36 Half IronMans in 36 Days w Layne Storrier #527

When you're sober , you feel like people know that you're not drinking .

We went for a run one day and obviously got to know you , a high energy individual . I was training for the world champs . You were training for 36 Ironman in 36 days . Sorry , half Ironman , Half still phenomenal Can you dive into ? firstly , share with people what the hell a half Ironman is and more about what made you want to do it originally .

So for me it was a short time ago when I actually got into this sort of space , so I've only been doing triathlon now for about a year and a half I guess , so relatively short time 18 months , and then you've probably done more in a month than most have done their whole life . Yeah . So I was like , well , what's the first goal ?

Because I look at someone like the Iron Cowboy is . That was the thing that got me into it and I was like I'd love to chase that record of his of the full Ironmans . So , yeah , I was like , well , yeah , you can't jump straight to that , only doing it for a year and a half . So I jumped into the half Ironman record , which is now 36 .

So , yeah , I just got after that and yeah , so it was a pretty good little feat to get after . And yeah , that's just how it all started and once I got that idea in my head , just trying really hard to get my body in my body and my head space in a space that I could actually achieve that .

Like seven days a week I'd either be coaching or playing . And then , yeah , also just I used to be a pretty much a general dude , so I'd get on the piss every Friday , saturday , sunday , whatever day it was , I'd just be on the piss and playing footy . And yeah , when I made this whole change , it just everything completely changed about my life .

It's actually it's very funny . Now , looking back at the lifestyle I used to live , I feel like I've already lived two different lives and I'm more only 25 . Like . So it's crazy how big of a change you can have in under two years .

So I always had those next goals to chase after me and sort of been in a small town , that was just a normal thing to do . So you go get your builder's license , your play footy , your drink piss , and yeah , that was , that was pretty much just the norm for me . That I sort of saw as a normal life .

And then , yeah , I actually my sister brought home while she gave me the Andy Frizzella podcast to listen to one day and she he was talking about 75 hard and I was like that is so stupid . I was like that is just .

I was like it's not even healthy to do two workouts a day and I was trying to make up all these excuses of why it wouldn't be good to do .

And then , yeah , slowly but surely , it just started chipping away at me day by day and I think I probably listened to his podcast for like two months before I even done it , and I was like , oh , I'll just give it a try . I was like there's no , no harm in trying .

I was like I probably won't even do this 75 days Because , like I even , I think the year before I tried to do dry July and I failed twice in the one month to not drink for a month . So I was like I'm not going to go 75 days not drinking . I was like I'll just I'll start and then see how far I get . And , yeah , go from there .

And pretty much , once I got into it , I really gave myself the challenge of doing the 75 days not drinking , but actually also going out and having fun .

And so , yeah , every time that someone would invite me to go out , I made sure that I was still going out to the pubs or going out to the parties and everything like that , and I found that I was actually having just as much fun , but I'd also remember the night out as well .

So , yeah , that really just driven at home to me that I don't have to drink to be having fun . And , yeah , it led to a whole new healthy lifestyle that I could actually wake up on a Sunday morning and go for a run or go for a swim or a bike ride . And yeah , it's . Since then it's just been a complete change .

One thing that I struggled with that I related to what you just said was when I wanted to cut back drinking and my partying . I wish I had the balls to continue going out and go out sober , but I just couldn't do it , dude , I had the rubber arm . So when I heard you talk about it on another podcast and I was like this dude's awesome .

He identifies , like you see , these areas that you would love to improve upon , but you don't alter your life to do it . It's just like you build it into your life , which , for me , that's how you make sustainable change .

For me , that was probably one of the biggest things that gave me a lot of confidence to , because if you look at it , when you're in a pub or you're in a bar , you're around a lot of people , so you feel like all eyes are on you . When you're sober , you feel like people know that you're not drinking .

You walk around you're like oh , they know I'm not drinking . Everyone knows that I'm not drinking .

So for me to gain that confidence , I then was able to take that into social settings of , say , a run club or anything like that , and actually be able to just go around and talk to people , whereas before that I used to rely on alcohol to actually , if there was a crowd of anything more than three , four or five people , I felt like I had to be drinking

to talk to everyone .

Yeah , I managed to kick . Kick . That it's like right , I'm gonna have a beer . And I didn't even enjoy joy at half . A . Yes , it was like my blanket man with . Like when you had the teddy growing up . You just hold on to that guy , I'm safe . And then you know , act like a dickhead afterwards 100% .

So I'd walk around just carrying a glass of soda , water and lime in there , hoping that people thought I was drinking vodka sodas .

