(upbeat music) - Hello folks, welcome back. And if you're a new listener, big welcome to the show. My name's Simon Ward and you are listening to the high performance human triathlon podcast. Now this week's podcast guest is triathlete racing driver, entrepreneur, and explorer Chris Brown. And I'll tell you a little bit more about him in a moment. Now I would describe Chris as high performance human. And he gets an awful lot out of his training and his life. But race results and fitness are only a part of that. What I'm referring to is your whole life performance. Could be sleep, nutrition, exercise, relationships, mental health. One of those are all of them. And you don't have to be a high level athlete to excel at any or all of these. Now we appreciate that you might feel like there's still room for improvement in your life. And so if that's the case, then we'd love to help you. I've currently got availability to take on a couple of folks and Beth, my wife, who's a certified life coach also has some availability. So depending on what you're looking to focus on, I think we've got you covered. And you can find contact details in the show notes. Right at this week's guest, as I mentioned earlier, Chris Brown is a man who wears many hats. He's a triathlete, he's a motor racing driver, he's an entrepreneur, he is in the Guinness World Record book with his own record, and he's an explorer. I've known Chris for about 20 years. We first met through our local triathlon club, Leeds Bradford, and Chris and his son Mika, so I'm in my session every single Wednesday. Now for as long as I've known Chris, he's always pushed the boundaries. And business, with his fitness, and the challenges he takes on. We talk about his passion for exploring and trying out new things. His trips to the centre of Africa and Antarctica, the middle of the Pacific, and even the middle of Yorkshire, searching for polls of inaccessibility and points of accessibility. He describes his involvement with the ill-fated Titan, submarine project, and also his successful attempt to get his name into the Guinness Book of World Records. You'll agree? I'm sure that Chris is a man who gets a lot done, and I really enjoyed finding out what makes him tick. In fact, there was a lot that I didn't manage to ask him, so maybe I'll have to persuade him back for another chat. But in the meantime, let's crack on and hear what he has to say today. - Chris, welcome to the show. He's taken us a while to get this together. - He has about five years. - Well, that's good, really. - I've managed to avoid your till this time, and you just cornered me. - Well, and unlike what one of your sons said about me scraping the barrel for guests, it's a pleasure to be here, so thank you. So, let's kick off then. If I go to your Instagram page, it says, "Chris Brown explores, and you tell people "that you are a modern-day adventurer, "and you are an explorer, and you're a car enthusiast." So, let's chat about... - I'll put the Chris Brown explores, because apparently there's another Chris Brown who's kind of got domains and stuff like that. - Right. - I don't know who he is. - Oh, that chap in America, is that one, yeah. - Yeah. - Okay. - The pretender. - Yeah. So, let's talk about the exploring there now. I know we've chatted a little bit about this separately. You have got this mission at the moment to visit all of the poles of inaccessibility in the world, and the most recent one you went to was the most inaccessible point in the oceans, wasn't it? So, somewhere out in the Pacific? - So, a pole of inaccessibility is the... It's a geographic point that's furthest from the ocean in any direction. It was all started in sort of the Arctic, where they took the point where ships could get closest to the North Pole and drew a 50-mile radius around that, in where the circles didn't intersect was known as an area of relative inaccessibility. And then you take the point in the middle of that, and that's the pole of inaccessibility. There is one on each continent, and one in the sea. So, point Nemo, which you just referenced, is the pole of inaccessibility, the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, which is the point furthest to land in an direction. And I've taken it on myself to be the first person to visit all eight poles of inaccessibility. - So, let's come back to Nemo in a moment. How many of you reached so far? - I've managed to do six. - Okay. - I'm in a race against other explorers, but I got a bit of a lead. The closest anybody else is on is three. - Right. - And which ones are left there? - For me, Eurasia. For Europe and Asia are obviously one landmass. Eurasia is in northwest China. So, getting permissions together is quite difficult. Traditionally, the Chinese and the British have had history, and the Chinese have not let go of that. So, it's more difficult for Brits to get permission to go there. And as Sun Slaw dictates, it's in one of these sensitive areas where the West is on, China's back all about it, and the point's right in the middle of all that. And one of the two possibilities for the Eurasian point, and of course, one of them's technically in disputed area as well, with Kyrgyz time. So, it just makes it all a bit difficult to get in there for permissions. And the other one is the northern pole of inaccessibleity, which nobody's ever been to. Nobody's been china on me, actually. But currently Russia claims the airspace over that. So, getting there is going to be a bit difficult as well. - Right. Okay. So, at least you know that nobody else is going to be able to technically get there before you. - Well, they could. It's going to be very difficult. I mean, we can talk about the African one and the Antarctic one, nobody's going to be doing those any time soon. Right. Well, tell me about why that's the case, then. The African one is in a country called Central African Republic. It's on the border with Congo, DRC, and South Sudan. It's a very fighty area. You've got the Bagling Group, which we are all familiar with now from Ukraine. You've got ISIS, operational air. You've got anti-government guerrillas. You've got bandits. You've got soldiers from other countries just passing through. There's an evil bunch called the Lord's Baptist Group, which just go around the villages killing the men, raping the women, taking child soldiers. So, it's one of those sort of areas. And you've got empops now, as well, to worry about. And what's the Evela? There's life in that area. Tetsy flies. The whole culture back before you, yeah. Get onto the environmental dangers. It's even more. You're in Triple Canopy. It's just not a nice place. It's the very center of Africa. It's just what you might imagine. It really is. So, I ended up needing to get... I asked some SAS friends if they could help me get there, 'cause I realized I was going to need some security. And they thought about it over the weekend, and it told me no, they couldn't do it. Kind of go, oh, they said you need somebody with a bit more local knowledge. So, I got in contact with some South African nurses, I should tell you. And even they said, no, we can't do that. And at this point, maybe I'm bitten off more than I can chew. South African mercenaries think it's a bit too late. So, I subscribed to this sort of insurance group called Global Rescue, and in theory, if you're taking hostage, you come a cropper. You call them, you get like an SOS button, and they will come and get you. Negotiate for your release, rescue you from the mountain, wherever you are, they'll come and get you. So, I thought, well, let's imagine I'm now at the pole of an accessibility in Africa, and I broke my leg. They must have a way to come and get me. QED, they must have a way to get there. So, I called them up, and I sent a message to them, said, look, can you help me get to this point? And I said in Africa in the public, near a town called Obo, and I got a message straight back, like, who are you? Just said, oh, my name's Chris Brown, I'm trying to get there. So, where do you wanna get? So, I sent him the coordinates, and he said, I just got, give me a call, which I thought was a bit odd. So, I called this guy off, and he could tell that he was suspicious about who I was, and then what had happened is, I'd just, by sheer look, managed to call and message on the day that a guy who'd worked there for the United Nations, trying to track down this Baptist street, he'd worked in Obo, and he thought I was one of his mates trying to wind him up. Oh, okay, all right. So, he's ex-special forces. He came with another American's ex-special forces. They had a contact in Obo, because he worked there, which was the sort of mayor, it's, I mean, mayor, it's just a few mud hurts, really. And we needed a contact in the government. He got us a contact in the government, 'cause all aircraft in Central African Republic have to go through the capital, Bangie, which is quite a long way from Obo, and we wanted to bring a helicopter in from Uganda, to a needed contact in the government, and it turned out to be actually a friend of the president, and he said, yeah, we can do all this if I took him to Obo with us, so that he could do some lecture engineering. And it turns out he's responsible for inward investment in Central African Republic, and of course he didn't want any