Ultra Adventures with Robbie Britton

Foreign.

I'm charlie redding. And I'm laura siddall and this is the tribathlon podcast.

Before Petra, it got a bit rockier. We went for the Dana Biosphere. If you do visit Jordan, that Dana is beautiful. It's this kind of massive U shaped valley and all the accommodation and stuff at the top is really beautiful, kind of rustic, kind of cavey rocky dwellings. And you stay there and you just drop down this nice switchbacky trout into this really beautiful green lush. It's a biosphere. So it's really kind of varied environment and then we run out of that and then suddenly we went back into.

Canyons and that was Robbie Britton. And this episode is Ultra Adventures. So in Sid's absence, Sid is off getting ready to go out to Tokyo for the Paralympics. And so we have an amazing guest co host. Welcome back to the Tribathlon podcast. Ruth Astle. Thank you very much for joining me.

No problem. Lovely to be back and in a slightly different guise as co host.

Yeah, exactly. So this is all good. And we actually met in person, didn't we, recently? Because you had a brilliant result at Outlaw Holcombe Half. So tell us about that race. How did it go? I know it was a big win for you, so tell us all about it.

Yeah, so Holcombe was my first pro podium and first pro win, so quite nice to sort of tick that off. Yeah, I think Holcombe for me, I sort of. I knew I had a better race in me than the Eaton Dorney race the like a few weeks before. Um, and it was really great that PTO have been putting money against some of the local races to give us the chance to kind of race easily and locally because as everyone knows at the moment travel is still quite tricky. Um, so some of the bigger races are like hardest to get to. Um, but yes, I think for me, like the main thing I wanted to show at Holcomb was a, that I have made some progress on the swim which I didn't show at Eton. Uh, so that for me was the biggest win that I managed to generally stay on feet the whole way. And I came out just behind Kim, which, you know, is definitely one of my best swims I've had and that's given me quite a lot of confidence that the swim's going in the right way. Um, I then knew on the bike again I was a bit like, I want to stay near Kim because obviously she's going to be biking well, she always bikes well. Um, and we kind of swapped A little bit sort of. Who was in front. We had a few kind of groups of age group is coming past and getting a little bit caught up in things. But generally, you know, it was like a really fair race with. With sort of me and Kim pulling away on the bike. And I kind of had the confidence in my run that I knew that I could probably run away from her. That run course is brutal.

Oh, I'm glad you think so.

I hadn't quite appreciated my coach, Willard, because he's done it before, and he was the record holder until it went. He had sort of warned me about it, but in my head, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm sure it's not that bad. Kind of ran out of transition and that whole first hill. And it kind of is also deceptive because you must have what, like a good kilometer and bit of that first hill that you can kind of see. You then, like, turn the corner and you have more hill and. And then you have a little bit down a little bit more hill. So just kind of keeps going. And that whole first run out, I was obviously a little bit excited. Cause I had the camera with me, and I was like, oh, my God, I'm winning. Like, just obviously still got the whole half marathon to get through. And I kept getting. I got this, like, really weird. It was kind of like cramp. I don't think it was cramp, but, like this crampy sensation in my knees. And I was like, oh, my God, if I get, you know, like, cramp or something like this at this point in the race, and I. And I'm sort of winning and I then lose it because of that, I'll be devastated. Uh, but, you know, kind of was like, just get up to that aid station, get a load of Coke on board, and hopefully it'll sort it out. And it did. Um, so that was great. But, yeah, just generally it was one of those races that it kind of. Everything went quite well. Like, it def. I wouldn't say it's like my best run on my best bike, but kind of to have that good swim and then kind of be patient and get through it. And also, probably the main positive as well was being back at a race where there were actual spectators and quite a lot of spectators. It was so nice. So, yeah, really enjoyed it.

I'm glad that you said that. That run was brutal. It crucified me, just out of curiosity, because it did crucify me. I'd had my second Covid jab a few days before it, and part of Me is saying, please tell me that it was the COVID jab that was influencing my run because my run time was awful compared to out or half which was like two weeks before. How did your run time at Holcomb compared to a tradition, you know, a normal half marathon as part of a triathlon.

So I think it's, it's probably hard for me to properly compare because I think I've made quite a lot of progress this year in my run. But I think, and I've not like Eaton was a weird distance. So I can't compare it to that Outlaw X that I did in September or October last year. Um, that I ran probably like a minute and a half quicker but that was a much flatter course. But also this course was 0.7k long so that's the other reason why it'll be slow. So I think yeah, obviously the hill didn't help but also it was quite long. So. But I definitely think the COVID jab also, like I was, I wouldn't say wiped out but I was definitely pretty tired for a few days after my second, my first. But both jobs. So that I'm sure would have affected as well.

I'm clinging on to that because I was about 15 minutes slower than my pre. The one I'd done two weeks before. I was like. And I was in bits. So there was a, I don't know if you remember, there was a lady that I think was wearing something like a rainbow colored tutu or something and she was waving signs and she was giving me encouragement as I ran past. Then as I, as I was leaving to get to go to my car, I said, oh, thanks for the encouragement. She said, I'm not going to lie, you look like you were in bits. Thanks very much.

Thanks. Always good to hear.

Yeah.

So, so what races are you training for now? You know, tell us a bit about what your, what your next big one is.

Um, so I'm actually just training for Kona now. So I sort of looked at whether it was worth doing any races beforehand. But with travel being quite tough I decided actually I'll just get a good training block in for Kona. The only thing I'm doing before that is a hundred mile time trial next. Not this coming weekend, but the weekend after. Um, but it's just a local one. It'll just be a training day so I'm not really treating it like a race. Um, so yeah, so I think other than that it's just sort of another month, five, six weeks here of doing Quite a big block and getting some heat work in and then head out to Maui for sort of three weeks before the race. Get a bit more sort of heat work and enjoying the nice Hawaiian atmosphere. Um, and then, yeah, hopefully have a. A good Kona, which will be my first one as a pro, which is exciting.

And. Yeah, as your first Kona race as a pro, what are your. What are your hopes and expectations?

Oh, it's a really, like. That's quite tricky. So I think, because on the one hand, I kind of. I sort of want to just go in and be like, let's, you know, let's try and execute a really good race. You know, I want to. I'm hoping that my swim is in a good enough place now that I can hang with kind of the main pack and then try and be sort of reasonably controlled in the bike and have enough left to run quite a good marathon. And I think, you know, if I can put together the kind of race that I think I've got in me, I'd hope that would put me some in the top 10. But I think the. The kind of. The challenge and problem with Kona is it's just one of those races where anything can happen. You know, if I lose the feet on the swim and lose like five minutes more than what I'd want, I'm in quite a different position. I'm having to chase quite hard on the bike. Um, or, you know, if someone makes a move on the bike and I. Then it's the decision of do I try and go with it or do I. So I think, you know, it's. Obviously it's going to be a very different race to when I raced as an age grouper when I was literally just like, I can focus on me, I can focus on my power, do my race. Like, obviously at this level as a pro, there's kind of tactics to think about. And so. Yeah, but I think mainly I kind of want to. I'd like to be able to put together a good Ironman that I'm capable of, because I don't think I've really done that yet. You know, like Tulsa, I had a terrible bike. Florida, before that. I sort of had stomach issues on the run. So it'd be nice to actually just have an overall really good Ironman.

Do you think so? It's interesting that you said that it becomes much more tactical when you're a pro. Why is that? Because my instinct is that you're almost. The natural thought is that you're best to just run Your complete your own race as fast as you can and almost ignore what's going on around you. Why isn't that the case now?

So I think generally speaking, that is still the case for pros because the fields are quite small. But I think at Kona where you have, you know, 35 women who are all of a fairly similar standard, other than like a few outliers, um, it just, it's things like, you know, if a bit of a move does go on the bike, there's kind of potential to either make or lose a lot of time. And so, you know, it might be worth putting in a five minute little bit of a surge to stick with someone who then drags you around faster. Um, but I think that's something that again, you kind of need to almost just experiment a bit with and kind of go with it if you think you can go with it on the day or potentially not. But yeah, I think you can see. You can probably see it a bit more in some of the men's races at Kona of where people have kind of made the wrong decision and suffered from it. So, yeah, I think it's you, like, you probably can get away with doing your own race, but you could potentially have a much better performance if, say, a little move went on the bike and you go with it and therefore you're with a pack and you're surrounded by people as opposed to being like, nope, I'm going to stick to my power. And now I've been left behind and I'm in the middle of nowhere, on my own, in the wind with no one around me. So, yeah, I think it's a bit different.

And is Kona more tactical than. Than most other races in that sense?

I think so, just because of how many people are racing and the level. So I think a lot of the other races, I probably. I think a lot of the races this past year have been a bit more like Kona because they've just had bigger fields because of the lack of racing. Um, but a lot of Ironman races, you'd maybe have six or seven pro women. So, like, you're probably, yeah, like maybe between two or three of you at the front. There might be some tactics, but generally speaking, you've kind of got a bit more space to be able to do your own race and not worry as much about other people and trying to go with moves because there's not going to be as many people that are kind of going to impact it as much.

Well, it will be amazing to watch Kona Again. And so I hope you have a fantastic race there and I'm certainly looking forward to watching it again. And the idea of three weeks, was it three weeks before the race that you get out there and a bit of time afterwards as well to chill.

Hopefully, hopefully. Hopefully a bit of chill. But I might have to get back for some work at that point.

That sounds like a pretty good month or so out there. That'll be awesome. And I'm guessing that you've been watching the Olympics. What have you made of the Olympics so far? So for those. So this recording will only go out in a couple of weeks time. So we're kind of midway through the Olympics at the moment. But what stood out for you?

I mean, it's amazing having the Olympics to watch. It has been really good distraction and motivation. Yeah, I mean, obviously I watched all the triathlon and I thought that was great. I think on the men's side, you know, being able to see someone like Alex at his first Olympics get a silver medal, just amazing. You know, clearly the race played out in the right way for him. But he's so talented and he's like, clearly worked on what he needs to work on, like with the swim and the bike and he just executed a really good race. Blumenfel. I just never. I don't know how he can race like that. I just. You just look at him and you're like, you're not going to hold it. Obviously Alex is going to come back and out kick you, but he just somehow seems to race like that. And then on the women's side, I mean, obviously I'm supporting the Brits, but. But I was actually really happy to see Flora win. I think given the level she was at then she had those injuries and kind of watching her fight back and that race she put on just. I mean, I think someone said that's the fastest 10k that's ever been run in a women's Olympic triathlon.

Wow.

So kind of fair play. But also, you know, Georgia kept herself composed after that puncture. Also ran a really good race, which after the kind of injury and stuff she's been dealing with this year is amazing. And again, nice to see Katie Zafiri is kind of get back to the form that we know that she's capable of after having a, you know, a bit of a struggle earlier this year. So I kind of, I really enjoyed both of those races. And then like the mixed relay, what a great introduction to the Games. I think it's just, it's so exciting. To watch. It's great seeing the, like, the tactics of who you put on, what leg and how they play out. And I think, again, just really good execution by the British team. I mean, Jess was always going to be a good first leg. Johnny then had an absolute amazing leg to put in some extra time. Georgia kept it. And then Alex again made some really good tactical decisions of kind of sitting on Louis and then just kicking when he knew he could outrun him. So, yeah, really, really good to watch. Really enjoyed that. Um, and then, obviously, I've also been watching, like, the athletics and the cycling and kind of whatever else I can watch, so that's been good.