And even now I've got like non-alcoholic beers in the fridge and I said to my mate yesterday I was on the phone , I was like man , I've never had beers in my fridge my whole life , ever .

Yeah , but we're obviously in a new town , we're socializing a lot of meeting a lot of people , and I was just hitting the piss not heavy but drinking most nights and I was like what am I ?

It's like sometimes I feel like I'm socially awkward , I don't know the right things to say . Maybe I don't feel like I have value to add to it . Okay , well , why is that ? And that then it comes back . You're peeling these layers back . It's like , oh , I don't Believe in myself or I don't think I'm worthy , okay , well , that's the issue , not the uphole .

used to be as well . Like when I used to drink , I would say I was pretty , I was pretty wild , like I'd go out there , I was pretty carefree and I wouldn't really give a shit about everything . But I think it's one thing you notice as well when you actually stop drinking Maybe about the way that people are receiving themselves when they're drunk .

Like you look at , I've found I've had a lot of mates that I've been out with since I was 17 16 and I'd never thought they were a dickhead when they were drinking . And then , as soon as I stopped drinking for like a month or two , I'm like holy shit . I was like I can't believe that you hang around these people and you and it's , it's all .

You think you're just having a good time and Now this is too serious . But you look at some of the stuff that they're doing and you're like that's , that's taken too far . So , yeah , I definitely have lost Like and , like I said , it's it's a part and part like . I think it's also my doing as well .

But , yeah , I definitely had a lot of mates that haven't reached out to me and I haven't reached out to them because it's just We've gone in separate paths . Like they look at my lifestyle and think that's not a lifestyle that I want to live , and I'll also now look at their lifestyle and think that that's the lifestyle that I don't want to live .

So I guess it's one of those things . But now I've also put myself in a situation where I've made Since , like I've moved up in Brisbane for seven months now and I'd have to have well , the last day of my challenge I had a hundred people rock up . So In a space of seven months I've went and met at least a hundred people , if not more .

They're actually called really good friends and great people to be around . So yeah , when you can do something like that and it's all just about changing your environment , really that's one thing that people struggle with is changing their environment .

Can I , can we start ?

So I went from running the longest run I've done before that was 23k and then I decided to do 100k run through mount cosy osco .

And then , when I've done mount cosy osco , I'm at a group of people that owned a run club up in gold coast in brisbane , um , and whilst I was still living in sydney , down there , so I met them At about halfway through december during the run , so we talked to talk to them for about an hour or two , um , over the run , and then they're like , oh , you

should come up when it makes coming up in brisbane or gold coast , like you should come and do the run club . And then , literally two weeks later , over christmas , new years , I was one of my best mates he'd went to , he'd went away and all my friends were were gone . So I was like you know what ? I'm just going to drive up to brisbane .

So I packed my swag in the back of my ute , drove up to brisbane and there's a run club called mega run and , yeah , within the space , so I've done that on new years eve and then I've done the mega running gold coast .

Um , on the new years day , met my current girlfriend , met all my best mates that I've got up here at the moment within the space of like something that I just looked at and I go , I never would have done that A year ago . I never would have just driven up in my ?

U I was camping along like all the beaches , like um , I think at one stage I was at mermaid beach and I was literally camping on the beach and both the houses next to me were both worth 15 million and I was really got my swag rolled out on the . Yeah , so Like I was just up here , just living , like just doing stuff .

That I just found A bit uncomfortable . But I look at it now and I'm like that's probably like the biggest change that I could have had in my lifestyle . So , from moving and then I decided to move up here after I met all those people , um , so I lived up here . Um , then I did .

There was a stage where I was actually running those run clubs , so I got to meet so many more new people and yeah , no , it's just been a real from one sort of thing that you go out and you think that's going to be impossible to do , which was for me , was 100k run to do ? Um has just completely changed my life .

If I think that's probably one of the biggest days , that has completely changed the trajectory of my life .

But I was like you know what , just say yes to it and you never know , there's probably gonna be people that you're gonna make during that that have also just said yes to doing it , and then you just make those friendships and I think doing stuff like that would really put you at a comfort zone and you think , oh , I'm probably gonna be the only one doing

that , but you're not . A lot of those people that are in those environments are all putting themselves out of their comfort zone . So you get that commonality through there .

And obviously every time you break this ceiling of what you think is possible for yourself it's like for you now 60K you're like , yeah , no worries , it'll suck , but you're fairly confident in your ability and that's the beautiful thing about pursuing the hardship 100% and that's like one of my things now .

