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

Ned Brockman, welcome to the show.

How are you, mate? Good. Thank you for coming last night.
Thank you for having me. It was a fun night.
I didn't know what to expect, as I told you last night, but I feel like a lot of people felt a lot in that room. When I saw you, it felt like all the energy was on you.
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. It was great.
Fuck yeah. Thank you.
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.
Yeah. I'm a bit traumatized, to be honest.
So it's a bit, it's good. I'm excited to talk about it.
It's been, as you said, I've just, I haven't really chosen to do it because I'm, I guess I wanted to process it a bit, but yeah, I ran a thousand miles around a track, uh, in what was hoping to be 10 and a half days, but ended up a bit longer than that, just due to a few, um, probably being a bit under ready for it, but still, uh, completed in 12 and a half days. Fastest person ever do it since I've been alive, which is a pretty cool stat.
Um've only been alive for 25 years, so a few guys did it before that. But yeah, ended up 130K a day around a 400-meter athletics track for 12 and a half days.
Why decide to do that particular event? A culmination of a few things. I ran across Australia two years ago and kind of felt this like desire to want to keep doing these things.
I ran across Australia two years ago and kind of felt this desire to want to keep doing these things and push my body. The more discomfort you put yourself through, the better of a person or more of a person you become.
And off the back of that, I knew I wanted to do something every one or two years and thought about running across the length of the UK. I was here lot of people have done that, uh, bit too hilly for me.
So I chose, uh, stupidly a thousand miles around a track. Um, and yeah, I didn't really think too much about it.
I don't really think too much about these things. I'm, 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. I only started, uh, three and a half, four years ago.
um so I think my naivety and stubbornness kind of go hand in hand um but yeah then got to got to the start of this year and went well I'm gonna do this gonna lock it in and I do a lot of stuff with homelessness um 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've I I don't think I've ever felt as much pain as I did in that 12 and a half days. Talk to me about the training preparation.
Yeah, it was a lot of people ask that, like 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, um, probably wasn't physically prepared enough.
Uh, but I don't think I will be for another 15, 20 years. And that's why.
Accumulating an awful lot of time and attention to get to that. 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. Um,'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.

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 in spite to do something.

It's like a social change organization masquerading as a fitness pursuit. Exactly, exactly.
Yeah. Because I don't like, even before the Ozrun, right, the run across Australia, I didn't really know why I was doing it.
I just wanted to. I wanted to feel what it would feel like to run across Australia.
I wanted to feel what it would feel like to run 100K a day. And I'm not willing to just sit back and go, I'll wait till the right time because I think in life there is no right time.
I think you just have to start these things. And so off the back of that, I didn't really know why or what was going to come of it.
And then I saw off the back of the Oz run that there was so many people, just in Oz, I guess, that when I was so inspired to run my first marathon or to speak to someone on the street or to whatever it may have been, I was like, I want to give people something like tangible to be able to put that inspiration into after I do something. And so off the back of this 1,000-mile run, I wanted to get people allowed to do their own thing as well.
So I started, um, Ned's Uncomfortable Challenge, which was like, uh, giving them their own 10 day thing that they can pick and choose to do something hard, uh, and feel what I feel. That was kind of like the hope.
So the lead up to it was like quite intense. Cause 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 mobilized uh homelessness but then as well train really hard for this thing that you can't give anything else but your undivided attention and well didn't you do uh was it 50 marathons in 50 days while you were at work yeah yeah not while you were you went to work and then did the marathons after as well I was still still a sparky, yeah. Yeah.
So, I don't know. 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. Ross Edgley swims around the UK, fucking unbelievable feet.
But he slept six hours on, six hours off, six hours on, six hours off for, you know, the best part of part of a year yeah and he had a support crew and he had all the rest of it 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 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. Everybody's got to walk the dog.
Yeah. There's always, that's, that was the biggest thing I've learned in the 50 marathons was like, I had to go to work for eight and a half hours and everyone, as you said, everyone can relate to the fact that they got to go to work and then they get home and they go, right, now I just got to feed and, and you know, whatever it may be, walk the dog.
But then I was like, right, I had to run 42K in the afternoon. Uh, and then also feed myself, also wash my clothes, also, you know, clean my sheets, whatever it may have been.
Right. Um, 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 in like, I only played rugby and road, but I never ran. So doing that was like a, it was a whole new world.
So preparation for the thousand miles. Yep.
How strategic are are you with this you said that you kind of pull the ripcord and just jump into stuff 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 so it's relatively structured how structured are you and sort of scientific evidence-based formalized with your process

for this kind of stuff physically?

It's evolved. Very cowboy at the start of this kind of four years.
The Oz run, I would say, still very cowboy. Like, I'll be fine.
I'll tough it out. And I learned a lot through that, especially.
When I started this, I always have a coach, a nutritionist. Um, but I think there's something very valuable in just doing it and being like having to find out yourself what works, what doesn't.
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.
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, 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.
We have to make sure we hit those Ks so we know we can do it. Where strength training, I think, gives you that time under tension, but then running on heavy legs and running on, you know, sore calves, 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.
But nothing can emulate or simulate what running 160K after 160K feels like. It's like just next level.
Okay. And you can only really feel that after day one.
All right. So you decided 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.
Yep. 10 days, 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.

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, I guess probably overdid a little bit.

The strength was up, but the Ks, I was trying to hit 200K a week roughly with three big

strength training days.

