 2 it's from the beginning of the 24 hours to the end of it but you're using yeah and i'm like no no no yeah um and the idea behind the the 16 hours was i started at 4 p.m on day one

Speaker 2 and um wanted to go throughout the night so it wasn't as hot because here on the track if you get a hot day it's like five degrees hotter and so that after day one i slept throughout the day, had like my, my eight sleep, had my, um, like the room was blacked out, everything was great.

Speaker 2 Unreal. Yeah.
And then after that, I realized, which I tried to do in my training, was like sleep being cooked and your heart rate being up and how do we get those things down.

Speaker 2 But yeah, that was that stress that built up about this whole event. So like after day one, I'm just like, oh, God, I got another, you know, 900 miles to go.

Speaker 2 And so after day one, sleep just never came. Like I just couldn't sleep.
So as we discussed last night, like sleep is one of, if the not the most important thing for recovery, right?

Speaker 2 And if you can't even get two of it a night,

Speaker 2 the wheels are going to fall off. If you like it or not, you can try and tough it out all you like.
And I was doing my best to do that. But

Speaker 2 day five was when I

Speaker 2 actually, I haven't really spoken about this to anyone, I, except for like the immediate crew. I got to the end of day five or day five, six hours.
I'd hit 810 kilometers.

Speaker 1 I was over halfway, pretty well on track.

Speaker 2 But I wasn't really making decisions very well. And I'd started to lose that like almost consciousness.
Like I wasn't really there with everyone, even though they were right around me.

Speaker 2 And mum was like, like, she's like, do you want to eat? I couldn't even work out if I wanted to make the call to eat.

Speaker 2 Like I wanted someone to say, you must eat, you must rest, you must drink, you must change your shoes. I just didn't have it in me.

Speaker 2 And so we got to this point where mum's like, you either run or go to bed. I'm going to call, go to bed.
And I went right at 45 minutes. I'm going to go to bed 45 minutes.

Speaker 2 Hopped in bed with my shoes on, clothes on. It's after like a 12-hour day.

Speaker 2 I'm laying on my bed and I, my heart rate was at like 110. That's me resting.
I'm laying there. I just like, it feels in my throat.
My ears were like pulsing. My eyes were like forcing out of my head.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, okay.

Speaker 2 This could be how I go, I reckon. Like genuinely thought this is it because like the sleep deprivation thing becomes gnarly.

Speaker 2 But if you can nap and you can switch it off a little bit, there's like little tricks you can play. And, you know, ultra runners do that all the time.
But over that kind of period, it starts to,

Speaker 2 I think, go the opposite way. And like, you start to die.

Speaker 2 And so I'm laying in bed, my throat's like closing up. My nose is bleeding.
And I go, mom, can you stay out the door? I'm like not sure what's going to happen here.

Speaker 2 Like I'm pretty concerned about like my health. 20 minutes later, I'm like freaking out.

Speaker 1 Mom, mom, mom.

Speaker 2 She's like, not there. She's like left.
She's having crisis talks with the team because she's watched me go, I'm going to die and going, we need to get him to bed. He needs to sleep.

Speaker 2 And we need to like make sure this, because essentially I was trying to get this record so bad. I was like a wounded dog going, I need to like kill or be killed.
Right.

Speaker 2 And when you're in that mode, you've done what you've done already to get there.

Speaker 2 You can't make that decision to say, hey, guys, we've got to quickly sleep here.

Speaker 2 This record's gone it's fine um so mum comes in goes get in this wheelchair i'm walking to the shower get in the shower you're going to bed i'm like okay so thank fuck for mom because otherwise like i don't know what would have happened or i would have gone out there and just tried to death march until i couldn't and then yeah ended up getting a bit of a sleep got about two hours that night and then woke up with a bit of uh you know umph in my step

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 and kind of like a bit of clarity that this is not about a record you're 25 it's important to go for them i think shooting and hoping and putting everything into getting it is really important.

Speaker 2 But I think what you learn about yourself in continuing to finish what you set out to do is 10 times more important than a flag in the ground to say, I got it.

Speaker 1 Did you see Ross failed his long distance swim twice before he did the one recently?

Speaker 2 In America. In Yukon.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sorry. And

Speaker 1 yeah, with that, I think he's got,

Speaker 1 of all of the endurance people that I've spoken to and that i know i think he's got the best mindset around it because he's very

Speaker 1 well at first he is a freak like he's depersonalized so much of this he talks about suffering as uh resilience is suffering strategically managed i love that dude he just smiles through the most terrifying yeah terrifying human uh but i what i like particularly about his approach is that he doesn't He doesn't tell himself a story about it.

Speaker 1 It's not about him. It's not about his capacity, his worth as a human.
Does Does it make him less or more? No, exactly. Like for doing it, he's just, he sees himself like a science experiment.

Speaker 1 You know, he is a sports scientist at heart. And

Speaker 1 yeah, it's interesting thinking about the situation that you were in where you've got

Speaker 1 the mental capacity, which is the exact thing that you need to use to make good decisions, is the very thing that the situation you're in.

Speaker 1 is depriving you of, which means that your difficult decision becomes infinitely worse.

Speaker 1 And then you can't even step in to help other people make decisions on your body. You can't even tell other people that you need them to make decisions.

Speaker 1 You don't even have that level of self-awareness.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, I mean,

Speaker 1 the sleep deprivation thing while doing these sorts of events,

Speaker 1 I think, must be one of the most difficult things. The reason that Ross is so good at what he does is his digestion because he can eat and then be horizontal.
I don't know about you.

Speaker 1 If I eat, I need to be upright for about half an hour.

Speaker 1 Gravity apparently needs to help me digest shit. Right.

Speaker 1 But he can happily chug down you know best part of a liter of porridge piping hot porridge that burns his throat on the way down to warm him from the inside like a fucking internal edible hot water bottle yeah and then get back to not only being horizontal but face down in water swimming not saying anything exactly so i wonder if

Speaker 1 i wonder if there's a a person out there who's like an elite sleeper who might be a worse runner, who might be a worse lifter, who might be a worse swimmer or whatever.

Speaker 1 They could win by sleeping. Yeah.
They can just, the same way Ross can digest at any point, I wonder if there's something that can be done by training sleep more effectively. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2 But it's like, yeah, I don't know. I also feel there's like a

Speaker 2 being in that mode of like, because I like, I can imagine Ross's brain is quite like

Speaker 2 just constantly, right? But when you're in that deprived sleep state,

Speaker 2 I feel like there's a lot more clarity. Not when you're out of it, right?

Speaker 2 But like in that period of like, there is there's nothing else that matters other than the task at hand there's something so pure about that even though like i would wake up and go oh god i've got to i've got to go again yeah um and even when i finished the run for the next 10 days i would i'd be in a like napping i'd i'd finally nap and then i'd wake up from like in this terror you've got to do it again that i've got to get up and got to get to lane eight and mum's there saying it's all it's all good and every physio says it's fine mate you're not you're not out there i'm like i know what you're saying it's not computing like i appreciate you you're telling me i'm here but i feel like i owe another 170k to the people that are watching on the live stream telling me it's you know what i mean like there was this

Speaker 2 because you're so wired to get this thing done you can't just switch that off once you're done you know what i mean you can't just go oh we're finished this is fine yeah it's like a it's a very traumatic way in other news this episode is brought to you by ag1 you are not eating enough fruit and vegetables and you know it and this is going to help.

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Speaker 2 So in that six hours, try and get four or three or two.

Speaker 1 Is this because of the pace? That if you were to push the pace much more quickly, it would be too fatiguing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was more just the fact that the lack of sleep thing was

Speaker 2 there was no way I was finishing it if I wasn't sleeping. I just, you can't tough that out.

Speaker 1 What was the original time on, time off plan?

Speaker 2 It was, well, the first few days, 16, 8. And in that 8, there'd be six or seven hours.
I'm usually a pretty good sleeper, but for some reason, it just wasn't the stress of the thing.

Speaker 2 And yeah, and you can't, you can't fight it. Otherwise, you're just sitting there going.

Speaker 2 And then I would get out earlier and go again, and that's just like not a not a thing to do. So, yeah, ended up 18 hours.

Speaker 2 Um, and I was probably that's when the average dropped down a little bit on those days where I was like,

Speaker 2 We've just got to get this thing done. But um, I was pretty proud of the fact that I got through those next you know, five days, still averaging over 120, 130k.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 I just,

Speaker 2 what I found, and what I usually in these kind of events is like, I have some sort of fun.