Like I look at myself and I might go out over the top , but then , like you said , for someone that's doing a 5K run or there's some people that's even just getting off the couch and going for a 10 minute walk so I just think that everyone should invest in their own crazy Like some people .

As for music , it's whatever and whatever , and it's like go out and do that thing that you enjoy , because , even though you think people might look at you , people really don't care . Like I said , when I finished my challenge , two days after I finished my challenge , I was like , oh , there was such all this hype around it .

Two days later I was just a normal human . So I look at that , if you go and do whatever you wanna do , people are still gonna look at you the exact same way .

We tried to get in a comedy it was booked out . And Amy's like there's this ghost tour on at nine o'clock . I was like let's do it . Anyway , it was like good fun man .

Anyway , once we get into like just the broad way , like the busy part of the town , there's people everywhere like socializing and all of a sudden , like our tour guide just was so invested in ghosts and whatnot .

But it's just the difference between whether you're gonna allow that to hold you back or not , is it ?

A lot of people can get stuck in the everyday rut , so a lot of them it's just like a crazy . Goal for them is just to sort of live the life that they actually want to live . And for me I'm like , oh , that just comes normal to me , like I'm happy to chase after dreams that I want to go after , but for someone else that seems really crazy .

So , yeah , it's definitely one of those things that it's all about . I've learned to put myself in other people's shoes a lot more , I think .

And for yourself , then you obviously mentioned living a , I guess , a life by design . You're happy to chase that . Yeah , where has , I guess , the motivation and the courage come to do that ?

Because I would say a lot of people listening feel that's courageous , because the safe option , the one that we get educated to , to live , is so different to what you're doing .

And then my parents they have sort of just started to slowly get away from that work scene as well and actually chase their dreams .

So for me , yeah , and that's like I love it now , because I think if I probably wasn't the one to start talking about all this stuff , about me moving to Brisbane to go and live a lifestyle of being active and actually going and doing the stuff that I want , I think that they probably would have just stayed working for the rest of their lives as well ,

whereas now they've just went and bought a caravan to drive around Australia and to have a like have a gap year and whatnot . And I really think that for me it was I sort of worked really hard from the ages of probably 15 when I started on this job site , so from the ages like 15 to 22, .

Like I was working six , seven days a week , 10 , 12 hour days in the sun , whatever , in the cold , whatever it was , and I was so used to that . And then I sort of realized that I wasn't overly happy and I didn't feel like I was fulfilled and I felt like I was just doing it to get by , day by day .

And then it come to a stage where I was starting to invest in property and I really want to go down the route of actually being a property investor , like a buyer's agent , so buying investment properties for people . And this is where I was like , oh , that would be so good . And I was actually like 99% signed up for the army at this stage .

And then my old boss he actually offered me a job to come in as a buyer's agent . And I was like , oh , I was waiting up the tube , but I was like I really want to do this buyer's agent job . So I went to this job and I was like I was so passionate about it and I was like , oh , this is going to be the best thing ever .

I'm going to do this for the rest of my life . And within the space of like four or five months I was like , oh , this wasn't what it was painted out to be Like I was really actually shocked and I was like I was working with a lot of successful people as well .

Some people that like had , I guess , materialistic things like their ferrari's and everything like that . So I was buying them investment properties . But for that , for me , was a big realization . To save it , money doesn't buy happiness .

Like a lot of these people had a lot of money and they were always trying to screw people over for the next thousand dollars , two thousand dollars , whatever it was , and they weren't happy in themselves . Like you could tell by every time I bring them on the phone . It was like there was this big drama of whatever it was .

They'd always have this thing in their life that they weren't happy about . And then for me , that was the biggest realization . To think , holy shit , like why are all these people working for money and they're never achieving happiness in their life ?

And there's been a study done on this and it's like people they ask people how much money would make you happier and 99% of the answers is three times much more money . So it's like I could be earning 50 grand a year . And they ask me it's like , oh , if I had 150 grand a year I'd be happy .

And then you go and ask that person to make it 150 grand a year . They say 450,000 . So everyone's thinking that money's going to make them happy . When it doesn't , you've got to find that , you and yourself , to make yourself happy .

Even for myself is , once I hit what I wanted to hit financially , the next thing was how do I continue to earn this but get time back to do the challenges I want to do , or spend more time with my wife or travel and do those things , because that then becomes a game as opposed to working harder and trying to grow your income .

It's just like how do I get time back ?

Die With Zero is great .

So why you got the money ? Why not give it to the kids whilst you're alive to actually help them , maybe invest or whatever it is , rather than passing away ?

