Pushing Past Impossible with Ryan Stramrood

Foreign.

I'm charlie redding.

And I'm claire fudge and this is.

The tribe athlon podcast.

In my head it was absolutely over. And how had I had now swam another four hours? I couldn't quite figure it out until started to realize that I'd actually just pushed past impossible. And that's been my catchphrase ever since.

That was Ryan Stramrood and this episode is Pushing past Impossible. Ryan Stranrood is one of South Africa's top extreme adventurers and ice swimmers. He quietly travels the planet into the most inhospitable waterscapes where he seeks out extreme cold water swimming experiences. He swam the first official ice mile in minus 1 degree water in Antarctica. He completed a swim in the Jockel Salon Glaciers lagoon, I think that is in Iceland. And he is the only person to have swam west to east across the shark invested waters of False Bay. And having been to South Africa and dive with great white sharks, I can't imagine what it's like swimming for sort of eight plus hours, nine plus hours across that shark infested water. That is frightening. And all of this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. And so he's a TED speaker, he's the author of the book Push Past Impossible. So Claire and I wanted to chat to him about how he can set goals that allow him to push past impossible time and time again. How he conditions his body for the extreme cold of swimming in well minus 1 degree water and how he also deals with that mentally and how he avoids being what he calls an excuse magnet. This is a great interview. I met Ryan in person at a conference in Boston earlier on this year. Genuinely love lovely guy and you are going to love this interview with Ryan Stramrood. 33 Fuel Produce Award winning natural sports nutrition and everything they do is led by their philosophy for performance, for health and for a fitter future. 33 Fuel's awesome products have been fueling triathletes worldwide since 2012 as well as many of the world's best athletes. So from the England football team to Tour de France winners and triathlon world champions including four times Ironman world champ Chrissie Wellington who's been using 33 fuel for years. 33 fuel also leads sports nutrition sustainability with plant focused formulas for reduced environmental impact, recyclable packaging and carbon neutral delivery on all orders which also got them rated as by Runners World as one of the top 50 eco hero companies worldwide. Another reason why I love what Warren and Erica are doing at 33 fuel so to find out more about 33 for go to 33fuel.com and if you use the code tribathlon or click the link in the show notes, you'll get an extra special discount when you purchase your amazing stock of 33 fuel. So, Ryan, welcome to the Tribe Athlon podcast. Great to see you again. Obviously, we met in Boston a few weeks ago. We enjoyed a very nice steak together, saw you speak, which was absolutely brilliant. So it's great to see you again. So welcome. I always like to kick things off by hearing about the story, the story at the core of what you've been up to. So. So I think for you, that was how you got into swimming. So tell us a little bit about how you. How your swimming started for you.

Well, firstly, hello, and thanks for the invitation. Hello to everybody watching down the line. My story factors into how I started, factors into my entire story. And a lot of people take quite a bit out of this because I have achieved quite a lot in swimming, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, but I had done absolutely nothing before the age of 29, 30 years old. So I was, you know, running a small business and getting nice and fat and lazy and loving the television remote control and a bag of crisps or chips way more than anything that vaguely resembled exercise. And a very, you know, I kind of recognized that I was being a bit lazy and this wasn't the right kind of lifestyle. And I took a client away on an advertising business trip and I kind of mentioned that, you know, I probably need a bit of a lifestyle change. And he said, well, join my little swimming squad. This is way back when. And I was, okay. Well, I've always enjoyed the water, and swimming used to be my thing back in junior school. So let me give it a go. And. And that literally was the start, the very start to my journey. I joined a little swimming squad and I managed to do a few laps, you know, on day one. I don't know if you know how swimming squads work. You know, you arrive and there are a whole bunch of people in lanes and, you know, you get the slow lane and then the slightly F lane and then the medium lane, the very first lane. And. And so now you, you kind of arrive and the coaches, right, where do you want to get in? And you intimidated. And of course, I put myself in the very first lane, and then I had to swim very fast, which I could do for about four lengths, and then I was in deep trouble. But, you know, the ego sits in and you push yourself. I think I made about 20 lengths, which is half a kilometer, and I absolutely broke myself. So nice lesson one on day one and something made me go back, which I'm very glad I did, and slowly but surely start to meet some of the people in the swimming squad. And then I met someone who had swum from Robben Island. Now that's in Cape Town for your viewers and listeners. You know that's where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years. It's an island in my backyard that I see every day. But swimming from the island to the beach wearing only a speedo, goggles and cap is reserved for the superhuman in my head. Back in these days, you know, there's absolutely no way it's something that I would ever attempt to do. The water is absolutely freezing and it's a seven and a half kilometer distance. But here in this very swim squad that I was now attending was someone who had actually done it and they kind of made front page news. And I remember just being an absolute awe of this person. And long story short, eventually sort of chatting to him and he eventually said, well, hey, why don't you set it as a goal? Which was bizarre. You know, like me, not a chance, way out of my league reserved for, for other people, not me. And you can see where this is going. Eventually they whittled me down and the squad got together and said, you've got what it takes to do this swim. I didn't believe him, but eventually set it as a goal. For one of the first times in my life stuck to a sporting goal. Did the training, did the work, got in the water and managed to across and it, it started an incredible journey for me in terms of really not believing I could do that and doing it and then started to go, well, hang on, where else have I sold myself short?

Amazing. And how was that first swim from Robben island to Cape Town?

It was fine, to be honest. So, you know, another thing that I've learned, swimming and I'm sure most sports, but let's just talk about, you know, my sport, which is cold water swimming. Now the impact of the cold is quite brutal. I'm sure we're going to talk about that, but it's headspace stuff. So when you are as nervous as I was for that swim, when you are as, when you're that nervous, you do probably way more preparation than was actually needed. You, you petrified for it. So you got your mind, you expecting the worst, you prepared for the brutality that's going to Come with it. So when you got, when I got in, it was hard and difficult and long and tiring and I was very, very happy two hours and 15 minutes later to find my feet on, on the beach. But it was well within my capabilities. It didn't push me to an end of my life as I thought it would be, which again was another, you know, massive epiphany for me. And then just to, to, to caveat what I'm saying, I did it a second time when someone, in fact it was my sister said, hey, come and join me on a swim. And I was not nearly as nervous and blase as I've, I've done this now, you know, I can do it again. And I didn't give it the mental thought that it needed. I didn't understand all the rules of open water swimming. And you know, one day is not like the next day. Currents are different, temperatures are different, winds different. And it very, very nearly kicked me in the butt. So, you know, so the first time was a lot easier than the second time and that's, it was a very valuable lesson to me up front.

Now I know from, from being out in your part, I love your part of the world as we've talked about, but I was supposed to, when I was in Cape, I was supposed to go do some blue shark and mako shark diving off the, off the coast of Cape Town, just slightly further along the, along the coast. I've been in a cage with great whites at Hans by, you know, sharks are pretty. I actually, I've also done a swim at Plettenberg Bay which we talked about and you said that was the one place in South Africa you wouldn't swim. So that was, that was slightly interesting. But talk to me about the, the psychology around knowing that there's, you know, we all, when you're swimming in a lake, there's kind of a lot of people that would think, oh, there might be a pike that might bite me on the big toe or something. Sharks are slightly different. So talk to me a little bit about that, particularly at the start of your swimming.

Yeah, so I mean, that certainly plays a massive role. So 99% of my open water swimming is in the ocean and our oceans are well reputed for being the home to the great white shark and many others. So it most certainly plays on my psychology. And then you combine the impact of the cold, which makes you negative and makes you. We'll get into that a bit later. So definitely it's always played a role, but I have an understanding of Sharks. I'm not saying I'm not scared of them and I don't have all the fears that everybody else has, but I understand they're not man eaters. I understand that you'll be exceptionally unlucky to get bitten by a shark. And if you do get bitten by a shark, it's mistaken identity. So you're swimming at night or you're swimming in really murky water in a place that you, you probably shouldn't, where there might be an aggregation shocks for at a particular time of year, you know, whatever the case may be. So I do the, the homework before and I've push that fear which never leaves to the back of my head and manage it appropriately. And you know, you, you kind of, in this sport you either accept the risk or you don't. If you don't accept it, then don't do the sport. You'll never do it. It's not for you. If you accept the level of risk and you believe the risk is as low as it literally is, then then you know, you can, you can get, get going, I suppose.

Well, I think the thing is we all perceive extreme risks to be more like. We all perceive a plane crash to be more risky than the drive to the airport. But actually it's massively in favor the other way. But because a plane crash makes the news, whereas a car crash doesn't. So, so that's, that's a, it's a great way of thinking about it. Now you went for. Now I might get the sequence of these events slightly wrong, but I think you went from doing Robin island to coming up to our neck of the woods and doing the English Channel. So tell us a little bit about what inspired you to do that and how that went.