Speaker 2 Like I have some sort of reprieve with family or with friends or with, you know, at dinner, we might be laughing about what happened or what I said or what someone did.

Speaker 2 This time around, I didn't have one freaking second of it. And for me, as someone who really like

Speaker 2 laughs about the crap that's going on and like really

Speaker 2 smiles about the crappy things, I just didn't even have that at all. And so I like,

Speaker 2 that was really hard for me.

Speaker 2 And so, the majority of the time, like even when we raised a million dollars on day nine, and I'd looked up and I was like, It was the first time I went, Oh my god, like you're actually doing something important and valuable to society, and people are clearly inspired, so they're right, they're donating.

Speaker 2 And it was the first time I actually took a breath and going, Oh, this is what you're doing is insane. You hadn't found any joy in the suffering up until that point, none of it, like not one bit.

Speaker 2 And then the night, even the night before we finished, we'd raised like 700,000 that night.

Speaker 2 night we were i was 2.6 million before i'd finished and then i i just like took a breath in there was i don't know how many people in the stadium just there to watch and i was like

Speaker 2 you've got to kind of appreciate this because these moments don't happen all the time and you know i might get it five or six more times my life or i die like i want to enjoy these moments and then even after that i'd seen all this all this money raise and i still was like i've got another 100k to go and i had to like just grit the teeth.

Speaker 2 That final day was a 26 hours non-stop, 160K done. And I crossed the line and I punched that fucking banner.
I was just so angry. It was so

Speaker 2 disheartening because I, with the Oz run, like, I just had so much joy throughout it as much as I had the suffering. I also had so much joy.

Speaker 2 Um, but I think off the back of this, I'm actually going to find

Speaker 2 out so much more about myself and

Speaker 2 like things I've learned throughout going through something so hard and so lack of joy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm like excited. Again, I'm yet to work what that is out yet, but I'm sure eventually I'll have that lesson.

Speaker 1 What were you angry about?

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 I lost like

Speaker 2 I just lost who I was in it because I am that happy, jovial person and I'm usually bringing everyone up. And when I'm up, everyone's up, especially in the support team.

Speaker 2 And I think I found that like I was putting a lot more pressure on the crew

Speaker 2 than I needed to because of how much pain I was in. So that I was angry that like it wasn't as fun for everyone else involved, where like I feel like the Ozran was much more like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then just,

Speaker 2 I I think I was also extremely proud to have finished it, but I think that was masked a bit more by the,

Speaker 2 that it was just so fucking hard. Yeah.
It was just so violently hard.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about physical pains, challenges, such going through it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I had,

Speaker 2 so I had tenocytivitis in both shins, which is just like fluid around the tendon sheath, anterior tibialis muscle.

Speaker 2 So essentially.

Speaker 1 I've felt that before, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I had it in the Osrun, probably like 20 days in.

Speaker 2 I had it day three on my right leg and i had to have a dictus band on that one for the rest of the run a what addictus band so for people with drop foot when they um like walk into the bus or they can't pull their shin up essentially their foot up um it's just a device that goes around the ankle and then a rubber band goes through your laces and so when you lift your hip up your foot comes up Oh, right.

Speaker 1 And then you, yeah. And so essentially we found that that worked on the because it takes the pressure off having to actually exactly.

Speaker 2 right when you press off foot wise your calf explodes and then it's down and that rubber band essentially just pulls your foot up yep pulls your foot up and I felt that like that worked on the os run it's a something if it does go to crap I can utilize this as a as a plan to keep moving

Speaker 2 we packed another one because we thought maybe my shin will go on the left side and it did on day day eight or nine So I'm running with like two big dictus bands, rubber bands.

Speaker 2 People are like, what's going on with these legs?

Speaker 2 I just have weak shins, apparently. And again, that's another thing that it's over time, you get stronger shins, you do these things.
And then my right knee, which I'm still dealing with a little bit,

Speaker 2 essentially I'd lost hip mobility. And so my

Speaker 2 gait was off all of, you know, two centimeters. So when I'd land, my knee would land in every step.
So about 400K to go, I had that pain. So I had to walk 200 meters, run 200 meters.

Speaker 2 Because at the end of the running of 200 meters, I, the pain was just so immense that I had to like walk to ease it. So for the next 400k it was just a walk run walk run

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 and yeah it was quite funny when people came to run with me i'm like i've just got to explain this sono like izzy uh israela da sonia flew in from uh auckland the second last night he's like ready to run with me fully keen i'm like just say no mate we're walking and running every 200 meters he's like yep all good mate no worries um but yeah that that i've had a like injection in that now just to kind of ease it um

Speaker 2 but it's all nothing structural which is good bloods were all fine um apart from like a bit of a uh gluten response just because of the high amount of carb you're eating and the inflammation in the body uh those markers were a bit high but

Speaker 2 iron was good everything was good i was uh pretty cortisol fine uh liver liver bit high from pain meds but what do you think

Speaker 1 that's really interesting because i would have expected hormonally something to have been going on if you're lying in a bed and your resting heart rates at 110 and you're only getting half an hour or an hour's sleep and you've got to do all of this work.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 a lot of the time, because the only thing that we have access to are our thoughts, right? So we know what the

Speaker 1 inner world is for us. I can't detect what my hormone and estrophagenum and progesterone levels are.

Speaker 1 But.

Speaker 1 If your bloods have come back and they're normal,

Speaker 1 relatively normal, what that shows is the power of of the framing that you've got inside of you, because it's not something systemic that's going on, or at least not something that could be measured.

Speaker 1 Free radicals, other like blah, blah, blah in the blood.

Speaker 1 I'm sure that there will be areas that weren't fully tested, but it just really shows what power you have mentally to be able to make a relatively okay performing physiology totally fucked.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 It's quite an interesting thing, isn't it? I,

Speaker 2 yeah, I was

Speaker 2 a bit perplexed.

Speaker 2 We only took them seven days later, so I reckon in that period, there probably would have been a bit, but like, I kind of guess you don't want to take them right then, because you know it's going to be

Speaker 1 another source of stress for you as well. Oh, by the way, get in, let's pin you, blah, blah, blah.
Of course.

Speaker 2 I would have been intrigued to take them throughout and seeing what.

Speaker 1 Well, they can do, I think they can do a little easier for lactate and stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it is always interesting, but again, I just like it for the

Speaker 2 just because I said I was going to do it. I don't, there's no like, I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone.
It's like one of those ones where it's like,

Speaker 2 this is something I want to attack. Life is, you don't know what's coming tomorrow.
So let's set this thing up. Let's do it.
Let's get it done.

Speaker 1 What does the ultra running community think of you?

Speaker 2 That's a good question.

Speaker 2 I want to dance. No, I'm not going to dance around this because it's like something that's,

Speaker 2 again, being 25, something I never thought I would have

Speaker 2 dealt with as much.

Speaker 2 There's purists in everything, and I know for a fact that people in boxing and swimming and all those things that take on these events without the,

Speaker 2 I guess, resume of

Speaker 2 what is supposedly supposed to do in order to attack a thousand miles.

Speaker 1 I'm saying that you're the Jake Paul of endurance racing. There you go.

Speaker 2 Perfect. Fucking God.

Speaker 1 Don't put that on me. He's got a mullet, too.
Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was shocked when I first copped a bit of flack for a few things, but I'm always like, even your talk last night talking about

Speaker 2 like anyone who's spreading negativity.

Speaker 2 It is funny when you've never copped it that you think they are.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, they must be right because, you know, I'm this, this lack of

Speaker 2 this person. I'm not not capable, but that person, he's got it.
He knows. Yeah, that person's assessment of me is bang on.
Like all your close people around you tell you, love you.

Speaker 2 No, they can't be right. No, you're fine, mate.
What you did, no, not a chance. Who know you so well.
But then the nuffy that said, oh, how dare you pause your watch for this amount of time?

Speaker 2 Cause it doesn't reflect exactly what it is. Oh, yeah, no, he knows me in and out.

Speaker 1 And it's interesting.

Speaker 2 I think we're just so naturally drawn to make sure.

Speaker 2 i think innately that's us to want people to love us and want people to approve us and welcome us with open arms but so you find the people that don't and work out a way to try and do the thing that will make them love you yeah i i when i first went through that i was like i i'm like i'm going oh fuck well how do i you just lose so much of yourself by doing that like you become the most broad

Speaker 2 have no backbone stand for nothing if you're trying to be general and please everyone

Speaker 2 so it's it's good that you have people that don't like you. But if you're yourself and you have those people that violently love you and can't support you enough,

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 2 as long as you can see it for that, and exactly as you said, these people are so insecure about themselves and so worried about what people think of them too, that they prefer to spit hate and anger.