Then they've got this large sum of money and then they just go and blow it all , whereas you could have slowly given them 10 grand a year to help them out doing whatever and actually had a bigger positive impact on their life .

You're not going to be sitting around talking about the fact that you made X amount of money , like your grandkids or your kids aren't going to give a shit about that .

. I went for a run this morning and for some reason , this thing popped in my head . It was like your future self will wish you'd done more when you were younger , and like it's probably I don't know , someone else has probably said it , but for some reason it just like popped into my head and I was like it's so true .

Like you look at where you're going to be in 10 years time or whatever , and like I'm only 25 now . It's like this is meant to be a glory day , so you should be doing so much more with your time , and that's the thing . Like you should just go and do whatever .

You speak to people when they're 50 and they're 60 and they're like , oh man , to do , like if I could go back to the age of 25 , the stuff that I do . So , yeah , it's 100% about just trying to do as much as you can in this little time , like that .

I'm like well , because that would mean I'd have to spend more time on it , more coaching , more X , y and Z , and it means then I can't do the fitness stuff that I love doing because I can always earn more money .

But there comes a time and a place , like you know , after sort of 40 you start losing a lot of your speed , so you can't do a lot of that fast work . That's when I'll start getting into triathletes and iron men's and all that sort of my endurance events , but thanks , mate .

No , you peaked early , but no , but you know , I've thought about a lot of that because it's like once again , when you think about what you want from your life and the experiences and the stories that you want to be able to tell . For me I've been like , okay , well , there's a timeline .

I regret retiring from rugby when I did , because as much as I could go back now I haven't played for 10 years . My body wouldn't like it . But I don't want to make that same mistake again when I'm 40 and not being able to do 400 metres or you know all these other things that I'm doing at the moment .

I've got a timeline for that , so business will continue to tick along . But as long as I have the freedom to do what I want and be a good man and have great friends and , you know , have a roof over my head , life's pretty good 100% man .

But some everyone thinks there's this secret ingredient that once you get this much money and you get this car or you get this I don't know laptop or whatever , it is like that you're going to have to be happy . But it's really not .

Like being happy is a very simple thing If you strip it down to the smallest things , the smallest matters , having great people around you . Yeah , it really is . It can be such a simple task .

In all seriousness , I think it's probably one of the toughest challenges there's ever been done . Some people say like like I really don't think anything else has been done . That is harder than backing up iron man after iron man for 105 days . I really don't think you look at some of these people that do these big runs and everything like that .

In my experience I just don't think that that could be topped at the moment . There's some , some people running around the world and people running across Africa and that that say they're doing averaging between 60 to 60 K a day . These people are going and doing like a 3.8 K swim , 180 K bike ride , five by 42 K run , so for 100 days plus in a row .

So for me that , like I was , just I've just been drawn to that . I don't know . I've had this mentality of always growing up , even when I was young playing footy , like I was always one of the smallest people on the field but I've always felt like I've had to prove myself and just that underdog mentality .

So when I saw and I did think that that would be the hardest thing possible to ever do , I just got driven to it . I was like if I can get that completed in my lifetime and say that I've done the physically hardest task ever , I was like that's a pretty , that's a pretty sick title to have to your name 100% .

10-12 hours .

I was sweating in bed and I'd have the air conditioning , I'd have no sheets on and I'd just be laying there sweating and I'm like what the hell Like ? And it's one of those things like and I found it sort of hit me harder after it .

Once your body is like allowed to just have all this fatigue in you , you just feel like you're laying there and like my legs are just throbbing . So , yeah , it's one of those things that it's definitely . The challenge of it is recovery . And I found like one of the best things for me was like the ice barbs .

Like every day that I finished , I just go and hop in an ice bath for like 20 minutes just to try and cool everything down , because I found that if I there was a couple of days where I didn't get in the ice bath and that night I was so hot , so if I couldn't sleep , I was like this is my biggest thing , so trying to get into an ice bath and just

have my core temperature down , like because especially around Brissy it's very hot , humid and there was like some mornings I think there was a morning after I didn't have an ice bath and before I'd even gotten the bike I was literally just like covering the sweat and I hadn't even started on the bike yet and like that's just how hot my body temperature , like my

core temperature , was just cooking . So yeah , there's little bits and pieces like that where it was . You've got to really prioritize recovery and try and work out what's going to be best for recovery .

So when you're burning around six and a half thousand calories a day , that means I've done a pretty good job at eating about six and a half thousand calories a day , whilst also bike riding , swimming , running . So , yeah , it's definitely .