It has been fantastic, isn't it? I mean, it's just been so. I feel like this year we're spoiled with live sport. I mean, I've kind of. I'm not a massive football fan, but I love watching the Euros. We've got the Lions Tour on and we've, you know, we've got the Ryder cup to look forward to, but the Olympics is just. And you will find yourself watching sports you'd never, ever. I mean, I was watching two. The two sailing golds this morning whilst on the Turbo Trainer. I would never be watching sailing under any other conditions, but it was. It's been amazing. And I think one of the things that stood out for me is that actually these mixed relays have been across many of the sports have been a really interesting introduction. Like with the swimming as well. Do you see that as something that, you know, that triathlon, mixed relay. Do you think that that will start to become more widespread as a result of the success in the Olympics?

Yeah, it'll be really interesting to see because I think on the one hand, it's a great Olympic spectacle because, yeah, it's just like. It's a bit shorter. It's exciting to watch. I think trying to bring it more broadly to the masses, I kind of. Yeah, I'm not sure. And I don't know how well it would work more generically. I kind of think at the moment, for the sort of broader population, the general relays you can do are kind of good enough. And I guess, to be fair, like, you do get some proper mix relays, don't you? Like, I'm pretty sure there's like, club championships at Nottingham and stuff, where people do it. I've just never really got involved in it, so. Yeah, I think it's one of those things that kind of. Lots of people like it. Cause it's. Sure. And it's exciting, but yeah, it's never going to be sort of my cup of tea to do because it's too short for me.

Yes, it is very short and frantic, isn't it?

And it's.

Yeah, it's not my cup of tea either. But great, but great viewing.

Yeah.

Now, one of the things that we talked a bit about when you were on the podcast previously was Incas and Incas Nova, the technology. And I just thought it'd be useful to get an update from you on that, because I went for a run with Chris from one of the founders at Incas, and actually I blame him for part of my Holcomb run. So before we were supposed to run the Friday before Holcombe, so Holcomb being on the. On the Sunday, I went for a run with him. It's supposed to be a nice, short, gentle run, just to see what the Incas Nova was all about. And it ended up being slightly less slow than I'd predicted and it was slightly longer than I'd predicted. So I was completely going against what my coach was telling me to do.

But anyway.

But it is an amazing gadget, so tell us a bit about how you're getting on with that at the moment and how that's evolving.

Yeah. So I've been using the Incas for quite a while now, actually, mainly on the swimming side, to be fair, as opposed to the running side. But part of that has just been, uh. Cause they've obviously only just released the kind of run straps, um, that are a bit easier to use than the vests they had before. But, yeah, on the swimming side, I mean, I love looking at lots of data, um, and I think most triathletes generally do. So for me, the swimming in particular, I found it interesting looking at, like, kind of when I'm having a good swim versus when I'm having a bad swim, what the data looks like behind that, because obviously I can usually feel it. And I obviously know because I'm looking at the times as well, but looking at what that actually translates to in terms of, like, my left. Right balance, like, definitely my left side is weaker than my right. So I often have, like, a much lower efficiency score on my left side than on my right score, my right side. But also the kind of looking at some of the little things of, like, my stroke rate. So from that I can look at, you know, clearly if I'm swimming well, my stroke rate seems to be a bit lower because I'm actually getting that longer distance, um, and also my rotation. So I actually played around with my rotation quite a lot. I was doing some sets with like a snorkel to see how much that affected it. Um, and if that balanced me a bit more and also looked a little bit at doing it, doing some with a pool boy. Because actually one of the things that the coach has noticed that swims with us a bit is that I have quite a wide leg kick, especially when I get tired. So I think that kind of drags a little bit. So I was kind of experimenting with work. If I use a pool boy a bit more, does that then translate through in the data? So I've definitely seen that kind of, you know, when I tend to swim the best, it's because I've got a much more even rotation as opposed to it being like much more heavily rotated on my right than on my left. And my efficiency is obviously a bit better. So I've enjoyed seeing that. And then on the running side, like I've done a bit of running with it, especially when I was coming back from the Achilles, and also with it looking at different shoes because that's one of the things I've been looking at a lot of kind of what does my shoe choice do to impact the way that I run? Because I think that's something that again, yeah, so you can kind of feel, oh, this shoe feels comfortable, but it won't necessarily be making you run in the best way. So I found again, a lot of it for me is looking at that left, right balance, especially when I know that I've had the like the left, the right side Achilles issue. But I've also previously to that had like left side calf tears. And so I find it really interesting looking at that kind of balance between. Is it. Are they quite even how does that change, especially going like uphill or downhill. And the kind of. I guess the other key metric they pick out running is the kind of deceleration and acceleration from you, which again is that kind of force that you're putting through. And yeah, I found that really interesting looking at and I've been doing a bit of looking at kind of normal shoes versus carbon shoes versus different shoes and how that affects it. And obviously some of it's quite hard to compare because some of it I've done like a fast run versus a, a steady run, which you can't really compare. Um, but yeah, I think for anyone that's interested either just in the data because it like, for me I just find it quite interesting to look at. But actually if I think if you've got any injury history or you're just worried about a particular niggle. I actually think using it for running to check that kind of left, right balance. Um, and also some of the tips that you just get from it, you know, like just some of the generic tips they have in there about how to correct your deceleration or what to think about to try and make sure you're not putting too much force through like certain, certain bits. I think it's really good. Um, yeah. How have you been using it or.

No, I haven't. That was literally my one, one trial of it. And it's. I'm kind of waiting for. Because I swim a lot now in a swim spa. They're hopefully going to develop a mode that will work well with a swim spa that doesn't sort of link up to the technology. So that will be when it really comes into its own for me. But I hadn't really thought, I thought it was interesting kind of making your shoe choice not just based on times but also based on, on the data that's giving you. So I think it looks like a great bit of kit and also in time as they add cycling to it as well. I mean it's just, you know, and what I liked was the app was really good in terms of like giving you those tips that you talked about. I thought it seemed like a really good bit of kit. But I haven't, I haven't decided that I need a new piece of technology in, an additional piece of technology in my life at the moment. But I think, I think as the app progresses I think it'll only be a matter of time. Fantastic. Well, okay, let's dive into the interview now with Robbie Britton. Robbie Britton has run everything from 5K's to 24 hour races with highlights being a 229 marathon and 261km 24 hour best, which earned him a world and European bronze medal. But it was actually his adventures in search of fastest known times, otherwise known as fkts, that intrigued me the most. Whether he's crossing Ireland, completing the Kom Emin in Bulgaria, setting an FKT on the 250 kilometer Jordan Trail, all on foot, or a 1100 kilometer bike ride, the next adventure never seems to be far away from him. And he's got some incredible ideas for others that he wants to do.

So.

As the one of the world's leading ultra distance coaches, I wanted to get a better understanding of what it takes to get through adventure races, the mental tactics needed for ultra distance running and cycling and what he has learned from a fell running wife and the wide array of books that he reads. I know you're going to really enjoy the interview with Robbie British. So Robbie, welcome to the Tribeathlon podcast. Really looking forward to chatting to you. Thank you so much for joining me. Let's kick things off for those people that don't know that much about you. Do you want to tell us a bit about your story, how you got into running and how your sort of career has progressed through, through to now.

Brilliant. Thanks for having me. So I am a coach slash ultra distance athlete. I started running 2009. Previously I just ran around other sporting pitches and venues either as a player, as a fan, using my ability to run a lot to make up for my lack of technical skill. And yeah, I entered a Windermere Marathon 2009 because a friend was entered and I didn't want him to have sole bragging rights. And then from two marathons in two weeks just to raise some money for Diabetes uk, we all start out like that. And then entered the London to Brighton ultramarathon and then gradually did longer and longer races until I was at the front.

Fantastic. Well, I think we need to dive into that a little bit more. So let's start with doing the Windermere Marathon. How did that first marathon go?

Went really well. I just trained for it, kind of like I was living in Liverpool. So I went to university and trained on the, on the docks and on the front around there. Did. I did the old kind of long run, a bit longer each week, bit of training in the middle, some intervals, some hill reps. Remember on this, on the Liverpool Cathedrals got some good. You can pretend you're rocky, go up and down those. And I just, yeah, I came in, I said I was gonna do around three hours. My mum was like, my mum come to watch, she's like, you're not gonna do three hours. Ridiculous. And I believe she was in the bar area when I crossed the finish line because she thought I was. It was 3 hours 13 minutes, which is a really course. And I was, I just ran it quite controlled and I had a couple of gels and I remember eating some Kendall mint cake and then instantly spitting it back out because I'm not a fan. It's nice enough. It's not just not. I didn't want it at that point in my life. And yeah, it went all right. And I tried. I did end of Edinburgh two weeks later, which was flatter. So I obviously adjusted my target and tried to run sub free. And that actually didn't. I didn't run sub free for another six years after that, I think, or five years after that. But yeah, I ended up blowing up in that one and running just under three and a half hours because I rallied towards the end. But yeah, both of those were just on the back of going out and running a fair bit and just seeing what happened.

Amazing. And so, I mean they're pretty impressive times for first marathons and so there was obviously an ability there from the start. But what, how did you find transitioning from those marathons to through to the ultra you talked about? Tell me a bit about how the Ultra, the Brighton Ultra went.

So London to Brighton, about like 12 years now. Should have checked my old diaries. I did. So I ended up. I was finishing a master's in archaeology at the time, so I went. My grandparents live out in Cyprus, so in the build up to that one, I was in Cyprus just doing my dissertation and I ended up doing two. The race was 56 miles on trials. I did two runs of, I think about 40 miles in training. I didn't know what I was doing so I just did normal training, kind of like my intervals and kind of a normal marathon style training. And then I added in these two long runs that were basically from where my grandparents lived 40 miles along the coast to a couple of different bays that they like visiting. So they went there for the day. I got up early, running 40 degree heat, chafed some bits I didn't want to chafe and then sat in the sea and realized that was really quite painful after chafing. And so then, yeah, and then I went and did the race and yeah, again, again it went really well. I think I ended up there was a pack of us. So there was two guys who went off the front. Turns out the one, one of those who went off the front is now my very good friend Dan Lawson. I've done a lot of running with since, so. And it was his first official ultra. Both of us had the same first official ultra. And then I ended up running with a Australian chap and I mean getting lost a lot and then kind of rallying up in a team with someone who knew where they were going and he was running with the first lady and then we all just ran our way to Brighton. I remember having to keep with those people because one, I would have got lost but I had a couple of like bruises, stones in my shoes and I didn't have time to take them out. So it was a kind of a very good lesson. In continuous forward progress because there was no chance to stop and sort the pain out because otherwise I'd be on my own. And the route wasn't. It was kind of like it wasn't marked. You had to find your own way. So I was like, right, if I stop for five minutes, it's going to cost me an hour of my time, so I'm going to keep going. And yeah, I had like one tiny little stone that dug into my heel at the end. It was all right, but it's just kind of like black. I was in these tiny running shorts and I was just limping around Brighton looking for an ice cream. Mum.

Yeah, and so, and so how. Remind me how far that London to Brighton Ultra is.

That was 56 miles. 56 miles.

And did you immediately then go. Because you've gone on to do some incredible, you know, distances way, way further than that. So what, what was your progression from there on through sort of to the longer and longer distances and I think.