Speaker 2 In saying that, in the running world, I would say majority of people accept me and appreciate appreciate that what I'm doing is, you know, probably a bit dumb and not the road to take.

Speaker 2 But it's also one that I would not change for the world.

Speaker 2 I would do the Osran again 10 times over at 22 years old to

Speaker 2 continue to, like, I just want people to...

Speaker 2 I've said it for like the last probably three years. Any keynote I've done, any speaking to anyone, I want people to live, like live, just make the most of it.
Stop waiting.

Speaker 2 Stop getting on your phone. stop just go and do the thing you've always wanted to do give so give without wanting anything in return i think there's a lot of that where it's like

Speaker 2 people want something from an exchange or want something from doing something i feel like if you can just give and give your time or energy or a smile or money to someone or to whatever it is um

Speaker 2 that is a very rewarding existence and then to get uncomfortable i love the fact that you can intentionally put yourself in really hard scenarios and you'll find out things about yourself that you'll never have learned unless you did those things, if you did the hard things.

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, live, give, get uncomfortable. That's all I want.
That's all my message is.

Speaker 2 And if I can get people to hear that through what I do, regardless of that being running, swimming, kayaking, rock climbing, whatever I decide to do next, and I'm sure I'll keep ruffling feathers with.

Speaker 2 the purists of the sport who can't stand that a sponsor's paying me what they're paying me or can't stand that I'm getting to speak at these events where where they're like but it should be this guy because he's can run this really fast marathon time it's like i appreciate that and those people are incredible those i i i could never match it with the elites of the elites in the marathon world or the ultra marathon world it might take me years to get there but i hope that i have a message that people can go yeah that's cool i like that i appreciate that for what he is and yeah i i don't want to get that mixed up with me being i've never gone i'm the i'm just attacking this thing because it's there and i feel like i'm capable of doing doing it and

Speaker 2 off the run i did i it definitely shows that i am capable i just have to do the years and years and years but by the time i'm able to do it i'll probably want to do something else so

Speaker 1 yeah do you know will googe i do yeah he's a he's a good friend yeah so will i've known will for years and uh you know he did his thing america across america he did a an interesting uk one before it was the counties different counties different the three peaks or the four or five peaks no no so this was maybe even before before that, um, where he ran, I think it's a marathon in each county in the UK.

Speaker 1 Maybe every day it was like the 60-55 or something.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, 40-30.

Speaker 1 48-30.

Speaker 2 That was it. You're in 48 marathons, 30 days.
That was it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yes. Yeah, I do.
That was before all that. Yeah, and then he did the thing where he ran across America and not too dissimilar.

Speaker 1 He's probably maybe like 30, only a few years older than you, something like that.

Speaker 1 For the people that don't know him, fucking good-looking kid.

Speaker 1 Hot, handsome, hot, big dick.

Speaker 2 Anyway, I haven't seen the dick.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like it's it's uh, you're not British. Um,

Speaker 1 and uh, he doesn't, I was talking to Rich Roll about this, and he said, what did he refer to it as? He said, the endurance races are a bit of a granola crowd.

Speaker 1 They're sort of a bit crusty, and you've got Will, who's trendy, and he wears flares. Yeah, exactly.
You know, like a skincare routine. Yeah, yeah.
And he ends up

Speaker 1 doing really well on a number of like pretty fucking extreme events, but it ruffles some feathers. People just want to hate it.

Speaker 2 People just want to hate it. And it's like, it's just such an odd way to look at the world.
And it's sad.

Speaker 2 And I think if you can look at it from that pity point of view, it's like, that's actually sad that you can't go, you know what? This bloke's been running. He's ex-rugby player.
He's hot as shit.

Speaker 2 He's getting deals from a freaking, you know, whatever it may be. And they can't just go, you know what? Good on you.
You ran across America in 55 days. They're fucking incredible.

Speaker 2 Like, give the man his flowers. Like, let's not hate on people for.

Speaker 1 What's the response been to Russ Cook?

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 relatively positive. And I'm sure he's copped it.
And as

Speaker 1 do you think his granolary beard has helped him with that?

Speaker 2 I mean, he's so likable. He's just such a...
You can't not like the guy. There's something wrong with you if you can't not like him.
You have to like him. He's too just bubbly and funny.

Speaker 2 You don't know what's going to come out.

Speaker 1 I remember this is the guy, again, for the people that didn't know that he ran the length of africa first person ever i think to run it to the the full length yeah from bottom of south africa to top of tunisia yeah wherever the it is yeah and uh

Speaker 1 i remember i was watching him on his instagram stories halfway through it and i think he'd managed to get some sort of food poisoning yeah and he was running down the road with

Speaker 1 pouring out of his shorts throwing up and videoing himself just saying that they're trying to stop me.

Speaker 1 They,

Speaker 1 they're trying to stop me, but I'm just too fucking fierce. I'm just still here chewing pavement, chewing tarmac, eating asphalt.
And

Speaker 1 I don't know. It's not.
I really wish that that was the way that I'm built in those situations. And maybe if I dedicated myself to it, there's something that I could activate.
But fuck me.

Speaker 1 I love seeing someone that is. Like seeing somebody that is

Speaker 1 dealing with suffering with a smile. And I don't know, is noble and like cool.

Speaker 2 It is. And that's why so many people love Russ.

Speaker 2 Like they just want to just give me more rust like when he was posting you know day 300 of 100 he's got his goggles on through the saha like that is that's just you know what that is that's authenticity that's him being him and i think so many people want to be themselves but don't know how and you've got this guy who's just so unapologetically himself and that is that's attractive and and draws you in and i feel like if we can all do that that's where you don't have these people that are sad and miserable about their lives, but that's just, that's the way the world is.

Speaker 2 You're never going to change them. They've, they've got to change themselves.

Speaker 1 And I wonder if, uh,

Speaker 1 I wonder if that's part of the reason that you were maybe a bit angry when you finished the race as well, that you have this opportunity to like not only be

Speaker 1 you for your own experience, but also like, this is what I want to put out. Like, the whole, one of the big reasons of doing this is to set the example.

Speaker 1 Like, this is how you can deal with suffering with a smile. This is how you can go through some adversity and and be jovial and

Speaker 1 add levity.

Speaker 1 And maybe that was as much of a missed opportunity as not completing the race would have been. Not just doing the thing, but how you do the thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I guess there's a part of that. But I still feel it

Speaker 2 grabbed a lot of people and went, oh, Jesus, we've got a like.

Speaker 2 this how is he still going how is you know we've been drawn on live tick tock at 3 a.m going how he's still moving he's still moving like i know i know it got

Speaker 2 it definitely got through the message i wanted but i think yeah potentially crossing and went

Speaker 2 yeah maybe maybe if i got the record it still wouldn't have been as important as the what happened anyway if i did i still don't believe i would be going i got this like i don't think that would be the message i hope it wouldn't be that if because as you said at the start it's like

Speaker 2 Ross isn't better or worse than anyone because he's done something. He's a human being that's living his life the way he wants to live it.
And that's what's caught.

Speaker 1 He's applied himself in a very specific way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's just cool.

Speaker 1 And people...

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Speaker 1 the first night i've done three shows very in very close succession and each one was the smallest show of this tour and also the biggest show i'd ever done each time So it was like a thousand people, then 1,700 people, then two and a bit thousand people.

Speaker 1 So each one had escalated up. And

Speaker 1 I, especially at the first show, there was a lot of like gripping from me to make sure that I didn't mess up. And it went great.
All of the shows went really perfect.

Speaker 1 You know, I couldn't have asked for them to have gone any better.

Speaker 2 How much prep have you done for those?

Speaker 1 Like, what? Sorry, I'm obviously. No, not at all.
What, like,

Speaker 2 how long was your preparation for a show of that? Like, because you're so refined and so

Speaker 2 clear with what you were for two hours, yeah. Yeah, but incredible, except for the um Arthur Shackleton.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I meant Arthur Shackleton. Well, it's the problem is Ernest Shackleton is the guy that did uh uh went across Antarctica, but Alfred Lansing is the guy that wrote the book, Endurance.

Speaker 1 And I managed to split the difference between Ernest Shackleton and fucking

Speaker 1 anyway. So sorry, no, not at all.
Uh,

Speaker 1 Quite a lot of prep. You know, I ran half of the show last year, maybe 20 times.
Okay. I did work-in-progress shows this year in Austin.

