Cycling the World with Mark Beaumont

Foreign. Tribathlon podcast finding out how ordinary people do extraordinary things.

The old fashioned way of thinking of endurance is you just go out and do long rides. You'd sit at zone one, zone two, tap it out and you've got one gear. It's hugely helpful for athletes to build their top end so they know how to suffer.

That was Mark Beaumont and this episode is Cycling the Globe. In 2008, Mark Beaumont broke the around the world cycling record by an incredible 82 days. So that's 18,000 miles unsupported in just 194 days. So when he returned to have another crack at it about 10 years later, but this time with a support crew to do the same feat, the same 18,000 miles, but in 78 days, averaging an astonishing 240 miles a day it is, that is something to behold. And having read both the books about his first round the world trip and then his Cycling the world in 78 days or around the world in 80 days as it's known, they're just brilliant stories and there's such a fantastic insight into what cycling on that sort of level looks like and what cycling across, you know, through some of the craziest parts of the world also is like. So I really wanted to pick Mark's brains on how he endures so much. I mean, 240 miles a day for 78 days consecutively is an incredible level of endurance. So I wanted to know how he does it, how from a physical point of view and also from a mental point of view, he endures such incredible distances. And then also I wanted to chat to him about the best places in the world to cycle and what he's seen and the experiences that he's loved most because he's clearly seen a lot when it comes to cycling. I know you're going to love this chat and I'm sure if you, if you haven't already, you will love the books by Mark Beaumont. So enjoy. This podcast is brought to you by Brits Superfood. Now, I've been a big advocate of wheatgrass for many years, but I only in the last year or so switched to having fresh wheatgrass that's then frozen as opposed to the powdered stuff. And I found that to improve my health even more. Now I've been a big advocate of wheatgrass because I know it's kept me fit and healthy, because when I've had spells where I've stopped taking it, I've started picking up the bugs and colds and things like that again, which I never seem to get when I'm taking wheatgrass. I know it improves my immune system, my health, but also gives me more energy and faster recovery. So loads of health benefits of taking wheatgrass. But Brits is field grown, organic, freshly frozen and they also do a load of amazing juices as well so that you can combine the two like the beetroot ones so you can have your nitrates before or after an event. You can find out more@britsuperfoods.co.uk but at the end of this podcast I'm going to give you a discount code or a referral code that will give you loads of benefits. So a discount, some free products, some free shipping, but they also have, which is worth just mentioning here, 110% 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not feeling better having taken this for 30 days, they'll give you your money back and an extra 10% which is absolutely bonkers. But that's how confident they are on the health benefits that you will see as a result of taking wheatgrass just for 30 days. So anyway, hang on to the end of this podcast and I'll give you a great discount code. This podcast is also brought to you by the tribeathlon app. Have you ever wished you could find people that would train with you at the time that was convenient to you? Well, the best place to find people to train with is Tribeathlon.com or the Tribeathlon app, because that way you can find people that want to train at your pace when you want to train. So download the tribathlon app now. So Mark, welcome to the tribeathlon podcast. I'm really excited to chat to you today. I feel like I've spent a long time listening to your voice over the course of the summer, listening to your books. So I'm really looking forward to kind of getting to know you a little bit more and trying to understand a little bit about the secrets behind your success. So welcome to Tribathlon podcast. I'd like you to kick off by just telling people that don't know a huge amount about what you've done about your story and tell us know the kind of significant events that have happened along the way because there are quite a few significant events.

Sure. Yeah. Great to we've been chatting away by email but great to great to finally have a have a podcast recording. And I guess for people who've got no idea my background, I'm best known for cycling around the world. I've done that twice in my career. But I've Made my, my career out of ultra endurance. You know, I've gone to 130 odd countries in the last 15 years as a documentary maker, as an athlete, as trying to push firsts and fastest, trying to do things which, you know, have not been done before, not just sort of pipping records and going out there and trying to do things a little bit better. But my hallmark, and the thing that I've always sort of really sort of prided my team on is how do we, how do we, how do we really sort of reset the dial in terms of endurance, how do we, how do we do things that, you know, quite often in the planning stage, people are saying to me that's impossible. Be it the logistics, the training, the physicality, the psychology, you know, we're trying to do very difficult things. And oddly for people listening to this who are sort of triathletes or, you know, involved in competitive sports, I've never stood on the start line of an event in a normal format. My game has always been big expeditions. So you could argue that the only person I've ever competed with is myself. And I've been interested in trying to figure out what my personal best is and try to share stories which are important and hopefully inspiring. And I often think for the people that come back to me every day on social media and all the time in terms of questions and queries, it's about building other people's confidence to really push their ambitions. So I always joke that I'm a real diesel engine when it comes to being an athlete. I look more like a rugby player than a cyclist. I'm 6 foot 3 and 90 kilos. And typically, whilst cycling is what people know me best for, for me it's always been about where sport can take me. And I've always sort of loved sort of all adventure sports, multi sport. I mean, if you'd asked me as a 15 year old kid, my best sports were big mountain skiing and horse riding. And then cycling became more important. And recently I've been geeking out on fell running and gravel riding and all sorts of other stuff. A lot of open water swimming this year. So I think the world that knows me sees me as a specialist, an ultra endurance road cyclist. Whereas if you follow my Instagram feed, you realize I spend my life just going to wild places and having lots of adventures.

And so how has I want to come back to these different adventures? Because they are incredible. But how has lockdown been for you? I mean, have you just kind of been carried on exploring and have you explored in a different way to what you would have ordinarily have done.