The net, basically I just did what I could, like races that I could afford at the time and that were on, I could get to. It's not cheap and I was working, so I was working as an apprentice for the Field Studies Council. So we did a lot of long hours, the wages weren't great, but you're working in the outdoors teaching kids. So I went and did a three day race with a company called XNRG, who's still going in the UK, called the Ridgeway, and that was about just under 30 miles a day. Did a couple more of those. I did four marathons in four days with the Enigma marathons the next year and then I just gradually stepped it up and I think 12 months later I did my first 100 mile in one go. So, yeah, there was just a mixture of different stuff. Quite a few around that kind of 40 to 50 mark and a few that were longer but over several days. And that kind of helped me build up a bit. I did a lot, I did too many. I just got really excited and when I eventually did the hundred, I think I'd ended 400 or 100 mile races in 12 months for like a couple years after that. I really just kind of went and did as many as I could until I had a couple of like kind of probably breakthrough for me. They weren't particularly fast by today's standards, but we had lower standards back then, so it's good. I won the North Downs Way, which is organised by Centurion Running, who I now work with, and James Elson who organised it as a friend. And that one was really good race. I won it in just under 20 hours. But I was about five minutes off a negative split for the 250s because I went out quite conservatively. And I think even thinking back now, one of the factors that meant I did okay was just that kind of judgment of my own effort even in that first marathon. I think that's the thing that a lot of people get wrong is the judgment of the effort you're supposed to work out. And somehow I managed that quite well on a hilly course around the lakes. And then it come to the races on the London to Brighton, I managed my effort quite well. And on this hundred miler, yeah, last 30 miles I was chasing the people ahead of me and it was brilliant fun if you've ever had. It's like a 30 mile runner's high just kind of. Everything was going well. The food was going in. I was getting closer and closer to the front and I caught the. Caught Neil Bryant, who's again another. He works with Centurion too. And that was. Yeah, caught him about 5k to go and it was wonderful. So I think from there I started kind of doing it, being a bit more selective of how I was racing because I was getting a bit better.

What, what, what do you think? How do you think you managed to get your pacing so, so good in that race? You know, what, how did you work out what pace you should go out for that so that you could get that negative split?

I guess I looked at the factors that affected performance. I'm going to make myself sound like I knew what I was doing more than a. I probably did. In hindsight, it's easy to go. Yeah. I just looked at the demands of the race and I stepped back and I thought, well, actually the legs are not going to be the sliding factor here. It's going to be the stomach. As long as I was the first half I was smiling and eating, then that was a kind of comfortable place. Like it wasn't. I wasn't worried about the times, people around me, the positions. I was just making sure that I was okay. So it probably comes down to not worrying about those outside factors that you can't control and actually just being focused on what I can control. I'd like to think it down to that and I think that's something that I try to do even now and try to impress upon my athletes is that we can only. There's not much to take from focus on everyone else in the position if you want to run a good position, then don't focus on the position in ultrarunning, which seems counterintuitive, but it's actually a very good way of looking at it. Because if you're worried about like you just measure yourself against others which you just don't know what they're doing through, they might stop, they might not have trained very well, they might have trained brilliantly, they might just be better than you. If you're focused on everything else, it affects how you run, it affects your own perception of effort which then changes how you fuel and how your legs cope with the day and how your head copes with the ups and downs of the race. So yeah, I think it probably comes back down to just being there for me and being there to prove something to myself rather than to anyone else.

I think that's good advice.

Actually.

I just did. I did two half Ironmans in two weeks over the last month or so. And I was racing with somebody that I knew personally, but I'd never raced against him before. And I thought I knew where we were mentally against each other. But I actually look back on it and think I would have been really happy with those two races or particularly the first one had it just been me doing it, but I was referencing it against him, not me. So I think that's, that's really interesting advice.

And if you, if you are interested in that kind of stuff, there's a guy called Professor Samuel McCorrah and he does a lot of stuff around perception of effort. It's brilliant because all that physical information that comes up to our head can be identity, two identical situations. But then you add an other external factors like another runner and we measure ourselves off that. So that guy could have, could have had a great training block, right? But normally you're ahead of him. So if you were behind him or with him, your brain would have been taking all the physical information. Again, mate, you're rubbish. This is so much harder than it should be because our perception has changed. The same race, exactly the same situation. If he was two miles behind you and you knew that because you had an out back, you'd be like, mate, you're on fire, doing brilliant. And the physical pain and the physical situation could be identical, but our brain just kind of interprets it differently.

Absolutely, it really does. And I look back on it and think that that impacted the way I raced and the way I enjoyed the race as well actually. So that's really good advice. How did you then progress through into 24 hour running?

So after North Downs. I did the Thames part hundred which was flatter run it just over 16 hours. I finished second there, Craig Holgate and after that I got an email asking if I want to run for England over 24 hours. So they paid for a couple of us to go out to basel, do the 24 hour there and I met Andy Smith who was the team manager and then we had Steve Holyoake who then went on to represent Great Britain a few times and John Pears who's now fellow team manager for the 24 hours. Now they all of us were there and I ran for me and Steve had England vests on John runs for Wales and then we, I ran, I was trying to get the qualifying mark which back then was 230k and I ran 2 to 2.5 or something like that. I was on pace for about 20 hours. Then I had some issues with my knee and I remember limping around for the time after that and probably like going back. There's probably loads of things I could pick up on that I could have improved but that was my first case the 24 hours. Steve qualified to run in Katowice in Poland later that year. I was then part of the youth expedition to Norway for six weeks. So then my training kind of took a back step. I was in a situation place where I wanted to do some more expedition style stuff but I was trying to do that as well as the ultra running. So this was company is now called the British Exploring Society that works at the Royal Geographical Society in London. And so I was out there for six weeks with those with the youth expedition. So I came back a little bit less fit. I tried to qualify for the 24 hours again at Tooting Back and I ran 209 that time. I went backwards and it was around that time I then had to kind of like maybe, maybe it was around then I kind of decide what I wanted to do because I could keep trying to do both. But spending six weeks in the Arctic is not conducive to good training, especially when you're in charge of the food. And then I trained as a six week block towards the Barcelona 24 hour and I went out there with my friend Mick, Mick Seymour, who's crewed a lot of my 24 hour races and I ran 231k and at the time that was good enough to get you on the team. It wouldn't be good enough now but we've got a lot of guys running a lot further. But back then it was different and yeah it Was really emotional. So then I qualified for. And that was the third 24 hour race with a UTMB in the middle in about 8 months and 100 mile before it. So I was doing a lot of stuff back then and I qualified for the world championships in Steenbergen the year after. So there we go, we're back here in 2013 still.

Wow. And so, I mean, the 24 hour racing always seems like a complete, complete nightmare from a mental point of view. To me, you know, running around the same track hour after hour after hour just seems like torture. What are the mental approaches? Have you got any mental techniques or advice that you give people when they're coming on to do their first one of them?

You gotta look at the positives, Charlie. You gotta look at the positives straight away, right? You're looking at it like, I gotta run around the same loop. I'm thinking I'm gonna get lost today. Brilliant. I'm never that far from a toilet, so disaster strike. My crew's there so I can have the food I want when I want it. I can see smiling faces every 400 meters. I've done it on or two miles. There's a really good community in the 24 hour racing world as well. So when we do the world champs, you see loads of friends and it's really nice to catch up with people because you can just run a few claps with a friend. Like I've got friends in the German team or the Australian team or Canadian team and we just like, you just spend a few laps chatting and it's, it's really nice. So you gotta look at the positives and that side of things and, and then more so than ever, you've got to focus on what you're doing rather than everyone else. Because the 24 hours crazy because you can, you could be leading by 20 miles, right? But if you slow down, the person who's 20 miles behind you can run past you, which really affects how people are thinking. Because it like. And then your head drops, it comes into perception of effort stuff again. But you just think, oh, I'm doing rubbish. You're 20 miles ahead of this person and they've just walked past you because you've stopped for a wee and your head's really kind of knocked by this and it's kind of been aware of that and using techniques to focus on, like to eliminate that as an issue in terms of general techniques. Often it's easy to break things down. So you look at it one hour at a time, one lap At a time, really focus. I look at it as a type of mindfulness, trying to focus in on what's happening right now rather than looking at the greater picture. Because that's actually. Yeah, it can be quite sad when you think about it. You're six hours in, right. And your legs hurt. Stuff hurts because you've been running for six hours, you're tired, you're kind of thinking, oh God, this is, this is tough. And you've got 18 hours to go and when your head is in that place, like your body hurts but you're still only a quarter of the way through your race, that's. That can be quite a negative experience. So it's kind of thinking of things in a way that, okay, I'm just going to get to eight hours or if you started a midday at six, I'm going to get to midnight. Then it's a new day when you get to midnight. A couple of hours more and I'll be getting a little bit. I'm going to be a few hours from sunrise and running through the night is always wonderful. Cools down a bit in the night so you can, you can maybe make a bit better time. Yeah and it's just kind of focusing on little, little kind of not milestones because I think some people do focus on 100k times, 100 mile times and then you often see a dip after 100 miles in 24 hours. If someone's running a strong 24 hours, they focus too much and get it to 100 miles and don't think about afterwards. And then psychologically after that they're like run a good hundred miler. What's the point of carrying on? And it plays with their heads and they haven't. You have to then pick another target or just focus on that next hour rather than I've run 100 miles now I'm going to get to 200k. Maybe it's. I've run 100 miles. Just put that to bed. I'm going to focus on this next hour. I'm going to have a good hour and I'm a little bit close to.

Finish so chunking it down basically and yeah, definitely yourself. Giving you some different mental wins I suppose along the way.

I mean just I break a lap down normally at the world champs by having like you have different groups of family and friends around, not even your own. I just adopt other people's family and smile and interact with them. So I just like it's only ever like a quarter of a lap or half a lap. Until you're seeing another bunch of people that you can have a laugh with. And then you run around your crew, you get your sandwich or your gels or your drinks, then you run around a bit and there's someone you know that they've pitched up a little tent for the night to support. So you have a laugh and joke with them and you run around, you have a laugh and a joke with a French team and then you get. And it's just kind of that circle round until you. Yeah. And it breaks down each lap.

Does that have its downsides too? When you're in those darker moments of the race and you're thinking, I really wish I was doing this in, in solitude as opposed to surrounded by people.

I'm not an introvert in that way. I don't think. I think that's me. I love interaction with people. Even at the lowest moment. Like again, I keep going back to perception of effort. But if you're smiling, even if it's a forced smile for someone that you're thinking, I don't want to, it just tells your brain that can't be that bad. If you're frowning, it's like, yeah, it's going to be, it's not going to work for you. And again, like, you're in 24 hour race, you're there by your own choice. Um, if you're in a miserable place in a 24 hour race, it's because it's your own doing. So if you can't see the dark humor side of that. Oh, yeah. How you doing? Ah, well, yeah, shit myself two laps ago and I've been sick and questioning the meaning of life whilst I'm running around this 800 meter loop surrounded by other people going faster. But yeah, life couldn't be better. I could be in an office. You just got. You've got to see the funny side of it because it is weird. It is pointless. Right. It's a bunch of like eccentric people running around in circles. Right. And even if you're doing it very well, it's a niche sport because no one really wants to. LeBron James is never gonna go, you know what? I'm gonna step back from the NBA to focus on my true calling, 24 hour running. We're never gonna get like Mo Farah and Elliot Kipchoge kind of going, I wonder how much I can run in a day. Like, we earn a niche sport and maybe we would do better than those guys anyway because there are other factors involved. But you've just got to Enjoy it for what it is, it's weird. And if you don't think it's weird, if you get like let it get to your head and you think, yeah, I run for gb. I've been, I've meddled at the world Champs. I'm a big timer. It's like I'm a big timer in a weird, peculiar niche sport. It's okay, I'm good with that. And that's. Yeah, you get let yourself, don't take yourself too seriously.