foreigners to come to harm on his watch, so he lent me 10 soldiers as well. So, ended up with two American's special forces and 10 car soldiers, so, how was that? He was still pretty dangerous, 'cause all these people operated now. We had four possible landing places for Heli, and even I didn't know where we were going to land on the day one of the guys picked it, the helicopter guy didn't know, so that nobody could set up a trap for us when we got there, and we exited by a different point, so we didn't retrace our steps, so nobody could ambush us in that one. - So, once she'd landed then, how much trekking and fighting away through the triple canopy and everything did you have to do? - Well, it was quite difficult. It was round about three kilometers, I think, something like that. It was difficult, we didn't use machete's, because that would have caused noise. We were trying to stay silent, so it was a lot of dipping and crawling and all this sort of stuff. And we also had, you know, we wanted to keep moving because of the possible dangers. The helicopter was hovering above us just above small arms fire, as a sort of deterrent, and we also had curfew, we had to get back to Bangy by us by dark. - So, we were moving to that, so everybody was really quite tired by the end, and doing the other thing. - And of course, when you get there, there isn't a flag that says you've arrived at the point of inaccessibility, is there so how do you know exactly when you get there? - There's apparently one in North America now. I did North America before there was any market there, apparently they put a market there, but none of these places are marked. They literally are just coordinates. So, there's nothing when you get there. I don't take anything, I don't leave anything. Sometimes take a sample of the Earth and put that in a little pot, just in the memento. But the point of the poll isn't the point. It kind of is the point, but it's getting there. It's the story, the people you meet. Like, I've just been telling about, you know, the soldiers and trying to find a way to get there and the helicopters and our fuel dump in South Sudan was literally blown up by gorillas before we're trying to get there. So, you have to send fuel along the road. A road which I originally thought, I'll just hire a car and drive along it. It took two months for our fuel to get. I mean, it's not a road, it's just a moon pit. This is the story. That's the expedition, that's the adventure. That's why I do it. It could have been 10 meters away, it could have been 100 meters away, it could have been a kilometer away. It doesn't actually matter where the point is, it's getting to the point is what it's all about. - It sounds like also you have a great deal of fun, I would say, from all of the logistics and putting all of this together and probably that's quite, that's as enjoyable as the actual adventure. - The physical adventure was wrong. The whole thing, from the very start, the concept of how are we going to do this? So, research you have to do it, you know, I included that, all the knockbacks, you know, asking the special forces, you know, that's part of it. It's all part of the adventure and the expedition. And this is what I like other people to just start doing, just get off your sofa, put down your phone, and get out to explore. It doesn't have to be as adventurous as that. - I mean, what's interesting about that is, you're going to a place that nobody's been to before, at least knowingly, and not tried to get to before. And yet, we hear constantly that everywhere's been explored and everywhere's been found, and there's nowhere unexplored in the earth now, but you're obviously finding places, because of your own little expeditions that you're creating yourself, not something like Everest where somebody's done it before, but, you know, the Chris Brown journey. - Yes, yeah. - Nobody's done it yet. So, nobody's been to the African one. We can be pretty safe with that. It's not something that you would happen upon. It's not, there's no resources there. There's no food, there's no minerals, there's no reason to be there. And it's not between villages or anything. It would, if you were trekking from the nearest village, it would take you four days to get to it. And to go to the nearest settlement the other way, as if you were passing through it, it would be like a 14-day journey, so you just wouldn't be doing it. So, I think we can safely say nobody's been there. And how long did it take you to put that whole expedition together there? That one took, there was COVID in between. So, we were just about to kind of do it, and then COVID came in, but from start to finish, probably about four years. - So, the Antarctica, you mentioned about that one. I know you tried unsuccessfully to get there, didn't you? I think we want to trip with Buzz Aldrin. - So, whether it's issues. - Yeah, the Buzz Aldrin trip was many years ago. That was something to have said, but that was to go to the regular South Pole, on the American basis. Now, going to the Pole of Accessibility in Antarctica, yeah, I went out there with a sudden make-up to do that. And we ended up just kind of getting stuck in Antarctica. We had some issues with the plane, couldn't get parts. It was still a back end of COVID at that point, but there was storm after storm after storm. We'd been there only three days, and the storm with 120 mile an hour came through. That's hurricane, false fire coming through. Backing down, everything like that, stuff got destroyed. And usually for Antarctica, it was snowing, 'cause it's a desert, it shouldn't be snowing. The only people who were happy about the whole thing was a couple of French researchers, and they're modeling a climate change of predicted precipitation in Antarctica. So they were kind of, yay, we've got it right. But that was all buttoned down. I mean, that's danger, it was 120 miles an hour in Antarctica, and things got broken, which ended up not actually getting fixed. And then because of these, just more storms rolled in. The guys who run the place, they'd been operating 17 years, never seen anything like it at all. We had another one, which didn't quite get up to 120 mile an hour, but it lasted five days. We were back down in tents just for five days, 'cause this blew through. Intense? Oh, yeah, we're in. So you're not in cabins or anything? No, there's kind of rigid tents. Some people are in just the clappy tent tents, but they, in the big win, say, all came into the rigid tents, because you literally huddle together. So I mean, you don't go out, you're not allowed to go out on your own. You buddy up and everything, so somebody's always watching, you know. Because if you step outside, you couldn't, you wouldn't be able to see that pole over there at five meters, or like, definitely. About two meters for visibility. I've got a video that I could show you, and I challenge people to say what's in this video. I say, it's something very big, and it's only five meters from the camera. And you can't tell what it is, and then there's a bit of a lull in the wind, and there's this huge truck there. You just can't see this truck, and five meters away from you, because of the ice and snow blowing through. - So when are the wind? - I mean, obviously, you huddle together in a tent, you're worried about everything being blown away, but how cold is it? - It's only about minus 25 by 30, that kind of-- - Only? - Yeah, I mean-- - Yeah, but you haven't got a central heating in your tent, so I guess the cold is a consideration as well, though. - It was a heating element, so you obviously got to have a heating element about that kind of temperature. And there was one point, actually, where it was near-- so we were trapped for about 28 days, flights couldn't get in, nothing could get out. We'd run out of fresh food the long time before, and the heating elements aren't made for snow, so that they can't take a back pressure to work. So the snow is getting in the exhaust, and it was stopping them working and packing up, and it was getting really darn cold, and those things go off totally. And we were down to the last one on one day, and that went off, so we had no fresh food. Anybody was down, tired, another storm was there, and we'd run out of all heating elements. So that was, we were one accident away from a bit of a very dangerous situation. If somebody had an accident at that point, we'd pull into deaths, but nobody could come and help. - So when you-- - So with that, you probably faced with impending doom, more than most people are in their lives. You hear people saying it's a catastrophe 'cause it can't get on Facebook, right? - The Wi-Fi is down there. - Oh, the Wi-Fi? - Right there. - Yeah. - So that is obviously front and center, impending death if things go wrong. So how do you deal with that? What are you doing to keep your spirits up? Well, yeah, people ask me this, are you scared, or all this? No, because at the time, you're in the process. You're not sitting there thinking, "Oh, I might die," or, you know, if things go wrong, because you're out digging the tents out, you're trying to get the elements to work, you're forging around, getting the food, you're going, everybody's doing something. And so you're engrossed in the process of doing it. Like, the thing in Africa, I'm