Right, so let me, yeah, let me take you through the journey. So in, in and around Cape Town, anyone in who's had a swim in our waters, that which is in my, my backyard, you know, we've got cold water here. So you. And, and the water is generally between about 10 degrees Celsius and up to 16 degrees Celsius on a, on a, on a warm day in, in the table bay side where I spend a lot of my time and I never wear wetsuits or anything like that. So the challenge of the sport I do is not just the physical ability to swim and getting fit to do whatever distance you've set, it is actually the ability to handle the cold. Because humans have not evolved well at all to handle cold. We've evolved very well to avoid it. So when we throw ourselves into increasingly cold conditions, the mind, which is an exceptionally powerful tool and has evolved for hundreds of thousands of years or millions of years, whatever it is, is designed to make sure we get out of that cold environment. It doesn't allow us rational thought to go, oh this is nice, I think I'm going to stay in here. It wants to get you out. And the colder that gets, the, the tougher the more profound that response is. And then to try and override this very powerful mental defense mechanism trying to keep you safe and perform physically to do whatever distance you have set. So that is in a nutshell the challenge of open water swimming. Then you throw in the psychology of you know what, what might bite you and what will far more likely to sting you. The jellyfish and the blue bottles and the things that are horrible and always there. So it sounds like a very horrible sport. I'm not painting a great picture but these are all the things that challenge you ought to get your head around. So I now start doing this in and around the Cape waters and you know, the more, the more I did that, the more you start to realize you can override some of these defense mechanisms. You can get yourself in a place to push yourself a little bit further and increase your distance. Right on your guys doorstep is the very Everest of distant swims. And that's the English Channel. You know, as a crow flies 34 km it is cold water so it's 16 degrees Celsius. But you're going to be in it for a lot longer, you know, so 34Ks and that's just as the crow flies you, unfortunately you don't swim as a crow flies with all the currents involved, you're going to swim a lot further. So I set my goal eventually and it wasn't. It's not an overnight go. You know, you don't do a Robben island crossing in Cape Town and go oh I can now do an English Channel. There's a long progression. You've got to, you've got mature as a swimmer. In fact a friend of mine went today and I told him he was a little bit quick off the cuff and he didn't make it. So he got halfway across and, and had to pull. It's a difficult, difficult swim, but it's usually challenging. And you, you know, I did it back in 2008, probably a little bit before my time when I should have. I was still young and a little bit bulletproof and gung ho and it nearly gave me a proper hiding. But I finally, I gave it a go and I made it across in 12 hours and 54 minutes. And just for your audience. So, you know, again, it's only speedo type costume goggles and one silicon cap. And when you're taking on something like an English Channel, you, you start in Dover generally. So you've got to walk out onto the beach. When you, your ankles clear the water, they press a stopwatch and say start. You walk into the water. You may not touch anything that helps you at all until you walk out and clear the water in France. So obviously you've got a support boat alongside that throws you liquid to drink and carbs and things to keep you fueled. But you can't hold on the side of the boat or get any kind of flotation advice. And you also, in cold water, you can't stop and enjoy the view and have a discussion and figure out what a new strategy is. As soon as you stop, the cold starts to set in. So you've got to keep moving. And those feed breaks are usually limit them to about 30 seconds. In that 30 seconds you've got to drink and feed and get instructions shouted to you, whatever you want to know, what you need to know and then you go off again. So I can't remember what your question was, but that was how I got to the English Channel. And I can talk about the English Channel experience for a long time.

Well, tell us how it went because I mean, I've obviously heard the story and it's an amazing story, but tell us whether it went well for those that haven't.

Well, so, so firstly we, in 2008 we didn't have all the weather apps that are so readily available on our phones. You know, we had, you could online and kind of do a dial up connection and find a weather chart. And yet a lot of experts, but the idea is to find a really good day. So the English Channel you can only really do in certain months between July and September is what is accepted because that's when the water's within a temperature range that is, that is doable. You also can only do it on certain tides. So there's a certain time of the month, maybe only one or two weeks in the month where it is swimmable. And in that, those two weeks or in the, you know, let's call it that one week. So I get a seven day slot where they say, okay, Ryan, you've booked your English Channel. You get from Saturday, the what, 28th of August to whatever it is. So seven days later and in that seven days I've got to fly from Cape Town or the day before, get to Dover and then sit there and hope in those seven days where the tides are going to be okay for me to swim. Hope that the weather plays ball. So long, long story short, the weather didn't play ball until right at the end of my window. Now it's kind of like summiting Everest. If you like 100 meters from the summit and there's a weather bank coming in. You don't quickly summit and then go down. You go down and the channel is. If the weather's not right and it's not swimmable and it's dangerous, you don't attempt. You try another time. Now, coming from Cape Town, that's a little difficult because it's a lot of expense. You've got to fly home and you know you've missed your slot. A people who swim the English Channel. So you got to book. I booked two years in advance by the way. They told me what tide I was swimming on two years before I even got there. And eventually my day arrived. The day before I had to fly home. So it was down to the wire. It looked like a really good day. I had studied those charts. There were a few question marks, if I'm totally honest. But I made the call to give it a go. And it started absolutely flat. And that's what you look for as an English Channel swimmer. You wanted like a mirror because you know that's just a very flat English Channel is a difficult swim. Throw in a little bit of wind that causes even as a foot of chop on the water and it totally changes your swim. It's exponentially more difficult. It rolls you, it changes. You lift your head higher to get breath, you get gulps of seawater and it slows you down, which keeps you in the cold longer. So there's lots of things that can go wrong. And mine started brilliantly and was going wonderfully for probably the first three hours. And then the wind started to pick up and got worse and worse and worse. And it wasn't predicted until I had big waves that were kind of rolling. And then I had the boat that was coming down on top of me and that made it very, very hard to swim. And I got to a point in the English Channel. I think I was nine hours into my swim and it had started to get dark, so I was freezing cold. I was absolutely exhausted. I drank so much salt water, which makes you very, very nauseous. I'd been rolled around by the waves. I was Freezing cold. And I absolutely hit the wall. Now, I'm sure your audience understand hitting the wall, that is pretty much when the tank is empty, you've got no more reserves to keep you going to draw from. And I hit the wall and I realized that that was the end for me. I got to a point mentally where it was absolutely impossible for me to carry on. I mean, these waves were banging over my head. I didn't. Everything I tried to put down was coming up, nothing was working. I could not take one more stroke. I just wanted to get out. Okay. And this is the part, this is one of the, probably the key learnings in my entire life and messages that I now share around the world. Charlie, you'll remember if I had pulled out of the English Channel on that nine hour mark, without a doubt, everybody would have patted me on the back on that support boat and said, wow, nine hours in those conditions, you got really unlucky, made bad luck, you know, well done, you gave your all, you did your best. And I would have sucked that all in as an excuse magnet I would have become and nodded my head and said, yep, it wasn't me, it was the weather that was terrible. I gave my best look at those conditions. I hit the wall, impossible for me to go on, and I would have sucked in every little excuse that just helped me to justify essentially the failure. But I didn't pull out of the English Channel on that day, which was, which was largely thanks to a very strong support team that I had on board on this boat next to me. And one of them being my brother is a guy knows nothing about swimming, but he's a solid, solid as a rock. He's a big unit as well. And I had kind of pre briefed him, you know, if I show any sign of weakness from start to finish, you need to say the following to me, which he delivered with great gusto, a very rude phrase and, you know, kind of just gave me a kick in the pants and I put my head down and somehow this, for the first time in my life, I changed from body, which was finished, to head. Okay? And it's very hard to describe, but I say with absolute 100% certainty that every single person can do it. Everyone's got this. I refer to it as a switch or a button you can press. You find a point where body's finished and now you need to change gear into mind. And in my case, the first time this happened to me, I had another short of four hours to swim if I was going to get anywhere Close to the French coast in cold, rough, pitch black water. And somehow, stroke by stroke, inch by inch, screaming and crying, I inched my way across to the French coast and finally found myself standing on a deserted French beach. And I'd made it across. So. And you know, once I was able to kind of digest it all and compute what had gone on for me out there in the English Channel on that nine hour mark, where in my head it was absolutely over. And how had I had now swam another four hours, I couldn't quite figure it out until started to realize that I'd actually just pushed past impossible. And that's been my catchphrase ever since. I'd managed to push past my own impossible, not anyone else's, because lots of people have swam the English Channel and done amazing things, but I, but I had reached a point where I couldn't go on and I could have got out of the water, back into my comfort zone, so to speak, on the comfort of the boat and I could have held my head up high and no one at all would have gone, oh, shame, you know, he didn't push hard enough. Everybody would have gone, wow, you flipping did everything. You got unlucky. And that made me look at my life very differently and all the little things that challenge me, that have just shaped me and, you know, done such wonderful work to keep me in my comfort zone and keep me safe. And I started to challenge those one by one. And that took me on that the fascinating journey into what I call the journey into cold. Brilliant.

And so that. And so now the journey into cold is what I'd like to focus on because, I mean, clearly swimming across the Channel is cold for people like Claire and I are not on. You know, I don't know whether I'm speaking for you, Claire, but swimming in across the English Channel without a wetsuit sounds like.

Absolutely.

I just wouldn't get in that cold water.

So that is really cold for us. But you then took it to a whole different level with your ice swimming. So tell us a bit. I know you went through Siberia and an amazing thing there, and I think that I'm not sure whether the video you've got of that is on YouTube for people, people to watch, but I'd like to kind of jump. No, it's not. You keep it to yourself. Very sensible. But I would, I'd like to jump the Siberia experience and talk about Antarctica, because that was, that was the, that was the event that really kind of made ice, made ice swimming for you, wasn't it? So Tell us a little bit about a brief bit of the backstory about that, but then tell us about that event itself.