And you've obviously, I don't know whether you're still doing a 24 round running but having watched recently watched Lost Dogs and Englishmen, you've obviously progressed more through to the sort of trails and fkts and those sorts of things. I mean I love Jordan and Petra in particular is stunning. But when I was in Petra I think, I think remember it was 52 degrees. So talk to me about running a trail like the Jordan trail that you did. Tell me a bit about that experience. Tell me about why Jordan and also some of the other ones that you've done along the lines like Iceland for example.

So I've always been into the trails. A lot of our 24 hour runners in the British squad they trial run as well. It's an easier way on the body, it's easier on the mind. Right. You do. It's nice to mix up a, a trial race and a 24 hour race and the training is not too dissimilar. There's different bits of conditioning around it and the psychological demands are different but you can be fit and strong for both. I did the UTMB first time in I want to say 2012 and after that I just kind of got really into that race for a few years and moved out to the Alps and really I really enjoy the trouting. I've always mixed both and that's like the first hundred miles of did we on trail first ultras of did we on trail. So it's kind of like yeah, you always go back to where you began. Jordan come about. So this was only a few years ago now. Basically I was trying to organize a trip to Lake Baikal in Siberia to There's a record I think about 12 days to run the length of it. It entirely freezes over in winter. I am much better in the cold than I am in the wall. I put it down to having quite, having quite a lot of muscle for an ultra runner. So like I generate a fair bit of heat myself whilst I'm moving. And so I was trying to organize trip there and I just kept losing team members like people that were willing to come and run 12 days across a frozen lake in minus 30. There are few and far between people who are willing to people who are capable. You've got to find the combination because there's people that are willing that aren't capable. And I'm not dragging someone a pulp for eight days because they like frostbitten their toes. And then I. Eventually I was just left with me and my mate Dan. Dan absolutely loved Dan. He's so far at the bottom of the list of people I would go to Siberia with just. He would die within about eight hours of getting onto the ice. And I. Dan's done some brilliant stuff. He's crossed the Gobi desert record for 400k there. He's been European 24 hour champion. He is a hot weather man. He lives in Brighton. Brighton area. And I think he keeps a down jacket on whilst running till about May and then after that it comes off and he'll maybe wear a T shirt and then he'll be topless for the entire summer and then it gets the winter again, he's back in a down jacket. So yeah, so then I was looking at other options. So I'd love to say there was. I could like. So it was. Yeah. Running across. Running across Jordan and through Petra as a former. As an archaeology student. It's just a dream of mine. But I mean it was. I did want to visit Petra and it was able to. To combine your kind of different parts of your life and what you enjoy in running and adventure is brilliant. But the long short of it was that there was some really cheap Ryanair flights to. To Jordan. So that was on the list of places. Alfie Pierce Higgins and Mohamed El Soiti had run the route before. So we knew that it existed. It worked well in terms of time window. And who doesn't want to visit a country like Jordan to see it's such a beautiful place and I had a real variety. So we went quite a bit earlier in the year March I think. So there was no 52s on the. I literally would have just killed over. And we spent a lot of time in some sections on our own. So that kind of heat would have just been unmanageable even for Dan. It would have been a challenge. And he doesn't. He barely eats or drinks anything. But the north of the country is a lot greener actually. We had some days where it was really quite wet and cold especially because the hotels weren't built for. They were built for 50 degrees in the summer and you're in there and it's like 8 degrees or something and you're thinking this is quite cold. There's no. See any heat? No. No heating. Okay. Shower Any hot water? No, no hot water. Because why would you want hot water? Yeah, no, I get that. That's cool. So it was, it was a really different challenge as it went through and. And then yeah, we got to the Petra which was. We got there at like 6 in the morning. So it was wonderful to run through and have it to ourselves which was really nice. Bit different. And my wife Natalie had joined at that stage so she joined us for that leg through as well. So it's kind of like how often do you get to enjoy a place like that with one of your best friends and your wife and you're just kind of running through this magical kind of. Yeah. This magical historical situation. So. Yeah. And then. Go on. Sorry.

What struck me about watching that was having seen Petra. It amazed me how the landscape in Jordan changed throughout your run, didn't it? I mean it really started as you said, it's really green and lush at the start and then. Because Petra is definitely not green and lush.

No, I mean it's the beauty of running nearly just under 600k the length of a country. You see different things. Like you could do that in any country. It would vary. Maybe not as much in the UK but it would vary over 600k. And yeah, so like the. Before Petra it got a bit rockier. We went for the Dana biosphere. If you do visit Jordan, that Dana is beautiful. It's this kind of massive U shaped valley. All the accommodation and stuff at the top. It's really beautiful, kind of rustic, kind of cavey, rocky dwellings and you stay there and you just drop down this nice switch bracket into this really beautiful green lush. It's a biosphere. So it's really kind of varied environment and then we run out of that and then suddenly we went back into canyons and waddies and climbing on rocks and it was dry as dry as a bone. And we'd then spend like 40 50k on our own, just me and Dan, in these really steep sided wadis. And remember the first wadi we went through, it was on a short day because we had to adapt things and we had time just to wander around. It was just our route went into the body and out of it and we just wandered down and it's just like absolutely beautiful. The geography is just breathtaking and there's A really good saying. The book. What's his name? The chat. I can't remember. It's a book called those Greenland Days, about like some of the 1930s Greenland expeditions. Martin Lindsey, I think the guy's name is. And they're on a boat on the way there and they look at the view and someone says, look at that, it's amazing. He says, one must not exhaust one's superlatives too early in an expedition. I kept saying that to Dan and Jordan, like, we cannot. You need some words left to describe to Petra, to describe the wadi. Wrong. Because if you go in and the first thing. I mean, people do this way too much these days. Everything's amazing. Oh, my God, that's amazing. And you're like. Are you honestly amazed by what you've just seen? Someone just ate like eight biscuits. That's not amazing. It's impressive. If it was one go. We need to be careful of our words. They're. They're, they're precious. And if you're on a longer trip and so it's. And that kind of comes into managing yourself because you can't get too carried away early on. It's about. You don't exhaust anything but let alone your supportives. But like, if you're kind of moving through those landscapes, getting too caught, like just carried away early on, then you suffer for that and you can't. Maybe don't enjoy the second half as much. Whereas, yeah, we had to have the words left to describe the. What was the. There was a wadi after Petra that was like 30k long and like you were. Dan and I were running through there and we had this dog with us at the time that followed us from Petra. And you just looked up and it was like 100 meters plus of wall in this very. 2 or 3 meters wide. And I, like, we're both enjoying it because it's absolutely stunning. I'm looking at every possible ledge in case there's a flash flood. Dan. Dan. One of Dan's reasons he's brilliant is he does not care about outside factors. He just. He focuses on the running. He was totally unaware that if a flood came through and could have done at any minute, we'd have been in dire straits. But, yeah, I worry about other stuff like that. But then between us, we combined well as a team and yeah, it was just.

It.

Was it the Wadi Al Mir or something? It was just absolutely ridiculous. And some of the places as well were so far from the roads of the normal tourist track. It really did feel like we Kind of would earned the right to be there. It was weird when we got to the more touristy places. A bit like, oh, you've. You've come on a bus, have you? That's not fair. And it's almost like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. We run here, we run 400 miles. You don't get to enjoy it in the same way we do. And it was like a bit like, yeah, bit of a weird feeling to have that jealousy that someone had just got a bus there. But it meant different things to us, I think. And it was. And that for that reason. Same with Iceland. I crossed Iceland James Elon few years before that and it was just somewhat like. What do I call it? The fastest known jolly. There was no. No one at the time had run or registered a time for going across it. I'm sure some Icelandic chap just did it as a afternoon. He was taking sandwiches to his nan on the north of the island or something. But we did it quickly. But people have since gone much quicker. Even the Jordan one. Amy Sprosten's gone and went and broke our record. She just slept less. She kept moving, slept less. And I chatted to her beforehand. She's like, I'm gonna try and run under this time. I said, you'll beat our time if you do it properly. You'll beat our time. We were there, we did it. Not like we were slouching. We beat the time before us, but we didn't beat it by so much that we couldn't enjoy ourselves. And it's that kind of. There are different. Like Sedan did le jog in the UK. He ran it under 10 days and that was the. That's a proper FKT attempt. Most of mine have just been, where is there a record that I can just nip under while still enjoying the experience? And that's a little bit different. I do want to do some more stuff where you're really pushing the boat out. And I've done that on the bike and I've done it in 24 hours and stuff. I'm just not done it in the more fk. So I'm a bit of a fkt fraud because mine are selectively picked to not be too difficult. So they can still be enjoyable. And I think that's a loud rise, isn't it?

Absolutely. And which future ones do you want to go after?

I can't give you all of them. Charlie. Get them. And they'll make the times harder. Then I'll have to do it faster and I can't enjoy it as much. There's a few little places I do want to go to Lake Baikal and do that. Eventually you need a little team for that because 600k minus 30 even just like the fact that you're carrying the tent and all your supplies for that time. Doing it solo, it just really, really raises the risk, which is fine. But probably my level of experience, I probably need. I've done some stuff in Northern Norway, a fair bit of cold weather stuff, but not as much as some others. It'd be good to get someone who's sounds like I'm recruiting, but just put like the old adverts that Shackleton & Co. Would put in the newspaper. Like was it risk of no return and stuff like that. This isn't that kind of. There is obviously the dangerous. What's the thing? An adventure without risk is no adventure at all. You do want. Like I found myself reading books like Andy Kirkpatrick's Kind of Cold wars and these books where the mountaineer. I love the old mountaineering books. I've just read one about chaps. Two Italian, three Italian chaps that were in a prisoner war camp in Kenya during the war and they escaped solely to try and climb Mount Kenya and then they got back into the prisoner war camp. So it was an escape. It wasn't like, we're not trying to get away, we just want to go and climb that hill and that kind of the level of risk they faced. We as a generation. Now, if you want to be an adventurer with the air quotes these days, I mean, can you compare yourself to the likes of Shackleton and Scott Amundsen or Nansen, where they were like, they were. They were spending years away from people, their loved ones and their family without any chance. Like, how did you get back? Well, we built a rock shelter and ate the local seals. Then we built a kayak from the bodies of the seals and then we crossed this, the Great South Ocean and then we climbed across South Georgia and then. Yeah, that's how we rescued yourselves. What do we do? We just tweet, can someone help me out? I've broken my legs. It's a very different. Like we've got these, this stuff like this and spot device which I've got for the next bike race. It's got a little SOS button. I could press this in my living room and someone would bring a helicopter in. So like it's, it's a very different invention. Maybe I found myself wanting to try and get a little taste of that bike up we didn't get with Jordan with I. It's not, it's very hard to find that and it almost, it could be seen as irresponsible to find that level of risk in this day and age. So. And I'd love to do it as a mountaineer, but my ambitions as a mountaineer far outweigh my ability. I would just literally die at the first given opportunity, which isn't what I'm after. I'm not, I'm not going to Death wish. I don't want to go and like meet the end of my days in a crevasse because I've just not got a lot. I can deal with a bit of grass work and, and rescue and stuff but I'm not. My ambitions to push my limits far outweigh my ability in those mountains. Just so it's finding what like a, an area or capable within to push your limits and then doing so. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, it.