not thinking, oh, there could be somebody around the corner or hiding and about the shooting. You're in the process, right? We're doing this. What's the next thing we're doing, right? We're going, we're doing this. Let's take some corn. You're always kind of doing something. So we went back to Antarctica the next year and successfully got to the pole of hidden accessibility. And the danger there is you go into a place where there isn't anything. So there's not a landing strip. There's no weather station, so you don't know what the weather's there. You're having to use satellite pictures to try and figure out what kind of weather's going, excuse me, going to be there. The average temperature at that point is -58 centigrade. What a lot of people don't know is that the south pole itself is in an altitude of 3,000 meters. That's the upper slopes in any ski resort. The point of inaccessibility in Antarctica is at 3,700. So you're at altitude as well. And we were in the only vehicle capable of getting there. So if we'd crashed, because there's no landing strip, where'd anything like that? Nobody's coming to go. But you're not thinking about that. You're thinking, how are we going to get this thing to land? How are we going to make a skidway so that we can get down there? How long can we be out there? What are we going to do when we get there? What oxygen are we taking? Because you've got oxygen. And it's not a pressurized vehicle you're going in. So you're in the process all the time. You're not thinking about the dangers. - Wow. So 28 days, stuck in a tent, hung together with how many other people were there. So there was some of the scientific people there and the people in the camp. There's probably about 30 people in total together. - Oh, okay, okay. But that's not the longest period of incarceration that you've had, really, is it? Because your most recent point was point Nemo when you were stuck on a boat for six or eight weeks. - Yeah, it was an cruise and ship. - Yeah. - No, it was actually short, it was three weeks. - Oh, okay. - One day. - Sorry. - It just seemed like six to eight weeks. It's, yeah, I mean, so point Nemo is 2,700 kilometers for the news, point of the land. For the news, civilization where we went was even longer. So it was 10 days sailing to get to it and then 10 days sailing to get out of it. It's in the Southern Pacific. It's down at about 50 degrees south, which you're in rough water there. When we set off from Puerto Montin Chile, that we were in 10-meter highways. - Wow. - We were only in 13 seconds, which means every 13 seconds you're going from a peak to a trough. - Wow. - And I was sick as a dog. And so his meager spent two days literally in bed. Every time I tried to get out and do anything, it just straight to the toilet. Absolutely. And I'm not exaggerating, so after about a day and a bit, I've got to do something. I've got to get out of bed. So I've got to, you get out and put on your pants and then you've got to lie down again. And then you've got to be put on your socks, then you've got to lie down again. Then you've got to put on a t-shirt, you've got to lie down. And I'm not saying lie down and like 30 seconds rest when you're in the gym. You've got to lie down for 15 minutes before you can force yourself to get up. Absolutely sick. And then what kind of made it okay was at the very end of the trip when we arrived in Tahiti at the end of it, one of the guys on the boat confided in me. He'd been on the boat and sailing for nine years, but more than that, he lived on an island. He was from an island. He went by boat to school. He went by boat. He admitted to be in the first time he's ever been sick. He was on the first cut of days of that trip. So on your trip, so you've had a bit of a bad look, haven't you? 'Cause you've had the worst storm ever in the Antarctic. You've had some of the worst seas, the two of these people have been-- They're normal. They're normal down there, yeah. All right. Right. So they have a saying below 40 degrees south, that there is no law. Laws of everything have gone. You just got to live. And below 50 degrees, there is no God. And we were at 49 degrees. Right, yeah. No, it's just storm after storm. If you look on the weather map now, you look on windy or anything like that, what's going on in the Southern Pacific, I'll guarantee there'll be at least three storms going on, and big storms at that. So we had to set off in, we wanted to get to Nemo in a period of relative calm. And if we didn't set off in that storm, we wouldn't have got there at the period that we'd targeted the weather window. Right. So we had to set off in the bad things. So it wasn't bad look. It was by design. It was just not good. And we only had about 40 minutes at Nemo to get into the water, 'cause I wanted to all the pills that I go to, I stand there with the flag of the nation and have a photo to take that. So what can I do at Nemo? 'Cause I'm not on the stage of walking on water just yet. So I thought, well, let's go for a swim. And if, you know, I've been talking about 10 meter waves, all this stuff. So it sounds a bit dapper. We've aimed at this weather window where the waves were only three meters high. Got there in the big ship, got in some zodiacs and went for a bit of a dip in the sea. And then a swim at point Nemo. Temperature of the water? Seven, seven to ten degrees. Right, yeah. - How long were you in the water? - I had wetsuits on. Probably about 20, 30 minutes. - Okay. - And I'll take a few videos and something. The bizarre thing that happened there. So bear in mind how far we are from land. And it's supposed to be an area of low bio diversity. As soon as we got in the water, these sea birds appeared. It would be followed by a couple of albatrosses. And this albatross came in actually attacked us. Well, so the videographer's in there, a video of me swimming. And you know when geese take off from a lake, you might have seen it so much, and they kind of run across the-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - This, I'll kill you not. This albatross did that at the videographer. He didn't see it 'cause he's filming it. This thing kind of ran across the water at him. Without a doubt, it was an attack. And an albatross has a wingspan in about three and a half meters. They're huge. They've got a 15 centimeter beak, and it's hooked and it's serrated because they're just like gouge fish, don't they? That thing going through your eyes 'cause you're just ahead. You're just a football. They're not going, "Oh, something tasty here." And the albatrosses apex predator out there, isn't it? And it wasn't bothered by us. I was trying to kick it, but I had fins on top, wasn't working. Adam kind of did this, like spread his arms with the cameras to try and scare it. And then the albatross went, "Well, in fact, "I will look at this and put his wings out." And we read afterwards, that's actually an aggression sign to raise your arms, like, raise your wings. He's like, "Yeah, look at this, mate." And he does his three and a half meter thing. So that was quite bizarre. They're attacked by an albatross. Now you talk about Adam, Adam, was your videographer. So there's actually a video that you put together of this that people can go and look at. That's right, yeah. So you'll find it on YouTube. It's called Visiting Point Neiman. All right, well, we'll put a link in to that 'cause it sounds like really interesting listening. I'm thinking as you're talking about these adventures, you know, trekking through the jungle, but not clearing a path by missheting, but just forcing your way through dense undergrowth. It's not like walking down an overgrown path in the summer in Yorkshire, is it? Where it's just brambles and things. It's like properly dense. Yeah, and when there's quiet, you get ripped, your arms get ripped, you know, you could, but you're still getting ripped through your clothing. And one of the big dangers in Central African Republic, that are bees. Yeah. There's some quite evil, not like British bees. These are proper big, hornet, damn things. And if they attack you, you must not hit them, or if you're trying to kill them. If you kill one of them, they go absolutely mad. Wow. And this was the special forces guys were saying, that's what scared them the most was these bees. Yeah. So I mean, we didn't use machetes there just because we didn't want to make noise. So like South America, we were hacking through the jungle air. We were using machetes there. But it's hard work, you know. When we did the South American poll, we traveled 300 meters in, I think it was 20, 20 minutes. Yeah. It took that long to be able to just do it in meters. It's hard, hard work and sweaty, obviously. And there's no air, I think you're saying. So I'm thinking here, you need a fair amount of endurance, strength, stoicism, ability to recover for all of these things. You know, putting up with being sick for days on end, still requires endurance. It's not probably not what my regular listeners are thinking of when they're talking about going out for a run or a bike ride. But you need a deep, you need a deep endurance. Just have the will to keep going through that. The same as sort of being stuck in a tent for 28 days in Antarctica. What do you do to keep yourself fit for all of these adventures? Just so got