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 there and I knew I couldn't pull out. So it was like, never write time.
You must do what you said. Let's just try and work out the best way.
A lot of physioing, a lot of praying, not on, not on my knees cause that was sore. And then I, I would, yeah, got to the, got to the start line essentially went, had a pretty severe injury from the get go.
Um, 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.

Got day one, did it in 16 hours.

That was kind of the goal.

Get it 10K done every hour.

Is that how you tried to break it up?

Yeah.

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 the way to lane eight,

come back to lane one.

So that would be 12.8K. Oh, because you accumulate a little bit more distance by going out exactly to the edge and it keeps variety which probably mentally exactly yeah because just doing 4 000 laps of lane one yeah is like almost completely unachievable in my mind where like lane one twice lane two twice lane three times really 500 laps of yeah or whatever yeah so 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 had to do 125 master laps i know this sounds much more consumable yes i know this sounds funny did you have a favorite lane as you were running?

It was the one that you looked forward to.

Lane four on the way out.

Yeah.

The way back home, like after the-

You like that?

Three quarters of the way.

Why?

So it was like lane four on the way at the start wasn't good because you still had-

And like 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, which means I've only got three more lanes, which essentially if I just run for like two minutes, I've got two laps, 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 or just quickly turn around and go. Were you reversing direction? Every master lap.
So, I would go that way and then come back. That's a really nice setup.
Yeah. That seems like a good way to mentally- Break it down.
Yeah, exactly. But then by day four, the master laps, it's like, why did I choose to do this? Why? I don't know.
It was almost like this. What's the movie with Tom Cruise in it where he keeps getting through and then he dies and he has to restart and go again? Oh, fucking Day After Tomorrow or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tomorrow will be on something.
Yeah, yeah, okay. I fucking love that movie.
You know the one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He dies and keeps waking up in this workshop or whatever.
Yeah, so I would finish a master lap and I I'm so exhausted. Like after day three, 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 in the shower, eating. So I had like an hour of sleep and I'd wake up and I'm like, oh, that's right.
I've got 12 hours of running right now. And so that's what would happen.
I would get to the physio bed after a master lap and nothing would move. Like I'd wake up and it was the exact same thing.
Like I just kept seeing like the, my shoes there, mum hadn't moved. No one had like done anything.
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.
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? Like, yeah, you are. 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. 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 still got a thousand kilometers to go, that's like terrifying. So talk me through the degradation of your body and legs across this.
Yeah. I felt quite strong up until about day three.
Daylight savings changed. So we went forward an hour, which really fucked my head up.
Oh, fuck. You did it across daylight savings.
Yeah, on end of day three. So that was like, oh, no, we've lost an hour, even though we hadn't, obviously.
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.
And the idea behind the 16 hours was I started at 4 p.m. on day one and 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 eight sleep, had my, like the room was blacked out.
out. Everything was great.
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? 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. 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 not the most important thing for recovery, right? And if you can't even get two of it a night, 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, um, day five was when I 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, uh, or day five, six hours, I'd hit 810 kilometers.
So I was over halfway, pretty well on track. 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.
And mom 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. 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. And so we got to this point where mom's like, you either run or go to bed.
I'm going to call, go to bed. And I went, right, I have 45 minutes.
I'm going to go to bed for 45 minutes. Hopped in bed with my shoes on, clothes on.
It's after like a 12 hour day. I'm laying on my bed and my heart rate was at like 110.
That's me resting. I'm laying there.
I just feel it in my throat. My ears were like pulsing.
My eyes were like forcing out of my head. And I'm like, okay, this could be how I, how I go.
I reckon like genuinely thought this is it because like the sleep deprivation thing becomes gnarly. 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, I think, go the opposite way and like you start to die.
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.
Like I'm pretty concerned about like my health. 20 minutes later, I'm like freaking out.
Mom, mom, mom. She's like, not there.
She's like left. She's having crisis talks with the team because she's watching me go, I'm going to die and going, we need to get him to bed.
He needs to sleep and we need to like make sure this, because essentially I was trying to get this record so bad. It was like a wounded dog going, I need to kill or be killed, right? And when you're in that mode, you've done what you've done already to get there.
You can't make that decision to say, hey, guys, we've got to quickly sleep here. This record's gone.
It's fine. So mom comes in and goes, get in this wheelchair.
I'm walking to the shower. Get the shower you go to bed i was like okay so thank fuck for mum because otherwise like i don't know what would happen 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 umf in my step um 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. 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.
Did ross failed his long distance swim twice yeah before he did the one recently in um america yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry and uh yeah with that i think he's got 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 well 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 story about it. It's not about him.
It's not about his capacity, his worth as a human. It doesn't make him less or more.
No, exactly. Like for doing it.
He's just, he sees himself like a science experiment. Yeah.
He is a sports scientist at heart. And, um, yeah, it's, it's interesting thinking about the situation that you were in where you've got the mental capacity, is the exact thing that you need to use to make good decisions is the very thing that the situation you're in is depriving you of yeah which means that your difficult decision becomes infinitely worse yes and then you can't even step in to help other people make decisions on your but you can't even tell other people that you need them to make decisions.
You don't even have that level of self-awareness. Yeah, so I mean, the sleep deprivation thing while doing these sorts of events, 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 horizontally. I don't know about you.
If I eat, I need to be upright for about half an hour. Gravity apparently needs to help me digest shit, right? but he can eat and then be horizontal again i don't know about you if i eat i need to be upright for about half an hour yeah i need to gravity apparently needs to help me digest shit right 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 seeing anything exactly so i wonder if 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 swimmer or whatever 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 sleep more effectively.
You know what I mean? Yeah, 100%. But it's like, yeah, I don't know.
I also feel there's like a, being in that mode of like, because I can imagine Ross's brain is quite like, just constantly, right? But when you're in that deprived sleep state, I feel like there's a lot more clarity, not when you're out of it, right? But like in that period of like, 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 go again. And even when I finished the run for the next 10 days, I'd be in like be in a nap, like napping.
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 get to lane eight.
And mum's there saying, it's all good. And my physio's, it's fine, mate.
You're not out there. And I'm like, I know what you're saying.
It's not computing. Like, I appreciate 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 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 by1.
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Essentially, I said I need to work on an 18-hour, six-hour rest.