Does. And so how. I was just thinking through that journey through Jordan, how did you deal with the heat? You know whether you're going to get advice around dealing with the heat because clearly, okay, it wasn't 52 or whatever it was when I was there.

But it was still hot. Yeah. I would recommend not going with Daniel Alan Lawson again. Perception of effort. I'll keep going back to that but just in general, that man's like a lizard. He's cold blooded and when he hits a sand dune, the sand doesn't move, he just skits across the top of it. So I would recommend going with a larger runner so you feel better in terms of heat. I've done some stuff recently, some of my athletes doing races in hot places, you can acclimate in the build up and that might be the two to three weeks beforehand. The thing is with heat acclimations we lose it very quickly. So if you're starting to do it two or three weeks out an hour a day or build up to an hour a day, you can use a sauna, jacuzzi, running in big jumpers, just making sure that for at least an hour a day you're raising your core body temperature to a point where you're evoking a response from the body and then you keep that going and you don't have to do like massive, massive hours. You adapt, you start sweating more. So the main adaptation we have is increased sweat rate. So then you've got to learn how to deal with the other side of that is that you might change your demands for fluids and electrolytes. Even when we are adapted to the heat, it doesn't mean we aren't affected by it, we just cope with it slightly better. So it's adjusting your effort, playing to strengths. Sat like Jordan. If you knew you really struggle in heat, you might get up at 4 in the morning, run for 8 hours, rest during the hottest part of the day and then run towards the evening. You could try things like that. Technologically, we're much more, much better coping with the cold because we've got a lot of clothing and equipment we can use with the heat. I mean, just taking off clothing so there's only so much you can take off, especially in a, an Arabic country as well. Like we made an effort after the first day like that. Dan took his top off and you could see that it was. I was like, mate, I don't think we should be doing this because running through little villages and it's not really respectful. And so like we would keep our, we would keep ourselves covered, but wet clothing as much as we could. Again, the water was quite scarce. Using the shade is the weird one. When you are stopping, if you're stopping to refill or to look at the map, don't stop in the sun, stop in the shade. It seems like a silly little thing. I remember like learning that from my dog and we would just be stopping, looking at a map and dog would be like, why she carried on. Oh, she's in shade. That makes sense. We're just idiots standing here in the direct sunlight and there are different qualities of shade. If you're just getting like a, an umbrella, that's a low quality shade. It's a building. Yeah, you're going to get better quality of shade, but then you might get some heat from the building. So think about when you're stopping, little things like that. And yeah, just if you do overheat, knowing that you have to stop or really slow down to bring it back. And at that point you're, you can really. If you keep pushing, you can really. It's just, well, you're accumulating core body temperature essentially and you can put yourself in real.

Bother. And how does your nutrition and fueling and hydration strategies change from something like running through Iceland through to Jordan.

Massively. The core parts of it are you have to get. For me, it's about getting the carbohydrates in that you need for the level of effort you're going at. But you have to stuff like the more remote things you have to bring in what's available. It's no good having like, well, I need to eat 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour with 400 mils of fluid and 1500,000 milligrams of sodium per liter. When you just can't get access to that, you mean you'd start a day with like a 18 kilogram pack and you wouldn't move anywhere. It's finding that balance between what's available and the main thing to change is our efforts. If you can't, if there's less food available, less fluids available, you then have to change your efforts. You can work at a rate that's sustainable. So when it comes to, like, people talk about being. I can use the air quotes again on a podcast or Wally. But talk about being fat adapted. And we all right, now our body's not burning. Highlight smashing through carbs. For me, standing here doing a podcast, it's operating mostly from the stored body fats. Maybe after some shot movements, I'll start using a few more carbohydrates. If I start jogging on the spot, that percentage might go from 80% fats, 20% carbs up to like 40, 60, 50, 50. If I start, I went for a run, it might go to 60, 40, depending on how fast I was going to. So then you're one. By going faster, you're increasing the overall calorific demand and you're also changing where it's coming from. So we have our stored muscle glycogen and liver glycogen that we use, but once that's gone, it's a finite, much more finite store than our endogenous body fats. We can carry a lot more, carry days worth of fuel on our bellies, but actually in our muscles and our liver, where we store the glycogen, we can carry a lot less. You're talking like a couple of hours worth at most, depending on the effort level. So adapting to those situations, you burn more in the heat and you burn more than the extreme cold because you keep yourself warm or you cool yourself off, the fluid demands change. So just appreciating that. But they also change during the day. If it's cooler in the morning and you're drinking like it's 40, 40 degrees in the middle of the day, it's going to change what's happening as well. So, yeah, there's lots of. I could talk all day about nutrition. I don't know how much detail you want to go. There's two different. We had. The underlying thing is carbohydrates for both of those. And at the start of Jordan, I'll make sure Dan was on top of it. I was like, right, let's just keep him fueled. I was in the nav and stuff and fueling myself. Make sure Dan was getting enough in, trickling it in. His demands are less than mine. He's a lighter runner. He's very well. He can work at a reasonably high percentage of of his effort and still burn a high amount of fat. That's partly down to his own diet, his own kind of training and backgrounds. Very. And he's just his body shape, body size, things like that. And as the journey went on, I stopped managing Dan as much because I needed him to bonk every now and again so I could just get my own confidence out of the gutter. So I purposely, he knows this. I purposely kind of went, I'm not going to help you as much as food. Eat what you want, mate, and when you fall apart, I'll give you some gels. But also use the time to enjoy myself a little bit, not chasing him around the.

Desert. So that brings me on to a different question, which is, you see how, how important do you think it is to have that sort of. Those sort of different complementary skills when doing one of these events with somebody like.

Dan? What you mean, Dan's ability to just keep running and my ability to keep Dan running. Epitomise why we make a good team. I'm Dan's coach. I'm his friend first and foremost. And when we did Le Jog, Dan's just fantastic at focusing solely on the running. And there's a real. And I mean that as a compliment because he doesn't carry the stress of worrying about nutrition, worrying about navigation, worrying about where we're going to sleep tonight if the crew's okay, if this next car on the A9 is going to hit him. He doesn't carry any of that. And there is a big benefit to that. It makes performance easier. When he runs, he's just worrying about the running. He's just out there, he's enjoying it. He's doing what he loves and there is no extra stress. And he can cope on his own as he showed with the ultra goby, which was a 400k self supported event. God knows how he didn't get lost repeatedly. It was just like, I don't know. But when it comes to stuff like the jog, if Dan was worried about the other stuff, he wouldn't be as good a runner. So that's. And that's. I Think that is probably something I'm trying to take learning from, from watching Dan. Like, can I. In a way, I think I've seen it referred to as psychological drafting. Even when you've got paces in a race for a runner, the aerodynamic benefits of drafting is much less than that as a cyclist. Right. Basically doesn't matter. But the psychological benefit of someone setting a pace, setting the route, looking at the Bob Graham round and the Paddy Buckley, Charlie Ramsey, not only is it more efficient to have someone else pacing because they're thinking about that and it allows you to think about the things you need to. Like you're eating, you're drinking and just keep it moving. It takes a weight off your shoulders. If you're the kind of person who always worries about that you're going to carry that weight with you, round up every hill, across every kind of river and all this stuff. If you're worrying about everything else and you're against, you're racing with someone who's just solely in that moment and not worried about the external factors, they're at an advantage and it can. So I've been doing some old traditions, bike races and it's just, you know, you have to worry about that stuff because you're the only one dealing with it. So that's a strength. Right. So my weakness in maybe the 24 hour or the jog situation becomes a strength, in the self support situation becomes a strength. I hope as a coach, as a supporter for my athletes and my friends and these different things. So it's kind of finding that balance, isn't it? And learning. When Dan wants to do some self support stuff. I keep using Dan. I feel bad he's giving me an example here, but he probably won't listen to this as well. But if he does, hopefully you'll.

Share it with him and he will. But.

Anyway, to get Dan to do anything for a limit, like a set amount of time is different. We have built some group calls on 24th and he just moves. It's just like he'd be over here, he'll be up here and he'd be kind of backing around. He's a hard man to tie down but he, I think if we, yeah, we have to look at what the demands of the event we're training for and look at our own strengths and weaknesses in that regard, in regard to those demands. And sometimes you pick the races, you're going to suit them because actually if, you know, you worry too much about everything, we'll pick the races and the events where Worrying's worthwhile if you know you're good at organizing and, and thinking on your feet and reacting to different adversities. Then pick the races where that's going to be a strength rather than, I don't know, I'll still go back to 24 hours. But I think I could definitely learn from how Dan puts that kind of concern and a lot of that worry. And I've got to find people. I have Mick does my crewing and I trust Mick to make the right decisions. But do I think that I can make better decisions if I was in his? Probably. I think that because that's my ego is part of it. So I've got to be able to place that ego on the side and trust in the people doing the support. And it's same with any like any running race. Like even you have to trust in your coach. If you're too worried about if the training's right, then the question is, is the coaching right? Okay, is that the right situation relationship for you? Because you're worried about that you're not kind of, you're putting extra stress on your training and you're going to feel that in your recovery, in how you perform in your sessions and stuff like this. So it's, it comes into all walks of life. Even if you're like you're working with people, you don't trust them to do the job someone else has got. Is that an issue for them or is that an issue of yours? Because you're the one not trusting someone to do the job. You can send someone off to do a job and as a coach you've got to send your athletes out on race day and you think, oh, maybe I'm going to be there just for whatever they need to do. Right? And that's, yeah, that's great. But it also doesn't allow them to succeed on their own as much and doesn't create that kind of long term development. So it's kind of. Yeah, you've got to trust other people to make their own mistakes and to make the right decisions at times as well. And even if you think you know best, you probably don't every time. Maybe you do sometimes and you can be there if an athlete needs you or if. Yeah, but should you always be there? I got like one of my athletes is a cyclist and he's riding his bike right now. He's doing a two and a half thousand K race and he's had some problems with his Achilles and his knees and my phone's just here And I want to check he's all right. You can check his tracker, you can see where he's. Anytime he leaves our message or voice notes, but there's nothing I can really do about it. We can go back and forth, but he's got to be able to cope with it himself. And it's weird with the races that last multiple days because you do interact and talk back and forth with a marathon or an ultra, like generally as a coach, unless you're there on the field, you're not kind of gonna do anything you're not gonna interact with. Race is like four or five days. You can, like, you can impact how they're, how they're going and it actually, it's. Is it beneficial but is it also what they're after? Right. So one of the reasons I do the longer stuff is because I want to see what I'm capable of. I don't. And I'm not saying I'm like I'm some kind of gnarly adventurer that goes off and will spurn, recover. There's support things, I know they're there. So like I've called my mum in a race upset because I want to talk to my mum. I'm using that support network as much I want to go without it, but I'm still not traveling without my phone. I still have a little headpiece that lets me speak to people every now and again. And that's me kind of, that's the conditioning from my entire life that I want that support network and I'm not willing to go about it if I really want to discover a little bit more. Do I, do I do a big adventure without that? That would be reckless because then if I do break my ankle or drive off a ditch or something, or cycle off a ditch, then I haven't got that. And it may be, is it unfair on the people around you because they're not kind of be able to, I don't know, waffling now? I don't know what the question.