Speaker 1 So I did in front of 40 people, like a comedian would do working different bits. And what story do I want to keep in, and which story do I want to get rid of and stuff.

Speaker 1 Exactly, yeah. What did people like? What didn't they? Which jokes landed well, which didn't, and refined it, and refined it and refined it.
And then went through this run.

Speaker 1 But I realized, especially after the first one, that I was gripping very tightly to the experience,

Speaker 1 very

Speaker 1 not fearful, but very on edge. You know, I just wanted to make sure it was very precise and sort of laser-focused on the thing.

Speaker 1 But it's very difficult, I think, to kind of be taking in what's happening whilst focusing on the thing that you're doing, right?

Speaker 1 It's very difficult to hold those two positions at once in your mind, like with maybe your most recent race, that you're so laser-focused and obsessed on what is this particular thing.

Speaker 1 You know, the type of race that you're doing is so unvaried. There's no novelty.

Speaker 1 It's very constricted and constrained, right? It's like running in a ladder. You might as well fucking ran it on a treadmill.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I realized Chris Bumstead talked to me about it's not just about winning, it's about how you win and the story that you tell yourself and the experience that you go through.

Speaker 1 So not just winning and being a gracious victor or losing and being a gracious loser or whatever. It's like, and how did you feel when you did this thing? Because when you back,

Speaker 1 yeah, sure, you can say, oh, I ticked the box. I did the tour, I completed the race, I did the whatever.
But really, what was the reason for doing the thing? What was for the experience?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was for the way that you felt the energy, the vibe, right? The intensity. Yeah, all of that.
Yes. So

Speaker 1 one of my friends before I did the show in Melbourne was like, How are you feeling tonight? I was like, I'm a bit nervous. He said, I've got some propanolol, if you want some, beta blockers.

Speaker 1 And I thought

Speaker 1 I could use those,

Speaker 1 but i really want to like i've got myself here like the entire reward is to feel the terror of course of hearing a few thousand people outside murmuring murmuring murmuring murmuring and then the music comes on and you have to walk out

Speaker 1 so yeah i just think it's really interesting hearing you talk about this experience as one where you maybe did this incredible achievement and raised all of this money and stuff, but internally, the experience maybe that you had left something to be desired from your presence, from the way that you tuck it in, from all the rest of it.

Speaker 1 And I think that, you know, that's another

Speaker 1 frontier to try and conquer too. Yeah.
And to talk about that and to say, hey, look,

Speaker 1 it's not necessarily just about winning or losing or completing it or not completing it. It's also about how you do it outwardly and inwardly as well.

Speaker 2 I think as well, I took on this.

Speaker 1 I love that whole, what we just talked about.

Speaker 2 I reckon I took on this probably because I felt

Speaker 2 I almost had to, not, not for anything, but like I've told myself I'm doing this every two years. And then I did it or I'd set up that I was going to do it.
And so when I'm

Speaker 2 in it, I'm like, why am I doing this?

Speaker 2 Even though I know like I, I'm, there's intention behind it to do good and get people to move and for myself to experience what I experience.

Speaker 2 But like in those moments of being in it, you being able to have that almost,

Speaker 2 you talked about last night, being just like be

Speaker 2 and to sit in it and be like, how on earth after, you know, all I've been through or whatever I've done, how have I got to this point where I'm running around a track where it's live streamed, where people are fundraising, where people are like, I find that a really cool thing in itself.

Speaker 2 It's like you've gotten yourself to a point in this life where you've chosen this road, this, this, this, and this. You're here.

Speaker 2 And there was like a few moments there where Tom, who who you met last night he's next to me and I'm like

Speaker 2 why are we like what is happening like what what on earth have I done in my life to get me to a point where I'm going I'm fucking doing this thing regardless of what happens

Speaker 2 and that in itself by finishing that and having those questions like why are we here why are we doing this still finishing that and still having those

Speaker 2 you know, being angry, like again, as you said, it's like, maybe there's something in that next time is like, well, the next thing I do, whatever it may be, it's like you've got an ability to then make the people around you enjoy it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you try and break it down so that each five hours, you have a moment of reflection and go, well, you know what? This is actually,

Speaker 2 but you never ever get to that by not experiencing this reaction.

Speaker 1 Exactly. This is how bad it could have gone.
Yeah. And this is how good I want it to be.

Speaker 2 Of course. And like, you know, if I did that, if I broke the record and I did it in 10 days and it was a seamless event, I did 16 hours of running.

Speaker 2 I got 160 done each six hours, got eight or seven hours sleep, beautiful meal, woke up every day and went again.

Speaker 2 It just wouldn't be what it is now, right? Like it just wouldn't be the,

Speaker 2 I guess, message of like how to not give in. And I think that's what I hope I can continue to show is that like

Speaker 2 it's not about necessarily, you know, being I'm better or worse. It's about going

Speaker 2 commit and see the damn thing through because

Speaker 2 life on the other side of that, I think, is

Speaker 2 with a perspective of something really cool.

Speaker 1 Well, it's not just within events, you'll have ups and downs. I'm sure even on the Australia run, even on the marathon after work

Speaker 1 competition, even within those, you've got good days, bad days.

Speaker 1 But I think if you broaden the time horizon, you know, we talked about this last night as well, that, okay, well, maybe across events, there's going to be some that are better and some that are worse.

Speaker 1 And some of the worse days within events will make the better days feel better. And some of the worse events across events will make the better events feel better.
But what can I take from this?

Speaker 1 Because fuck knows what the next

Speaker 1 reason is that you need to galvanize yourself and steal yourself against some sort of a challenge. Maybe it's something in your personal life.
Maybe it's something that happens professionally.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's some fucking press story that comes out. Maybe it's the next physical event that you do or one down the line.
And you need to draw on that.

Speaker 1 And without that, without the bad, without it going bad or worse, maybe than would have been ideal,

Speaker 1 the next one, actually, you can't survive. Yeah.
And it's that odd thing where

Speaker 1 ironic tragedy that life has to be lived forward, but only makes sense in reverse. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 And you don't know the lessons from

Speaker 2 what you're doing until you've done the next one. Precisely.

Speaker 1 It's why, you know, you'll have heard that story about the

Speaker 1 farmer's son. who gets a horse, finds a horse, it runs away, it comes back, it breaks his leg.

Speaker 1 The soldiers arrive and then they say,

Speaker 1 how unfortunate the horses run away, how fortunate it's come back with a herd of them, how unfortunate it's broken your son's leg, how fortunate it means he doesn't get conscripted into the army.

Speaker 1 It's like,

Speaker 2 well, what's the way you're perceiving it? Exactly.

Speaker 1 And over a broad enough time horizon, I think

Speaker 1 people generally get what they deserve. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You don't need karma

Speaker 1 or spiritual energy to deliver justice to people. They just need to keep repeating their patterns and habits over and over until reality just gives them what they deserve.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think that's kind of

Speaker 1 that's why ultimately I have so much faith that good people end up out on top. Completely agree.

Speaker 2 What's your goal with not necessarily the podcast, but like

Speaker 1 more broadly, when you started?

Speaker 2 I know it's definitely evolved and what you've, I'm assuming, from when you started to now and what you hope with it all, but like, what is the hope? Where does it

Speaker 2 not end, but but where does it go for you with

Speaker 2 the because i like i'm in this not uh

Speaker 2 i wouldn't say it's definitely not a lonely chapter but it's like one of those

Speaker 2 you've kind of got a open doorman you go what's where do we take this because i have an ability to potentially uh inspire a heap of people or is it is it to double down on something else is it business is it whatever

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 2 how do you do you just go with it or do you have an intention behind where you want to go or what's the

Speaker 1 great question? You know,

Speaker 1 very few bits of sympathy are given to people who have lots of options. Yep.
Right. Because most people have fewer options than they want.

Speaker 1 And when somebody says, well, there's lots of different directions that I could go down, you go, oh, what do you think?

Speaker 2 But you also made them through a lot of work.

Speaker 1 Of course, of course. But still,

Speaker 1 I said it last night. Problems of abundance are always going to be given less sympathy than ones of scarcity.
Of course.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 So in some ways, you think, well, what a luxurious position to be in. How great that you've got that.

Speaker 1 But then on the flip side, you have all of this optionality, which means that you, the pressure is on you to go down.

Speaker 1 Is it more virtuous for me to spend all of my time fundraising for homeless people? Or is homelessness even the best charity that I should be doing this for?

Speaker 1 I could be raising it for a more worthy cause. Maybe I should be swimming instead of running, or maybe I should be doing whatever.