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

Is this because of the pace, that if you were to push the pace much more quickly,

it would be too fatiguing?

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

there was no way I was finishing if I wasn't sleeping.

You can't tough that out.

What was the original time-on, time-off plan?

It was a good time. the fact that the lack of sleep thing was, there was no way I was finishing if I wasn't sleeping.

I just, you can't tough that out.

What was the original time on, time off plan?

It was, well, the first few days, 16, eight.

And in that eight, there'd be six or seven hours.

I'm usually a pretty good sleeper, but for some reason it just was the stress of the thing.

And yeah, and you can't fight it.

Otherwise you're just sitting there going.

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.
Um, and I was probably, that's when the average dropped down a little bit on those days where I was like, 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 one 21, 30 K.
And then I just, what I found and what I usually in these kind of events is like, I have some sort of fun. 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 this time around.
I didn't have one one freaking second of it. And for me, as someone who really like, uh, laughs about the crap that's going on and like really smiles about the crappy things, I just didn't even have that at all.
And so I like, that was really hard for me. And so the majority of the time, like even when we, we'd 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 donating. And it was the first time I actually took a breath and gone, 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.
And then even the night before we finished, we'd raised like 700,000 that night. We were, I was 2.6 million before I'd finished.
And then 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, 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 in 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 raised and I still was like,

I've got another a hundred K to go.

And I had to like, just grit the teeth.

That final day was a 26 hours, nonstop, 160 K done.

And I crossed the line and I punched that fucking banner.

I'll see so much joy. But I think off the back of this, I'm actually going to find out so much more about myself and like things I've learned throughout going through something so hard and so lack of joy.

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.

What were you angry about?

I think I lost like, I just lost who I was in it. Cause I'm, I am that happy, jovial person and I'm usually bringing everyone up.
And when, when I'm up, everyone's up in, especially in the support team. And I think I found that, like, I was putting a lot more pressure on the crew 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 Ozrun was much more like that um yeah and then just i think i was also extremely proud to have finished it but i think that was masked a bit more by the that it was just so fucking hard yeah it was just so violently hard talk to me about physical pains challenges such going through it yeah i had uh so I had, uh, so I had tenocytivitis in both shins, which is just like fluid around the tendon sheath, uh, anterior tibialis muscle. Um, so essentially.
You've had that before, right? Yeah. I had it in the Oz run probably like 20 days in.
Um, I had a day three on my right leg and had to have a dictus band on that one for the rest of the run. A what? A dictus band.
So for people with drop foot, when they like walk into the bus or they can't pull their shin up, essentially their foot up. It's just a device 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.
And then you, yeah. And so essentially we found that that worked on the because it takes the pressure off yeah so actually exactly when you press off footwise 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 osrun it's a something if it does go to crap i can utilize this as a plan to keep moving um we packed another one because we thought maybe my shin will go on the left side.
And it did on day eight or nine. So I'm running with like two big dictus bands, rubber bands.
People are like, what's going on with these legs? 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, um, essentially I'd lost hip mobility.
And so my gate was off all of, you know, two centimeters. So when I'd land, my knee would land in every step.
So about 400 K to go, I had that pain. So I had to walk 200 meters, run 200 meters because 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. And yeah, it was quite funny when people came to run with me.
I'm like, I've just got to explain this scenario. Like Izzy, Israel Adesanya flew in from Auckland the second last night.

He's like ready to run with me, fully keen.

I'm like, just so you know, mate, we're walking and running every 200 metres.

He's like, yep, all good, mate, no worries.

But yeah, I've had an injection in that now just to kind of ease it.

But it's all, nothing structural, which is good.

Bloods were all fine apart from like a bit of a 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 higher but iron was good everything was good i was uh pretty cortisol fine uh liver liver bit higher from pain meds but what do you think that's really interesting because i would have expected hormonally something to have been going on if you're lying in a bed and you're resting heart rate 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. I think a lot of the time, because the only thing that we have access to are our thoughts, right?

So we know what the inner world is for us.

I can't detect what my hormone in estrogen and progesterone levels are uh but if your bloods have come back in their normal what's relatively normal what that shows is the power 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 free radicals other like blah blah blah in the blood i'm sure that there'll 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 yeah yeah yeah it's it yeah. It's quite an interesting thing, isn't it? I was a bit perplexed.
We only took them seven days later, so I reckon in that period there probably would have been a bit, but I kind of guess you don't want to take them right then and there because it's going to be wildly out of work. It's another source of stress for you as well.
By the way, get in. Let's pin you, blah, blah.
Of course. Mate, I would be intrigued to take them throughout and seeing what.
Well, they can do, I think they can do a little. Yeah, for lactate and stuff.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is always interesting.
But again, I just like it for the, 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, 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. What does the ultra running community think of you? That's a good question.
I want to dance. No, I'm not going to dance around this because it's like something that's, again, being 25,

something I never thought I would have dealt with as much. 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, I guess,

resume of what is supposedly supposed to do in order to attack a thousand mile.