Was. So tell us, let's move on to the ultra cycling. What made you go from the running to cycling? I think it was injury related initially, wasn't it? How have you found that transition and what have you been doing since you started your ultra.

Cycling? So back in two years ago now, two summers ago, I was, I mean, everyone says this, but I was in the shape of my life. I was training to do the track 100 miler and I honestly, I felt stronger than I ever felt before. And I was, we had A training camp in Chamonix. Ping sank in my arse, my glute around the top of my right arse cheek. And we had a six hour day the next day with the group. So I went out and I was at the back of the group. I was in a lot of pain because people were paying us to be there. I wanted to be there with the group. I wanted to kind of get through it. And I spent the days getting through it. And then the week after I took some time off and jumped on the bike. And that was two years ago now. So then the injury didn't improve. I think in part it's just always quite embarrassing to me because I jumped on a really badly fitted bike. So what the injury I had then moved around because I developed a new injury from the back. I think the seat was really low. So the new injury was then being what I was chasing around. So when I went to the physio, I worked someone called Sarah Tunstall, who's been my physio for years. She's again friend as well. And she's like, where's the pain? I'm like, well, it's kind of here, kind of there. Probably made her job a lot more difficult by doing this really bad, like being on a badly fitted bike. And then like, well, this doesn't make any sense. It doesn't because it's two injuries and I'm saying it's one, probably two, maybe three injuries. Then we're chasing that around. And then I ended a bike race instead. Trans Pyrenees organized by Lost Dot, who organized the Transcontinental. And I went to it. That was about six weeks after the injury. It's 1500 kilometers across the Pyrenees and I DNF'd after about 45, 46 hours somewhere around Fontremo. I was cold, my light had stopped working, my navigation had stopped working. I was poorly dressed and I gave up. My wife had driven. She wasn't. We were new to this sports, probably wasn't supposed to, but she wanted to drive. She was near fortnimosis. I drove past her and we waved. And that was kind of like, okay, that's a little bit of a kind of. She didn't help anyway. I just. We just waved and said hello and then I knew she was nearby. So when I got cold and trouble hit, instead of dealing with myself, I called the wife and got in the van. And once you've accepted help like that, you're out of the race. There's no. It's a solo unsupported. Even just a phone call to meet her was probably at that point the writing was on the wall. So I entered another one about four weeks later. Two volcano sprint from Napoli to Sicily, from Vesuvia to Moneta, and that was 1100 kilometers ish, maybe a little bit less with 25,000 meters of up and down. And same things happened. Like my navigation track on my computer was broken from the start. I was cycling up to the start, 5k uphill to start. I didn't think that one through and it was not coming up. And I'd input it onto my computer twice and both times it was too big a fine, so it was too many waypoints. So I only had 100k section somewhere further down, like the Calabria mountains. So for the first day I went to the back of the field because I didn't know where I was going to check my phone at every junction. I went down the wrong side of a mountain, had to turn around, cycle back up. And after, in the early evening, I got into a sports shop and the guy and his son helped me. We spent three hours there trying to fix it. Eventually I deleted all the maps, which was unnecessary, it just made it harder. And then got a blue line on the screen, which was the correct route. So for the rest of that race, I followed this simple blue line. And because I'd already intended to cycle through the first night, but. So I went from 20th back to, I think, sixth by the next morning, because everyone else but bar the first, like two had stopped. No, everyone bar the first one had stopped for the night. And I caught up most of them and then cycled with another chap back and forth all the way down the country and over, like two or three days. It rained, it hailed, it was windy, it was hot as anything during the day. And we just gradually worked our way down the country and then got to Sicily over on the ferry. And it was Barry who I was with. Barry Scott, not the Silly Bang man, but he's a nice chap who owns a bike shop in London. And yeah, then we raced that last bit. I don't know if Barry knew we were racing, but I did. And we got to Etna. I remember cycling up etna at like 10 at night in a storm, and no one else there was absolute. I was wearing every item of clothing I had with me, so you can only use what you have at the start or what is commercially available on the way. So I could have bought an extra jacket, but I was wearing full waterproof trousers. Full waterproof, like three Layer jacket, a windproof kind of thick, Gore Tex windproof jacket. About three or four layers underneath that like a down jacket underneath with other layers, full windproof arm warmers and leg warmers, overshoes, a hat underneath my helmet and the hood up as well. I was wearing marigolds because it was raining with gloves underneath as well. Cycling up Mount Etna at 10 o' clock at night. And I was cycling so slowly that the front light on my dynamo was just turning off repeatedly because I wasn't going quick enough to power that, which doesn't require much. And I was drifting off at that point. I've been awake for about 22 hours, I think on the back of three or four days with two or three hours sleep a night. So I was extremely sleep deprived. And I got to the top and it was absolutely horrific. And I'm in a lot of pain. I was really chuffed. I was like, I've done it and it's 10 miles downhill. Which was. I had to stop a couple of times just to jump up and down on the spot just to, just to kind of recover the feeling my hands. I was on rim brakes and wherever side you fall on the rim, disc brake. Discussion. For descending Mount Etna in the pissing rain at 1 in the morning or 11 at night, I would definitely, I would edge towards disc brakes on that one. After like four days of just the pain of just kind of. Our hands were like this. I would just like little claws like the T Rex. And then, yeah, I got to finish there. And that was. I had the bug for it. I really, really enjoyed it. And I entered that race again the year after. But I also did a race across. The injury wasn't getting. But I was trying to run more. I DNF'd a 24 hour race after 48k later that EO tried to run back and the injury was still there. So I entered another bike race that following summer from Vienna to nice, which took five days, 2000k and 30,000 meters, which was fantastic. Just a whole, like to see the whole of Europe. Well, not the whole of a big swathe of Europe on your bike, cycling through the. Down the Furka Pass and at night and through Switzerland with their wonderful expensive vending machines. Just like fueling yourself and, and discovering that we went up Mont Ventoux and that was 40 over 40 degrees. That was. And I was, that was after four days through the Verdun Gorge up to like the, in the, in the Swiss Valley as well. We went up to one of the checkpoints was really kind of out and back on this tiny little road in the Swiss Valley. So yeah, it was just absolutely. It's just magical. It's just really great way to see something different. And yeah, it's a bit closer to. You're not far from anything but you're a bit closer to that kind of self reliance. You've got to sort stuff out yourself. You've got to be able to cope with adversity. It's.

Nice. You think if you could only do one ultra running or ultra cycling, which would it.

Be? Running. I've asked this, I get asked this question a few times. It's always going to be the running for me and it probably comes down to the fact that I'm better at it. I just. There's something. If I could pick one injury free and just do that for some life, it'd always be the running. That's my first love and I still have big ambitions within 24 hour running and longer. Yeah, I'd be sad to have to just pick two. Why would you do that, Charlie? Why would you just make some. But yeah, and I do think in an ideal world the ultra cycling will be and cycling in general will be part of my sport for the years to come. I really hope so. And I think you can combine it well. You've got the likes of Steph Davis and Beth Potter both running fantastic times on the shorter distances whilst whilst training on the bike a lot or cross training a lot. I mean Beth's 5k was really fantastic and she's training for triathlon. So you look at those, those kind of situations. Okay, maybe I can do both. It's maybe just picking the races that complement that and swapping your training around to be more specific at certain times. Different challenges. Yeah. Doing what you enjoy. Maybe that's the sacrifice I'll make on both fronts is I won't be as good as I could be because I'm making sure I can enjoy.

Stuff. But that's not a bad sacrifice to make, is.

It? Let's be honest, I think as well it might end up again. Use Beth as an example. She's run her best 5k time. Not off 5k training, he's run it off triathlon time. So maybe there is a line. Yeah. And you can learn a lot. So like in terms of 24, 40 hour racing on the running to learn about the sleep deprivation side and stuff in the side of running is really, really damaging because to do it you have to run for an entire night and your body is Just kippered. Whereas you can do it on the bike and you could just do an overnight and you just. You're solely dealing with sleep deprivation and you get that you can recover from that in a few days and the impact on the body so much less. So you can learn a lot more about sleep deprivation, how you conduct yourself in that situation, because you can practice it more because it's not as destructive as running through a night. You can only do so often because it smashes the life out of you and sleep deprives.

You. One of the things that gets talked about quite a lot with ultra running is.

Hallucinating. Do.

You. I think I heard you say that you hallucinated on the bike, but not on the run. On the running so.

Much. So, like on the run. I'd never. I mean, hallucination is a strong word, right? For me, hallucinating is like imagining clowns surrounding you whilst you're tripping on acid or.

Something. Not that I think the funniest I've heard anybody talk about was hallucinating about seeing Cliff Richard appearing at different stages of the.

Run. See, that to me, seems like a really. Maybe too vivid a thing to really. So again, I think it's a trick of the eye and the mind when you're sleep deprived and normally around, like, dusk or dawn. So one time in Spartathlon, I remember seeing running coming through the door and I was looking for my crew and I saw a field and I was like, oh, look at that. It's like meerkats in that field. And then I got closer. I. Don't be stupid. It's not meerkats, just deer. And then I got closer and it was just big things of corn and just waving in the wind. And that was. I guess that was more a trick. I wouldn't have said that was hallucination. And then getting to the. So one of the really weird things with the sleep deprivation in the biking. So I have. See, I remember cycling through, like, the third or the fourth night was really sleep deprived and getting to a town and thinking, this is really impressive. They've sculpted all the rocks on the side of the road for faces. That's like. And that's why I never heard of this town. That's brilliant. And it took me got, like quite a lot of time to realize that wasn't the case. They were just. I was seeing faces in the rocks and same in the woods. You kind of look in the woods and the stuff that you're looking at, you're thinking oh, that's. That's a face. Or that's a. I don't know. Is that hallucination? It wasn't there, but it wasn't like a creation of my imagination. It was just that the eyes weren't properly seeing it. And then the one that I really quite like. It's really weird is the deja vu. So apparently it goes with. So your brain gets so muddled up that it stores what it sees. It doesn't use the short term memory as much, it stores it straight into the long term memory. So you look at something and you're like, oh, been here before. Because it's straight into your long term memory and not in the short term memory. I don't know if this is correct. I'm not a neuroscientist. This is what I've read up on it and it makes sense. So then you. So I was cycling down a valley. Been like, I've been here before. And it was really vivid recollections of having been there before. I've cycled down here with Rye, and I was thinking, I've never cycled with Rye. How does that work? That's weird. And then so like, you're going, like, along these kind of roads and you're climbing up a climb. Oh, no, I've been up since. But it was almost as soon as you got on a bend, you're like, oh, yeah, I knew that was gonna be there. Oh, yeah, I knew that was gonna be there. You never foretold what was gonna be ahead of you. I never knew what was around the bend. But as soon as I got around the bend, I knew that I'd seen it before, but I couldn't tell you it was gonna be around the bend in the first place. So that's. And I've had that a couple of times at Deja Vu. And that's quite fun. And it's a bit weird because you just can't. If I've been to this town before. Yeah, of course I have. Oh, look. Yeah, that fountain. I saw that fountain before. That shot. I saw that shot before. But you've never seen the shot before in your life. I've had that a few times with sleep deprivation. And I've had the rock faces changing a couple of times as well. And little bits like that where you kind of. You're not sure of what's going on. But I'd struggle to call it. I guess it's. That's hallucination, but not in the. In the Cliff Richard kind of Style. I mean, cliffs. Yeah. I mean, imagine how creeped out you'd be. And that means music's fine. Right. But if he was just around every bed, you'd start really getting.