Speaker 1 In my experience, I've always been bad at long-term planning, and I kind of came out of the productivity bro world, at least initially. So, in that world, you know, you have a

Speaker 1 you write your epitaph and you've got what's on your headstone and what's written in your obituary, and then you break that down into, you know, 10-year like chunks, periods, into three-year sets, into one-year goals, into 90-day sprints, into daily actions.

Speaker 1 And you, you know, you have this perfectly coordinated, this is how I'm going to get there.

Speaker 1 I always struggled with that naturally.

Speaker 1 And then laid on top, any sufficiently quickly growing situation means that optionality breaks out in ways that you couldn't have ever imagined.

Speaker 1 So for you,

Speaker 1 five years ago, you didn't even know that things that you could be doing were things that you could say yes to. They even existed.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. Right?

Speaker 1 So in my experience,

Speaker 1 It's very difficult to have rigid long-term plans, which is why principles and rules are much easier. So for me, I just try and follow my curiosity.

Speaker 1 I want to keep on learning about stuff I think is important. I want to follow my instincts.

Speaker 2 I like how much you are clearly inquisitive of so many people.

Speaker 2 It's a really cool trait. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's honestly, man.

Speaker 1 Everybody is idiosyncratic and varied, and they're into distance running and fucking 80s jazz.

Speaker 2 I hate distance running, by the way.

Speaker 1 Warhammer 40K and blah, blah, blah. You know, they're into like, they've got all of these different things that that they've got going on.
And

Speaker 1 I kind of get the sense that people like

Speaker 1 interested, curious people, like life is an intellectual buffet. Right.
And sometimes they want to hear Mark Norman shit talking doing gay jokes.

Speaker 1 Sometimes they want to hear about this really intense war story. Sometimes they want to hear about the psychology of female serial killers, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 And yeah, the job that I have is just to keep satisfying my own curiosity. And if I keep doing that, I think downstream from that, everything will go well.

Speaker 1 And yeah, that's the only guiding principle at the moment is like just try and do stuff that I think is interesting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's interesting to me. And I think next year I'm going to start doing some stuff on bullying interventions.
Cool.

Speaker 1 So I happen to have a couple of friends, Tracy Vinecourt, who's the head of the Canadian Anti-Bullying Association,

Speaker 1 and Tony Volk as well, who's another evidence-based bullying intervention guy. I really want to see, I don't know of anybody that's talking about bullying very much.

Speaker 2 As in like

Speaker 2 kids or is in

Speaker 1 specifically for kids, because most bullying occurs in school, the reason that most bullying occurs in school is that for bullying to happen, you need social networks to ossify for a while.

Speaker 1 And in the workplace, especially with remote work now,

Speaker 1 people come and go from jobs so much, they don't spend that much time in the office around the same people.

Speaker 1 But in class, you see the same people every single day for five years or for 11 years, right? If you follow them through like one big school or whatever.

Speaker 1 So that's how you get locked into these hierarchies and the pecking orders occur. So it's easy to do the intervention there.

Speaker 1 But really interesting thing that no one is talking about, and there are interventions for is

Speaker 1 helping ex-bullied adults to overcome that bullying.

Speaker 1 We heard about it last night in some of the Q ⁇ As that some of the people have got chips on their shoulder about people that didn't believe in them when they were kids or people that were mean to them or whatever in school and trying to

Speaker 1 liberate adults from that because it's very shameful to you know to be in your twenties your thirties your forties and still realize that you're driven by this thing that this devil on your shoulder this kid that probably maybe doesn't even remember doing it to you

Speaker 1 and for you it's still something that fucking crushes you so were you bullied yeah badly late school okay yeah for long like whole schooling uh i think when you're in primary school when you're super young kids are just like they're just blobs do you know what i mean so they're not really doing bullying but then when we got into secondary secondary school,

Speaker 1 it was never extreme physical violence.

Speaker 1 But it was

Speaker 1 this sort of very mundane social exclusion that in some ways, I think, sticks with you for longer because it tells you a story about your position in the world socially, about

Speaker 1 how

Speaker 1 you get the love of other people, about... how safe you should feel around other people as well.

Speaker 1 Can you trust other people? Do you need to offer them something in order for them to accept you or want you

Speaker 1 or be friends with you? Do you have a

Speaker 1 backup? Like, do you have reinforcements ever?

Speaker 2 Do you feel like you're...

Speaker 2 Do you feel like some, I know kids should never be bullied, but for you

Speaker 2 potentially

Speaker 2 it may have aided? in your pursuit now, I'm assuming.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 So is there an argument, not not saying bullying and this is great but like hard love and hard being uh

Speaker 2 like on to that i don't know there's something in it because i know so many people myself included there was definitely bullying at school where i've you know you feel like ostracized or not a part of something or um laughed at because of a certain thing it's like that it 100 sticks with you but i also feel that like

Speaker 2 I was never, I was never badly, but it was also enough where you're like, well, maybe this will help me in some.

Speaker 1 I I don't disagree. And this is one of the ruthless things about anything difficult that you go through.
Again, what I spoke about last night, right? Like

Speaker 1 all of your greatest growth is germinated from your lowest points.

Speaker 2 And that you can't tell someone that

Speaker 1 you're doing it and you're like, hey,

Speaker 1 you're going to really appreciate this.

Speaker 1 In 10 years' time, this is going to be the thing that's going to propel you to actually do whatever, to be the strongest person that stands up at your father's funeral. And you're like, that's not.

Speaker 1 But this sucks. Yeah, exactly.
Because in the moment, people don't feel good about it so yeah this is one of the most ruthless things i think about

Speaker 1 difficult life experiences which is that

Speaker 1 lots of the

Speaker 1 things that you're most ashamed of the dark sides of your personality your insecurities your fears are just the other edge of the strengths that you love most in yourself yeah so for me

Speaker 1 Solitude, hard work, my ability to keep going and not need support of other people,

Speaker 1 all of that sort of resilience and agency and intentionality is definitely born out of the fact that I needed to, I didn't have anybody else to rely on. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, in some weird way, and I think this is, to be honest, how most of the chips, or maybe even all of the chips from my shoulder, at least the conscious ones, I'm sure the subconscious ones are still fucking running rambling.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But the unconscious chips on my shoulder, I realized, well,

Speaker 1 if

Speaker 1 the things I'm proud of are the light light side of the dark stuff, and the dark stuff wouldn't have come about had I have not gone through the difficult stuff, that means I need to be grateful that I went through those things, which maybe means in a weird roundabout way, I actually need to be grateful for the people that did it to me or for the situations that I was in.

Speaker 1 Because if I take so much pride and value in those, but the only other element that I'd add in here, I always had a problem with people who said,

Speaker 1 it was meant to be like this sort of retrospective storytelling of,

Speaker 1 and the reason I don't like it is let's say that you're in a car accident and you break a leg and in the hospital bed, despite the fact that you're on a ton of morphine and you're supposed to be miserable and life sucks and loads of bad stuff's going on,

Speaker 1 you meet your future partner and they're the nurse that's caring for you or something like that. And you go, see, it was meant to be.
I was meant to break my leg. And I'm like, okay, that's one story.

Speaker 1 Another story is you were in a fucking shit situation and you alchemized it into something amazing.

Speaker 1 Like, I think when we retrospectively say it was meant to be,

Speaker 1 it removes the agency that we had from that situation, which is exactly where we should take all of the lessons and all of the priorities. What's the lesson that you take from it was meant to be?

Speaker 1 Just doing things, keep doing things until it keeps me

Speaker 2 meant to be.

Speaker 1 It's like, don't fuck off.

Speaker 2 No, it's like, I can find this out by doing it.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And so you went through something hard.
Yeah. And you made something good out of it.
Congratulations.

Speaker 2 That's this is, I've got a whole body goose on it.

Speaker 2 This is my whole desire behind this uncomfortable challenge thing I said at the start is like, I don't like, we don't need to be bullied to feel something hard to then go, oh, well, I'll overcome that.

Speaker 2 We can bully ourselves.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we can bully.

Speaker 2 I mean that in the purest way, we should be throwing ourselves in these harder things in order to, you know, learn those lessons. And if you

Speaker 2 do that, it's going to be, you're going to learn these things about yourself without, you know, being

Speaker 2 told your haircut shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, I like that.
Yeah, it's a bit wild.

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Speaker 1 A checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom.
A checkout. Yeah, I really want to just linger on that,

Speaker 1 how you're doing the thing, not just doing the thing.

Speaker 1 That

Speaker 1 you have the opportunity to

Speaker 1 get the promotion, get the new car, have the marriage, do the whatever, and in retrospect, sure, you will be able to maybe have the photos and all the rest of it.