I mean, yeah, for sure, like everyone, I mean, I appreciate most people listening. It won't be their job to train and to go out and have adventures, but it's impacted us all in terms of our ability to do big miles or train normally, whatever that looks like. So I live in Edinburgh in Scotland and certainly early doors and lockdown when we were allowed to go out and exercise for one hour a day, you know, how could I suddenly, how could I continue to do what I typically do? You know, big expedition rides, training in the mountains? You know, I couldn't do any of that. It wasn't, it would have been ridiculous. So I thought, well, I can't keep the intensity, the duration that I meant to be. I was training to do race across America this summer in June. So it's a 3100 mile road race from California over to the East Coast. As soon as that was canceled and my focus went, I thought, well, what can I pivot to? I was listening to a podcast with Ricky Gates, the US ultra runner who had run across America coast to coast. And then when he did that sort of thought, well, I don't really know home. So he took on this daft project to run every street in San Francisco, which is like a 7 mile radius semi block. And for a wild man who's used to being in the mountains, to suddenly run an urban event like that over three months was amazing. And it's a cool little film on Salomon TV on YouTube if you want to watch it. So I was quite inspired by that. The next day I went down to the local post office and I picked up the A to Z of Edinburgh and just sort of mapped out with my six year old daughter. And she's a good little cyclist, but not, you know, hadn't really done big miles. She's six years old and wasn't super confident on the roads and so it was perfect because the roads were really quiet. So we set out five days a week to do every street in Edinburgh and we ended up spending over 100 hours together. So even though so much of this year was cancelled and the big expeditions and the films and all the stuff that was going to take me to the other side of the planet, suddenly I had an opportunity to run 506 miles of Edinburgh streets with my six year old daughter, who, guess what, is a pretty strong little bike rider now. And if you were to say to a six year old, do you want to cycle Every street in your city. The answer is no, of course not. That's crazy. Or I don't know how far 500 miles from Edinburgh is, but it's probably here to Bristol or Cornwall. I don't know, it's a long way. So you would never say to a six year old, do you want to cycle to Bristol from Scotland? But if you just do a little bit every day, it's amazing how it stacks up. I would typically run 12, 15k a day, she would cycle alongside me and money can't buy that stuff. I got fit in a different way. Okay. I wasn't doing the high intensity mega miles on the bike, but I was suddenly super running fit. And I've carried on, you know, with some other running challenges this year and I've got the same fix. I've got the same fix exploring within five miles of where I live than going to the other side of the planet and making films. You know, I've loved it. And certainly to connect with the next generation, to do something with them. But like anything in sport, it's not about going nuts and knocking out the park, it's about what you do every day that makes the difference physically, psychologically. Just, you know, we're creatures of habit.

I think that's an amazing lesson to learn, isn't it? You know, you were focusing on what we could do as opposed to what we couldn't do. And I think there was a lot of that in the lockdown. It was like, okay, there was a lot of people focusing on what we couldn't do, but for those people that focused on what they could do, actually they achieved huge amounts just in different ways to what they would have ordinarily achieved. So for those people that haven't listened to your books, what do you want to sum up the difference? Because your two world around the world records were absolutely incredible. I mean, I think the first time you took it took the record down from 290ish days to 195 days, is that right? And then you went back into it 10 years later and brought the record down to an astonishing 78 days. So talk to me about how it was to go around and do it self supported and then the differences by going back and doing as a supported crew and taking just a huge chunk off the record each time.

Yeah. So people who are listening, like, if you've not sort of thought about a circumnavigation record before, there's pretty set, well, very set criteria on that, whether you're sailing around the world Whether you're running, people have run it. Whether you're driving a car or riding a bicycle, you have to hit antipodal points. That's two points in the opposite side of the planet. For land based circumnavigation records, you have to travel more than 18,000 miles, 27,000 kilometers. You're never allowed to go back on yourself. So crossing the same degrees of longitude, which sounds blindingly obvious, but a few years ago somebody cycled all the way to the east coast of China and Shanghai and then flew down and carried on across Australia. Well guess what, Perth is further west than Shanghai. So you've gone back on yourself. So you can mess up in the, in the planning for this. So the first time I cycled around the world I was straight out of university. I had a perfectly useful economics and politics degree and I didn't plan to build the career I've had. I simply thought, well, let's go on one big adventure to end all adventures and then we'll go back to doing my CA and becoming an accountant and working in finance. Because you know, as a young person it's very hard to know how you could possibly make a career in adventure sports. You know, there was certainly nobody in my life who had done that. My parents were farmers. You know, whilst I'd been grown up in the outdoors and had a huge amount of freedom from being home schooled until the age of 11 and 12, I still didn't know how that could ever be a job. So when I set out the first time I thought, well, let's get this out my system. I would say that even though the two times I've cycled around the world couldn't be more different in terms of the speeds I was going at and the record I set in terms of the scale of the challenge, they're the same. Purely based on my life experience at the time. You take being a 22 year old graduating from university, needing to raise 25 grand to head out and cycle what would be 100 miles a day every day for half a year. So right, a century a day between now and six months, that was my task the first time. That is what an Everest. What an amazingly difficult, complicated thing to fundraise, plan for and do as a 22, 23 year old and then 10 years on, I'm now taking a fully professional performance team. I've got tens of other expeditions under my belt and we're now trying to recruit a team of 40 people over a two and a half year project which costs over A million quid. And I wouldn't say that that's any harder. It's just I've been on a journey, I know more as an athlete. I can push myself further and faster. First time around I was riding four times two R sets. Second time around I was riding four times four hour sets. So I'm on the bike twice the amount of time every day and all 16 of those hours are ridden faster than the shorter amount of hours I was the first time. But it's more based on just how you know yourself and what you have the ability to do, rather than whether things are in and of themselves difficult. Because athletes come to me all the time when I'm at events and say to the first thing they do is they reflect on my events and the scale of them and the stories they've just heard. Then the next thing they say is they reflect on their own challenges and they normally sort of talk themselves down and go. It's nothing compared to what you've done. And that's of course, completely not true. Because if what you're aiming for, your event, your expedition, your endurance challenge, whatever it is as an athlete, based on your life experience, it's got to be uncomfortable, it's got to be difficult, it's got to be the next level in order to inspire you and in order to be worth training for. So I think it's a great leveler in sport to say that whatever that big iconic challenge is for you, it's personal, it's deeply personal and it's difficult simply because you've not done it before. So to compare the first time, I could say, well, the second time I cycled around the world made the first time look like kindergarten. I mean, look how slow I went sort of thing. And yet at the time that was considered remarkable. I remember when I cycled around the world the first time in 194 days and 17 hours, people said things like, I wonder if that'll ever be broken. Well, guess What? In those 10 years, we saw some remarkable efforts in that record coming down and down and down. Now the thing you've got to realize is when you're doing these unsupported records, it's as much about what happens off the bike as on the bike. So you're trying to find your next meal, you're trying to find a safe place to sleep every night, you're trying to worry about your safety. When you've got a massive support team with you, you're entirely focused on how fast and efficiently you can ride and obviously when you're on the bike from four in the morning until half past nine, ten o' clock at night, every single day for two and a half months. I mean, you're going 1,000 miles every four days. It's an extraordinary pace to pedal around the planet. So I couldn't have done what we did recently without the experience of having done it the first time and everything that happened between the first and the second. And I think it's interesting for people who are now thinking that they want to have a crack at the circumnavigation world record, they don't have that benefit because I came into the sport at a time when the record wasn't particularly competitive. You could literally fall out of university and give it a crack. You can't do that anymore. It's a very professional record and I'd love to see how anyone is going to go faster than 78 days.