You're saying that you're the Jake Paul of endurance racing.

There you go.

Perfect.

Fucking God.

Don't put that on me.

He's got a mullet too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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 like anyone who's spreading negativity, it is funny when you've never copped it that you think they are, they so, oh my God, they must be right because, you know, I'm this, this lack of this person. I'm not capable, but that person, he's, he's got it.
He knows. Yeah.
That, that person's assessment of me is, is bang on. Like all your close people around you tell you, love you.
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 but then the Nuffy that said, oh, how dare you pause your watch for this amount of time, because it doesn't reflect exactly what it is.
Oh yeah, no, he knows me in and out. It's interesting.
I think we're just so naturally drawn to make sure, I think innately that's us to want people to love us and want people to approve us and welcome us with open arms. 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.
When I first went through that, I was like, I'm going, oh, fuck, well, how do I'm- You just lose so much of yourself by doing that. You become the most broad, have no backbone, stand for nothing if you're trying to be general and please everyone 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 uh like as long as you can say it for that and 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.
In saying that, in the running world, I would say majority of people accept me and appreciate that what I'm doing is probably a bit dumb and not the road to take, but it's also one that I would not change for the world. I would, I would do the Oz run again, 10 times over at 22 years old to continue to, like, I just want people to, 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, 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 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, 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.

And so, yeah, live, give, get uncomfortable.

That's all I want.

That's all my message is. 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 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 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 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 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 it.
And 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 yeah do you know will gooch i do yeah he's a he's a good friend yeah so will i've known well 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 four or five peaks no no so this was maybe even before that um where he ran i think it's a marathon in each county in the uk maybe every day it was like the 60 55 or something like 40 30 48 30 that was it you're in 48 marathons 30 days that was it yeah, it was before all that, yeah.
And then he did the thing where he ran across America. And not too dissimilar, he's probably maybe like 30, only a few years older than you, something like that.
For the people that don't know him, fucking good looking kid. Hot.
Handsome. Hot.
Big dick. Anyway.
I haven't seen the dick. Yeah, like, it's, you're not British.
And he doesn't, I was talking to Rich Roll about this.

And he said, what did he refer to as?

He said that the endurance races are a bit of a granola crowd.

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 doing really well on a number of like pretty fucking extreme events but it ruffles some feathers just want to hate it people just want to hate it and it's like it's just such a odd way to look at the world and it's sad and i think if you can look at 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-r an ex-rugby player. He's hot as shit.
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. That's fucking incredible.
Like, give the man his flowers. Like, let's not hate on people for- What's the response been to Russ Cook? I think um relatively positive i and i'm sure he's copped it and as do you think his granola beards has helped him with that i'm being so likable he's 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 yeah he's too just bubbly and funny and like you don't know what what's going to come out.
And it's. 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. Yeah.
To the full length. Yeah.
From bottom South Africa to top of Tunisia. Yeah.
Wherever the fuck it is. Yeah.
And 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 shit pouring out of his shorts throwing up and videoing himself just saying that they're trying to stop me yeah they yeah they're trying they're trying they're trying to stop me but i'm just too fucking fierce i'm just still here chewing pavement yeah chewing tarmac chewing tarmac, eating asphalt.
And 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, I love seeing someone that is.
Yeah. Like seeing somebody that is dealing with suffering with a smile and I don't know, is noble and like cool.
It it is and that's why so many people love russ like they just want to just give me more russ like when he was posting you know day 300 of runder he's got his gobbles on through the sahara 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 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 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.
You're never going to change them. They've got got to change themselves and i wonder if uh 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 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 like this is how you can deal with suffering with a smile yeah this is how you can

go through some adversity and and be jovial and and add levity and and maybe that was a 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.

I guess there's a part of that, but I still feel it grabbed a lot of people and went, oh, Jesus, we've got to like this. How is he still going? How is, you know, we've been drawn on live TikTok at 3am going, oh, he's still moving, he's still moving.
Like I know it got, it definitely got through the message I wanted, but I think, yeah, potentially crossing and went, 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 like 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 quite applied himself in a very specific way yeah and it's it's just cool and people in other news this episode is brought to you by function i partnered with function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to understand what's happening inside of my body.
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functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. You were were saying before this is something i've been thinking

about an awful lot especially you know i'm here in australia i've been on tour uh 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 1700 people

then two and a thousand people yeah so each one

had escalated up and um 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 you know i couldn't have asked for them to have gone any better how much prep have you done for those Like what, sorry.

No, no, no.