Speaker 1 But the only person that could have experienced whatever it is that you're going through, the only person that could have been on that track that was going to do all of those laps and all of those miles was you.

Speaker 1 The only person that was going to run across Australia or was going to swim around the UK or was going to run across America or the fucking length of Africa. You go,

Speaker 1 anybody can watch the videos. Even you can watch the videos of you, but only you get to experience what it's like to do that.
And it's this odd blend between,

Speaker 1 do you want to be the absolute best in the world at a thing, which I do think can cause you to need it? If you want to be the best,

Speaker 1 all sacrifices are on the table.

Speaker 1 Everything fucking

Speaker 2 life.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Enjoyment of the event, relationships. Yep, exactly.
Family, bank accounts, reputation, everything, right?

Speaker 2 This one thing. But

Speaker 1 if you are doing something for not being the fastest in the world, if it's not a sports competition or it's not a zero-sum game where there's only one winner and you want to just be that one winner, I feel like there's a little bit of tolerance, just a bit of give at the top.

Speaker 1 And it's like, where can I sneak in something there? Can I sacrifice five 0.5% performance to gain 50% presence?

Speaker 1 And that's what I think is fucking interesting about all of this stuff that you guys are doing, whether it's Russ, whether it's Ross, whether it's yourself, whether it's Will. It's very well put.

Speaker 2 I was almost, I was like, when you said come on the pod, I was excited initially. And then I went, oh, I don't know if I'm like, I had this, it wasn't that I wasn't

Speaker 2 ready or worthy. It was that I was like,

Speaker 2 am I ready to talk about

Speaker 2 what I feel or think because of the only I know what I felt in that thing?

Speaker 2 So to sit and talk with you, who you are, would be one of the best people to try and get it out, like get it out of me. But

Speaker 2 that is like, again, you can only associate it with something you've ever, you've done. And so then I'm like, oh, do I, do I really want to do this?

Speaker 2 Because i want to be able to get to a point where i can explain it to people in the best way possible so

Speaker 2 that to me is like it's a lot of writing that's a lot of um speaking to people it's a lot of like hearing how same with a keynote or a speaking gear is like well that didn't work well so i'm going to say it this way and so i was a bit like nervous about the fact that I might come off as like, it's like, it might go straight over people's heads, but I'm like, it's a really cool digital diary of my.

Speaker 2 Where were you at that time? Yeah. And so in five years' time, I might laugh about some of the things I've said because I'm like, what the fuck was that?

Speaker 2 And I'm sure your first bloody podcast, you're going, what on earth was I saying? But I think that's what's really freaking cool about this is like, if I do look back at it and I do look and go,

Speaker 2 well, that's what I was thinking at the time. And that's what I felt.
And that's what. That's accurate.
Yeah, it was exactly right. There's nothing.
I'm not hiding anything here. I'm not trying to.

Speaker 2 say I'm something else. It's like, it is just what I am.
And I think that's a really cool.

Speaker 1 Isn't it strange that authenticity is something you need to practice? Like, you need to work at being authentic. There's so many,

Speaker 2 yeah, that it, yes, in this, yes, a hundred percent.

Speaker 1 Like, how can you, yeah, why is it easier to not be you than it is to be you to file in line and just go, oh, well, I'll do what they do, exactly. Yeah, but you know,

Speaker 1 so much of what we do, our social lives, especially people that don't have to have long conversations. Like, when you,

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I would love to know what the longest average conversation a person who doesn't need to record it and put it on the internet has, apart from outside of work, maybe like stolen 20 minutes here and there over dinner with the kids or the partner, like little bits here and there.

Speaker 1 Just the opportunity to ask yourself questions. I had this like prescription, my equivalent of Ned's Uncomfortable Challenge was record a fake podcast with a friend once a week.

Speaker 1 So you put a phone on, record it, put it on the recorder mode, pop it in the middle. Because a lot of people want to become better communicators.
They want to really understand themselves.

Speaker 1 If you're a fan of of a podcast, you probably like having interesting conversations anyway, but

Speaker 1 you don't need to go and fucking publish one. Not everyone's got the time or the inclination to go do it.

Speaker 1 I was like, if you record it, then you're forced to be rigorous in the way that you think, be precise with these things.

Speaker 1 But authenticity, oddly enough, is something that has to be discovered because you've got to dig away all of the fucking layers of social expectation and bullshit and decorum and politeness and bullying and past fucking traumas and patterns and tiredness and caffeine and all of that.

Speaker 1 But you've got to like get rid of all of that to be like dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. And then finally you hit something, you hit something solid.
You're like, oh, fuck, that feels like me.

Speaker 1 That feels really true. Yeah.
And it's weird because it's like, how is it easier to not be truthful or authentic or honest than it is to do the other thing?

Speaker 1 Well, because of all of the social expectations.

Speaker 2 It's not as jarring. It's not as like, oh, why is he posting about this now? Exactly.

Speaker 1 Jarbo or harsh.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. I think that's the other thing with the running thing is like, I don't, running is just the tool I use.

Speaker 2 It's not like, and so when I'm doing this thing and being myself, I think that's why it's so jarring for some people because they're like, This is not how you're meant to be running around a track for a thousand miles.

Speaker 2 You're meant to be doing it like this. This is how they've always done it.
And it's like, well,

Speaker 2 it's not really me. And to find, I think,

Speaker 2 exactly right, you have to remove everything and find out, like, I don't want to be a sparky. This is me.
Like, I want to do this. I want to find this.
And that's why I think it will change over time.

Speaker 2 It's like this will come. I will be really excited.
And that's what I will start pushing.

Speaker 1 Like, you mentioned the PTSD.

Speaker 1 Talk me through.

Speaker 1 we've got up to the end of the race now. Yep.
Finishing, at least punching the

Speaker 1 fucking thing was a little bit angry. Yep.

Speaker 1 Recovery, next few days, psychologically, physically, all the rest of the stuff. What was that like?

Speaker 2 I drove home from the track. So I'd been that whole 26 hours because my old man is farmer, like through and through.

Speaker 2 He's like, we live six hours from him, the family farm, and he has no idea about directions around the city. And I'm like wheeling in my wheelchair up to my, up to my ute, hop in.

Speaker 2 He starts going to the driver's set. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 I hop in.

Speaker 2 I just knew he'd asked me for freaking directions the whole way home. So I was like, I'm driving, turned ACDC on and drove home.

Speaker 2 Six hours. No, no, no, no, back to into Sydney.
From where I, where I did the track run, it was like 30-minute drive into the east of Sydney, where you are.

Speaker 2 And yeah, but when I got home, I was like, I was just in shock. Like, I sat for about two hours after the run in the room that we got ready for each day.
I'm just like staring at.

Speaker 1 So you've now been awake like 28 hours.

Speaker 2 28 hours, yeah. From 4 a.m., it was now like, yeah, 8 a.m.
the next morning.

Speaker 2 I'm sitting there just like, got this massive blister on my car from all the tape because my leg was essentially strapped up to be like a

Speaker 2 like a crutch because I was just like stumbily, couldn't move it. And then my knee was cooked, everything.
I'm just sitting there like

Speaker 2 first breath I took over the whole 12 and a half days of like sigh of relief, the sigh sigh of like it wasn't even, it was no post-run endorphins.

Speaker 2 There was no like, it was just pure and utter relief that it was over and that I could take a moment to go, oh my God, what just happened, guys?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 so then went home, laid on the couch, and I just was in this like tweaking out stage for like 12 hours, I reckon, just like in and out, in and out.

Speaker 2 And there'd be food in front of me, and I'd go to sleep and I'd be like,

Speaker 2 lay nate.

Speaker 2 And then I, I did not sleep well for the next seven days. I would, I would nap a lot.

Speaker 2 And I'm very like, I have to move every day. Like I have to get my body up and do an hour of something.
Otherwise, I'm like,

Speaker 2 you know, it's not good. If I see a, in the afternoon and I haven't done something, I'm like,

Speaker 2 this is nasty. I don't know why.
It's just, it's just in me. It's not like a, like I, I can, you know, control it, but I, I feel much better for doing it.

Speaker 2 So I'm like now three, four days of not doing any exercise and I've just done so much to get in to turn off is near impossible.

Speaker 2 So in bed, yeah, I'd just be up all night staring at the ceiling. And then I'd finally get asleep on the couch.

Speaker 2 And that's when I'd wake up just like, it's a really, really hard thing to explain because you're like, you know, it's all okay. And everyone right around you is saying, it is fine.
It is fine.