history in triathlon, which is where we first met. So I've got some endurance from all the triathlon training. I just generally keep myself fit, do weights every other day, cardio, running, cycling every other day. Sometimes trained twice a day and we're here at the swimming pool, because I've been swimming this morning. I'm currently trying to break 30 seconds for 50 metres, not quite there yet. And a bit more difficult since you've smashed your shoulder up. Yeah, so I've dislocated my shoulder in January, broke for femur, broke two ribs and dislocated the thumb. Yeah, skiing, that was a skiing accident. And how long have you been skiing? A long time. I've been skiing that 40 years, right? And you don't just go and slide down from the top to the bottom, you skin up as well and you have a guide a lot. So you go back and go off, it's the most my time on the risk. And on pieces of it, right, tedious. I think that being on pieces is more dangerous than being off-paced. We are skidding up, go for me, because sometimes we've done three-hour climbs to get to peaks. Yeah, we submit and then ski down the other side. All soft-powered. Yeah, because it was on the piece when you did your shoulder here, right? Exactly, yeah. Although, my only serious skiing accidents have all been on the piece. Yeah, all of those are the idiots that are getting in your way a lot. Although this wasn't anybody else that hasn't gone off. To tell them that I'm coming and to get out the way. So, you also do a bit of obstacle course racing, don't you? Did you not National Champion or World Champion or something in one of those? No, it's not quite. So, I've been to World Champion triathlon seven times at three different distances. And I've probably reached, I've probably done everything I can do. I'm too big to ever get on the podium and just don't have the right DNA. So I've not kind of quit triathlon, but I just moved on really. So, I'm not saying I won't ever go back, but I've been doing other things like the race swimming. And I started doing obstacle course races. So I've got a bit more of a body strength than a normal traffic, I think. And he's doing those. And then, during COVID, we came across this, there's a 12-hour one. And we suggested that we do this 12-hour one together. It only worked quite well, because he was dragging me on the buttons, because he's much better running. I was helping him over the obstacles. And it's from eight at night to eight in the morning. She goes through the diet. So you're doing the ice dive at three AM, is a challenge. And there's all the endurance there. So he could put on the endurance training from the gym. It's actually quite a good fun one thing. Traffic's tend to poo poo, these things. I was probably a little bit that way when I did the first one thing, because everybody charges off at the beginning of these things. There's no way they're going to maintain that, I'm just thinking of what they're doing. But then we've got to the first obstacle, and everybody's helping one another over. I thought, actually, this is good, there's a degree of operation going on here. And some of the obstacles you literally can't do without somebody there. There's like this rotating box in mud. And unless somebody's the other side pulling it, you're not going to get over, because if you jump up to the track, it will just rotate in your direction. So we did this eight hour one, which is good for them. You just kept going, you do circuits, how far you can go in eight hours. And you have a cam axle looked after all the food for us. And when you come round with each one, just change socks, and you can do a full change. But I had a sort of shorty, you know, a run, swim type suit on, and just stayed in that, because it kept you warm. It came across on our last lap, Axel said, "Oh, you're in fifth position." So, "Okay, kept going." And when he crossed the line, he said, "You've come third." And I thought, "Ah, that's interesting." It stayed around for the prize giving, and they called third in my age group, and it wasn't me. I thought, "Yeah." And then the fifth, maybe, had crossed in third, and two people had come across and done further distance in the time. So, I think, "Let's go and get some food," and started walking off, and then they put, and in second place, Chris Brown. That's what we're talking about. Excuse me. Yeah, so we've got a silver medal, and it turns out it was actually their European championship. So, I was a European silver medalist. And I remember a long time ago before I met you, I used to do this obstacle course, right? I think it was probably the one of the originators of the method. I know that there was a legal case about the origins of Tough Mudder, which came from this event called the Tough Guy, which isn't any other guy whipping it. Yeah, which was based in a horse sanctuary in Wolverhampton, but what I found about that was the first half of it, maybe the first hour, was a cross-country run, and that's not my forte, because I'm a bit like you, as a triathlete, a bit heavy-built, bit more muscle. But then the second part was through all the obstacles, and I don't have a real fear of heights. I'm fine on high ropes, and cargo nets, and tunnels, and crawling, and that sort of stuff. And that was when I found that I made up all the ground. But to your point about cooperation, there were things where you'd help other people out. You know, you had to wade through, because it was in January, often ponds that were an inch thick in ice, so people would help each other out breaking the ice, and you had to go under the water to get through some of the obstacles. And so that's, you know, even though you're in a race, there's a little bit of a safety concern. But, you know, divers looking after people, people panic, so you do what you do in the Marines. I cross-fit like that. Yeah. But you haven't. Huh? You see what happened? I cross-fit. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the guy that passed away. Yeah. But what the Marines do is when somebody goes under a tunnel, you have one guy pushing them through, and then they come through another guy, he reaches in and grabs all the round by the collar, so I started doing that and helping people through, and then we got together as a team, so when we got to the next underwater crossings, everybody was helping each other out. So, you know, it became more of a team thing there. So I like that. But I also think that you probably enjoyed the logistic thing, working out what Axel was doing so that that helped with the team effort as well. I think a lot of people don't consider those other paths when they do those events. It's like the expedition. It's the whole thing, comes together. It's the running. It's a bit of the climbing, a bit of this, a bit of that, and you know, where are we going to get nutrition, because, you know, it's not just, it's not like a straight out trampoline. I'm going to take this gel at this time and this gel at that time and see how you're going to be feeling six hours into it, 3 AM when you're freezing cold. So let's just go back to the poles of inaccessibility accessibility. How did you, you said that there was this one in the North Pole that was identified, you know, it was in the central of those circles. How did you first find out about those, because it's not something that you'd widely read about, is it? So we got to go back, you mentioned Buzz Aldrin earlier, so in 2016, I went to the South Pole with Buzz Aldrin in the astronaut, because as a connection I've always been fascinated by space. I'm only even signed up to Virgin Galactic to go into space at some point, and because I was signed up to that, I was given the chance to go to the South Pole with Buzz Aldrin. There was that group, there was two spaces, so I maybe put my hand up to go to that. And when we landed at the South Pole, you go in sort of Dakota-type, the bazza plane. The guy who was kind of guiding us said there's actually five South Pole, what do you mean? So the American base is called the South Pole, there's the sort of South Pole where everybody has their photos taken, and they've got the flags of all the nations, and it's got water, the ceremonial South Pole, there's the geomagnetic South Pole, there's a geographic South Pole about which the Earth rotates, and the fifth one, they told me about this pole of an accessibility, and I never heard about it, so I just kind of stored it in my head. I've been on a couple of years, 2018, up Everest, doing a charity fundraiser for Sherpas, doing the world's highest inner party. So we had a place camp on the Tibet side, I don't even know, all in tuxedos, and the girls had four grounds, and we had a five-star meal, and it was a world record and something. And at that point, I came across people doing the seven summits, which is the highest amount in each continent. I thought that's an interesting project, you can see, it satisfies the little ticking off things, and adventure, and sporting, and you know, fitness and all this kind of thing. The problem was, and although I've been up quite a few mountains and things, I don't really like mountaineering. So at base camp, it's quite a bit of a miserable existence, and you're suffering, you can't sleep properly because of lack of oxygen, the wind's blowing, and at night it's quite cold. So just one miserable night in my tent, I was just thinking about things, and I was thinking through the day, guys doing the seven summits, and then I remembered about the poll to be an accessibility, and I just kind of put the two together, and I just thought, okay, well instead of doing the seven summits, I'll do the proposed, and there's eight of them, eight of them, so the project was born. Finding little things that people haven't done before seems to be a thing of yours as well. The show you're listening to right now, and all of my others that provide you with amazing real-life advice and guidance from top coaches, athletes, and successful humans, well, making it takes me a lot of time, but I feel it's well worth it, and all in the name of helping you to improve your health, longevity, and performance. And all I ask in return is this. Please send a link to this podcast to somebody you know who you think will benefit, and if you haven't done so already, please click "Follow this podcast" on whatever platform you're listening to right now, so that you don't miss any of our future episodes. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. We talked about the swimming in this goal of yours to get under 30 seconds, but you've also got a very, a very weird swimming world record, haven't you? Oh, in the pool. It's not? In the pool swimming, yes. So I've got a world record for a number of race dives into the pool in an hour. Right. And then you haven't done that before? No. So how do you find out about a world record that nobody's doing, and then go about making sure that it's actually acceptable to get a world record? Well, there's actually a world record day where they try to get as many people attempting world records as possible. And I read about that, but it was too late to kind of do something. So I was thinking, well, apart from a group on, like the dinners, you can do these things or you can go in where somebody's set up the world's highest obstacle course race. That was something I was going to do in Africa, Kilimanjaro. As an individual, what could I possibly do? I ain't going to be breaking any world records at 50 metres something, I'm going to be breaking any world records at triathlon. So what could you actually do, the world record? Well, currently I've been practicing my diving quite a lot, and I looked up and nobody seemed to have done that, and I thought, well, I'll put it to Guinness. Would this be a world record? And they came back and said, yes, it'd be a world record, but they actually stipulate what you've got to do. So you can't just stand on the side of a pool and flop in, you know, that doesn't count. You've got to get onto the blocks, you've got to go through the starting process, you've got to have a starter, and you have to enter the water three metres from the pool. So that's actually a full-on race dive, you know, it's quite an explosive effort to be able to do that. And they said, and to count for a world record, you've got to do at least 50 in an hour. So that's getting on for one minute. Bear in mind, you've got to launch, you've got to go, get on the blocks, go through the whole procedure, set, go, enter the water three metres, stop, get out of the pool under your own steam, and then get back to the blocks, and go through all this, and you can't run back to the blocks, you know, break your leg off, crack your head on the ground, because it's wet. No running on poolside, right? For a reason. Yeah. And then back on the blocks and go through the whole process, I was thinking, it's actually quite demanding to keep doing three metres, because you're going to need strength endurance there, and then you're going to need endurance just to keep going, and you're going to need strength for muscling up out of the water all the time. I was seriously concerned about whether I could end up doing 50, but we did some practices and I thought, oh, we can do it, and then we got a route together and had a go at it in the JCC here. When you break it all down like that, I sensed that there was another logistical puzzle you had to work out to do all that. So again, the record gave you satisfaction, but putting it all together, I think. Yes, it would have been part of the whole enjoyment. Also, kind of convincing yourself that it is possible. I don't know. Okay, well, let's go from this, and how are we, are we going to go out fast, and then die off? Are we going to try and keep it continuous? You know, I didn't really know, because nobody's done it before. Just like all the other things, nobody's done it before, but yeah, it kind of worked out. And did 130. Wow. Do you know of anybody who's tried to beat it yet? No, but obviously, you think, well, there's much better swimmer's name, there's much better divers, but if you think, the things I've told you, one explosion, it's fine. Each of these 130 dimes, you've got to explode off those blocks, and then actually lifting yourself out of the water 130 times. That's quite hard. And two things that I came across, which you can't think about, racing blocks have a texture to it so that you don't slip. It puts your feet up, because you're launching off that, and it's like scraping your feet on sandpaper 130 times, so my feet were bleeding by the end. And then the other thing that you don't realize is, I didn't wear the swim cap, because I've not got one. I don't think I just died then. My forehead was red raw. You can just tap, tap, tap, tap, and then 30 times into the water, all the impact. So a couple of things that you don't think about were probably the endurance factors there. And that you can't prepare for either, really. No. And come across it, you know about it. Next time I'd work out. You talked about virgin galactic. When does that happen, or is it? Oh, next year. Yeah. Always next year. Every year is next year. It's, I mean, they've started, they've had their first passengers, if you want to call them that. We're called Future Astronaut. Right, a foot pretentious name. Probably about four years in the future, something like that. Already about eight years behind the schedule. Right. Hopefully it'll happen. I'd love to get into space because it'll die. And so that's going into space. You were also an original involver in the Titanic, the ill-founded Titanic. The Titan. The submarine? The Titan. Sadly, they lost last year. So most of all was called the Titan. Right. And that was down and down to the Titanic. Yes. Okay, so was that, was that involvement of fascination with the Titanic, or a fascination with just... Not at all. Most of them. Well, this comes back to Virgin Galactic, so it's on Neckar Island, Richard Branson's Island, because as part of Virgin Galactic, you get invited there. It's not the pain. But the people that go that have signed up to Virgin Galactic have obviously got to be fairly successful to be able to afford it, and generally are starters of their own business. And if you think, although it's all people who are prepared to strap themselves to a rickety first-generation rocket that could go all wrong, they've also got to be, achieve as old, you know, explorers in a way. So all the people there are, you know, there's no problems, because if anything goes wrong, people will figure out, figure a way out. So they're a great bunch to be just there, shoot and breeze with, and learning from their experiences and what they do and all this, and you pick some great things. Everybody's an achiever and a doer. So when you go down the pub, and people say, "Oh, shall we do a marathon?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and let's do a marathon." And everybody goes home and nothing ever happens, doesn't it? You know, it never happens, you just need to push it at the pub. On Neckar, if you bullshit about things like that, it bloody happens. So we're out there talking about Titanic. One guy, one of my friends, his company is shipping in Black Sea, so he's into ships and all of a sudden. Another friend, he's always been fascinated by the Titanic. Quite a few people are, you know, obsessed about Titanic and its history and all that. So, and they were talking about the Titanic, I was just part of the group, having a few beers. And one of them said, "Oh, there now was a company developing a submersible to go down and do a 3D scan of the Titanic, and then looking for people to pay their way, but you still got to be part of the scientific thing. You're doing a 3D scan, then go back periodically and do another 3D scan, see what's decaying so that steps can be made to preserve it." So, that was the idea, the original idea of Cyclops, it was called then, which became known as Titan. And we've had a few beers, they say, "Oh, let's do this and we're out, I've had a beer, so yeah, I'll come here. Let's do this." So, I'll disappear from Neckar, and as I say, not like being just down the pub, two weeks later, the contracts on my desk and the deposits are paid and we're all off to the Titanic. But you didn't go, I didn't go. When you have a big ticket item, a very expensive car, or something like the Titan, you don't pay it all up front, it's usual to have stage payments. And usually the company is building the car, making a submersible or something, whatever. They have to hit certain targets before more money becomes payable, and this was based on