What, like, how long was your preparation for a show of that like because you're so refined and so uh clear with what you were for two hours yeah yeah but incredible except for the um arthur shackleton uh yeah arthur shackleton but the problem is ernest shackleton is the the guy that did, went across Antarctica, but Alfred Lansing is the guy that wrote the book, Jurens. And I managed to split the difference between Ernest Shackleton and fucking, anyway.
Sorry. None at all.
Quite a lot of prep. You know, I ran half of the show last year, maybe 20 maybe 20 times okay i did work in progress shows this year in austin so i did the in front of 40 people i'd like a comedian would do working different bits and what story do i want to keep in and which story i want to get rid of and stuff 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 through this run.
But I realized, especially after the first one, that I was gripping very tightly to the experience. Very, 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. 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? 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.
You know, the type of race that you're doing is so unvaried. There's no novelty.
It's very constricted and constrained, right? It running in a lot you might as well fucking ran it on the treadmill yeah and um 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 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 look back yeah sure you can say 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 is for the experience yeah it was for the way that you felt the energy the vibe right the intensity yeah all

of that yes so um one of my friends before i did the show in melbourne was like how are you feeling for tonight i'm a bit nervous so i've got some uh propanolol if you want some beta blockers and uh i thought i could use those but i really want to like i've got myself here like the entire reward is to feel the terror of hearing a few thousand people outside murmuring, murmuring, murmuring, murmuring, and then the music comes on and you have to walk out. 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 took it in, from all the rest of it.
And I think that, you know, that's another frontier to try and conquer too. And to talk about that and to say, hey, look, 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. I think as well, I took on this.
I love that whole what we just talked about. I reckon I took on this probably because I felt I almost had to.
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 in it, I'm like, why am I doing this? Even though I know like I'm, there's intention behind it to do good and get people to move and for myself to experience what I experienced.
But like in those moments of being in it, you be able to have that almost, um, you talked about last night being just like B 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 is that you've gotten yourself to a point in this life where you've chosen this road, this, this, this, and this. You're here.
And there was like a few moments there where Tom, who he met last night, he's next to me and I'm like, why are we here? Like, what is happening? Like, 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? 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, you know, being angry. Like, again, as you said, it's'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 and 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, but you never ever get to that by not experiencing this really shit 12 days.
This is how bad it could have gone. Yeah.
And this is how good I want it to be. 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. I got 160 done each, 16 hours, got eight, seven hours sleep, beautiful meal, woke up every day and went again.
It just wouldn't be what it is now, right? Like it just wouldn't be the, 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, it's not about necessarily, you know, being I'm better or worse or worse it's about going commit and see the damn thing through because life on the other side of that i think is with a perspective of something really cool well it's not just within events you'll have ups and downs i'm sure even on the australia run even on the the marathon after work yeah competition uh Even within those, you've got good days, bad days.
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. 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 and some of the worst events across events will make the better events feel better but what can i take from this because fuck knows what the next 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 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 and without that without the bat without it going bad or worse maybe than would have been ideal the next one actually you can't survive yeah and it's that odd thing where ironic tragedy that life has to be lived forward but only makes sense in reverse yeah of course and you don't know lessons from- Exactly. What you're doing until you've done the next- Precisely.
It's why, you know, you'll have heard that story about the farmer's son who gets a horse, finds a horse, it runs away, it comes back, it breaks his leg. The soldiers arrive and then they say, how unfortunate the horses run away, how fortunate it's come back with a herd of them, how unfortunate it it's broken your son's leg how fortunate it means he doesn't get conscripted into the army yeah it's like well what's the way you're perceiving exactly yeah and over a broad enough time horizon i think people generally get what they deserve like you don't need karma 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.
And, uh, I think that's kind of, that's why ultimately I have so much faith that good people end up out on top. Completely agree.
What, um, what's, what's your goal with not necessarily the podcast, but like more broadly when you started, 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 not end, but where does it go for you with the, cause I like I'm in this not, uh, I wouldn't say it's definitely not lonely chapter, but it's like one of those, you've kind of got a, a open door where you go, what, 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? Like, how do you, do you just go with it with it or do you you have an intention behind where you want to go or what's the great question you know very few uh bits of sympathy are given to people who have lots of options yep right because most people have fewer options than they want and when somebody says well there's lots of different directions that i could go down you go oh what did you also made them through a lot of work of course yeah of course but still yeah i know you said it last night problems of abundance are always going to be given less sympathy than ones of scarcity of course right um so in some ways you think well what a luxurious position to be in how great that you've got that but then on the flip side you have all of this optionality which means that you the pressure is on you to go down is it more virtuous for me to spend all of my time fundraising for homeless people but is homelessness even the best charity that i should be doing this for 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 so in my experience i, 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, 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, tenure, like, chunks, periods, into

three-year sets, into one-year goals, into 90-day sprints, into daily actions, and you'd say, you

know, you have this perfectly coordinated, this is how I'm going to get there. I always struggled

with that naturally, and then laid on top, any sufficiently quickly growing situation means that

optionality breaks out in ways that you couldn't have ever imagined so for you five years ago you didn't even know that things that you could be doing were things that you could say yes to that even existed right yeah so in my experience it's very difficult have rigid long-term plans, which is why principles and rules are much easier. So for me, I just try and follow my curiosity.
I want to keep on learning about stuff I think is important. I want to follow my instinct.
I like how much you are clearly inquisitive of so many people. It's a really cool trait.
Thank you. Yeah.
Honestly, man, everybody is idiosyncratic and varied, and they're into distance running and fucking 80s jazz. I hate distance running, by the way.
Warhammer 40K and blah, blah, blah. They're into all of these different things that they've got going on.
And I kind of get the sense that people like interested, curious people, like life is a intellectual buffet, right? And sometimes they want to hear Mark Norman shit talking, doing gay jokes. 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. Yeah.
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 yeah um yeah that's the only guiding principle at the moment is like just try and do stuff that i think's interesting yeah that's interesting to me and uh i think next year i'm going to start doing some stuff on bullying interventions um so i happen to have a couple of friends tracy vinecore who's the head of the canadian anti-bullying association right um 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 like as in like kids or as yes so um specifically for kids because most 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.
And in the workplace, especially with remote work now, people come and go from jobs so much. They don't spend that much time in the office around the same people.
But in class, you see the same single day for five years often 11 years right if you follow them through like one big school or whatever so that's how you get locked into these hierarchies and the pecking orders occur so it's easy to do the intervention there but really interesting thing that no one is talking about and there are interventions for is um helping ex-bullied adults to overcome that bullying. 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 liberate adults from that because it's very shameful to be in your 20s, your 30s 30s your 40s 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 and for you it's still something that fucking crushes you so were you bullied yeah badly like school okay yeah for long like the whole schooling uh i think when you're in primary school, when you're super young,

kids are just,

they're just blobs.