Speaker 2 Yet you're like,

Speaker 2 I don't trust you.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 I'm a, I'm literally trying to do this thing and it's not done. I'd had it on the Osrun where I had like road trains because they were constantly on the, like trucks, big trucks, big trailers.

Speaker 2 They were constantly on the highway. And I'd, I reckon I'd run past 100 of them in each day over the 100K.
We'd get into one of the road houses where I'd sleep for the night.

Speaker 2 And the whole night, I'd just have these road trains coming at me.

Speaker 2 And I'd be like spitting at the wall because I was spitting so much because there's so much dust in my mouth throughout the whole run.

Speaker 1 So I'd be like.

Speaker 2 traumatized like road train I'd jump and then I'd like spit at the wall and I'm like I'm in a room I can't spit at walls or like I'd wake up in like a panic panic.

Speaker 2 And so I kind of knew what to expect this time around. I knew that this would happen.
And I kind of like weirdly enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 Like, when do you get to that point where you actually get to feel those things because of what you've done to yourself?

Speaker 2 And then that's what I really like in this period now is that I know I'm going to crash for certain. I know there'll be a point where I'm a bit lost.

Speaker 2 I've, you know, devoted my life to this pursuit of this thing with no real plans after it. And I kind of give myself that time now because you can't have ups without downs.

Speaker 2 You can't have downs without ups. I

Speaker 2 love feeling those downs.

Speaker 2 Like I love feeling that because I know when I do process what just happened, I'll be so much prouder and so much more grateful about the $5 million we raise, you know, like it's those things.

Speaker 2 I don't think you can feel the beauty of those without this kind of really downtime. And I'm okay.

Speaker 2 I know how to deal with those, but it is, it is one of those things that I think people kind of push away is like, oh, I can't feel terrible I need to like like I think lean into it the way you lean into feeling good and finishing you should lean into like Why is my head like this?

Speaker 2 Why am I feeling these things? What's this emotion?

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Speaker 1 I started realizing this to do with meditation a little while ago that do you do it every day? I try to. It's difficult when I'm on tour.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I try to. And

Speaker 2 I just can't. I mean, I can't.

Speaker 2 If I intentionally wanted to do it, I'd be able to do it. But I just, I just haven't given myself the

Speaker 1 it seems like running might be a pretty good proxy for that for you. Relief.

Speaker 1 But what I realized was people have a variety of modalities. Maybe it's fucking weightlifting.
Maybe it's running. Maybe it's meditation.
Maybe it's breath work. Maybe it's whatever.

Speaker 1 A lot of the time when you feel an emotion that arises inside of you, especially one that you don't like, you have some sort of coping mechanism that makes it go away.

Speaker 1 Now you can alchemize it into something beautiful, right?

Speaker 1 You know, running a thousand miles around a track or doing whatever roster, you know, that I feel something and I'm going to lean in and I'm going to grit my teeth and I'm going to do this.

Speaker 1 Really fucking phenomenal. Great way to turn something like pretty bad and useless into something that's really magnificent.

Speaker 1 But the same thing with meditation,

Speaker 1 emotion arises inside of you, release and allow it. Okay.

Speaker 1 You still haven't actually got to the root. of where that fucking emotion is coming from.

Speaker 1 And this is only something I learned since doing therapy over the last year, that it's like, you can keep doing that and you can have really beautiful coping mechanisms.

Speaker 1 The one that makes you run, the one that makes you lift the weights, the one that makes you swim around the UK, the one that helps you to be more mindful or a peaceful person.

Speaker 1 But it still doesn't get to the actual core. At no point are you going,

Speaker 1 you're finding a way to get it up and out of you, but at no point are you actually looking inside and going, yeah, but why does that keep coming up? Like, why is that thing there? And

Speaker 1 not everything actually needs assessment in that way. There's some stuff that just.

Speaker 2 I think there's a lot, way too much getting assessed. Yes.

Speaker 1 There's stuff that just is. You do this very intense thing.
You dedicate yourself to something for a long time. Out the other side of it.
What the fuck did you expect?

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 1 You've been like monomaniacally focused on this one thing for months and months and months. And then you finally do it.
There's a fucking existential crisis coming. Like it's going to happen.

Speaker 1 Always going to happen to every person that does that sort of a thing.

Speaker 1 But on the other side, the stuff that's oddly like more mundane, I think the patterns, the assumptions you have about yourself and about the world, your relationship, your place in it, it's like, hey, if that thing keeps coming up, even if you've got a great, beautiful coping strategy,

Speaker 1 like you can either continue to keep on coping and coping and coping and coping for the rest of your life, or you can get rid of it.

Speaker 1 But here's the fucking dangerous thing that a lot of people probably think, which is, well, if I get rid of the emotion, what about the useful coping?

Speaker 1 What if my desire to go to the gym or to run the races or to be mindful or to be peaceful? What if that goes away? What if that goes away?

Speaker 1 Because what if the only reason I do the good things is because of the bad thing that's motivating it and that's sort of honestly like a fear of peace and it's very much a fear of novelty it's like well i've kind of got some kind of stasis here and even if it's like a little bit out of balance i've managed to get it back into balance and if i take something away even if it makes life better i'm now out of balance again i've got to all compensate so do you feel like you've got like a just you need to do things or do you feel like you're at peace with whatever happens this way we go life's good no i have very much a need for control in my life i'm very sort of structured very organized very routinized yeah yeah uh and getting more used to being sort of free-flowing in that way might be useful but then on the flip side people are constructed differently

Speaker 1 and we find solutions that work for us and this is one of the reasons why i'm so

Speaker 1 hesitant about anybody that gives one size fits all answers to success or or mindfulness or what you should do in life and stuff because what most people have done that are successful is they have found a very specific way that works for their mental pathology and their fucking construction who's exactly what their environments were what exactly so Matthew Syed sports reporter in the tennis world really interesting Djokovic Nadal and Federer all were world champions at the same time but all of them have massively different training styles one's super aggressive one's super fun one's super robotic but all of them traded places so you go if I want to be a world tennis champion which one do I I do?

Speaker 1 And you go, well, it depends who you fucking are. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Every one of them has been a fucking tennis champion. Yeah, yeah.
And all of them have different approaches.

Speaker 2 That's what I love about that. I don't know who it was on your pod when you talk about the, you know, you might be 98% right.

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 2 yeah. So, and then that the 2%

Speaker 2 right is something that you should still listen to. Like people being certain on something that is potentially not so certain is an odd way to share the truth between us.
Yeah, I love that so much.

Speaker 2 It was a really good way to be.

Speaker 1 What did you make of that Jill Stark article that was written about you?

Speaker 2 I haven't really spoken about it too many people.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 it has evoked, it's allowed people to start conversation about

Speaker 2 this topic. And

Speaker 2 I'm the least,

Speaker 2 I would like to say toxic human being. I'm not at all.

Speaker 2 And the fact that, you know, my mother was my immediate support person shows that like, I can't really, like, she is, I would love Jill to speak to my mother. Like, that would be amazing.

Speaker 2 I think it was quite opportunistic. I think it was like a bit of a clickbaity kind of article.
But

Speaker 2 yeah, I think it's allowed

Speaker 2 people to question. And there is the Jimbro,

Speaker 2 I must be tough. I must not deal with emotions.
I must be stoic and no one, you know, do not talk about emotions. There's that side of things that needs to probably be addressed a bit more.

Speaker 2 But then there's the, like, we also don't need to be too aware of our emotions all the time. I think you need to be aware, but use them to your benefit and be,

Speaker 2 yeah, I mean, I don't, I just don't want to, I don't want to get too into that. I understand.
Yeah. But I just think

Speaker 2 I've got nothing against Jill. I'm sure she's amazing.
I didn't read too much of the article. I just saw it.
I just knew it was a tainted, a really, it was just not needed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because it didn't do that. To the people that didn't read it, men's mental toughness is just toxic masculinity rebranded.

Speaker 1 Cult hero Ned Brockman's grueling 1600 kilometer charity run has Aussies talking, but now everybody sees it in a positive light. Basically, that

Speaker 1 doing hard physical things denies you of tapping into your emotions in a way. It's a coping mechanism, et cetera, et cetera.
Look, I think that the modern world has a multiplicity of problems.

Speaker 1 One of them is victimhood. One of them is people

Speaker 1 needing more resilience. They need goggins screaming in their face.