Okay, so the, the brief backstory and, and how I ended up in Antarctica. It's important that everyone understands I didn't go from the English Channel to Antarctica. There's a long bit that happens in the middle. So once I started to have these epiphanies about my own abilities and, and, and I started to focus on the element of cold, because, as I said earlier, we haven't evolved well to handle it, but we've evolved extremely powerfully to, to avoid it. And this human mind, which is the gateway to absolute greatness, I started to realize this gateway to absolute greatness that we've all got is actually our biggest limitation, because it's an extremely powerful tool. But it's. One job is to keep you alive and safe, but it happens to be exceptionally overzealous. So the element of cold is one area that the brain knows it's got to get you out of. There are only two outcomes. Talking about the English Channel or talking about Antarctica wherever that if I stay in the English Channel for too long, the English Channel is going to cool me down to its temperature, or I'm going to warm the English Channel up to my temperature and survive. That's not going to happen. I know the, the ultimate outcome. Your mind kind of knows, you stay in here, you're dead, therefore, let's get you out. And you deny the ability of rational thought. Now, in the cold of the English Channel, it's what we call actually quite warm. It's mild cold. It's. It's something you can spend 13, 14, 15 hours in if you've done the training. However, as you take that lower and lower every degree or even every half a degree, you go down the scale, the impact and the mental defenses to get you out are significantly more pronounced and that I started to become fascinated with. So I started to set challenges around the world where we were pushing a little bit cold and a little bit cold and a little bit further, and we're bringing that temperature scale all the way down and learning about our abilities to override this powerful defense mechanism and stay in that water for a little bit longer and to perform in that. And that took me, as you mentioned, eventually to Siberia and a few other places. As a friend of mine started the International Ice Swimming association, we decided to. Once we had done quite a lot around ice swimming and swam in Alaska and around Cape Horn and lots of other silly places, we formed an organization called the International Ice Swimming association, where we said, right, we're going to tell the world. Because no one was recording this or no one had even thought to do this stupid stuff yet. We said, well, let's formalize a little bit. Not me, actually, the other gentleman said it, that we are going to tell the world that if you want to say you've done an official ice swim, you have to swim a one mile distance in water that is outdoors, okay? Can't be indoors. You can only wear that speedo type brief if you're a guy and a woman can wear like a normal woman costume, one cap and goggle. So there's no wetsuits, there's no grease or anything. You've got to be very pure. And as your most naked swimming format and you have to do that one mile, an outdoor body of water in your speedo, in water that is 5 degrees degrees Celsius or below. If you can do that, you will be recognized by the International Ice Swimming association as having done an official ice mile. So this is all important to the backstory of how I ended up in Antarctica. So once we put that together, I was a founding member of it, we shaped it a little bit and my incented out to the world and did a lot more work and eventually made it popular and, you know, the world started catching on. Like, hang on, there are a couple of crazies in the colder parts of the world that actually want to try this one mile and the cold. And so it went. And eventually we got to a point, I got to a point, let me speak for myself, where I had pushed past my own impossible, my own boundaries many times. So I'd found stuff that was hard to do and I didn't think I could do. But if I did the training and I got the team in place and I did all of that, I could probably do it because it's been done. Now. We wanted to get to a place where medical science suggested was not humanly possible. So how to swim further in colder than was recognized to be able to do. And there's a lot of differences here, Charlie, as well. Remember, there isn't one unified book that you can go look this up, or one, you know, the medical science isn't all completely aligned. But there's lots of research and the one will say, yes, it's possible, the next won't. But it was 100% agreed that that distance in water that we plan to swim in shouldn't be done. Basically, I'm trying to, I'm trying to Play this down a bit. Anyway, I set the goal of trying to be the first in the world with a bunch of mates to swim an official ice mile south of the Antarctic Circle, and that is how I ended up in Antarctica. So you can now tell me how much detail you want to.

Well, okay, so, so just tell us about. Just tell us a little bit about how that played out, because swimming a mile in the water around Antarctica is. Well, tell us about. So what was the temperature? How did it play out? And, and I've got lots of more questions about this, but you tell us the story and then I'll work around that.

All right. Well, I mean, the, the story is a long one and it's, it's. Where, where do I start from? So I'll nutshell it and we can work back through your. Through the, through the questions. But eventually, in fact, we should probably. If anyone really wants to read the full story, I've just launched my book which tells the whole thing. It gives you the A to Z, which is people are finding quite fascinating. But.

So I didn't know because you hadn't. Have you literally just published it in the last few weeks?

It came out in May. I'm going to hold it up.

Oh, fantastic.

Yeah.

Push past impossible. I actually hadn't, I hadn't actually realized you'd even got a book yet. Is it on all.

Really?

Can I listen?

Burn your ear off in Boston.

Is it on order as well?

It's. It's on. It's. No, it's not on audible yet. No. I've got a lot of mates who don't want to read and they want me to do it on. On audible. So I've got the pressure. But it's on Kindle and Amazon and all the other accessible places, and you want a nice message, you chat to me and I'll send you one with a nice message. Anyway, back to me.

One extra person putting pressure on you for audible.

Okay. All right. So back to. To Antarctica, where when I eventually got to give it a go and we missed the geographic goal, by the way. So. And that's a fascinating part of the story, I think. But at the end of the day, we went south of the Antarctic Circle and then the weather was so terrible up there. It was. We really couldn't. And we couldn't afford to take our own ship to Antarctica, so we were paying passengers on a cruise line and there were a lot of rules. We kind of set world records by breaking rules and by pushing boundaries. You have to. And we, we Found we met our match on the cruise liner in Antarctica. They were very strict. But anyway, we eventually got to give a go and, and the day that the place that it all finally happened to give my mile ago, the water temperature turned out to be -1 degree Celsius. So it was actually 0.9 degrees negative. So salt water freezes below zero. And we had found the coldest little patch in Antarctica. And that was where not, not by design, it's just after a long story, that's where we ended up. And I remember, you know, getting ready to swim and I was in the zone and, you know, a lot of things had to line up. There's a lot of curveballs and catastrophes before I got to walk down that gangway of the ship. And they came up to say, hey, thinking it was good news. Water temperatures minus one. And I'd never swam in minus one before, you know, because it's usually rock solid ice. And I, I remember it being a big mental blow almost, you know, because now I don't know what to expect. But now I'm so in the zone, I'm so focused. I'm literally walking down the gangway getting ready to dive in and attempt a mile, which has never been done before at that temperature. And eventually, yeah, dived in and off I went. And you know, it's, it's, it's. I don't know if you want me to. You through what you experience when you dive head first in a speedo into minus one degree?

Yeah, please. Well, we're going to come on to sort of how you condition yourself for that. But yes, I mean, I, I know that just diving into the English Ocean with a wetsuit on, I get my head just immediately get the ice cream headache. So is diving into minus 1 degree.

Water like natural bodily response as well? I can't remember the breathing's called, but.

Yeah, you have a very great response. So, you know, the body, the one positive which is a dangerous positive, is that the body can't even compute what you've just done. If you walk into 10 degrees Celsius, that's brutal. And you feel all the pain immediately and you go through everything that most of you are familiar with. When you dive into minus one degree, it's almost like an explosion of sensation. And it's less painful. The pain does come, but it's, it's less painful. Your hands feel like they've exploded. That hyperventilation happens on an extreme level. And that's the main thing that I've got to calm My mind to make sure I suppress that, although you can't swim under that. And then everything just starts shutting down within minutes. So you go through the initial, I call an explosion of sensation because literally your hands feel like they explode into petals. Like it's quite a weird thing saw on your teeth because it's like biting into to an ice cream. And you know, and obviously everything feels very, very nerve wracking and out of sorts. You've got adrenaline pumping through your veins because you know what you're doing. You know you're diving into something that, that and you're going to try and swim a distance that is meant to kill you. So, so you know, I'm nervous and I've got all that nervous energy going. And then you get going and you can probably, you feel out of sorts for a minute or two and then things start to settle and all your training starts to kick in. Even though you've applied your training in that initial minute as well. And you start to just get that mental focus as your body starts shutting down. So the blood starts now rushing from all your extremities so not just your fingers and toes, it rushes from biceps and thighs and all goes into your center core to keep your heart pumping, to get blood to your brain. You can live without arms and legs, but not a heart pumping blood to your brain. So that's all happening at a, at a high pace inside your body which is very disconcerting feeling. While your head is implementing pain, panic and fear to accentuate self doubt, to deny you the ability of rational thought and to try and do everything it can to get you out of that situation. You've just got to try and calm all of that. So that's what I'm focused on of in the initial minutes and, and there after things settle a bit and you, you kind of just keep the nervous energy and then very rapidly, usually around about for me, the 14th minute, everything just starts diving and you start shutting down. So my body starts shutting down. I don't even know that I've got arms. It's not like you can kind of just feel. Oh yeah, I can still feel my arms. You can't. You actually have to look. Yes, because I'm, you know, I'm doing the motions but everything is just, just very weird. So I actually look. Is my arm still going in front and giving a pull? Yes, it is. My legs feel like they're now hanging at 90 degrees because the blood's rushed out of them and those muscles are now totally gone. Your fires and that there's nothing in them. So you can't kick. Your legs are just dragging, your biceps are shutting down. And that's the, the training part to try and keep moving, to keep performing in -1 degree water.