Do you know what I mean?

So they're not really doing bullying.

But then when we got into secondary school,

it was never extreme physical violence.

But it was that 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 how you get the love of other people, about how safe you should feel around other people as well. Can you trust other people? Do you need to offer them something in order for them to accept you or want you or be friends with you? Do you have a backup? Like, do you have reinforcements ever? Do you feel like you're, like, do you feel like some, I know kids should never be bullied, but for you potentially it may have aided in your pursuit now, I'm assuming? Absolutely.
Yeah. So is there an argument, not saying bullying is great, but like hard love and hard being like onto that? I don't know.
There's something in it because I know so many, myself included, there was definitely bullying at school where I've, you know, you feel like ostracized or not a part of something or laughed at because of a certain thing. It's like that it 100% sticks with you.
But I also feel that like I was never badly, but it was also enough where you're like, well, maybe this will help me in some. I do.
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 all of your greatest growth has germinated from your lowest points. But you can't tell someone that when they're in it.
You're like, hey, you're going to really appreciate this. In 10 years time, this is going to be the thing that's going to propel you to actually to do whatever, to be the strongest person that stands up at your father's funeral.
And you're like, that funeral you're like that's not it 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 difficult life experiences which is that lots of the 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 solitude hard work my ability to keep going and and not need support of other people 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 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 where i'm yeah but the unconscious chips on my shoulder i realized well if the things i'm proud of are the 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 because if i take so much pride and value in those but the the only other element that i'd add in here i always had a problem with people who said um it was meant to be like this sort of retrospective storytelling of and the reason i don't like it is let's say that you're in a car accident and and you break a 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. You meet your future partner and 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. Another story is you were in a fucking shit situation and you alchemized it into something amazing like i think when we retrospectively say it was meant to be yeah 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 what's the lesson that you take from it was meant to be yeah just doing things keep doing things until it keeps keeps meant to be.
It's like, no, fuck off. No, it's like- I can find this out by doing it intentionally.
You went through something hard. Yeah.
And you made something good out of it. Congratulations.
That's, this is, I've got a whole body goose. 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 i'll overcome that you can bully ourselves yeah we can i mean that in in the purest way we should be throwing ourselves in these harder things in order to you know learn those lessons and if you throw do that it's going to be you're going to learn these things about yourself without you know being told your haircut shit or yeah no i like that yeah that's a bit wild you might have heard me say that i took my testosterone level from 495 to 1006 last year and one of the supplements i used throughout that was tonkat ali i first heard dr andrew human talk about the really impressive effects that tons of research was showing which sounds great until you realize that most supplements don't actually contain what they're advertising.
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Yeah, I really want to just

linger on that

how you're doing the thing

not just doing the thing.

You have the opportunity to 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 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 the only person that was going to run across australia or was going to swim around the uk i was going to run across america or the fucking length of africa you go anybody can watch the videos even you can watch the videos of you but only you gets to experience what it's like to do that and it's this odd blend between 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, all sacrifices are on the table.
Everything. Fucking health, life.
No, no, no. Enjoyment of the event.
Relationships. Yep, exactly.
Family, bank accounts, reputation, everything, right? It's's one thing but 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 and it's like where can i sneak in something there can i sacrifice five 0.5 performance to gain 50 presence yeah 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 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, I don't know if I'm like, I had this, it wasn't that I wasn't, uh, ready

or worthy.

It was that I was like, am I ready to talk about what I feel or think because of the

only I know what I felt in that thing.

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 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? Because I want to be able to get to a point where I can explain it to people in the best way possible. So that to me is like, it's a lot of writing.
That's a lot of speaking to people. It's a lot of like hearing how same with a keynote or a speaking gig 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- 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? 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, well, that's what I was thinking at the time and that's what I felt and that's what uh yeah it was exactly right it was nothing I'm not hiding anything here I'm not trying to say I'm something else it's like it is just what I am and I think that's a really cool isn't it strange that authenticity is something you need to practice like you need to work at being authentic

there's so many yeah that yes in this yes a hundred percent 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 do what they do exactly yeah but you know so much of what we do our social lives especially people that don't have to have long conversations.

Like,

I don't know.