debt. The submersible had to reach certain debts before more money became payable. And they just weren't hitting the debts. So the first year, we're supposed to go out in the June, I was a bit agreeing because they'd said if they weren't going in the June, they'd tell us a pre-September. And this was 2018, which was the year I was going up, Everest, if you remember. And they cancelled it too late, so I'd arranged to come down from Everest from this thing to go on the dive to the Titanic, which didn't happen. If I hadn't done that, I'd have summited because kicking pants away from it, we'd done all the stuff, we'd gone up above base camp, the guys there watching me come in, they'd said I'd be able to submit, I've been able to submit Everest, but I didn't because I had to go to a Titan, which didn't happen, so I bit agree with that. And then the next September, October, came around, and I was taking much closer interest in what was going on because it took it. And I was looking at their diving in the Bahamas, and I'd had some crumbs about the way it was all coming together then, and started to look at the submersible itself and just thinking well this is a bit of a botched job, I know he's breaking new ground here and using new materials, but he's not doing it in a very professional way. The ballast was scaffolding poles, basically, on a hook, and one of the dives he didn't have problems, and the ballast didn't release, and we had to swing from side to side in this damaged submersible to get me fixing it all. We sat on the floor, the flooring was flammable, the lighting was from being key, the controller was a logic check controller, like a Playstation controller. You were fastened into it, once you're in, you can't get out, you have to be let out from the outside. The communications weren't hard wired, so if the Bluetooth and stuff went down inside there, you're screwed. But there was no backup, the diving that they were doing in the Bahamas to reach the depth to get to trigger the payments, it got stripped by lightning, it was a storm, and stuff like that happened, so they blew all the electronics on the sun, and the next thing I knew, because I was watching all this on the web, we were involved, we were allowed to see what was going on, these webinar things, if you weren't there, and they were packing up and going, "Oh, it's a backup," and they didn't have backup for the electronics that were blown, now normally on a vessel where you're supporting life and playing or anything like this, everything is duplicated, so if one set goes down, you've got backups, but all the more to that, you would then, on the support vessel, have the backup and the backup in the backup, so you'd have four sets of electronics, they only had one set, and it was blown there, I just think this isn't safe, and then I was looking at more aspects of the sun itself, and just gave the conclusion that this is looking a bit unsafe, and then the final nail in the coffin for me was that the guys who were running it decided that they weren't going to get certification from any organisation, so it's covered with this revolutionary material, it's using carbon-5 instead of steel, it's not going to be spherical, which is spherical for a reason, it just sounds pressure better, there's going to be a join between the car and fibre and the aluminium hole, and it's not going to have it certified and checked after each dive, that's me out, when you talk about it like that, that sounds like a very rational decision to look at all of those things that they're not doing and then decide that you're pulling out, so it intrigues me as to why the other people who clearly they were probably of the same mindset as you and diligent folks, why they didn't follow your decision? You've got a question, were they quite as diligent, did they look at it in as much detail, possibly not, maybe just clouded by of how nothing will happen to me, you know, things don't happen? My friend, who died, he's another Virgin Galactic thing, I'm surprised that he went down, because we had a mutual friend who actually maybe didn't look to go on this thing, we'd had discussions about the dangers of it and he still went down and all I can assume was that it was easier for me to let go of it, because I wasn't that involved in Titanic, I wasn't obsessed by it, so it was much easier for me to say, "Ah, I'm out of this, I'm not doing that", it wasn't my life's ambition to go to the Titanic, and I just got assumed that that overrode his fears or his thoughts of danger and didn't look into it like too much. So you talked briefly there, when you were making the payments, how when you're buying a high performance car, so let's move on to cars, right at the beginning I said that one of the other Instagram headings is that you were a car enthusiast, let's talk about car racing, yeah, of all of these things, the exploring, the adventuring, the enthusiasm for cars, the problem solving, the engineering stuff, were those things all passions of yours when you were growing up? Not really, no, it's just kind of any of them, no, well I was interested in Formula 1 when I was younger, it just saves any kid really, the passion seems to, my life changed massively, I was, people who don't know me, I've read how I've got a scar face, I used to do my homework, I was bullied incessantly at Stokesley comprehensive, and then things seem to change when puberty happens to get a bit more aggressive and all this stuff. I mean that's when I started looking outside of the world, because I'm a child as well, and I got into trouble when I was at university, went backpacking in South America and that's where I got a taste for travel off the beaten path, went to Machu Picchu when it said there's a luminosa work prevalent in Peru, so it was the Maoist thrillers, so we were taking hostages and things, so it was great, there was no other tourist, and rather when it took to Machu Picchu in those days there was no hotel or anything like that, he stayed in people's houses and climbed up there, there was no railway or anything like that, and that's where I got a taste for the adventure, I think, in the jungles in South America. So let's just jump forward a bit, you've talked about all of these adventures, clearly finding a team to help you get to the middle of the African jungle, to get out into the middle of the ocean, to go to the South Pole, these things, they cost money, so let's talk about your business life, you weren't born into money, you didn't carry millions to enable you to spend it all on this, I do know that, Baron Brown, but I do know about the Baron Brown thing, but that's probably another podcast, you're a successful businessman and I'm always interested in when you're building a business, a lot of the folks I know are just engaged in building that business, they don't really have time for much, sometimes not even their family, and yet you find time to do all these adventures and we'll come on to the car racing in a moment, have you managed to balance your time successfully to build a business, but have the adventures and find time to keep yourself fit and healthy? It's just the incessant drive I think, it's an internal thing, so. Do you not sleep much? It's something, yeah, I sleep a lot, it was an inversely proportional to your intelligence, your mind telling you you are, the less sleep you need, how do you patch it, that must be thick as bricks, how do you do a lot of sleep? I know it's just, I have a drive to always do things, you know, if something can't be doing I'll try and find a way to do it, not only will I try and find a way to do it, I'll try and find a way to do it better, everything I look at I'm thinking well, how could that be done better, how could it be done quicker, how could it be stronger, everything, and it drives me mad sometimes, I can't just be satisfied, my first traffic was just to go, oh, I can go faster than that, oh, I can go faster than that, I can go faster than that, start trading before you know what you do in the great Britain thing, then you're in the world championships and it drives me mad that I can't just do something to kind of just enjoy it, constantly trying to find a better way of doing things, and so I'm doing that in my business life and I do that in my fitness life and I do that in my adventure travelling life, but I'm always trying to do things better, faster, stronger than before. To build a successful business which is called Take That, which is another thing, we'll come back to in a minute, it takes time and hours in the day, so and again a lot of the folks that I know who've built similarly big successful businesses spend so many hours a day that there isn't time for all this stuff, so are you very good at compartmentalising things and saying right, I'm going to leave work at five, there's still stuff to do but I'm going to leave work at five because I need to go out and do the training for the triathlon. I would never say that I'll leave work at five, I'll leave, I'll stop work when X has been done. I think I'm quite good at focusing, so anything, stuff can be going on, you know, you could be talking to me, if I'm focused on something, I won't be hearing what you're talking about. So focus is a big thing and if you're really focused on things, it's amazing what you have done, so you