Because having seen the video, having seen the video of your form at the start looks like a, a good swimmer. By the end, you look like you're on the verge of drowning.

Yeah. So you become completely uncoordinated because you've got no blood in your muscles. So. And it's, it's just a willpower to keep them going and using the little bit that's left. I remember trying to kick when I, when I was nearing the end, probably about 200 meters to go, I thought, I'm, I'm gonna drown. Because you feel very heavy. It feels like you're just going to sink. And I'm trying. I'm nervous. So none of this, by the way, is like, I've got this. I'm very nervous right through it, so I've got that nervous energy. And I tried to kick and it was like an electric shock through both legs in my groin area. Very unfortunate feeling. And it's, I don't know why, but it's just. There's no blood in your, in your, in your muscles, and you're trying to engage them. So it's a very horrible feeling. And quite frankly, guys, the, the thing that gets you through your umbilical cord is the support team alongside. So with a Zodiac next to me cruising, not like over there, and I'm here, there's me, there's a Zodiac. And they're looking in my eyes every time I breathe. They've got eye contact with me because I'm that nervous. And if they were looking else and looking all worried and like, he's looking terrible, I would have panicked. But they were like, come on, you've got this. You still, arms are still moving, you're still moving forward. They're giving me the, the, the thumbs up. And that gave me the confidence to keep pushing because I've literally put my life in their hands. Literally not. You know, I've got to do the work. I've got to keep it together mentally. But they need to make the decision if I'm going to make it or not.

So a couple of questions that spring from that are, how long would it take you to swim that mile in normal in a pool? How long did it take you in? Minus 1 degrees. And also remind me what the medical advice was for, how long you should be able to Stay alive in that, yeah, that temperature.

So, so if I swim that distance in a swimming pool, it takes me 23 minutes. If I swim at a decent pace on an Antarctica, it took 32 minutes and that is largely because of the impact of the cold. But also there were currents at play. So we went against the current first, which slowed me right down. But then because I swam to a GPS point and then back, I would have have caught a ride with the current on the way back when my body was shutting down. So it was a neutral current. So it took me 32 minutes. That was the one question. The other question, the other thing you asked me to mention was that it was generally accepted that a human of average build would be able to perform for approximately 5 to 10 minutes in water that is 0 degrees so about to freeze. That's how long you should be formed before the bladders now left those muscles and you have no current coordination left. So again, this is not perfect science and there is debate around it, but that's what we understood going into it and that's what still I think recognized as what it should have been.

And is that because there's not enough research in that area because it's so dangerous to put people in that position? And did you, from a scientific perspective, did you have any research that was going on at that time? So did you collect data from all of the different swims that you've, that you've done?

So your first question, there probably is research out there. I don't know, you know, it's just what, you know, the doctors and the medical guys that we spoke to before and what we could find on the Internet. So there might be stuff, there might be other stuff out there. And obviously you engage with a lot of cold water swimmers and there's a lot of opinion as to what can be done. Some would have said that's fine. There's a lady called Lynn Cox who lives in America, is a very well known swimmer. She had also swam in Antarctica. She's also done miles in extremely cold water. And, and what also plays a massive factor you must remember is your body size and your body weight. So if you are a very big person, you are going to be able to spend a lot more time in because you've got a lot more insulation and those muscles will, you know, maybe retain the blood and be able to, to perform for, for a longer period. Where someone of, of my build, I'm not, I'm not huge, but I'm also not skinny. It impacts me a lot longer so there's also that ratio to, to play with. So I'm giving, you know, in terms of the keynote that Charlie's heard, I don't go into reams of, of scientific detail. I give the basics. But if you want to really drill it down, there's a lot more to it. And the other question was about any.

Research that collects data because obviously, as you kind of point out, there is research out there about kind of environments and survival and what our body does from a physiology point of view, which is fascinating, but I would imagine that there was lots of data that could be collected. So are you collecting that data and is that kind of being used for research?

Sadly, no. We are such hackers. We're a bunch of mates pushing boundaries around the world. Antarctica is just one of them. When we go to Russia and do these things and we invite, quite often invited by the Russians, we've always got wires and things sticking out of everywhere. And they do a lot of research. I've never seen any of it. I almost wish we did with it. There is a Dr. Sean Gottskelt in Cape Town who has almost specialized in studying U.S. cold water swimmers. So he knows a lot. But that's more about taking temperature before and taking temperature often, studying recovery and processes and body weight versus this and that. It's not very detailed. I also know my mate Louis Pugh, who's the swimmer as well. He also has had a lot of wires and thermometers shoved everywhere to do research. So there's some research, but I'm afraid we haven't contributed very well to this medical science.

I'd imagine there's like such a, like body. Well, I know it's like mini case studies, but it's such a body of evidence because there's not a lot of people that put themselves in your position or voluntarily put themselves in your position.

I suppose so, yeah.

It's not ruthless reason I would think.

We have met like, like medical personnel, like your support cree like you mentioned your brother when you're doing the Channel. But do you have a specialist cree that comes with you? I was just having visions of you getting off this cruise ship that you're talking about. So I didn't quite know how that worked with a crew. And so how does that work?

So English Channel, we had no medics. I think that the crew probably have done medical aid courses on no first aid. But that, that's slightly different. You know, there you doing extreme distance with cold. Antarctica, you're doing extreme cold and a shorter distance. But an extreme distance for that level of cold. We had to use the ship's medical team and we sat with them and brief them very thoroughly before we got into that water. So you can't do what we've done or even a fraction of what we've done and get out and dry yourself with a heater and a little towel. You need some medical support. We have trained on how to recover ourselves, so. And again, there's no research here. This is all just from our own practice.

So what do you do to recover?

So firstly, a lot of it's mental. So. So the sport I do is probably 30 to 40% physical, call it 30% physical and 70% head. Okay. Because this is where the power lies and this is where the doubt happens and this is where the, the evolution to keep you safe happens. And it's just a little bit overzealous. We make sure that part of my training is that my swim in the cold. So training the cold. The swim does not end when you finish the swim. The swim ends when I recover from the cold. So the most dangerous part of any extreme cold swim is not while you're swimming, it is actually when you finish, when you get out. And the reason for that is that warm blood that's now all sitting in your center core, keeping your heart pumping blood to your brain. That warm blood. Sorry, yeah. That warm blood starts to release and it releases back to your extremities which are now absolutely frigid because they've been in the cold water. And then it circulates back to your center core. So your core temperature keeps going down after the swim and it's a term known as the after drop. Core temperature drops after the swim. So we know that's going to happen. That's the most dangerous part of what we do and we can't avoid it. You can't will away hypothermia, but you can extend your time by concentration. You can finish that swim and continue to concentrate on building your body heat. You stay, stay seated. In other words, upright, standing or seated. But it's hard to stand. But you're no balance. You don't lie down, you don't get in a hot bath with a hot shower, all those little things. We don't. So we literally stay seated. We make sure you dry immediately. You get your speedo off, nothing wet must be touching you. We go into a super heated environment. So firstly into a room temperature environment and then slowly into to a superheated like a sauna. But not, not when I say Sauna, let's just rather say a room that's made as hot as the room can go, that isn't a proper sauna. So it's not like scorching heat, it's just hot, warm, and that helps very nicely. And when you can, because your lips are usually very frigid, you can't use them, you get a hot chocolate or something that you can just ingest that's a little bit warmer than the air temperature and it starts to warm you from the inside. And you stay seated and you wait and you concentrate because there's no shivering at first. And eventually when that, when you turn the corner. So when you're after drop process stops and it starts coming back up. That is quite a euphoric moment. And that is when we. The shivering really starts, which is horrible. But we kind of know that we on the app and, you know, then you can just let your body do what it needs to do.

So the shivering is a sign that actually you've kind of fixed the problem.

Good. Correct. If you come out of the water and you're not shivering very soon after coming out there, there's problems. And we didn't. After Antarctica, I didn't shiver probably for about 15 minutes, which is very, very dangerous.

Right. Okay, that's. That's really interesting. I remember lying on Plettenberg Bay beach shivering like crazy. But that's slightly pathetic given what that's toasty water too.

I did after swimming in Turkey, I shivered God knows how long.

Really?

I'm definitely not built for the Antarctic.

So how do you condition your body to be able to deal with that cold in the first place?