I think I loved, said this to you while we were chatting before we started recording. I absolutely loved listening to your books and I listened to them while cycling myself. And a lot of it was we were down in Cornwall for quite a bit of the summer and I was listening to your books while out cycling and I got so absorbed in your books, I'd have to remind myself occasionally that I was in Cornwall and not New Zealand or Afghanistan or wherever it was, because they were just, they were really compelling. But it's just made, what you just said made me realize that actually when I think about listening to both books, there was, there was always more doubt that you were going to finish the first time than the second time. It didn't. There was much, so many more hurdles for you to overcome. Like for example, the spokes, the spokes on your bike were such an issue on the first time. Whereas you had a team to eliminate all of those sorts of worries, didn't you?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, when you look at the margins for error on the second time around the world, they were next to nothing, you know, I mean for. I always joke that if I messed around for five minutes every time I got off the bike, we lost five minutes every time I stopped. That would add a day to the world record, a day that I didn't have in the contingency. So actually the margin for error was tiny. And yet the level of professionalism, the logistics team, the performance team, the media team, that well oiled machine. One of the issues we have had with the documentary and the story off the back of it is that people have often said it Looked too inevitable. Like what you and your team pulled off. Yes, you've broken a world record. It's the ultimate. How fast can you get around planet Earth? You know, we might have smashed the world record by 37% but the fact that you are, you know, getting up at half past three, riding four times, four hour sets a day, every single day for two and a half months, unless you've ridden a 400k day, unless you know what 240, 250 miles on the bike feels like and then wake up and do it again tomorrow, there's nothing about that that's inevitable. It's insanely painful. I was time trialing for 1,200 hours and yet because of the well oiled machine, because of the process, the planning, the belief systems that went into it, I think for the watching world it sort of looked like it was almost just premeditated and inevitable. And that became a real problem. You know, honestly, I got halfway around the world, into the middle of Australia and the news reports, I was calling back and doing BBC breakfast and all the normal stuff and people were talking about it like it was a victory lap, like I'd done it months before the finish. And I can't tell you what that feels like. When you're on the bike, the alarm goes off at half past three every morning, you've had five hours sleep and you've got another 16 hours to ride. And that's just today. There's nothing inevitable about it. And yet to pull off something at that scale and to not just pip a record, but break it by over a month, you've got to build an incredible plan, you've got to have figured out all the contingencies, you've got to do all the big thinking before you turn any pedal strokes. I mean, it's that old sort of familiarity bias. Most athletes just think, well, I'll train hard and then I'll figure out in the race what I'm capable of. I'll leave out my best time once I've. And so you focus so hard on the physical aspect of being the best athlete you can be that you've never sort of zoomed out and considered, you know, what are the other controlling parts of, of the race? How do you, how do you have, how do you have a mindset when you're doing an endurance race in particular where you can just ride the road in front of you, you're not constantly worried about the what ifs that are over the horizon. So it was looking back a brilliantly pulled off Plan by, I'd say, a team of over 40 people. But what it looks like is one guy on a bicycle just nailing it for 16 hours a day. And nothing went wrong. Well, guess what? A hell of a lot went wrong. I had some serious crashes, I fractured my elbow, I broke some teeth. There was issues at border crossings, lots went wrong. But we had such a minute plan in place to mitigate, to make sure that. I think the interesting thing to stop and remember is if 80 days didn't exist as a concept, you know, Phileas Fogg, if the Victorian fiction wasn't, you know, Michael Palin, Disney, you know, 80 days is a thing. And if that didn't exist as a thing, then I probably would have been quite happy to have broken the previous world record, which was 123 days. So breaking that would have been one thing. But to try and take it to such a new level takes a level of detailed planning which, you know, most athletes just wouldn't think of because all they care about is their FTP, their, you know, their recovery, their physical performance. Well, the longer the race gets, the more it becomes about psychology, the more it becomes about logistics, the more it becomes about teamwork, collaborations and everything else. You know, I always joke, there's a lot better bike riders out there than me. That is definitely true. And yet, you know, year after year, for the last 15, you know, we, and I'll always say we have done these first and fastest by considerable leaps, and I don't think we live in a meritocracy. It's not because I'm a faster bike rider. It's because of the, you know, the power of the plan and, you know, ultimately getting people to buy into these concepts to begin with.

I think it's really interesting because I'm just thinking about it from a business point of view and, you know, when you're, when you were riding around self supported, you had to do everything. Then you had to find a solution for the spokes, you had to find the nutrition. You know, you started that with as veg. I'm going to come back to nutrition because your vegetarian plan had to go out the window fairly early on, didn't it? But you were doing everything. And as a result, you did a phenomenal job taking a massive chunk off the record at the time. But in business, the best businesses focus on something that a guy called Dan Sullivan calls your unique ability. So you took all of that other stuff off your plate, didn't you, by doing it the second time and focused on your Unique ability, which is the ability to be able to cycle phenomenal distances day after day. And by doing that you could massively leverage up the results. And that's essentially what happens in the best businesses. I think it is incredible. I think I didn't mean to imply, and I hope you didn't take it, that I was implying that it was going to be the no brainer that you got round the second time because it is a phenomenal achievement cycling. I mean I've cycled 200 miles and, and the, and that was, that was a tough day. But the idea of getting a, doing another 40 miles at the end of that or even another 85 miles because I think you, on I think the day you cycle to Brisbane, didn't you knock out 285 miles that day? To do another 85 miles on that day would have been a huge ask. But the idea of then getting up at half past three the following morning and going again and doing another 240 miles or jumping on a flight and then fly, I mean that's just an insane level. And what sort of training do you, did you need to do to be able to get to the point where you could not just cycle 240 miles or 285 miles, but you could do it day after day after day.