can probably do the work of three people by just focusing properly and not being distracted, not stopping at a five minutes to check your phone or going for another coffee or anything, just totally focused, it's not good for your body, you don't get up and move around and your eyes are going a bit squirky but you just get on until it's done and then right, okay, time for the gym, get in the gym, do that. You don't spend a lot of time scrolling through Instagram or Facebook then? Not really. I can't come in back to you. I talk about TV and you know, soap and things and what, are you talking about? Any of these quizzes about what's gone on on TikTok, but not Klumay, not Klumay, but I do know where the middle of the African jungle is, I've talked about car racing, let's talk about car enthusiasm and racing cars, when did that all start? So it just kind of developed, I've had an interesting car, so it was interesting four in a one, you know, James Hunt and all that sort of period and then my dad took me to some hill climbs, so that probably got me interested in aspects of racing and then when I had the money enabled to do it, I thought, oh that would have got a Subaru and did some hill climbs and then from hill climbs you just progress on to doing some track days and from track days, you go into racing and then there's a common thread here, isn't there? I didn't just do a drive and enjoy it, so it goes from this to that to that and then I'm into the race and then they go, okay, go get a race car, so you get a race car, we'll go to GT4, we'll get the best GT4, so I've got a BMW factory-compared M4 GT4 and then they end up in, you know, touring, you know, we've got GT4 Cup, which is one of the low touring cars end up doing that, but that's actually a road to ruin, quite literally, there's always, unless you are currently, well, Lewis Hamilton on Max Verstappen, there's always somebody got my money, got a faster car and is prepared to put more time into it or change their car to make it quicker and I actually realised that early enough to stop myself going down that little hill, I've seen so many people come in and do car racing for fun and it ends up not fun and they get their tutors and they're spending all their time, you know, and get totally obsessed about it and they'll never win because they'll always be somebody with a bit more skill and all pay more money, or spend longer on it, so it's sort of different to some of your other challenges where it is a lot about your own physical input, whereas this is, you know, you could be a good driver but there could be a less able driver that's got more money, a better car. Yes, there's spend more time on it. Yeah, and so I do quite a few endurance races with me because my co-driver, so we're amateur amateur and a lot of people are amateur and pro and what you find is that they, there's a set time, you've got to do a minimum number of laps or minutes in the car and they were doing the minimum time and putting the pro in for the longest. Why don't you just buy yourself a trophy? You're not winning it, you know you're not winning, that's why you put the pro in for the longest possible time and you buy in the biggest car and you're spending money to put the prep, you're spending money to put somebody else in to drive your car. Where's the enjoyment there? Well, I was just thinking that because I love driving, I can't afford to have a race car but for me, if I was going to have a race team, I'd actually want to be in the car doing the driving, I wouldn't want to be sitting there waiting for somebody else and then getting the satisfaction of having the trophy due to their efforts. Even things like when I was first doing it, so I have a team who look after the car and turn up with it. So there's this thing called collecting at the end of a race where you're going, you've had the car make sure it's all got, yes, checked that it's correct and starting the race and this guy used to get in the car and drive it from the garage to the collecting and said no, get out, it's my car, I'm doing that. So not even on the track, I just love driving the car. Yeah, it's just fantastic. So are you still racing or are you just, yeah, I haven't been doing so much recently because I've been concentrating on any of the expeditions but yeah, car racing's great. It's the adrenaline isn't it, there's some sort of adrenaline thing going on there again. Well, I was wondering about all of these things we're talking about, the exploring, the adventuring, the racing, the going in space, going into the sea, what's the thread that connects all of these and I think maybe it's the adrenaline also, I think on each of them you've sort of explained a little bit about solving problems as well. Yeah, I think it's the addiction to your adrenaline and because it's always got to be faster, a bit more adrenaline each time, so when does it end? Probably in a cask. You've mentioned a couple of times now about me here and Axel being involved in these, just being able to do these adventures with your sons, does that give you an enormous amount of pleasure? Because it's not something that every father, some combination are able to do or have a desire to do. Yeah, it gives me great enjoyment to be able to do things with my children. It's not my accident. When I started my business, I worked from home for 20 years so that I could be there with them growing up so I could take them to school and bring them home and they put them all in afternoon. You know, none of this has happened by accident and then you've just got to work on those relationships. I never wanted to be the sort of dad that goes off to the office, comes back, maybe reading the story when they go to bed and you don't ever see the children must pack them off to public school. So being involved in their lives along the way and always done stuff with them. And this has continued on as they're now adults, you know, they're 30, but we still do stuff together. It brings me great pleasure. So car racing with them or going on travels and adventures with them. Yeah, amazing. I mean, you're just a little bit older than me, you're in your 60s now and I know, well, on that point, a lot of people say to me, "Shouldn't you be slowing down, should you, should you still be doing this at your age?" And I think, well, man who's not doing it, shouldn't get in the way of man who is doing it. There's plenty of time to rest when you're dead. Yeah, although if you keep pushing yourself like this, maybe that'll come soon. It doesn't sound like you've got a fear for much, but are there any things that are on your bucket list that actually frighten you too much to actually do them? No, it'll take a long time till you get me back on a boat. Right, that trip, I just heard it would be done, but I'd do it. I'm not keen on heights unless I've got skis on. That's the bizarre thing there. But no, it's not many things I'm scared of, I don't think. So you'd willingly go and do Everest or something more difficult K2? I mean, I wouldn't do Everest, but just look at the cues. It's not too much a physical challenge anymore, is it? People are going up and they've got four shifters basically carrying them up there. And who would want to be studying one of those cues? You know, there's that famous picture taken by Ninsdy, but there's been a few photos after that, and it's just constant cues. People are dying up there because of other people being incompetent. I don't want to be in the situation where I'm going to die because some of the idiot isn't fair enough to get themselves across a part of the mountain. Yeah, I mean, that sort of back to your point about the car racing, isn't it? Is if you can throw enough money at it, you can get people to get you up there and carry all this stuff, and it's just like if you're fitting it, if it's a hill walk. I mean, you've got to have the weather conditions in your favour as well. Yes, there is a degree of fitness and joy, without a doubt. But K2 is my charter, isn't it? Yeah. So you're not planning on that one next time? No, as I say, I'm not that keen on that there, and I've got this thing about heights. So what's your next adventure that you're currently preparing for? Well, I've still got the two poles to do, and then I came up with the idea, so we've got these poles of inaccessibility, so I started thinking, well, you can have a pole really on any island, so there's one for the UK, because you find a point that's furthest from the ocean. And then I started thinking, myself, actually, if there's a stable border, you can have, I'm calling them, points of inaccessibility for a country. So it's a point furthest from either the ocean or the border or the country. So there's a point of inaccessibility for each country, each island, each state, if you want it. In fact, your own garden and stuff like that. And I've been going around different countries just doing these points of inaccessibility. And as I said, it's all about going there and what you're seeing. And I'm seeing different parts of countries from which people go to, so like France, everybody goes to the Sean to Lee, so the I put tower, just standard stuff. But going to Colombia, which is in the middle of France, it was great. I ended up, you know, stayed in a small French village, no English being spoken, stayed in