Scared. Yeah, I think. I think that was from. I can't actually remember whether it was her or one of the people that she'd work with, But I interviewed Dr. Charlotte Edelston, who is a really keen ultra runner, but also a sleep scientist based in Chamonix, and she.

Was. You've met her at a Checkpoint at like 3 in the morning. Oh, brilliant. Doing a sleep study. And I was just there take like, just, just. I was probably doing my own kind of slit. Just looking at people who were completely.

Kippered.

Yes. You've got. They were all filling in information on an iPad at different stages of the race and. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm sure. I'm sure it was her that told me about it and I don't. I. But I don't think it was her hallucination. I think it was somebody else's. So, coming onto books. I know you're a big reader, you've mentioned books quite a lot already. You've got your own book coming out, haven't you? Tell me about.

That. It's called 1001 Running Tips and it's just full of different. It covers everything from beginning running to ultra running to multi days to your own fkts. We just tried to. It's being published with Vertebrate Publishing in the autumn and. Yeah, we're just trying to. I wanted. What's the kind of tagline I had in my head? Good advice. Doesn't need to be boring. There's plenty of, like, textbooks out there that kind of. You could sit down and you can. No, I'm going to pick up this one. Just this one here. There you go. It's Winning Running by Peter Koh. I mean, it's a good book. Right. You pick up little bits, but maybe not every runner is going to want to read a 1980s, but this is actually. So it's based around the concept of 1001 climbing tips, which is Andy Kirkpatrick. It's just loads of different. He goes through, like, mountain navigation, ice climbing, loads of different tips and stuff. And it's. Yeah. So it's the same publisher and we're doing a running one and there's a cycling one coming out. Someone else is doing that. I don't know. I haven't got a thousand one cycling tips yet. Yeah, it's kind of. I just wanted to write it. So it was kind of an accessible, easy to read advice and you could pick it up, read a few tips, really enjoy it and you can read it the whole way through. There is a thread as such, but it is. You could also read one section at a time, one page at a time. And it's kind of book you can read on the toilet and then put it down again and then go about your day and get meaningful advice.

From. This might be a predictable question and I also dare say you're going to get asked it more and more as the book comes out. But if you can only pick one of those tips to share with us now, which is there a tip in there that you think oh, that was a moment of genius or that one's a total.

Curveball. Probably something along the lines of we're all very individual so none of these tips may apply to you. Go out and go running and see what works. Something like that. Or just run your easy runs easy. Those are the two that probably would benefit most people. It's hopefully written in a way that people can take what they need from it rather than be told what they need to do. There are obviously certain things that are right or wrong things to do, but a lot of it is very individual. So hopefully people can. Different people can pick up the book and be from all kinds of different experiences and backgrounds and different goals and they can still take something from it. That's what my goal is. And especially the individual bit. I think there's tips in there for like the certain section of the female running sections. This says that this book's written by a man. This research is all done by a man. Like this is not. You've got to take that into account when you read any research as a female athlete because the chances of it being designed for you is lower. And unfortunately I'm also a male and I'm trying to write it from a ungendered Is that even a thing but like a considered position? I suppose I'll be careful what I say though. Obviously yeah, people are non binary but I tried to write it from a considered position but I'm still like I'm still not going to consider half the things. And I had help from my wife who's a very experienced running coach. Friends and athletes that I coach, I asked them for their advice on areas where people have more experience than I and hopefully that comes across. But yeah, we're all very individual. So advice I give to. Any advice I give normally starts with a question. So if you ask me Advice about your nutrition, your pacing, your racing. I'm going to ask you questions back and a book can't do that so you have to try and implement that into the. Into the.

Pages. Brilliant. What other book you've mentioned a few other books but are there any particular books that stand out to you that you find yourself recommending or going back to time and again, whether they're running books, cycling books, whatever they.

Are. There's one my wife gave me when we not long after we started going out with Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It's pretty good book. It's about a seagull. Have you read.

It? I haven't read it. I've heard of it but I've not read.

It. It's like written by an American fighter pilot I think back in the 70s and about the seagull that's kind of different from everyone else. And then he kind of has to follow his seagull dreams and he can do what normal seagulls do and chase the fishing trawler around and fight each other with food or he can do his own thing. And the message, I've sent it to friends and athletes and stuff like that. A message for me is that follow your dreams and do what is right for you but also once you get there, help other people do the same. Yeah, that's quite a nice easy read. But my favorite books and generally it just depends on the mood as well. The more intense uni stuff is like the more I'm going to read just like trashy fiction, crime novels and stuff like that. What's the one I read Mark Billingham's novels I've been reading recently. Then they're great but they're great for switching off and then like when you get to mountaineering it's stranger than fiction. The non fiction there is because it in a mountaineering book someone can die like that. They can be having a great day and a rock falls down and kills someone. And if you wrote that in a fiction book it would be considered too abrupt. Whereas the non fiction, the mountaineering is just so. It's just. Yeah, it's. You can get thrown instantly and you get likes of Walter Bernatti's books or Gaston Rebuffed a Starlight and can't remember the name of it. But you get in the mountaineering you get the board Matasca Awards for literature and the books written by Pete Baldwin and Joe Tasker back in the 70s and 80s. Joe Tasker's Savage arena. Just every time I read it I just want to Put it down and walk out the door in the direction of the Himalaya. And that's because that's what Joe. It just felt like that's what he was doing. He'd come back from expeditions being like never again go back to do some part time work to start saving for the next one. And he was just straight away trying to leave to go back to that place. And he even Pete eventually died on Everest. And they went up, it was the north ridge but they were trying to get up there and don't quote me on that ridge, just. That sounds right in my head. And they just never came back. On one of Chris Bonnington's expeditions and they'd done some amazing things but they wrote so brilliantly and it's just, it just makes. Yeah, it just evokes that kind of feeling of adventure. So there's loads of, there's loads of books like that that just. Yeah. If you want to. Again depends on the person for a book recommendation. But this, the mountaineering and the polar expeditions, you've got the Worst Journey in the World by Cherry Apsley Garrard or Apsley Cherry Garrard. It's a big old tome that it's massive. And he was part of Captain Scott's expedition and he didn't go on the final like the fatal kind of push for the pole, but him, Dr. Wilson who did a birdie Bowers who was also on that final trip, they did the first winter journey in Antarctica, right. And this is what they call the worst. At the time they were trying to, they were trying to prove that the missing link between birds and humans was the emperor penguin, right. This is a theory back in the turd at the start of the 19th century. And to do that they needed an embryo, right? And they needed like an egg to kind of test this theory of theirs. But they. You could only get it by going to a certain point. I think it's like, I don't know what. It's the Cape of something. They probably not the Cape of no Hope, but something like perilously named like that. And they had to go there in winter. It's like pitch black. And the three of them and they had hurricanes and their tent blew away and all this kind of stuff. And what's brilliant about it is that the humor is still there. It's that kind of underlying humor that when you read kind of older books on expeditions they're either very military, John Hunt's books about the Everest expeditions, all these kind of things, or they're like Shipton And Tillman kind of understated British humor about oh yeah, we had a terrible time crossing that river. Someone nearly come a cropper and you like, you look into the details and someone was swept down a river by for 100 meters and nearly died. And it's just that humor and it comes through in that, oh yeah. And the tent blew away and we really thought, oh boy, oh jolly, that's going to be a cold night's sleep. And it was minus 40. And you're like, oh yeah. I guess it just reminds me that to be in those environments and to kind of keep pushing in some of those situations, you've got to be able to smile. You've got to better kind of have that. That sense of humor and that kind of attitude is the same for the kind of person who responds to an ad in the 1907 times asking for people to do a journey with potential without returning those people. Maybe if I was around in that time that would have been something I would have responded to. I don't know, maybe there's a kindred spirit back in those days. So yeah, that's stuff like that. There's so many really good mountaineering and kind of polar exploration books if you want to really learn about.

Endurance. Fantastic. Well, yeah. And nobody has. I've asked that question to pretty much everyone of 50 plus interviews so far. Nobody's gone down, you know, the sort of route that you've done in terms of mountaineering books. So that's, that's really interesting and certainly I'm gonna add a few to my.

Reading. I'll send you some answers, mate. I'm an armchair mountaineer. I'm terrible in the actual mountains. I've done some stuff basically on a lead with the wife. She's. She's climbed the Matterhorn and does really cool stuff. We went up the Mont Blanc to tackle which is 4000 meters but just kind of not. It's like well, part of the Mont Blanc massif. I was just like a dog on Elite. I was super excited and I did well at altitude. She's like got me kind of on like we're roped up because of the crevasses. She's just slow down, I can't. And we get to like an icy like a crevasse with. To get across and I'm just like so.

Scared. You've mentioned your wife a few times and her sort of running ability and I think she comes from a fell running background. I think from. I remember you saying in another podcast, have you learned anything from her? From her, from that fell running.