So most athletes doing sort of normal short races and I'll include like an ironman in that, anything which is over in a concise amount of time, less than a day, you know you can ride to fail, you know, you're, you can leave all out there and you know, you have a warm bath and, and feel sore the next day, but it's done. Whereas obviously ultra endurance, multi day, multi week, multi month stuff like I do, it's got to be ultimately sustainable. So you cannot completely empty the tank today because then you won't be able to do it tomorrow. So that's the first important part. Most athletes do really solid base training over the winter months and then rack up towards their events with intensity and speed sessions into the spring and summer. Whereas adventure athletes, ultra endurance athletes tend to do the opposite. Because we will never replicate our load. By that I mean the duration that we do our events in training. So you know, even if you're training up to doing a marathon, you know, you'll have done something approximate before, Even if it's 2/3, you know that what they call the domain, that last third where you really go into the, into the unknown, you know, you'll have, you'll have done something close if you're riding for a century, maybe you've done a 70 mile ride. If you're running, running a marathon, maybe you'll have run 22, whatever. But the trouble with ultra endurance is your load. The time you spend doing what you do is so much longer than you can ever do in training. Even when I was training full time for the world, you know, I'd be doing 25, 30 hours a week in training and then I was transitioning to 16 hours a day. So you cannot, in training, it doesn't matter how full time you are, do 16 hours a day, seven days a week. You know, it's ridiculous. So ultra endurance athletes spend their entire time in what a lot of race athletes would consider sort of over training syndrome. You know, that that level where you lose your top end, you lose your ability to raise your power and your heart rate. You're not getting optimal recovery, but you've got to find a sustainable output where you can endure, you can keep going. So that classic over training you get when you build your load too much or you take too big jumps in training is an interesting phenomenon with ultra endurance athletes who ultimately have to keep performing at that sort of suppressed level. So when I say we sort of do reverse training, it's massively important for ultra endurance adventure athletes to, over the off season, long before the event happens, to do a lot of high intensity power sessions, you know, building their top end. Because if you think of where you need to then sit when you're doing your ultra endurance event, you want to pull up the top of that pyramid so that your ability to go all out is higher, is harder. The old fashioned way of thinking of endurance is you just go out and do long rides. You'd sit at zone one, zone two, tap it out and you've got one gear. It's hugely helpful for athletes to build their top end so they know how to suffer. So physiologically, psychologically, you know how to push yourself through the ranges so you can lift your effort into the headwinds, into the hills and you've got a range to play with, but also because it does pull up your average, you know, your long term endurance base, whatever that, whatever that is. But then as you get to the final two, three months before your event, you're switching from being very fit in a narrow sense of the word, to building the conditioning to endure long hours. So then it becomes things like, you know, just can you, can you endure long hours in the saddle? Your neck position, your backside, your feet, your hands, nerve damage, things which a normal Roadie would get to like four or five hours into a ride and you're like, okay, I'm done. Not because my legs can't keep going because I fueled effectively, but because I'm too sore to keep going. And that deep conditioning to be able to do long, long, long hours is something that you need to train. And I think a lot of want to be endurance adventure athletes miss that part because they smash themselves on the Turbo trainer. They think they've pushed their FTP up and then they think, well, it's just a case of going easier and sitting there for longer and just sort of. But you've got to have the physical competence and psychological experience to endure to spend those long, long, long hours in the saddle. And if you're, you sat there and said, I did a 200 mile day and it hurt. Well, you probably did it as a one off without ever having sort of staged up to it. And then psychological arcs, you'd set that up as a big day. And when you got to 200 miles, you're like, I'm done. Whereas if that had been a 240 mile day, then your psychological arc, your expectation, your mindset around it would have been completely different and you would have got to 240 and you'd have been done. So I think the power of that expectation when it comes to endurance is hugely important. But in terms of training your nervous system, you know, literally training your conditioning, your resilience, your positioning, your biomechanics to long, long, long hours in the saddle, just like runners, that's something that happens in the final weeks and months. And I think a lot of athletes miss that point because you can be super fit, you can be really strong, but fit for a purpose. And if you've never built out the load, the duration of what you do, then once you get to the domain, that sort of final third, when it really, really bites, you're just so far from your comfort zone, mentally and physically, that a lot of people just can't complete.

Fantastic. And that makes a lot of sense. And I think when it comes to the endurance piece, what, you know, clearly a lot of it is a mental thing as opposed to a physical thing. Probably the further you go, I don't know, is more of it mental than physical? I'm not sure maybe you've got a thought on that. But what, what techniques have you developed or kind of learned as a result of your experiences to help you with the mental endurance side of things?