I would love to know

what the longest

hour

is. so much of what we do our social lives especially people that don't have to have long conversations

like i don't know 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 the kids or the partner like little bits here and

there just the opportunity to ask yourself questions i had this like um prescription my

equivalent of ned's uncomfortable challenge was record a fake podcast with a friend once a week 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 don't if you're a fan of a podcast you probably like having interesting conversations anyway but you don't need to go and fucking publish one everyone's got the time or the inclination to go do it i was like if you record it then you're forced to be rigorous in the way that you think yeah you're precise with these things 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 but you 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 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 well because, because of all of the social expectations. It's not as jarring.
It's not as like, oh, why is he posting about this now? Exactly. Shard or harsh.
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.
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. You're meant to be doing it like this.
This is how they've always done it. And it's like, well, it's not really me.
And to find, I think exactly right. You have to remove everything and find out like, I don't want to be a sparky.
This is like, fuck me. Like I want to do this.
I want to find this. And that's why I think it will change over time.
It's like, this will come. I will be really excited.
And that's what i will start pushing like you mentioned the ptsd talk me through you we've got up to the end of the race now yep finishing at least punching the uh just fucking thing was a little bit angry yep recovery next few days psychologically physically all the rest of the stuff what was that like i uh i drove home from the track so i'd been that whole 26 hours because my old man is farmer like through and through he's like we live six hours from him the 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 he starts going to the driver's seat my nanana i hop in i just knew he'd asked me for a freaking directions the whole way home so i was like i'm driving turned acdc on and drove home um for six hours no no no back to into sydney from where i where i did the track run was like 30 minute drive into the east of sydney where we are um and yeah but when i got home i was like i 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. So you've now been awake like 28 hours.
28 hours. Yeah.
From 4am it was now like, yeah, 8am the next morning. I'm sitting there just like, it was massive blister on my car from all the tape because my leg was essentially strapped up to be like a like a crutch because I was just like stumpy leg couldn't move it and then my knee was cooked everything I'm just sitting there like first breath I took over the whole 12 and a half days of like sigh of relief the sigh of like it wasn't even it was no post-run endorphins there was no, it was just pure and utter relief that it was over.
And then I could take a moment to go, oh my God, what just happened guys? 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. And there'd be food in front of me and I'd go to sleep and I'm like, oh, lane eight.
And then I, I did not sleep well for the next seven days. I would, I would nap a lot.
Um, 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, you know, it's not good. Get, if I see in the afternoon, I haven't done something.
I'm like, this is nasty. I don't know why.
It's just in me. It's not like I can control it, but I feel much better for doing it.
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. 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 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.
Yet you're like, I don't trust you. Like I'm literally trying to do this thing and it's not done.
I'd had it on the Ozrun where I had like road trains because they were constantly on the like trucks, big trucks, big trailers. They were constantly on the highway.
And I reckon I'd run past 100 of them each day over the 100K. We'd get into one of the roadhouses where I'd sleep for the night and the whole night I'd just have these road trains coming at me 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.
So I'd be like 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 penny. 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.
Like when do you get to that point where you actually get to feel those things because of what you've done to yourself? 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.
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.
You can't have downs without ups. I love feeling those downs.
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 raised, you know, like it's those things. I don't think you can feel the beauty of those without this kind of really downtime.
And I'm, I'm okay. 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? Why am I feeling these things? What's this emotion? I love those like more than anything.
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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at the link in the description below or shopify.com slash modern wisdom or lowercase that's shopify.com slash modern wisdom to upgrade your selling today i started realizing this to do with meditation a little while ago that um do you do it every day uh i try to it's difficult when i'm on tour uh but yeah i try to and um I just can't. I mean, I can.
If I intentionally wanted to do it, I would be able to do it. But I just haven't given myself the AOK to do it.
It seems like running might be a pretty good proxy for that for you. Relief.
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 breathwork. Maybe it's whatever.
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. Now you can alchemize it into something beautiful, right? You know, running a thousand miles around a track or doing whatever Ross did, you know, that.
I feel something and I'm going to lean in and i'm going to grip my teeth and i'm going to do this really fucking phenomenal great way to turn something like pretty bad and useless into something that's really magnificent but the same thing with meditation emotion arises inside of you release and allow it okay you still haven't actually got to the root of where that fucking emotion is coming from 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 yeah 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 but it still doesn't get to the actual core at no point are you going you're finding a way to get it up and out of you but at no point you're actually looking inside and going yeah but why does that keep coming up like why is that thing there and um not everything actually needs assessment in that way there's some stuff that just i think there's a lot a way too much getting assessed yes 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 yeah of course you've been single 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 gonna happen always gonna happen to every person that does that sort of a thing 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 yeah 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 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 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 because what if the only reason i do the good things is because the bad thing that's motivating it and that's sort of honestly like a fear of peace yeah 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 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 it 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 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 and we find solutions that work for us and this is one of the reasons why i'm so 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 uh in the tennis world really interesting jokovic 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 traded places. So you go, if I want to be a world tennis champion, which one do I do? And you go, well, it depends who you fucking are.
Every one of them has been a fucking tennis champion. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And all of them have different approaches. 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. Yes, Richard Reeves.
Yeah. So, and then that the 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. Share the truth between us.
Yeah. I love that so much.
It was a really good way to be. What did you make of that Jill Stark article that was written about you? I haven't really spoken about too many people.
I think it has evoked, it's allowed people to start conversation about this topic. And I'm the uh, I would like to say toxic human being.

I I'm not at all.

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.

Um, I think it was quite opportunistic.

I think it was like a bit of a clickbaity kind of article, but, uh, yeah, I think it's allowed people to question and there is the, the Jim bro, uh, 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's, that needs to probably be addressed a bit more, 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, and be, um, yeah, I mean, I don't, I just don't want to, I don't want to get too into that. I understand.
Yeah. i understand yeah but i just think um i 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 because it didn't do that for the people that didn't uh read it men's mental toughness is just toxic masculinity rebranded cult hero ned brockman's grueling 1600 kilometer charity run has aussies talking but now everybody sees it in a positive light basically that uh doing hard physical things denies you of tapping into your emotions in a way it's a coping mechanism etc etc look i think that the modern world has a multiplicity of problems one of them is is victimhood.
One of them is people needing more resilience.