So living in Africa, in Cape Town, we firstly again have got the privilege of cold water. So I spend a lot of time in the cold water when I've got something cold. The cold challenge coming up. But that's usually around 11, 10 maybe you get 9 or 8 degrees Celsius, which is horrible. But it's. You can do some training. When I want to do the real cold stuff in the mines work, I go to my local fishery, which is INJ here in Cape Town. They were lots of ice, for obvious reasons, and they've got these big basins really, with their big tubs, almost containers. And they, they know me well now and a couple of us and we asked them to fill this up with ice and I bring the water down to, you know, usually about 0.5 degrees Celsius or just about freezing. So they prop. A lot of people, do ice bars, but they haven't got a real clue what an ice bath is until you do a proper one. You can't fill it up with water and throw some ice in and bring the temperature down. You've got to fill it up with ice to the top, then throw the water in. The ice melts a bit so you get a little layer of water at the bottom like that and the rest of it is solid ice. And then I sit, get in my speeder and I sit in that. Usually 10 minutes. Longest I've ever done is 16 minutes. And it's absolutely brutal. It's horrible, horrible, horrible. But all those processes, the mental pain, panic, fear, hyperventilation, bladder rushing from extremities to center core, all that happens in that ice bucket. And I've got to then try and sit there and think, well, okay, I'm sitting in this hideous situation. It feels terrible. Everything's screaming at me to get out. How am I going to feel all of this and process it when I get to whatever challenge I've taken on? In Antarctica's case, I'm diving off the side of a gangway of a, a ocean liner into very cold water. How am I going to overcome that hyperventilation? How am I going to keep the, the adrenaline at bay so I don't sprint the first 200 meters of my mile and not be able to do 1,400 meters thereafter? How am I going to be brave enough to handle the pain that's going to sit in and that biting pain in your teeth and your head and everything that's, that's going to hit you. All of that happens in that ice bucket. So that's where I do my most mental conditioning. The, the work and the physical stuff is the easy part that I do in a pool or in the ocean.

I can only imagine some of the comments you get thrown at you by the local fishermen as you sit there in a massive tub of ice.

Yeah, when I strip into a speedo in their backyard, that's usually gets the most laughs.

So there's a lot of talk at the moment about how good for your health cold is. You know, we've got the WIM HOF stuff and cold showers and cryogenic treatments and all this sort of stuff. So I'd be interested to hear your comments on both that. But also what you're doing is completely different in that it's, it's, it's much colder or much longer in the cold. What do you think the long term health effects are, good or bad of this sort of stuff stuff.

So Yeah, I mean, there's a massive movement on cold. When we started doing this, no one was interested. Very few people were doing anything in the cold. And it certainly wasn't a fad or known to do anything for your health. Now, guys like Wim Hof have done amazing stuff creating a brand and bringing it to the public's eye. I can't comment with any authority as to the health benefits of the cold. I really don't know. I'm not saying they aren't and I'm not saying they are. I don't know the whim of Hoff Method. I must still read a book or get to know it. But what I do believe happens, which I do really believe is very medically beneficial, is a mental wellness aspect. So when you get cold, even mildly cold, swimming in Peterburg Bay or having a dip in the English Channel, maybe not turkey, that's too warm, but hey, I'll give it to you when you get out and that after drop happens. So even when you do it in mild cold, the same process does happen. Your core temperature keeps going down, down afterwards, and then eventually it goes up. Now, if you do that in really cold water and you stay in that really cold water for 20 minutes, half an hour, and you, you know, all that blood's now rushed your center core when you get out, that after drop happens and then you turn the corner. In other words, once your core temperature's finished going down, it starts to go up. And that releases a wonderful array of endorphins. And that, I think, is an amazing. Well, I don't think. I know. It's an amazing feeling. It's a euphoric feeling. And I think for people who suffer from anxiety and depression and even just, just for stress, I think it's a great relief. And that's, that's my belief. And as close as I'll come to, to saying that the cold has medical benefits, which, what I do, the extremes that I've done, I don't believe there's any benefit to that at all. And I think I've exposed myself to levels that no one really should. Unless you've got something to prove to yourself or you. You got a goal, it's not something you should do regularly. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Yeah, it really does. Thank you. Now, you've talked about going beyond the impossible, and I know that's a big part of your keynote, and you really made me question whether my goals were big enough. I've got to do some work on getting them beyond Impossible, I think. But how do you set yourself goals? Now that you kind of understand this a little bit better, how do you set goals so that you're continuing to achieve. Achieve goals that are beyond impossible?

Yeah. So you know what? I don't do it all the time. So it's not, you know, some. I do a lot of performance coaching, and I had someone come on and say, oh, I want to be like you and, like, be super motivated every day of the life. Because I get motivated. And then, Then I, Then I'm not. And then I want to be. I say, well, I'm not motivated every single day of my life. And not every goal I set is beyond impossible. You know, that's. Let's be real here, here. But what I do know, when I set myself a proper goal, certainly in swimming and now in business as well, if you're setting yourself goals you know you can achieve. Okay, so if I do A, B and C, be it business, be it family, be it whatever, be it sporting, you know, you can achieve it. That's comfort zone that you're not getting out your comfort zone. It might be an awesome goal. It might impress lots of people. It might, you might be very happy achieving it and, and staying in your lane with, you know, you're achieving the goal you said, without actually getting out of comfort. That's great. But I guarantee you underachieving in that, that's. That's a given. It's very hard to argue that if you set a goal that you don't think you can achieve, that's where you're forced outside your comfort zone to attempt it. And that's where you open the door to failure. And as humans, we do not like to fail. We have such a gateway of, of power in our heads that is designed to keep you safe inside your comfort zone. Because not only has it evolved from the days of, you know, it doesn't want you to walk into a fire or run off a cliff or do something stupid like that. It's also evolved to protect you from the emotional pain that comes from failure. Because when we fail, there's a little bit of hurt and there's this, there's humiliation, there's consequence. So we are so geared to not try anything that might cause, end up in failure. Okay, so. And that's scary. But another keynote I do, Charlie, which I hope one day you hear is called failing forward. Where I have had brutal failures and how I've mismanaged the learnings from those failures until I did manage them properly. And then how that helped me to achieve the next thing. So that's a whole other story. So your question is, how do I set these goals continuously? I don't do it continuously. I do it every now and then, when it really counts and when I have. Have a passion for it. So, for example, I recently did a very big swim here in, in Cape Town. It hadn't been done for like seven years, and I did it in a route that no one had ever done. So I was the first to ever do it the opposite direction, essentially, which might not sound very exciting, but when you're going against the grain of the five people in the world that ever succeeded in it, and I'm saying, well, I'm going to go the other way, where they've all researched that, that's not the right way to go. I was opening myself up to failure. I was opening myself up to learn. Look, silly, if I did fail, you know, everyone would have gone, well, I told you so. But I managed to do it and I got a Guinness World Record for doing it and all of that. And when I look back at. And all the accolades that came with that were wonderful for me and I was very happy with myself. But when I look back at that goal, I realized that it was within my comfort zone. I mean, it's, it's the. Probably the biggest known feeding ground for the great white shark. So it's got a hell of a psychological element to it. And it's 34.

We're talking about False Bay here, aren't we?

Doing by False Bay. Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't going to give that away, but not seen that you have, I swear.

Sorry.

No, no, it's, it's fine because I'm getting to where my next goal is and, and I'm trying to illustrate my point in that. And, and when I, when I say these things and I have to do it, and I'm still getting my head around this, so, so no one can hold me to this, but I swam across False Bay. It's an extremely difficult swim. It's a mentally daunting swim. It's 34 kilometers a crow flies. But if I'm honest with myself, having done the English Channel and many other big swims, it was within my comfort zone. So it was me setting a goal that everyone thought, wow, that's really hard, and he's going to do it the other way, which is silly, but, you know, let's see how he does. And, you know, I had all that trepidation inside me and Then I made it and when I look back, it's comfort zone stuff. What I don't know is whether I can swim False Bay and then turn around and swim back which would be a 70 odd kilometer swim. Call it yeah, you know, 68, 70K swim. It will also make me swim overnight in False Bay in the dark, which is an absolute. No, no from, from a shark point of view. So I will then have the, the psychology of being absolutely exhausted, freezing cold and now it's got dark and I know it's swimming under. Can, can I handle that mentally and keep going physically and do the training and, and that I don't know. So that is a goal that I would like to set for myself, myself. So please, whoever listens to this don't like call me up and say have you done it yet? Because I'm not looking at it just yet. But I will, as I will shortly I think if I get my head right. So does that illustrate the setting the goal part? It does.

And I think, do you know what? I think there's, I think what you've just talked about reminds me of. So a guy called Dan Sullivan who's a business coach runs a company called Strategic Coach Coach and he talks about when you're thinking about goals instead of thinking about like double, like to talk about in business terms instead of doubling the size of your business because you think one, you know, you use the same systems to try that you're using today to try and double the size of a business. When you think about 10 times 10xing the size of your business you have to think totally differently. You have to go right, okay, now I've got to think I've got about, you know, these systems just can't deliver that. So it is about sort of stepping beyond and. But yeah, I think that's really interesting and I certainly listening to your talk made me think, oh my God, I need to set much, much bigger goals. I haven't, I've got a few ideas in mind.

Then you took something out of my keynote. Exactly what I wanted you to.

Well actually, you know, having seen, I don't know, I lost track of how many talks I saw in Boston. That was the, that was the biggest takeaway I had from the whole event was I need to do something crazy. I've got a few things I'm going to share with Claire in due course. That might be ideas but yeah, no, that's really, really useful. What. So Claire will want to know a bit about the nutrition side of things. So Claire what do you want to ask around nutrition, around dealing with the cold, pre and post?

Yeah. So in terms of, that's not, you know, extreme environments is not really kind of my area of expertise in terms of sort of nutrition. But I guess I'm, I'm really interested to know on some of these, obviously not maybe that miles swim, but certainly on the longer swims. What, what do you do in terms of nutrition? Like you were talking about kind of feed bottles and things being thrown at you and also not stopping for long periods of time. And in these cold water swims, are you using any sort of, sort of like hot liquids at all or is it all kind of just kind of cold drinks? Like how. So tell me a little bit about sort of tell us how, how, how you sort of work things out and what you do.