So, I mean, it's definitely nurture, not nature. When it comes to psychology, you might be born as a, you know, a certain character type, I see it with my own two daughters. But the ability to suffer, you know, and I don't care whether you're running a 10k or cycling around the planet, you've got to be able to, you've got to have grit. You've got to have grit. You got to. You know, that four letter word is massively underestimated as an athlete. You know, your mindset, your belief, your want to go deep, that sort of wry smile, your humor, these things are learned through hard miles. And the more you do, the more you understand yourself. And you end up having these crazy conversations with people who have put themselves through similar places and people who haven't looked at you and ask those questions about why and what's it for and what you get from these things. And it's hard to talk to because that entire topic is the classic. If you need to ask the questions, then you'll never understand the answers. You've got to have lived it, you've got to have done difficult things, you've got to have suffered to understand what it gives you in life, what it gives you in terms of your identity, what it gives you in terms of your purpose and your passion and the fact that, you know, life is very comfortable unless we choose to make it uncomfortable. And there is so much to be gained from figuring out what our best lives are physically. Getting into the great outdoors, pushing ourselves, our relationship with nature and wild spaces, when we are physically active. You're not just a passenger in a place, but you've taken yourself there. You're wiping the sweat from your brow. You have run that mountain, you have felt how slippy the terrain is. You've ridden that bicycle across the continent, you have taken yourself there. And that sort of journeying and that perseverance to, to create a memory is so much more vibrant, is so much more real and long lasting than just being dropped in as a tourist might or a driver might. So, you know, your original question is about mindset and, you know, how do you build that? It's the topic that I've been writing about a fair amount in a book I've just written called Endurance. And it's so hard to put your finger on because for me, at the base of even having an interest in these topics, why you would be listening to this podcast, for example, is about identity, is about how you see yourself in the world. And if you want to fundamentally reshape your motivations, you know, your habits, your ability to go out and do difficult things as an athlete, you've got to shift how you see yourself and see yourself in the world. And it's very hard to not live up to your own expectations of yourself. So if you suddenly become, you know, an ironman person or a century rider or an around the world cyclist, by redefining how you see yourself will fundamentally change how the world sees you and will therefore, almost by accident, give you the belief systems to do those things. We could geek out on this all day, but you know, I'm hugely passionate about sort of trying to figure out what that is. And it's no, it's no one X factor. It's just you've got to, it's got to be deeply personal. You've got to be trying to sort of figure out how to just being aware of what makes you feel alive and not thinking about an athletic journey or performance as a moment in time. You know, it's not about sort of getting to some sort of peak in terms of results or like I won or anything like that, because ultimately it's about your health, it's about the ecosystem that exists around you in terms of your friendship groups, and it's about just having that sort of prime, consistent, positive relationship with the world around you. And I think athletes who get very fixated on numbers, be it their, their, their time trial, their time trial number, or, you know, their, their, their power numbers or their positioning compared to their friends, that is a, that is an output. That is, that is a result. Those are results, those are, those are statistics along the journey. But they don't ultimately define your, your, your happiness long term or your sense of purpose as an athlete. That's got to be defined by what, what the sport gives you, you know, and just the reason you get out of bed every morning to train and to better yourself and to be physically active. And I think people get very tied up in the fact that it's about, you know, specific moments in times or numbers or results and they're just punctuation marks along the way. And I think it's important to realize that life will be wonderfully unfulfilling if you define yourself by those things. And it's more primitive than that. It's more about your identity and the relationship with the world around you. Trust me, all these Guinness World Records on the walls, that's not why you cycle around the world. That would be a. You go through the blues. You feel pretty shoddy after you finish a race on that scale because you've Lost your purpose, you've lost your identity, you've lost the thing that was important to you for a long period of time. So you don't race around the world to get to the finish. You race around the world because you get to cycle around the world.

And why did you set out to do these challenges? Actually, no, before I ask that, do you enjoy the challenges while you're doing them? Sometimes bits of them, yeah.

I think, you know, let's be honest, you know, cycling around the world in 78 days was not the most fun thing I've ever done as an athlete. You know, it was incredibly painful. I'm incredibly proud of it and of my team that, you know, enabled that to happen. But I think I'm. This is not an ego statement, but I'm very, very scared of being average, the seven plus billion people on the planet. And I am very scared of doing nothing remarkable in life and just existing. My driving force is not about wealth, although I don't want to struggle. My driving force is not about power, though. I like to have influence and things that I'm interested in. The thing for me is about how I see myself, how you define yourself. And I think that's fundamentally important because when I left university, I had options. I could have had a finance career, which I'm sure I would have pursued very eagerly, but I felt I had an opportunity to go out and do something which was mine. I could fundamentally put my name above the door. And I don't care whether people, you know, where they work or what they do is about choice. And you want to feel like for yourself, you're in the driving seat of your career. You know, you have choice and you're good at making choices. I see around me all the time young people who are super smart, but they don't feel like they've got control. And I think that's what gives you sort of health and happiness more than anything else. You know, you want to be the master of your own destiny. So why did I cycle around the world? Because I love the idea of doing something that's not been done before. Not for the fact that I've actually beaten somebody else's record, but by the fact that, you know, for myself, it's that sort of pioneering spirit. You know, I feel like, how exciting to get a chance to. To do something new, to figure out something for myself, which is absolutely exciting and difficult and got a risk to it. And I think it's important to recognize that we're not all wired up the same. Clearly but that want to feel like we've got an element of control. And if you're going to look back, what is the life affirming, career defining moments? You want to feel like you've created them. You don't want to feel like you've just, you know, treaded water for this life that's been given to you.

And of the different achievements that you've had, whether it be your Africa 1 or around the world ones, what do you think was the toughest psychologically?

Okay, so as a performance athlete, the around The World in 80 Days was by far the hardest in terms of sleep deprivation. Just the whole cognitive behavior of it. Two and a half months. If you looked at my cortisol levels, my stress hormone, you know, I was in a very, very difficult place for two and a half months, but I always knew I would be. So yeah, in terms of performance, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. It's not at all the most difficult situation I've been in. So capsizing, rowing the Atlantic, rowing from Africa to the Caribbean. After 28 days going wrong way up and then spending 14 hours trying to save the lives of myself and my crew. That's the only time where I very clearly thought I'm going to die. And it was a very analytical thought. The upset came afterwards, but I had to work very, very hard for six hours to do what was needed to bring us all home. And I was incredibly analytical, I was very, very process driven and I was very proactive and I'm very proud of the fact that we all came back alive. You know, you can't compare that to the around the world cycle where I was just, you know, if things went wrong, I got off the bike. But in the high mountains, some of the situations I've been in where sadly, you know, people have lost their lives, and the Atlantic, where, you know, it was very nearly us, these are objectively a lot more, a lot more dangerous. They're, they're, they're a lot more difficult to deal with. But you've kind of got to put them in a different box than high performance in terms of endurance.

Well, and that's, that's kind of why I asked because I mean, I suspect there's, it's a different type of psychological challenge depending on, you know, just taking the two around the world cycles again. You know, one is you out on your own kind of discovering things for the first time and one is you as a team having, being pushed to the absolute limits and is there. So yeah, I get that there's a very different psychological kind of toughness needed. Do you have a preference, you know, with future events, will you, do you have a preference as to which way you will lean on those, which ones you kind of think you enjoy more?