They need Goggins screaming in their face.

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,

like read some poetry outside or go for a walk

or do whatever.

And I think 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, fucking hell. Go nuts.
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 have worse mental health outcomes than ones who suppress negative emotions 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 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 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 so you think like fitness right-wing coded and um you go yeah but what if it makes them feel happy and fucking full yeah for the day what if that's their favorite part of the day yeah and they rock up to their family and they're inspired and ready to go yeah like yeah i think it's i just i there was a friend of mine shared an article that talked about the jill stark article and me and then just framed it and really Like, well, what is different to Ned Brockman running a thousand miles and screaming because he's in pain or 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, we're pursuing something hard and we're showing ourselves. I'm not saying be tough, be a man.
I'm saying be tough, 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.
This is do hard things because you will grow. And to paint it with that brush is just so out of context.
What's the on the street thing oh we like just as part of the uncomfortable challenge people signed up and said well i'm gonna go and street sleep on the street and see what it feels like for 10 days wow that's one of the yeah yeah yeah and speaking to people on the street for 10 days or um no like all those things but that was yeah someone why Why is homelessness such a big thing for me? Yes. The fact that we're all human beings and I feel like no one ever wants to be homeless.
No one's chosen to be homeless. For whatever reason, they've ended up there.
A lot of homelessness is a lot out of their control. 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, and then they go down a path of, you know, it just, for me, I feel for these people because they didn't have the same access to things that I had throughout my upbringing and even an education or, 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 bit of tucker to eat every day. So that for me, I just like, I want to bring awareness to it.

I don't know how to fix it. 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, all those things, seeing each other as human beings, I think that's why I chose homelessness. Because I think 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.
Is it a big problem in Australia? It's nowhere near as a state. When I went over there, I was like blown away.
It was in LA and yeah, I was, I was crying all the time. I was like, this is fucked up.
Like, this is sad. But there's 126,000 in Australia every sleeping rough.
Yeah. So that doesn't mean on the street, but that means car, couch surfing.
Yeah. I mean, I'm just, I'm compassionate for that because I don don't like i would hate to see someone i know personally in that scenario and i as i said we're all human beings we all have we all should have the same access to things and i think um we're also we have access to so much so why can't we help those people there was a prince william documentary about homelessness you see this

i haven't seen it okay so prince william was criticized for a big new documentary saying he will show the uk how to prevent homelessness the main critic said that he should leave it to the experts and non-government movement needers aren't needed very strange yeah and i think like with mobilise the the charity I'm working with, it's really exciting. We're seeing like the noise created from this, then it's now going, oh, government's got to get involved because it's almost too loud to not 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, hopefully hopefully it's like we've started something that gets people off the street and gets people um into safe housing into kids into school things like that where you know you're seeing a mother with a child who's living out of a car or like that stuff is it's interesting man bottom-up social change campaigns for stuff that everybody broadly already agrees with it's like well why did we need this much motivation to get this thing moving in any case like no one wants more homelessness no you know like the homeless people don't want it no the house people don't want it yeah like no one wants more is it taking this yeah exactly but i don't know it kind of makes me think well maybe that was a it's evidently a worthwhile effort if it takes still a lot of work of course relatively like a minimal amount of work in order to cause this big sort of snowball moving downhill you know what i mean it's very cool yeah it is cool what else would you be interested in looking at is homelessness just the entirety of your um it's not not necessarily like this is it right it's like i would say the through what i've done now my passion is definitely getting people moving and um live give and get uncomfortable i think that's the big message but um right now, the homelessness thing, I want to end it. I want to get people, like, I want to see the change happen in real time.
So that's why I don't want to be an ultra runner that goes, I'm going to raise for this one this time because it's favour of the month. Like, I genuinely care about homelessness.
And the thing with these guys too is they work with everyone. It's not them trying to fix it.
It's them going, well, you 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.
So they kind of set at the top. 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.

And the funding, because there's no red tape,

it's not caught up in government stuff.

This is funding from the 55,000 people who donated

and the big corpies who got behind it.

It's like, here we go, go nuts.

And hopefully that, through the Uncomfortable Challenge every year,

people just like Movember, right?

That's the goal.

I want it to be, I want everyone doing it in October. 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.
It's like- This is going to be an October thing annually. Call it Nucktober.
Ned's Uncomfortable Challenge, October. Oh, very nice.
Yeah. I want it, I want it like, 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's psyche like and i love shooting for the stars i love like taking on a challenge it might be impossible but in the pursuit of it i think is a pretty cool whatever happens it can't it can't be bad the result dude i love it i appreciate the fuck out of you and uh i'm really excited to see what you do next. Appreciate it, mate.
I've really, really enjoyed today. And I appreciate you.
Thanks for last night. And yeah, you're a good man.
My pleasure. Why should people go? Keep up to date with the charity stuff, your stuff, everything else.
Yeah, just Ned Brockman, Ned's Uncomfortable Challenge on Instagram. I mean, social media is a necessary evil for these things.
If I could, I do mean this, if I could not be on social media and still raise the money,

inspire,

and,

you know,

there's a commercial aspect of things.

So you have to do what you have to do.

But if I could do that without social media,

no one would fucking know who I was,

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 Instagram.

Well worth it.

Appreciate you,

man.

Appreciate it,

mate.

Good man.