Let me tell you. Okay, so I'll start with the caveat that I'm notoriously terrible with, with nutrition. Okay. I've been swimming for so long and I've done such big swims and I still haven't quite got it right. Although my false base swim I did. That's only because I outsourced it. But how it works in swims, a lot of people think, oh well, you're swimming so you don't have to drift drink, which if you, if you try and think like logically that doesn't make sense because you're still sweating and you're exerting great amounts of energy to move yourself through, through the, the environment. So you have to drink. So when you're doing a very long swim, like a, let's call it a channel a 34k swim, 13 hours, I stop every 30 minutes. So it's all, it's all pre planned and generally, and, and I've made a mistake before. It's, it's whatever, whatever works for you but generally it's mostly liquid feeds and they throw you whatever you've prepared on, on the support boat and you drink that, they'll usually send me a bottle. I make it 300 mils of. It's usually a carb drink that I wolf down. But now at some stage you're, you obviously have to take proteins. You've got to think about the fact that you're in salt water so you're ingesting a lot of electrolytes through the salt already. So you want to cut that down on your feed. I have tried to do solids before and I've learned all the classic lessons of, you know, you want to. I'll just eat this firstly, everyone, oh, have a little piece of bar one. Oh, that would be so nice. And nice sugar. You need warmth in your mouth to chew a bar one. So when you've got 30 seconds to stop and you shove a bar one in your mouth and your mouth is freezing cold and you bite into it, it just sticks like goo. Now you can't, you don't have time to kind of pick the chocolate up because now you've got to swim. So it's an absolute disaster. So I've learned all of that before. I also then said, right, well let's do some, you know, little pieces of banana bread and grapes and that and some of that still worked. But you get a piece of banana bread or any cake or any bread kind of thing wet. There's splashes and sprays and things that happen in the ocean. It's never like a nice mirror. It's always, it's just completely impractical. So what you end up doing is having your drinks and you liquidize whatever food you get, whatever kind of solid. So I've moved away from solids. Every now and then I'll take like a handful of grapes which is thrown to me in a Tupperware and I then eat it out of it that I have taken to not, not all the time, but we warm the drinks. It's quite nice to get a hot chocolate or even just warm your, your carb drink a little bit just so it feels like a warm blanket going down you when you're in the cold water. So yes, we do warm and that brings a little bit of warmth from the inside. Other than that, I can't give you much science. All that I can tell you is that doing something like an English Channel, at some point you are going to run the tank dry. Dry in terms of energy and carbs that you've managed to pre store. You're also going to run it dry in terms of you can't put enough in, in cold water swimming, you're exerting a lot but you have to hydrate. And at some stage you, you most probably going to get to the point where you have to change from where your body says thanks, that's hit the wall time. And now it's, now it's, it's going to separate the, the guys have done the mental training from guys and girls who've done the mental training from those who haven't.

I guess it's difficult, isn't it, because it's quite positional in terms of like if you're swimming and even if you're there treading water a bit or slightly moving forward, trying to even drink like that is actually quite, quite difficult, isn't it?

So I'll give you just an anecdote. You know, on my English Channel, I prepare, I had everything that you could eat from roast chicken to little sausage rolls that were all prepared because, you know, you don't always know what you're going to want. And about probably about five or six hours into the channel when the waves are now so that you've got the waves that are rolling and you're just a little head in the water. Okay, now they throw me a Tupperware where I've got to take the lid off. I've got to hold that Tupperware above the. I don't want the waves to splash in it. I've got to lift my other hand. Now what do you do when you're in the water with both hands out of the water? You know how hard that is to, to tread water? Now you've been swimming at this stage maybe nine or ten hours. You're exhausted. Now you're trying to kick to keep your, your head afloat and keep yourself above the waves and feel what's in there, get in your mouth. What also happens, I get bad sinus. There's also lots in the water, firstly, like this normal sea lifey stuff. And then there's also like in the English Channel, there's lots of ships and diesel and, and stuff. So my sinuses block up, so my nose is blocked. So now I'm thinking I'm just going to take everything in that Tupperware and shove it in my mouth, which I do when I can't breathe through my nose and my mouth is full, so I can't breathe at all. So I'm. I just spit it all out and I realized that I can't eat and you can't stop for a long time. You've got to keep moving. I shouted you if you, if you try stop for a long time or for longer than a long time. I'm talking 30 seconds is, is what you, your allocation. So I got it, I didn't get it horribly wrong. I had enough other feeds and, and stuff, but it's stuff that you can't plan for. All my nutrition and all significant part of it, I couldn't take for, you know, eight hours of, of my swim, I couldn't get it in. So I started fantasizing one of the. I turned it into a mental carrot for me and that was to fantasize about all that yummy food that was on that boat. And if I made it to France, I promised myself that when I get on that boat, I can eat it all, can smash it, because there's like a four hour drive back to Dover and I'm just going to sit and eat roast chicken and sausage rolls and grind some cookies and. And of course, that's exactly what I did. And when I got on that ship, the, you know, one of the crew members, I said, I'll bring all the food, just bring it all. And he said, oh, I'll bring you the vomit bucket. I said, no, no, I'm not gonna vomit. Don't worry about me. And he said, oh, I'll bring you the vomit bucket. Which he did. And I've got the food. And I tell him within, within five minutes I was in the vomit bucket. So he had seen that movie.

I guess you're swallowing same much salt water as well, aren't you? Like, you know, that takes its effect in terms of vomiting and like diarrhea as well. You know, it all has that.

That, yeah, I don't know that we.

Need to know about that.

Didn't happen to me on that.

So you mentioned your book, Ryan. Are there any other books that you were. You found really powerful, really useful that you would find yourself recommending to other people.

People?

So there are a lot of books that have had an impact on me through the years. You know, some completely unrelated to.

What.

We'Re talking about might surprise you and your listeners. And the one is good old Richard Branson's Losing My Virginity, which I read at a young age when he, when he brought it out. And just to see his adventurous spirit, to see his never say die attitude, you know, and, and his way of turning an absolute dead end into an opportunity really impressed me. So that's one I'd have on my list. And then more recently I read Victor Frankl's the Man's Search for Meaning. And that impacts me on a deeper level. You know, there's life surviving concentration camps. And that fascinates me, the psychology around that, because again, it's one of the kind of not. Not sure if I nearly said is one of the goals, certainly not a goal of mine, but it's a goal of mine to understand how strong you have to be mentally to stay positive in an environment like that.

All right, that is an incredible book. I think I really like Losing My virginity. It's a long time since I read that as well. But, but Man's Search for Meaning Is. That's. Yeah. That's incredible. And so now for series three, we've got this new feature of the previous guest is asking the next guest the question, but without knowing who it is. So you've got a question from Sharon Davis.

All right.

And Sharon. Sharon wanted to know if you could relive one day of your life all over again, which day would it be? Why would it be that day? And would you change anything about it?

Now, that's a lovely question because immediately start thinking of where's the nicest day that I'd love to relive, but I'm not going to go there. And I might. Yeah. Goodness. I might want to change my answer, but I'm going to say my North Channel was a day that I'd like to redo. I went to attempt to swim from Ireland to Scotland and everything went very wrong for me and I ended up in hospital for two days, very nearly dead dead. And I would like to repeat that and do it very differently the next time around. Not that I particularly want to swim the Irish Channel again. It's a horrible place. Not Ireland, Love Island. But that water is. That is. It's really. It's a. It's a swim that. That doesn't appeal to me very much.

So what would you do differently?

Lots. So from. Not the choice of my team, just how I structured the team from my nutrition, which I got horribly wrong. I went for. I copied a mate who had successfully swam it and I was a little like panicky with the nutrition because I'm so bad at it. So I just cut and paste what he did and he got a beautifully flat day. I got a rough day and it. And something as simple as that made his feeding regime completely impossible for my day. I was impatient and a little bit cocky. I was bulletproof and I was advised not to swim and I was told to. To go home and that's just not how I operate. So I pushed my team into allowing me to swim on a day that it shouldn't happen. And I would be more patient, I'd get more sleep. I had to meet at 3am and I couldn't. I was unprepared. So I couldn't sleep before. So I got like maybe an hour of sleep before. So there was a whole barrage of thing that's taken me about three years to admit my role in the disaster. And I'd love to go back and change each one of those little elements and then see if luck would come on my side because I also got a bit Unlucky, I think.

Fantastic. Ryan, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you again. There is so much brilliant advice in there. I really enjoyed you, your, both your keynote and listening to you talk today. There's, there's some really inspiring stories there. So a huge thank you and I'll, I'll be looking, I'll be holding you to account to that double False bay swim.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your interest and, and your time and, and the invitation to this pod.

If you want to find out more about Ryan, the best place to go is ryan stramrood.com and that's s T R A M R double O D. And that has the link to his book Push Past Impossible and all his social media links on there. So what did you make of the chat with Ryan?

It was amazing, actually. I'm really different. We always have amazing people on the podcast anyway. But it's really good to have that kind of depth of different types of athletes and also kind of why they got, why they got into it in the first place. Because he had quite a good story, didn't he, about sort of getting into swimming? Because he wasn't a swimmer by background, was he?