I think my risk profile has probably changed as I've grown up. So some of the things I did in my twenties I probably wouldn't do now and some of the ocean rowing and mountaineering expeds. Having said that, I think probably the round the world in 80 days was, I said it before, like my Everest. In terms of ultra endurance, I've got no reason to cycle around the world a third time. I do want to still push myself as an athlete in the endurance space, which is why for the first time in my career I'm taking on some of the most iconic endurance events out there, like Race Across America, Cape Epic and others. But these are still big events, but they're short compared to what I've done in the past. So I've done a lot of sort of three to six month expeditions and races, whereas these are all over in a matter of, you know, a week, 10 days, two weeks. So it's a, it's a totally different thing in terms of what I plan to take on in the future. I've got those sort of bucket list events, but it's more a case of I'm intrigued to know how I will do in a competitive field standing on a start line with others around me as opposed to going out there and doing these big expedition documentary projects. But the truth of the matter is I've really enjoyed taking the pressure off over the last couple of years and finding the sheer adventure of sport again as opposed to, you know, as opposed to that quite sort of limiting and linear process of how do I become a better endurance road rider. So I've been doing a lot more gravel riding. I've been doing some daft stuff like racing my penny farthings and you know, vintage rides and you know, all sorts of stuff. So I've probably spent more time in 2020 fell running, road running, open water swimming, gravel riding, doing adventure sports of all ilk rather than just going out and trying to push my numbers as a road rider.

And so what is on that bucket list? Knowing what you've learned over the course of the last few months and exploring different activities. What's on the bucket list and perhaps what wasn't on the bucket list that now might be I'd like to do.

So I think I've mentioned a few in Terms of the cycling side of stuff. I'm a presenter for GCN for Global Cycling Networks for their big documentaries. So not the main YouTube channel, which is more how to be a better bike rider, but more where we go off and do big journeys. So I've made a couple of films, documentaries in Scotland over the recent months because we can travel so far again, big gravel rides, multi sport. And I plan to do a lot more of them when we are allowed to get back to normal travel. I've got plans to go and do one in the Norwegian Arctic over the winter. Like basically a full night polar Arctic gravel ride for a thousand kilometers. Imagine where midnight looks like midday just before lockdown. I was out in Chile doing a free ride down the world's highest volcano, 6,893 meters, climbing with bikes to the top and riding through the Atacama Desert, brainstorming at the moment, doing big adventure rides, Lebanese mountain trail out in Nepal, all sorts of stuff. You know, for me, I love the idea of trying to do things that people haven't done before and also make interesting documentaries, you know, have time to also stop and, you know, soak up the culture and the people and the places. So, yeah, as a filmmaker, I want to do. I basically want to use the bike as a vehicle to take me to interesting places and try hard things.

Fantastic. Well, I mean, that's an amazing list of things. My bucket list is expanding rapidly, trying to keep up. But I mean, those just sound awesome adventures given all of the cycling that you've done. Actually, I suppose I haven't read your book on the, on the cycling across Africa. How did cycling or down Africa as opposed to across it? How did cycling through Africa compare to kind of the rest of your world experiences?

I would say, I mean, Africa, if I was to go back to one continent more and explore more in a bicycle, it would be Africa. It's just such an extraordinary and diverse place. You know, you got that route 6,000 miles, you got the Sahara desert in the north, you've got the Ethiopian highlands and down through some pretty rough wild riding through the sort of southern Ethiopia and Kenya. And then you've got the great savannas through Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, you know, the, you know, literally the elephant highway and riding alongside giraffes at full flight. And, you know, it's, it's dreamy stuff. For me, Africa was probably the perfect combination between going for a record, pushing myself hard as an athlete, but also being very reliant on the world around me. Still unsupported still carrying my own kit, albeit I was riding a race bike, carbon Di2 bike, seven and a half kilos of bikepacking kit, going super light. But I still didn't have a truck with me. So I was still very much a case of where's my next meal, where am I going to get clean water, where am I going to sleep tonight? And I loved that race. It was awesome. By the time I then took on the 80 days, I didn't have any of that. I lived in a little performance bubble where I could see the world around me, but I never engaged with it. So Africa was awesome. And to bike pack Africa at the speed of 160, 170 miles a day was unforgettable. I loved it.

It's the one that I think, you know, I look at what you've done so far and think, that's the one. I'd like to have a go at. The idea of cycling around the world from a time perspective and logistics perspective, having now understood what some of the logistics involved are, seems like a bridge too far as a dad and somebody who runs their own business. But cycling the length of Africa does actually seem a achievable. And how achievable is it for somebody that, you know is a strong cyclist? But from a logistical point of view and also from a safety point of view, I mean, I love South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania, but I've not done, you know, Ethiopia, I'd imagine would be a very different experience. How achievable is it for most people?

I mean, the answer is very. You know, I've obviously been asked a lot about the Africa trip because there's a lot of fear of the unknown when you go to the African continent and perceive danger. You know, I never had to unwrap my tent the length of Africa. I never had to ask a second person for a meal to eat or a place to sleep, which I don't think would happen if you were cycling from Land's End to John o'. Groats. Yes, you need to be street wise. Yes, you need to know what you're doing.

But.

You know, the people throughout are just extraordinarily welcoming. And I think a lot of our prejudices and assumptions around risk are just that. And when you go to the parts of the world, I mean, if you look at statistically some of the worst accidents that have happened in terms of sort of endurance cycling, I would say probably America is the worst. It's not India, where you might think the driving is crazy and whatnot. I think there's almost more understanding and more of a cycling culture in these parts of the world where there's less of a divide between other road users and cyclists. So traveling through most of Asia or Africa, you know, you're immediately understood and accepted and integrated as a bike rider. Whereas when you are, you know, piling across the plains of Texas, you know, you feel pretty alone because there's a world that divides you and the norm. So again, I'm just sort of breaking down some of people's perceptions and barriers around going to, you know, big, bad, scary Africa. It's an incredible continent to explore at the speed of a bike. And yes, of course you need to be careful and there are parts which you need to get up to date advice on. But you know, for the most part it's that classic doorstep mile. It's the fear of the unknown is people not wanting to do something that they've not done before which would stop them ever doing something like that, as opposed to the reality that you find on the ground.