Background? No, not at all. She's come back for a run. She let me know. No, yeah, definitely. It's really what's fascinating about watching Massey run, especially downhill is. And this ties into. She's finished the Tour de Gents, which is a 330 kilometer race in the Oster Valley. It like there are many races that claim to be the toughest running race in the world and it's the ones that don't claim to be that are probably more likely to be and that they don't claim to be the toughest race in the world. But with the elevation, the altitude, the kind of technical level of it, it's a very, very difficult race. And before that, Natalie, she'd done. She fell around from the age of like 8 or 9. She ran for Great Britain in the mountains and then she came into ultra running through association with a bad influence such as myself. And she's done at that point like a 60k was her longest around the Eiger and we just been getting her to try out some of the longer stuff and we'd been to support friends at the Tour de Gents. And at the end I said, one of us will do it next year. And she let me toss the coin. Rookie error. I was like, oh look, it's you. And I thoroughly believed that she could make that step up in distance. And it wasn't because she's done particularly long stuff in the past because of her efficiency downhill from watching the Tour de Jong's. The main thing that unstuck people was the damage to their legs, right? And when watching that move downhill, it's me and her can run at the same pace downhill, but I'm always working hard for it as a percentage of my own kind of top level, I'm always working hard on her. She's extremely efficient and what that means is that the longer the race, the better she's going to be because she's not smashed to pieces by the downhills. And I think I look at the likes of Kylian Jornet, who's the top mountain runner, people ask what's his secret? And I think the downhill, his efficiency in the downhill is a massive thing because it allows him to train more because he's not getting as much damage in that it allows him to recover on the downhill while others are working to stay with him. And it's the same for Nats when you watch her run downhill, it's people you hear fail. Runners say, people say you've got to Switch your brain off to run downhill. And for me, it's the opposite. It comes into the. I don't know if you got the Malcolm Gladwell book with a 10,000 hours of practice. And the original research around that was Professor Anders Ericsson. And it was less about the number of hours, obviously, that sells more books and more about the type of practice you do, the purposeful practice. So it's the reason that taxi drivers don't beat Lewis Hamilton around the Formula One track. They've got 10,000 hours, but he's driving a taxi around London. And it's not purposeful practice. I mean, I'm sure there are some very good drivers that drive taxis and I'm sure Lewis Hamilton would be a woeful taxi driver. So it's just horses for courses. But then you see, when you look at developing your downhill running, it's about the purposeful practice. And with fell runners, every time they run downhill, you can run down the same fell 10 different times, and it's different every single time because of the terrain, because of the lack of trail. So you're never switching off as a road runner. You could run down 100 road hills and it's the same every time. And you're not particularly learning by going down that hill. Whereas a fell runner has to learn on every descent, whether they know that's happening or not, whether they think they're switching off, they're making loads of really quick decisions. The more experienced they are, you get the chunking of information. So the unexperienced runner is seeing one rock and they're going to run round it, and then they see the next rock. And as you get better, you start putting together like two or three rocks, and you look at the situation in front of you and you process it as a series of movements. And that's on a subconscious level, you're kind of progressing downhill a bit quicker. And you take the likes of Natalie and you take the more experienced fell runners. The mountain runs that we did it for years, they look at 10 meters of hillside and they're processing all of that in one go so they can work for it efficiently. The rest of us, us mere mortals, are slamming on the brakes too fast, and then we have to then deal with what's ahead of us. So I always say to people, you want to develop your downhill running, just slow down a little bit to allow your brain to learn those processes, to start kind of to. To crawl before you can walk. Because if you miss out that developmental stage by going too fast, your Brain's always playing catch up, but it's. Yes, sometimes it might learn a lot, but if you're. If you're not actually given the chance to kind of look at a series of rocks ahead of you and process your way down, and then you then just go a tiny bit outside that comfort zone and you'll go a bit faster. Rather than switching the brain off, engage it more and allow it to learn and purposefully practice. Every time you run down a hill, every time you cycle downhill. If you're into the more like alpine cycling. My downhill is a weakness in cycling, so every time I'm going around a bend, we have lots of switchbacks here. I'm thinking about the pace I go into the bend, the line I take. Can I get through the apex? How far out do I go on the other side? Do I need to lean more? Can I get my. Do I put the weight on the inside and the foot push pressure on the outside and all these little bits that I'm trying to pick up from, mainly from YouTube or from watching other cyclists to try and implement my own. And that means slowing down a bit because if I go too fast, I might go around that bend quicker. But I'm not learning, I'm just screaming inside, sometimes audibly. And that's not a good learning experience. And if you're training, that's what you want to do. You want to learn. If you're racing. Yeah. Push the boat, don't learn as much. So that's why from Nats. That's one of the many things I've learned from watching Nats run, is that she's just so super efficient. She doesn't go fast. She'll get down to the hill. She does go fast, but she's. She's not working hard. That's the difference. We descend, we want to go fast but easy rather than hard and fast. Because the cost of that, when you get to the next climb, it's massive. So you might not lose the. You might gain time in every descent, but you will accumulate more loss on the climbs to come because you've worked too hard down that hill with the likes of athlete has cruised down it at the same speed and then got the next climb and gone. Oh, sorry, were you trying? I just slid down that hill and now I'm going to try on the uphill and put 10 minutes in.

You. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. And just to wind things up, last question. What are you most looking forward to in the year or two.

Ahead? What am I most looking forward to? More running. I'm doing a bit more running at the moment. So I've been working with a local physio here, Elenia, and she. And actually a chap who's been an interesting person for your podcast, Paul Tierney, who's done some big multi day stuff in the Tour de Jong's around my feet and we really hopefully. And it's like a balance proprioception and trying to work on that and it feels like we're making progress around my running. So honestly what I'm looking forward to is more running but combined more running, more adventures running. I want to run some stuff that really goes into those depths of sleep deprivation and pushing the limits like I've been doing on the. It feels like I've been doing on the bike. So hopefully yes, more running, more sleep deprivation, more misery and more learning. More learning, more adventure. Kind of learning what you're made of. Right, that's the fun part. Right. What about you? What are you looking forward.

To? Charlie, that's a great question. You're the first person that's asked that back at the moment. I'm looking forward to finally doing Ironman Tallinn in about three weeks. Well, by the time this podcast comes out, in theory I might have actually done it, but I was supposed to do it last year. So this is sort of two years in the making. And it's felt pretty uncertain for the last sort of 12 months too. But it now looks like it should happen as long as something crazy doesn't happen with COVID in between now and then. So I am definitely looking forward to that. And then I'm looking forward to my first ultra, which again I was supposed to do last January, which is the arc 50 around the Cornish.

Coastline. Yeah, I know that Dan Lawson's done that one as well. A few and a few others have done it. Yeah, it's good.

Excellent. Well, I love Cornwall. I mean Cornwall as we. As we speak. And I just love the. It's going to be a tough one for me to do first up, but. Well, I did my. I did my staying local ultra last January when I wasn't able to do the.

Ark. Much more enjoyable than September. Than January as well. The.

Ark. Well, yeah, it won't be in September. No, it's in January. It's going to be in this January. It's just that, yeah, I did this, the staying local one from home which went well, but I'm desperately looking forward to doing on the Cornish coastline rather than around.

Rutland.

Yeah. So great question. Thank you. Anyway, Robbie, it's been an absolute pleasure. I really hope that the injury continues to get better and better and you can get that running back. It's been fascinating listening to you and, yeah, so much brilliant advice in there, so thanks so much. You can find out more about Robbie@robbiebritton.co.uk and or@fastrunning.com and he is pretty active on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, but I'll put all the links in the show notes. So, Ruth, what did you make of that interview with Robbie.

Britton? Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I thought he was just fascinating and he's clearly just so energetic and enthusiastic. I could. I could actually just listen to him talk for ages. I was listening to him running this morning and I think he just brings, like, he's clearly, you know, just a normal guy that's kind of got into this world of endurance running and cycling. And I also. The thing that I liked about it was some of the stuff he talks about, I was like, that's really relatable to kind of what I do. But then some of what he's talking about, I was like, no, you're completely off on, like a massive spectrum and I've got no idea what you're on about. So I quite enjoyed that mix of. It's kind of very relatable in some ways, but also just doing these hugely extreme, to me, challenges that he.

Does. I mean, you've already said in the intro that you're not for sort of short, quick triathlons, you're much more on the endurance side. Did it make you think about saying, well, you know, should I go and do something even longer than you're doing with Iron man.

Stuff? Definitely not yet. I think maybe one day. But I think that was actually one of the things I liked the most about what he was talking about when he goes after some of the records that he tries to selectively pick the ones that he knows he can break just by a little bit, but still enjoy the experience. Because I think for me, if you're doing some of those longer challenges, you want to be able to soak it in. You want to be able to enjoy the experience. If you're in some of these amazing places, like some of the places talked about being, you want to be able to look around and enjoy that scenery. So I think I would have to do similar because I'm too competitive to want to just go and randomly do stuff over loads of days. I'd probably have to try and pick some things that I thought I could try and get A record or that, you know, it's a race and I could be competitive. Um, but I, that I really liked his approach of the kind of, yeah, do it. So you break it just by a little bit, but you can still take that time to enjoy the.

Experience. Yeah, I agree. And I also, I, I thought it was really interesting when he started talking about the impact his wife's fell running has made on his running and running downhill and kind of. I thought that, I thought that was really interesting. I know with things like the Helvellyn Triathlon, you're essentially into fell running territory there. Have any of those kind of spiked your. Have you done Hell.

Valen? I did it last.

Year. You did, did.

You? So how. How was it? And will you do another, Will you do more of.

It? I mean, I have zero fell running skills so I lost a lot of time. Um, and the way they did it for us again, that was a PTO supported race and it was kind of cat and mouse. So the women started and the men started half an hour behind us, so they were chasing us. Um, so basically my experience of running downhill was of having all these men come absolutely flying past me and I was just looking at them like, how are you going that fast? Whereas I'm there kind of trying not to break my ankles and being very worried about where I'm landing and et cetera. So. But I've loved it, I thought generally as an event, absolutely loved it. Again, you get to see some of these great places. So definitely some of those more extreme, I say extreme, kind of slightly different triathlons do appeal to me. I was actually meant to be doing Patagon Man a couple of years ago, but changed my plans when I took my pro license to go and do Australia instead. But yeah, some of those really do appeal to me from a. Generally just from being in a really amazing part of the world and exploring. So that's one of the things I generally like about triathlon. But I do quite like the idea of you're not going off to any kind of time, you're just doing something slightly different and you're battling the elements or you're trying to get up some mountain. So yeah, again, one day I will tackle more of them and, and look at what's out there to, to kind of do.

Well. I mean having. I'm really keen to get in to try these extreme triathlons because I'm never, you know, you've got a career to make out of it. I'm never making anything, you know, if I. If I get a podium ever, then I'll be happy. So the extreme triathlons. And you know, for me, I actually fly tomorrow to Tallinn for the Ironman. And so going and seeing different parts of the world as part of the triathlon experience is definitely a big part for me. And yes, so doing things like Patagon Man, Swissman, Norseman, you know, having interviewed Alan Hovda and Flora and for college, they've just kind of inspired me to do more of those things. And I think, you know, Robbie again, you know, running things like through Jordan, just. It just sounds like an amazing adventure, doesn't it? So, yeah, I suppose one thing actually, I hadn't made the link till just now, but both you and Robbie are precision hydration athletes, aren't you? So have you done any. I'm guessing that you've done all the sweat testing and all that sort of stuff with them. How is, how has the work you've done with, with precision hydration impacted your. Your approach to.

Kona? So actually I've been with precision hydration for ages. They were like the first people that came on board when I was an age grouper, before I'd even gotten to Team Free Speed. So I've been with them for like a good five years, I think. So I kind of feel like in some ways it didn't really impact Kona because I was already working with them. So I kind of already had like done the sweat testing. I knew what I needed to be taking hydration wise. And I just worked that into my Kona plan. Um, and I think because I had a pretty good first Kona, I then I did talk to them a bit more before the second Kona. Cause I was doing sort of heat chamber stuff. So I was obviously trying to make sure from a kind of scientific approach, I was doing everything that I needed to do. But I think I'm quite lucky in that I'm. I'm a sort of medium sweater, so I don't have some of the issues that some people have of being like a very heavy or very salty sweater. But I have spoken to them quite a lot about, you know, is there other stuff I should be thinking about? I think in particular, one of the things I've talked to them about quite a lot is because I generally use the Morton drinks to fuel from is the kind of how does it impact if I'm mixing my precision hydration with that kind of, you know, does that still work? Because there's like, from both sides, like Morton generally say, don't mix. There's, you know, there should be a certain sodium level of the water that you use, etc. But yeah, I think for most people I've spoken to that seem to fall apart at Kona, it's usually something hydration related or it's because they've not done very good heat prep. So I think for me, I was just lucky that I've been on board with them since the beginning. So it kind of was kind of wired into what I was doing.

Anyway.

Fantastic. Well, it's obviously helped you because your performance has been brilliant. So. And for those of you that I forgot on there is a discount code for, for precision hydration, which is Tribathlon 15. So feel free to use that. But yeah, so let's wind this up. But thank you so much for joining me as guest co host Ruth. It's been absolutely brilliant to catch up with you again. And yeah, good luck with all the, all the racing going forward. I'll be keeping an eye out for you in Kona. And yeah, keep on, keep on racing really.

Well. Great, thanks very much. Been a pleasure being.

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