a bar upstairs at one of these things and tried to negotiate through how am I going to get breakfast on these things and, you know, cany movies goate so I can get out in the morning and stuff like this. And just not, you wouldn't do that normally. Just the fact that these are a bit more accessible. Does that mean you can take other people along with you that might not normally come on some of the more arduous things? Oh, yes, it is. Adventuring isn't, it doesn't have to be as extreme as Robert described it at all. So when you come to Leeds, there's always signs, uh, 20 mass leads, 25 mass leads, wearing leads. So there's a thing called the zero kilometre, where all distances to a city are measured. Go and find it. Go and find where it is in Leeds. It's going to cost you nothing. You can walk there, you can take a bus. But, um, do you know what it is? I do not. Go and find where it is. Remember part of it's about the finding out and the climbing and how are you going to do it and just go and do it. And you can do it for pens and you can do it in a day. So you can have good fun adventuring and exploring your own towns, your own villages. You don't have to spend fortunes to do any of this. I think, during the pandemic, when we were all restricted in where we could go, a lot of people did some adventuring like that in their own local area. And I- I'd rather concern. It is. It is, yeah. Have to put home people started looking around for things to do. Yeah, I found tracks and paths that I'd not run on or walked on in the local woods that were within half a mile of my house, because I just thought, well, I'd go around that one all the time. Oh, there's one up here. I'll just get through these brambles and see what's, oh, there's a bath that goes up to this old quarry. And there's a, there's a well that's here. I wonder what the story is about that well. Then actually, on one of those walks, I met a guy who runs a Facebook page about the history of that area when the navigators were building the railways and the canals. And so I spent a bit of time chatting with him and emailing him. And I discovered a lot of stuff about the area that isn't widely available. I mean, it's the area if you look, but not easily available. You see exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. Because it's not actually about the well, is it? It's about finding it. Finding somebody who can tell you about it, learning all about it. This is, this is what I want people to get out and do. Well, I mean, if I don't know how many counties there are in the UK, but I probably haven't been to more than 20% of them. And start ticking those off. Yeah. How many countries have you been to? Is something like 176 that you can go to? Yes, I've definitely not been to 176. But I do, that was one of the things that got me into triathlon and doing Ironman's, particularly was I didn't want to go to the ones that everybody went to. I wanted to go to the ones that were in places that I wouldn't normally choose to go on. So I could do a bit of experience ended up in Penticton, which is 200 miles east of Vancouver and the Wine area. But it's not a place you would normally go to. I went to do the Norseman. It's an iconic race now, but not when I did it. It was because I had never been to Norway and I wanted to jump off a ferry and swim down the field and any black shirt. I did get the black shirt, yeah. But I wanted to do it for the adventure because it was a point-to-point. It was finishing on top of this mountain. You got to come down in the logistics as well. Yeah, you'd come down in the funicular, which is used by NATO soldiers. So the public don't ever get to go down in it. Even the supporters and volunteers had to walk down. But we went down inside this military railway inside the mountain. You did have to support yourself there. Well, they do have some support, but it's all about working out. You have to have a minimum. You don't want to carry any more than 10 kilos. You have to keep your sleeping stuff and your food. So, yes, you can take more food. But then you've got more weight to carry, which is going to burn more energy. So you have to take all of your stuff. Nothing gets taken for you. Oh, they just put up a tent, but you have to have your sleeping bag, your mat, and your cooking utensils and your food. They provide you with water and that. So, yeah, the logistical parts of that and the problem solving, I've really enjoyed those way more than when stuff's done for you. So, how do your feet go? The first time they were wrecked, the second time I learned how to manage my feet by changing dry socks or changing into dry socks, dirty socks, but dry regularly, taping my feet up in advance. So understanding where my pot spots were, and then taking them out. That's what I discovered on that 12-hour obstacle course phase. Just changing my socks on each loop gives you a big boost. Yeah. And it just makes you feel better. Yeah. There's something about changing socks, whether you're in a state of misery. Yeah, it's psychological, isn't it? It is, definitely, yeah. And I think the other thing is, well, you know, we talk about the training and your fitness for all of these adventures. I worked with some guys who rode across the Atlantic a team of four and they weren't rowers traditionally. You know, they just decided that one of them was in the special forces and had an adventuring spirit and talked three of his mates into it and off they went and they actually were the fastest four-man boat to get from Tenerife to Barbados. And I asked them the evils of beer, was it? So, yeah. Let's throw across the island again. Okay, then. Yeah, there's a race starting. I don't know. Okay. But who's got a boat? You got a boat? They were doing a lot of rowing, and I said to him, so how was all the training? He said, "It was great for the first 12 hours." And then he said, "Well, after that, we were seasick, sunburned, pissed off, had blisters everywhere." And after that, it was about stoicism and, you know, unwillingness to give up. And there were people that were Olympic rowers that were giving up because they just couldn't cope with the hardship and discomfort. And so on, on these adventures, you just, to me, you just do. Yeah, you just, just get on with it. But then what's the option? "Talia, give up." No, you're not going to do that, I ain't. Just get on with that. But it's, for something like the marathon disable, for instance, I hear a lot of, two minutes. I hear a lot of people saying, "I'm not fit enough to do it." Actually, if you can walk faster than the slow walking camel, if you can get round, it's not a run. It's a fast... Well, they're quite, okay, shit. Yeah, that's a long time. But the things that traditionally sideline people on these are feet, getting blisters and infected feet, gastrointestinal problems, so diarrhea, you know, dysentery, heat, sickness, and just getting a bit scared of some of the exposed bits of which there aren't many, but I know at least two people who pulled out on one of the events because they didn't want to go over to the mountain pass because it was exposed for a few hundred yards and they just didn't feel comfortable with it. But they were fit enough to complete it. So it's, it's, it's nearly always not the fitness. It's sort of the stuff that sidelines people. Yes, yeah. There's the mental edge, a big thing. Yeah, it's for in business, in life. Well, that's a good way to stop, Chris. Thank you. I know you've got to, you've done fasted training, fasted podcast this morning. So thank you for being here. I know you've got to go and get some food now. Really appreciate your sharing all of your adventures and your fun that you've had and the adrenaline and problem solving. It's been great listening. Thank you. And we didn't even get on to vegetarianism. That's next time. We'll leave that as a teaser. Thank you again to Chris for being my guest on the show this week. The point he makes about exploring is really interesting. I'm sure that we could all probably do a lot more just to explore our local areas. Never mind going to the African jungle. And hopefully, this conversation has inspired you to get out and do your own exploring. Meet while I'm off to find zero kilometer in Leeds. I'll keep you posted and where they're actually finding it. To make sure you don't miss any future episodes, please go to iTunes, search for high performance human and triathlon podcasts, and then click on the subscribe button. Once you've finished listening to this episode, please, please, please, could you share it with just one person who you think might enjoy it, or might benefit. And if you've got a couple of extra minutes, perhaps you could leave me a review on your chosen platform. Please also make sure you check out our show notes for links to the things that Chris and I had about in the show, details on how to contact Beth or myself about help with your own high performance human journey, and also links so that you can get your free copy of my daily mobility plan. Because now, it's the perfect time of year to get working on that. That's all for this week, I'll have another great guest in seven days time, and I hope you'll be able to enjoy me. But until then, happy exploring, and enjoy the rest of your week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