I think it just sounds fantastic. I think, you know, I've cycled in the States a bit and I can, if, you know, that was daunting in certain places, but more because of the unknown. But the idea of just getting on a bike and going through Africa, actually I kind of earmarked the idea of cycling between the tests at the lot, doing the Lions Tour and cycling between the tests because that sounded like a nice way of kind of breaking into it. But it does sound like that sounds like a fantastic trip to do. And if somebody was trying, you know, planning a trip like that, what from a nutrition point of view, I mean, I know, I remember you when you were doing your self supported trip, you went, you know, you were vegetarian at the time, I think, weren't you? But it wasn't that long before you eating offal and I remember you talking about some soup with all sorts of different lumps of meat in there that even as a meat eater didn't sound very appealing. How, how would you approach doing a trip like that from a nutrition point of view in terms of what you take, what should you eat, what should you avoid?

Well, when you're doing, I mean, when you're doing multi day, multi week unsupported, you obviously need to be reliant on the world around you, you simply can't take. So you'll need to have some, some spares and some supplies with you. But you know what people get away with on a single day. Sportif is very different than Big expedition riding so you can throw all sorts of nonsense into yourself if you're just doing a six hour ride. You can live off gels and jelly babies if you want. But as anyone who's done any endurance or expeditions will appreciate, your tummy normally gives up before your legs give up. So you've got to keep it natural. You've got to make sure that you're pretty kind to yourself. You got to have a carb appropriate diet so that you're putting in the fuel that you need. So people, you know, people really sort of worry about those, those proportions of the macronutrients, your fats, your, your, your, your proteins and your carbs. In training. The reality when you go out on expedition is, you know, you're, yeah, yes, you're probably wanting to be quite fat adapted insofar as you're going to, you know, I couldn't if I was on the 80 days and eating 8,9000 calories a day. You can't be eating 8,9000 calories of spaghetti. You know, you just the bulk of it, you wouldn't get in. And also to give you that slow release of energy, you're going to want, you know, calorie dense foods, you know, higher fat content but also appropriate carbs. So you've carbs, so you've got some, some, you know, some more, some more power, some more energy, some quicker release stuff if and when you need it. And then during the day using the treats if you like, as such as opposed to a base. So your caffeine's, your sugars, things which are, but understanding that mentally and physically you want to iron out the peaks and troughs that you have on an endurance ride and food fueling is at the heart of that. So you can sort of say, well in theory I'll eat small amounts and regularly and. But the reality is when you're riding through the Sahara desert, you might find a truck stop you know, every four hours and you might be water rationing between them. So with, with all the best laid plans, you need to have flexibility. When I'm back here, I sort of have a pescatarian diet. I do eat meat, but only when I know when it's come from because of all food sorts, you know, anything which is heavily processed through a factory and meats are going to be, you know, have the most additives and most foods that are sort of pretty foreign to your body. So I think, you know, I'm definitely from the keep it natural school of nutrition. You have to be very kind on your gut so that it keeps working. If you climb to altitude or you push yourself through ultra endurance, your tummy will slow down and keeping your intestines working and ultimately how closely aligned your mental state is with your fueling strategy. You know, if you bonk or if you have a psychological crash on the road, it's normally goes hand in hand with a nutritional crisis.

Yeah. And have you had instances where you kind of where your nutrition strategies backfired and you've had to kind of readapt or do something differently?

Yeah, I mean I've had multiple cases on big expedition rides of food poisoning and where I've, you know, just got it wrong or I've run out of food or you know, more fundamentally run out of water. Water rationing in these big stretches is a big problem. I mean, these are pretty extreme examples because I'm talking about, you know, being out in the middle of the Atacama Desert or Patagonia, or up in the wilds of the Yukon or in the Australian outback. You know, for if people are listening to this podcast and that is their problem as well, then yeah, you need to build experience to know how to pack your bike out and how to fuel effectively, you know, in these remote, unsupported expeditions. But for more practical day to day advice, it's A lot has been made in recent years of all sorts of keto diets and training fasted and all these things. Fundamentally, I don't want anyone to go into any camp wholeheartedly because they think it sounds like a good idea. I want people to be inquisitive. I want people to tweak their plans and make it deeply personal. So their fueling strategy should be not just great idea because they read a book on it, but adjusted to who you are as a person, the event you're taking on and what you've practiced and what's available to you as well. I think the risk these days, especially with social media and so many athlete experts out there, is people just jump in in quite extreme ways with certain fueling plans or certain training plans or whatever it is. And what I always encourage is to be very inquisitive, to try different things. We're creatures of habits. So force yourself to make those changes, but then be open to break the rules that are given to you because only then can you figure out what works over these big events. Anyone can wing it on a one day event that lasts five, six hours. But when you go into bigot expedition riding multi day, multi week, then you'll get unstuck if you don't know yourself and you've not built your tolerance to different fueling strategies.

Brilliant. Yeah. So essentially, kind of just work out what works for you and practice it and get used to it and kind of identify that. That's great advice. Thank you.

I mean, there's some basics, like most people just geek out on the macros and make sure they're getting enough carbs and proteins and whatnot. But again, the micros, that's what most people miss every day. You know, genuinely knowing that's the, you know, the clear analogy. Your macros are your petrol in the tank. Have you got enough fuel to keep going into, recover from exercise? Your micros, that's the oil. You know, to use the car analogy and to make most people put so much petrol in their car that they just don't need it. And that's blind. And the obvious in terms of what goes wrong then, but then there's just not enough of the good stuff, the little stuff, to keep the, to keep the human engine going efficiently and effectively over time. And that's why you need to really, really care about, you know, all your micronutritional sort of sources every day. And, you know, I would, I would only, I would keep any supplements to an absolute minimum. Maybe your cod liver on your, your multi vets and, you know, maybe some Cherry Active or something like that, but, but you can, you can really care about where all your antioxidants are coming from and make sure that you're consistent around that. Because, honestly, in terms of mindset and energy levels, that's as important, if not more important than, you know, getting enough carbohydrate in your plate?

And is that something you would monitor particularly closely? Like, would you keep track of, of those micronutrients in terms of what's in the diet, or is it more, you know, you just take those supplements to try and eliminate any shortfalls.