Speaker 1 Another group of people are the ones who do push too hard and that do need someone to say, hey, man, maybe you should slow down and read some poetry outside or go for a walk or do whatever.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 horses for courses with regards to this, if you are someone that is doing something very, very good and very, very hard and very, very inspiring,

Speaker 1 It's hell.

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, it's very, very different and very difficult. There's a really interesting study out of the US and Taiwan that showed men who suppress positive emotions

Speaker 1 have worse mental health outcomes than ones who suppress negative emotions.

Speaker 1 So, you know, when we're talking about all of the dangers of men not opening up and all the rest of it, I've spent a fucking ton of time in the live show that I've done here talking about opening up and opening up on stage.

Speaker 1 But very few people are saying, what about helping yourself to achieve some glory and some pride and to conquer something and get mastery and feel really fucking good and positive?

Speaker 1 What about like, oh, guys listen, I'm sure that there's an article out there that says this, guys listening to heavy metal music in the car whilst on caffeine is like right-wing coded or whatever, you know, there's all of this like silly thing, like fitness is right-wing coded.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you go, yeah, but what if it makes them feel happy and fucking full for the day? What if that's a favorite part of the day?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and they rock up to their family and they're inspired and ready to go. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, I think it's, I just, there was a friend of mine, she had an article that talked about the Jill Stark article and me and then just framed it and really like, well, what are, what is different to Ned Brockman running a thousand miles and screaming because he's in pain or

Speaker 2 being happy because he finished another day to Jessica Watson who sailed around the world and being excited. And like, what's the difference? We're men and women.

Speaker 2 We're pursuing something hard and we're showing ourselves.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying be tough, be a man. I'm saying be tough,

Speaker 2 do an uncomfortable challenge, go and sleep on the street, speak to someone on the street. This is not gender toxic masculinity related at all.

Speaker 1 This is

Speaker 2 do hard things because you will grow.

Speaker 2 And to paint it with that brush is just so out of context.

Speaker 1 What's the sleeping on the street thing?

Speaker 2 Oh, we like just as part of the uncomfortable challenge, people signed up and said, Well, I'm going to go and street, sleep on the street and see what it feels like for 10 days.

Speaker 1 Wow, that's one of the. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. And speaking to people on the street for 10 days or

Speaker 2 all those things, but that was, yeah, someone did.

Speaker 1 Why is homelessness such a big thing for me? Yes.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 2 fact that we're all human beings and

Speaker 2 I feel like no one ever wants to be homeless. No one's chosen to be homeless.

Speaker 2 For whatever reason, they've ended up there, a lot of homelessness is

Speaker 2 a lot out of their control.

Speaker 2 I've been fortunate enough to have the backing, like my family there. And if something goes wrong, I can always rely on them.
A lot of people don't have anyone to rely on.

Speaker 2 And then they go down a path of,

Speaker 2 you know, it just,

Speaker 2 for me, I feel

Speaker 2 for these people.

Speaker 2 because they didn't have the same access to things that I had throughout my upbringing and even an education or a, yeah, you know, all those things that I just feel we all should have the ability to know we have a roof over our head, a shower at night and a good, good bit of tucker to eat every day.

Speaker 2 So that for me, I just like, I want to bring awareness to it. I don't know how to fix it.

Speaker 2 I don't know how to solve homelessness, but what I do know is if we can make enough noise about it and get people seeing each other regardless of status, wealth,

Speaker 2 all those things, seeing each other as human beings, I think that's why I chose homelessness.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 by being in the front of the public eye and having that voice, you can get everyone involved and go, oh, this is something we can, we can help.

Speaker 1 Is it a big problem in Australia?

Speaker 2 It's nowhere near as the States. When I went over there, I was like blown away.
It was crazy. It was in LA.
And yeah,

Speaker 2 I was crying all the time. I was like, this is fucked up.
Like, this is sad.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 there's 126,000 in Australia every sleeping rough.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So that, that doesn't mean on the street, but that means car,

Speaker 2 couch surfing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm compassionate for that because I don't like, I would hate to see someone I know personally in that scenario. And I,

Speaker 2 as I said, we're all just human beings. We all have, we all should have the same access to things.
And I think

Speaker 2 we're also, we have access to so much. So why can't we help those people?

Speaker 1 There was a Prince William documentary about homelessness. Do you see this?

Speaker 2 I haven't seen it. I've seen it.

Speaker 1 So Prince William was criticized for a big new documentary saying he will show the UK how to prevent homelessness.

Speaker 1 The main critic said that he should leave it to the experts and non-government movement leaders aren't needed.

Speaker 1 Very strange. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I think

Speaker 2 like with Mobilize, the charity I'm working with,

Speaker 2 it's really exciting. We're seeing like

Speaker 2 the noise created from this that it's now going, oh, government's got to get involved because it's almost too loud to not

Speaker 2 take on. So they're getting behind it now because of what we've done and the funding and it's going to become this.

Speaker 2 Hopefully, it's like we've started something that goes people off the street and gets people into safe housing, into kids into school, things like that.

Speaker 2 You're seeing a mother with a child who's living out of a car or like that stuff is.

Speaker 1 it's interesting, man. Bottom-up social change campaigns for stuff that everybody broadly already agrees with.

Speaker 1 It's like, well, why did we need this much motivation to get this thing moving in any case?

Speaker 1 No one wants more homelessness. No, you know, like the homeless people don't want it.
No. The housed people don't want it.
Yeah. Like no one wants more homelessness.

Speaker 2 Why are they taking this?

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. But I don't know.
It kind of makes me think, well, maybe that was a

Speaker 1 it's evidently a worthwhile effort if it takes

Speaker 1 still a lot of work of course but relatively like a minimal amount of work in order to cause this big sort of snowball moving downhill you know what i mean yeah it's very cool yeah it is cool what else would you be interested in looking at is homelessness just the entirety of your

Speaker 2 um i it's not not necessarily like this is it right it's like i would say the

Speaker 2 through what I've done now, my passion is definitely getting people moving and

Speaker 2 live, give, and get uncomfortable. I think that's the big message.
But right now, the homelessness thing,

Speaker 2 I want to end it. I want to get people

Speaker 2 like, I want to see the change happen in real time. So that's why

Speaker 2 I don't want to be

Speaker 2 an ultra runner that goes, I'm going to raise for this one this time because it's favourite of the month. Like I'm, I genuinely care about homelessness.

Speaker 2 And the thing with these guys too is they work with everyone. It's not them trying to fix it.

Speaker 2 It's them going, we want to work with everyone who's already so it's like whether it's orange sky like people who clean clothes or haircuts or all these things are already established set at the top and yeah and they go here's we've got the funding here you go let's help let's help let's do this that's awesome yeah it's really really cool so it's not about them being the ones who've done it it's them helping and facilitating everyone else who's helping as well wow um and the funding because of the there's no red tape it's not caught up in government stuff it's this is funding from the 55,000 people who donated and the big corporates who got behind it.

Speaker 2 It's like, here we go, go nuts. And hopefully that through the uncomfortable challenge every year, people just like November, right? That's the goal.

Speaker 2 I want it to be, I want everyone doing it in October.

Speaker 2 I want everyone doing an uncomfortable challenge because it's like that time of the year where we go, oh yeah, that's where we do this hard thing and we raise money for people who need it.

Speaker 1 It's like, this is going to be an October thing annually.

Speaker 2 Calling it in October. Ned's Uncomfortable Challenge.
October.

Speaker 1 Oh, very nice. Yeah.
Yeah. I want it.
I want it like.

Speaker 2 That's my goal. And that's, again, that might be the next thing I go into is like, let's build this thing out so it becomes this ingrained in the nation psyche.
Like,

Speaker 1 and I love shooting for the stars.

Speaker 2 I love like taking on a challenge. It might be impossible, but in the pursuit of it, I think is a pretty cool,

Speaker 2 whatever happens. It can't, it can't be bad, the result.

Speaker 1 Dude, I love it. I appreciate the fuck out of you.
And I'm really excited to see what you do next.

Speaker 2 Appreciate it, man. I've really, really enjoyed today and I appreciate you.
Thanks for last night. And yeah, you're a good man.

Speaker 1 My pleasure. Where should people go? Keep up to date with the charity stuff, your stuff, everything else.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just Ned Brockman, Ned's Uncomfortable Challenge on Instagram.

Speaker 2 I mean, social media is a necessary evil for these things i uh if i could i do mean this if i could not be on social media um and still raise the money inspire and you know there's a commercial aspect to things so you have to um do what you have to do but if i could do that without social media no one would know who i was

Speaker 2 but it's a necessary evil and it's the game we all play the ultimate price that you have to pay exactly being on this

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