No, I thought, I thought it was really lovely to get somebody on for first time in ages where they only really found their sport in their sort of late 20s, early 30s, as opposed to somebody that kind of trained hard through their, you know, through their youth and kind of became a pro athlete. So, yeah, it was brilliant. Really good to hear him kind of getting into swimming and then, and then he went on and, and set up the, the ice. What is it called? The Ice Swimmers association or whatever it was. I can't remember exactly what it was called. Yes, it was, but what a lot. I mean, it sounds absolutely brilliant. And I think one of the things that still kind of strikes me is the, the amount of swimming he's done in water where he knows that there is lots of sharks. People particularly go to this part of the world to see sharks. And he's swimming, you know, so it's quite interesting how he, how he positioned, how he kind of conditioned his mind to, to kind of forget about the sharks and, and think about the probability of it.

Yeah, no, I, and I think that's, you know, that's amazing in terms of. We've talked with a number of different sort of athletes, haven't we, in the past, about how they cope with different scenarios. And I think the fact that he can just get in the water and not necessarily Focus on that and actually focus on what. What he's doing. And I guess that is also how he's been able to get into those freezing cold waters and still swim. Or being told by the crew on his boat that, yes, your hands are still moving or your arms are still moving. I mean, we know the best of times, don't you, if you swim in cold water in kind of when the lakes first open in May or whatever, that your hands kind of go like claws and you think, have I got hands? But I mean, I can't even begin to imagine what it's like to even get into that kind of water to start off with.

Well, that's it. I mean, the shock of getting into it is enough to kill a lot. Awful lot of people, but.

Well, literally.

Yeah, absolutely. And yet. And then swimming for 35 minutes in that sort of. I mean, and by the end of it, I mean, if I've seen the video, his arms and legs are kind of. Yeah, his arms are just about resembling a swimming stroke. His legs look like they're just going straight towards the bottom.

Oh, really?

Yeah, he's just got almost no control over rhythm and. Yeah, I mean, that must be really, really difficult to swim where you basically can't feel any of your limbs.

And I imagine like everything slows down because obviously. Because what was really interesting to me is, as always, is like all the kind of physiology sort of side of things. And he was talking about. Because obviously everything does slow down when you're that cold. Because when we think about in some theater procedures and some surgery, especially cardiac surgery, some. Sometimes they cool a body down so that they can perform the surgery and then they have to rewarm the body very, very slowly. So it's really interesting for me to hear kind of what he went through and then standing, like basically taking off his clothes and standing with nothing warm around you to start to warm up yourself until that shivering kind of came in.

Yeah.

And it's also, I think it's interesting to kind of understand how the body deals with cold. I mean, obviously how he conditioned himself. So going to the fish.

The.

Going to the.

Oh, yeah, the.

The. Was it, I want to say fishmongers, but it's not the fishery.

Yeah, yeah.

Sitting in a. In a big, big tub of ice. But, you know, the, The. Yeah, I just think it's, you know, how the body starts to shut down and how you've got a. I love, I love his term becoming an excuse, Magnus, that, you know, you're kind of. Your brain is trying to come up with excuses to get you out of that water because it knows long term you shouldn't be there. And yet fighting through that. I think that's, I think that's really interesting.

But I guess you're, you know, your body has these warning signs the whole time that, you know, we shouldn't necessarily ignore. But like, I can, you know, from what he was saying, actually that's what he had to overcome is those, those body like warning signals, like very early warning signals the whole time time. Because, you know, actually we, we get it if you, if you, I don't know, twist your ankle or something and then it kind of hurts a little bit, it may actually be better, but it's giving you that feedback signal that it's not particularly happy. So we, we kind of go through that the whole time, don't we? But yeah, his, I did like his, his terminology.

The other thing I loved is when he talks about kind of setting goals beyond what you think you can achieve, so achieving the impossible, basically. I, I just think he, when I listened to him speak, he really made me think about setting bigger, scarier, more difficult goals. And you know, particularly he, I mean, what's also interesting is he's, he's now building a public speaking career of keynote speaking, flown around the world based on the experience he's created through his new passion. And it's like, yeah, so as somebody that wants to do more and more speaking, that makes me think, well, okay, what crazy goals should I be setting that I can bring into my talk? So I think that needs some, some planning over a few drinks at some point.

It's true though, isn't it? It's pushing you. I think it's like, you know, with a lot of endurance athletes that we have on the podcast and probably that listen as well is, you know, we all to a certain extent have that ability within us, don't we, to be able to push ourselves to the extreme. But I guess for those that are minded like that, how much further do we need to push ourselves? Because this, this for us is comfortable. If you did kind of ultra events, so to speak, like comfortable. So yeah, what, what ultimately, like where do we need to push ourselves? I guess as well.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's. We've got something coming on the podcast in, in, in a few episodes time and I was listening to him speak, guy called Julian Dean, who was a.

Pro.

Cyclist and for a Kiwi cyclist, and he talked about the fact that he, now that he's retired, he's got some Kind of understanding of how most people look at the sort of level of training that he was doing as a pro at which to him was totally normal and the sort of level of training that you do. I mean as somebody that does Iron man, lots of people say to me, how on earth do you do that level of training and keep, you know, know, keep up. But I look at your level of training and go, how on earth do you do that? And obviously the pros are another level above that. So I think it's just kind of making it become the norm. But then of course, yeah, setting a, a, a really difficult goal isn't like, you know, for many people saying I'm going to do an Iron man is setting in a, an impossible goal. Whereas for somebody that's doing an Iron man, everybody, you know, several times a year like yourself, it's like, well okay, I've got a sign up to a stupid 100 mile run round Dartmoor or.

Something crazy like that in the dark in the winter.

So speaking of which, how's that, how's.

The run training going?

Yeah, well, not very much. Somebody asked me that, one of my cycling posses said, so what training are you doing specifically for your 100 mile run? I was like, well, just done an Iron man. Now I'm having a bit of time off, then I'm just going to do some running. There's not really much more specific than that I think but so obviously we, we had Sharon Davis as the first episode of this season but we didn't really have a catch up after that. So tell me a bit about the races that you've done over the summer. Yeah, and you know, obviously you're building up to Kona which is really exciting but what are the rate, what races did you do over the summer? Just give me a bit little, little rundown.

Oh, I'm not quite far sure how far we need to go back actually.

But well, we finished series three in.

About.

June, July I think.

So I'd done. What had I done at that point? I did 70.3 Staffordshire and then I did like a little local race where I went 10 miles out of my way, went wrong. That would teach me.

But you still came where? In what position?

I came fifth. So still managed to come to come fifth. But not that I was slightly annoyed with my competitive mindset but you know, it's really good grounding actually that it just teaches you to keep your feet on the ground and that actually anything can happen in a race, like anything and to concentrate on where the course tells you to go.

Absolutely. But even when things go wrong, you can still achieve a huge amount. I mean, Joe Skipper at Ironman Wales, 20 minutes stationary on the side of the road with a mechanical and he still went on to win the race. So, you know, to come fifth, that it, having done an extra bike loop or whatever it was, is pretty impressive.

And then I think it was actually my. Probably one of my fastest half marathon times ever because, and you know, because exactly what you just said, it puts you in a different mindset so you're able. And actually this, this, this comes into what we've just been talking about. Like it takes you to another level, a level that you didn't realize you had. So I was so annoyed by it and I didn't like, I didn't want to be the last person crossing the finish line, which I probably near enough probably was actually by the end. But yeah, so that was, that was, that was interesting. You, I think you then raced in between there, didn't you? Did Cowman or something.

I did Cowman in, in. Yeah, around that time which. How did that go? So that was, was chaotic swim. Nearly everybody missed the first boy and we all, we all had the, the instructions were really poor and everyone got the swim. I think one person went correct and added, you know, probably did 200 meters more than everybody else. So the swim was chaotic. Bike was rolling, but was a nice course run was blooming hard work. It was not. I don't think anybody seemed to enjoy the run there. It was, was. It was. I mean it's beautiful, but it's a lot of uphill. A lot of it was on kind of the side of a stubble field. So it's on sort of grassy uneven. Yeah, it was. The run was hard work so I wasn't very happy with my, my time there. But, but it was good training for.

For Wales which was good training to like do some, you know, hard hitty running. Because that's so difficult getting off a bike and knowing that the marathon is, is to come. But the marathon's really heavy, really hilly, really challenging.

So then I think after that you did Ironman Finland, didn't you? How was that?

Well, I did Finland off the back of working at the Commonwealth Games, so I was absolutely exhausted. I didn't quite know how that was going to turn out. Finland was beautiful. I just. For anyone that hasn't done Finland, it was a logistical nightmare to get there. But other than that, the roads are amazing. It's beautifully clean. The lake was lovely. Yeah, great, great Weather, nice run. It was kind of like a bit of a rolling run course and a bit of a rolling bike course. Would you do it?

Is it a race you'd do again?

I enjoyed it. It's quite. At the end of the season. That's the only thing I. I think I probably would. And then obviously be back in Finland next year as well. So that. So I will definitely be back in Finland. But yeah, it was. It was a nice. It was a nice race. It was well organized and everything. It was like set up in a ski resort. So for any of you guys at Ski like, it. Like everything was there. Like you didn't have to go anywhere, like all the hotels or chalets and stuff around it. So, yeah, it was very cool.