Whenever I've made changes as an athlete, I keep a food diary, but then normally, once they become a habit, I don't need to diarize it quite so closely. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, I guess I've got the benefit of having a performance manager, so I'll share that information and we'll make choices together around any changes. But, yeah, I mean, it also makes you a lot more inquisitive in the kitchen and interested in what you're making and, and, you know, not just taking the raw ingredients, but, like, how do you prepare them to keep the nutrition in them, you know, vegetables are a great example. So the short answer to your question is just I stay inquisitive. I make changes based on what the needs are. You know, what the seasons are going into winter, you know, what my load is in terms of training, how I'm feeling in terms of simple metrics like my quality of sleep or what else is happening in my life, juggling kids and work and travel and the rest of it. So, no, I mean, as long as you're not too rigid, as long as you're willing to change what you eat, be aware if you are making bigger changes, you know, diarize that, have a bit of thought process around it, but then realize after a couple of weeks, you can probably then just call it a habit sort of thing.

Fantastic. And you touched on books there and there. Any particular. I mean, I've genuinely loved reading your books or listening to your books. And I found them inspiring to the point where when you were getting to the end of them, I was actually kind of, you know, getting quite emotional about you finishing the journey myself. So if anybody was watching me cycle by with kind of welling up that of question what I was up to. But have there any been any books that have really helped you on that journey, both either in terms of inspiring you or in terms of books that you think have got a lot of practical advice or books that you find yourself recommending to other people?

Yeah, I mean, I love. I love life stories. So, you know, when it comes to sort of biographies or even listening to, you know, Desert Island Discs, I absolutely geek out on hearing other people's, how they've strived, how they've pursued excellence in their own field. I mean, I can go back to being a teenager and watching Elle MacArthur sail around the world or early reading books on the great ages of exploration in the, you know, north and South Poles and the Arctic and whatnot. Though that was. That was me growing up sort of getting interested in adventure and exploration. When it comes to specific information, I would recommend Endure, which is a book by Alex Hutchison. That's a. That's a. That's a great read.

Yeah.

Performing Under Pressure, which is a book by Josephine Perry. It's actually partly sort of biographical, but there's a good book book I'm reading at the moment called Endless Perfect Circles by Dr. Ian Walker. He's got an interesting career. I think he's down at Bath or Bristol Uni, but he's about human behavior. He's the guy that has the world record for riding the length of Europe from Nordcap to the south of Portugal. But he's also a behavioral psychologist. So he talks about, you know, why we drive our cars rather than cycling bikes and how you make, you know, macro changes based on micro decisions. And that's a good one.

But I mean, I think I missed the title of that. What was. What was the title of that book called?

Endless Perfect Circles.

Oh, that was Endless Perfect Circles. Okay. Yes.

Yeah. And in terms of, like, a training.

Book.

There'S a guy called Pav Brian who's helped me out with the endurance book that I've just written, and he's got the guide to Truly Effective cycling, which is pretty good for, like, structured training programs.

Okay, fantastic. There's a whole load there that aren't on my reading list already, so that'll be expanding further. And I suppose the last question, because I'm very conscious that you've been very generous with your time. If somebody wanted to get into endurance cycling, not necessarily to the level that you are, but maybe cycling the length of Africa, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them?

So my one bit of advice would definitely be about that doorstep mile. You know, people spend their life talking about wanting to do these things. So it's not normally physical ability that stops people. It's committing to the ideas. So the doorstep mile is a lovely phrase, as a Scandinavian phrase, about the fact that you never regret going for a ride, but it's sometimes hard to go for a ride. And the doorstep mile is that turning a thought into an action. And so that process, that habit of the doorstep mile and even being aware of it as a concept is what stops most of us turning our dreams into realities. And I realize that might sound a bit sort of. A bit sort of fuzzy, but fundamentally, you know, we could talk about nutrition all day, we could talk about training plans, we could talk about logistics and routing, but fundamentally, if you don't turn the big ideas into something that might happen, to something that will happen, you know, afford the time and whatever other resources it takes to commit to that. Say it out loud, tell your friends, become accountable to your own dreams, you need to do that, because otherwise time just slips away and it will become something which you once thought about. So for anyone, you know, who has that bucket list, there's always a good reason not to do it. There's always a reason that we're not quite in the right space of time or priorities. But if it's important enough and it's something that you believe you're going to look back on as a formative part of your career, then you need to commit to it. You need to become accountable to that and understanding that that process of it goes back to the very first thing that we spoke about. Make it your identity. If you're that person, it's very hard to not live up to your identity. I watch my kids every day. They have amazing ideas and they're used to just living out their ideas. And as adults, we lose that ability because we're so silly busy. So it's rather simple. But just commit.

Incredibly powerful as well. It might be simple, but I think it's, you know, it's about. Yeah, absolutely. Setting goals and then getting that first step on the way to achieving them and putting the logistics in place, sort of. The logistics will end up working themselves out. You'll work them out as long as you've committed to doing something. So fantastic advice, Mark. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you. There is. We've only scratched the surface on a whole load of this stuff. I know. But it's been a real pleasure and there's some amazing advice in there. So huge thank you for coming on and I wish you every success with the. With the next few items on your bucket list.

Thanks, Ali. It's been great fun.

I'm sure you'll agree. An incredible guy. Lovely guy, so insightful. In terms of the endurance, I definitely need to read his new book, but I also definitely need to add cycling the length of Africa to my bucket list and need to make sure that that happens at some point because that does sound like an incredible way of just kind of taking a step into the sort of things that he's achieved. So I hope you learned a lot from that chat, particularly around the psychology and physiology of endurance. I hope that you take your training to the next level as a result of that. So keep on training. If you like these podcasts, please review them and share them. And my name is Charlie Redding. And keep on training. And remember, this podcast is brought to you by Brits Superfoods. You can find out more@britsuperfoods.co.uk but if you use the link in the show notes or you use the referral code of Tribeathlon, you'll get 10% off your orders. You'll get a free bag of juices worth £15 with every order. And those will happen forever as long as you buy from BritSuperfood with that having started with that referral code, you'll get those forever. In addition to that, you'll also benefit from that 110% money back guarantee. So if you don't see the value in it, then, then you can. They'll give you your money back and an extra 10%. So go check out the link in the show notes or go to BritSuperfoods.co.uk and use the referral code Tribeathlon and you'll get that 10% off free shipping and free juice on every order. And don't forget to download the Tribathlon app for more amazing podcasts, but also to help you train, compete and to build your tribe.