Well, I think it's one of the races I've got on my short list for next year. I think. I think I might. I might do that. Particularly as it sounded like it might be a slightly easier place to qualify for Cloner as well.

It was. It was an interesting award ceremony.

Well, that sounds appealing, but maybe we need to keep that bit quiet. But yeah, no, I think it just sounds like a really lovely. It's a sort of. It's the sort of place. What I love about doing Ironman is this. It takes you to places that you wouldn't go ordinarily, and that is the sort of place that you might go there in this. In ski season, but you'd never think to go there any other time. So.

So.

So that sounds really cool.

And it was beautiful. And the roads were just immaculate. Like they probably didn't even need to close the roads. I went out a few days before and I don't think I hardly saw any traffic. I mean, it was just beautiful. Yeah, brilliant.

Oh, well, that sound. That sounds good. It's one for one from one for my list. And then I think you did. I think next.

You did Poland, didn't you, just three weeks after.

70.3.

Yeah, so I did 70.3. I thought it was going to be an absolute disaster because I'd raced hard at Finland and then I only had three weeks, which was kind of not my planning. These are all like, kind of all kind of rolled over from. From COVID times. So all the races were like a bit jammed together this year, but Poland was another logistical nightmare. But really nice, like fast bike course. Although it was extremely windy, so it was very good training for Kona. And a. Like a boring but flat one actually undulating run, I'd say it was actually. So, yeah, it Was again, it was an end of season race so early, like an early qualifier as well. So yeah, it was, it was good. I'm really glad I did it actually. And I felt worse before than I did afterwards. Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

And then that is your last race before Kona, which is in, in about three weeks. Is it awesome? You're looking forward to it?

Yeah. Do you know, I'm actually really looking forward to finishing this season is what I'm really looking forward to. So I think Kona is going to be great. And you know, the, one of the things about doing a world championship race is that there's no expectations for like having to go and qualify, which is actually really nice. And that's what I actually always really like about, about local low key races. One, they're really friendly and I love doing like supporting kind of local companies and things and they're usually really good fun. But actually the, the fact that there's no expectations, it just makes a race just so much more fun.

Well, and, and also when you're like, when you're racing at Kona, you're going to be racing against the best of the best, aren't you? So, so yeah, in some ways you're not, I don't know know. Are you going into it thinking, well, I'm not going to bag a podium slot so, you know, maybe you're thinking you are going to buy a pony slot.

I don't know.

But maybe, maybe you're going into it. You know, how, how are you positioning it in that? Because I would think, I'd like to think that you're going in to enjoy it as opposed to try and win it.

Well, anyone that knows me, yes, I'll go into it, Joy, but I, I am competitive so like I want to go and do as well as I possibly can and that's all that I can do. I think my understanding is like to qualify, you're in the top 2%, I think of your age group, but then you are going to have a depth of field anyway because this is two years worth of rollovers if you didn't take your place at Utah. And it's our first year of doing all the females plus I think it's one male age group and then the males on a different day. But I think it's going to be the last year and I don't know what your thoughts are on this, but I think it's going to be really interesting because this is going to be essentially the last year of people qualifying with only A small number of slots. Ironman races, certainly for the females because now this season we've got so many more slots open to us. So the depth of field is going to be like a normal Iron man race, I think because. Well, a greater depth of field. Field.

Yeah. Well, certainly for the ladies, you know, they've basically doubled the. The slot allocation, haven't they? So.

Yeah, 70.3. Like in Poland, they're. The girls in our age group below us had nine slots. I mean, to put it into perspective, for any men out there, usually in our age group we have one or two slots. That's it.

Yeah. So that is. That is amazing, isn't it? I mean, that's. Yeah, that. So I was in. At Ironman Wales, I was in the most kind of highly packed age group and we had eight slots available to us.

How many race in your age group then?

250.

So it's relative, isn't it? Because I range, you know, usually like 40 deep or something. So it is relative to what you, you know, you're racing.

But if, but if you're getting nine slots for 40 athletes as opposed to eight slots for 250 athletes, it's. Yeah, it's going to change the dynamics, liked massively, isn't it?

I don't know what that was for seven. That was for the latte. 70.3 championships in the age. I don't know how many there were in our age group, but I would imagine it probably would have been relatively similar as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, certainly Finland is one for my. For my list in. In the future. But yeah. And then. So. And then after you did Poland, I did Ironman Wales, which. Which was brutal.

Oh, you are doing that. You know that there is. I'd love to do whales, but when you were telling me about it, like how cold it was, I was like, no, cold, hilly. How did you cope psychologically?

It wasn't that cold, actually. It was so. So the swim was really choppy. About 50 people got pulled out of the swim in the first hour, really, because it was really choppy and I mean, I think Joe Skipper said it was his. His toughest race swim because of the conditions. Although bizarrely, it didn't actually hamper. I was really happy with my time given that it was. It was brutal. I got the worst wetsuit rash I've ever had. I don't know whether I'd kind of got Velcro rubbing against my skin or salt water and. Yeah. But I mean, I've done. I've never had it Particularly bad before. I do quite a lot of sea swimming, but, God, that really, really was sore. Bike was really windy and it rained for the last hour or so, which meant, you know, and the descents were really technical. I hadn't gone and recceed the course other than a little bit of it. And you could tell the people that that had, because they would absolutely fly by you on the descents. Although there was also more bike crashes on any than I've ever seen on a race, I think. So I was chatting to one guy afterwards, and it had taken him 15 minutes longer to do the bike leg than it had the last time he'd done it.

It.

And that. He just said that was purely down to the conditions. And then the run and the hills are just hard work, but the atmosphere around is just like nothing I've ever seen in a race before. You know, it's probably the closest I'll get to riding in the Tour de France with kind of up. Going up Heartbreak Hill, which is the last hill before you go, and you just got people right up against the side of the bike, like, cheering and yelling and, oh, it was incredible. And then. And then you come into the run and it is like four massive hill repeats. It's basically. That's it. You go up this long hill, down the long hill, zigzag through the town a bit, and then it's like past.

The finish line and back again.

Yeah, exactly. And then. And then. But again, the atmosphere was incredible. And I. I thought I set off. I was fairly happy with lap one. Tried to build up a bit more on lap two. Couldn't get the pace any better. Then I was like, right, lap three, trying to put the hammer down. And the problem is the hammer went the opposite direction. I think I just. My leg just said no. And. And then in the fourth lap, I knew that I wasn't gonna hit the times I wanted, so I was like, you know what? Actually, when I came down to the town, I might as well just enjoy the laugh. You know, if I absolutely break myself, I might take another couple of minutes off my time time, or I can enjoy the atmosphere running through 10b.

And.

And. And so I did, and it was absolutely brilliant. So I really enjoyed the race. It is. It took me an hour and 20 minutes longer than my previous Iron man. And I know I'm in better shape than I was then, so it's different.

You know, the one thing I've learned over the years of racing, like certainly doing Ironman races, is you can never. You Just cannot compare them against each other, you know, often. And you probably have the same people ask, like. Like, how long does it take you to do? And I'm like, well, my answer is always to a lot of questions in life and in work, it depends. Because it does. It, like, totally depends. On what. What race you're asking me about. What were the conditions? Like, was it flat? Was it hilly? You know, and it really does, doesn't it? So I think it's very difficult, you know, for you to compare that against your last race. That was flat. Was it?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah.

So it's totally. Yeah, it's a totally different race. And. And the only way I think you can compare yourself and even this is kind of very subjective, is to where did you come in your age category? So I went from coming about halfway up my age category, my last in Tallinn. Up, up. Now I'm in top 20%, so I'm making progress. But I mean, you can't even really use that, can you? Because, you know, were there better athletes in Wales or were there better athletes in talent?

And also, what do you see? Because are you good at technical riding or not? Like, flat versatility and turns out, not.

So much on the descent. I. I actually think I'm a pretty good climber, but I'm not. I could. You know, people were flying past me, so I need to work harder at that or pick flatter courses. But anyway, so. So it's been an interesting summer for both of us. I think you. You've had. You've definitely ticked off more races than I have, but there's no surprise there. But I think. I think one of. One of the episodes we've got coming up, actually, which listeners are gonna. And watch it. Viewers are gonna love is Mark Alan. And so that is an amazing episode that's coming up. But I love talking to him about Kona, and I'm sure that that's kind of sparked a little bit of. A bit more excitement in there about. About the race that's coming up.

Absolutely. Especially the. The heat.

Yeah, it might have added a little.

Way to get off the airplane.

Yeah, a little bit of intrepidation to it. Well, I'm looking forward to witnessing it and. And albeit not racing. That'll. I'll have to save that for another time.

But next year.

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Right. Well, we will let our listeners and viewers disappear off. But just. I just. As you. Before we do, though, it's just worth mentioning, I'm really, really pleased that 33 fuel are sponsoring this series again. It's great working with 33 fuel. Love using their stuff, particularly their protein shakes and their new the new packaging on their bums is really cool. I really like that. And so yeah, really chuffed that we're working with Warren and Erica some more and they'll be supporting us on the hundred mile run in in Dartmoor later on this year. So. So that'd be really cool. So thanks Claire. Good luck with the final last bits of prep for Kona.

Thank you.

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