That was one of the biggest challenges of like you just have to force yourself to eat , like I'd sit down for lunch and it's 34 degrees and you don't really want to eat , which is different to American temperature . I don't know what that would be over there in America .

Like the first day I went out with having , I think all I had was like a chicken wrap for lunch between the bike and the run and I went out on the run with no food as well . So by the time that I got back on the first run after the first day , I was like holy shit . I was like this is going to go south like real south , real quick .

But then , yeah , by the day four , day five , it was like okay , this is how much food we've got to eat in this like amount of time , and it's like you've got no choice . So I just eat as much as I could , like literally it was . It wasn't even a healthy diet because you're just trying to get as many calories in as you can .

So I was waking up , I was eating two peanut butter and honey sandwiches before I'd swim . I'd get out and have like a big thing of protein oats and then like I'd be eating brownie for breakfast and drinking like just cut calorie water .

So I was just drinking carb waters on the bike , so between my three bottles I was getting 900 calories on a bike just through drinking . Wow , that's a dream , yeah , yeah . And then I'd have like 20 snakes on the bike ride , packages of chips , just LCM bars , just like everything that was just full of sugar and full of calories . I was eating .

And then , like the biggest thing was then , when you go out and try and run , you feel like you're going to throw up the whole run . So I'd get to like 13 K and I'll be like trying to stop myself from throwing up , because if you throw up then you lose all those calories that you've just eaten for the day . So yeah , that was .

That was certainly one of the biggest challenges . And I guess like one of the biggest challenges also was I just getting up . Every single day I'd found that I'd get out of bed and I'd go and sit . I've got a step near my bed . I'm just like sit on the step and that was like the first step of the day .

So I'd get there and I'll be there for like five minutes just like thinking why am I going out to do this ? And I guess for me it's one of those things like tying it back to that having cystic fibrosis is the main charity for this fundraiser . I was like people living with cystic fibrosis don't get a say in how they get to live their life .

So I'd sit there and look at myself in the mirror and go you're doing this for a reason more than yourself and get out there and go and do it for them . And then , yeah , it's one of those things as well . Once you put it out there and you tell everyone that you're going to do 36 , half eye means you want to fucking do that .

So , yeah , I'm a man of my word and I was like let's fucking get it done . I guess .

It was so windy Like I was normally on my bike when I pushed 200 watts on the bike , I go about 30 K an hour and this one day I was pushing 200 watts on the bike and I was going 23 K an hour , so I was like doing the same amount of effort to go seven K an hour slower and I was just like I was literally screaming at the wind .

Then my bike chain fell off so I had to fix up my bike and it was just like everything just felt like it was against me that day . But yeah , in all in all there wasn't too many days where I thought I was going to quit , but there was a lot of days where it's just a tough grind and some days you just don't want to talk to anyone .

Some other days you're wishing you had people around to talk to , and I found that for me my focus was just all over the shop . I was trying to maybe listen to music , sometimes listen to a podcast or whatever . But then other days it was just like I just want to be by myself and not have people around me talking .

So I'd go out on a three , three and a half hour bike ride I was taking sometimes and I wouldn't listen to anything , or I'd find someone along the track and try and talk to him , or whatever it was . And yeah , it was really . I think I just got stuck so much in my own headspace that I couldn't even control what I was thinking at

most of the time .

Like one of my worst training sessions was we do like after a big week of training and then Sunday was a double run day , so it was like 15k on Sunday morning and then 15k on Sunday Arvo at about three o'clock in the Arvo . So when no one else is doing nothing on a Sunday Arvo , you're meant to be relaxing . That was like always my staple workout .

I guess it was always a big run on a Sunday Arvo out in the heat and yeah , like it was just one of those things you don't really feel like doing it and yeah , you'd build up a lot of , I guess , mental toughness . But then again , like I said , one of my biggest challenges I think that did help me a lot was the 75 hard .

It was one of those biggest mental challenges for me where at the start of it I didn't think I was going to do it . And then I look at how I did complete that and then , yeah , then what has happened from there ? The confidence that I've been growing myself .

So I think it's all about that little bits of confidence that I do , getting myself about going and talking to strangers and whatever it is . I think all those bits and pieces that you put brick by brick by brick and then you end up building that mental toughness in yourself and that confidence .

I actually met him in one of the first road comps I ever went to and me and him just got chatted and we went for a brekkie after it and he put out all his tablets and I was like , oh , like I was like I don't want to be nosy or don't want to ask questions and then , yeah , I found it .

Like I found out Brad's podcast and I started listening to a couple of his things and I was like , oh , he's got Cystic Fibrosis and I was like , oh , like just my instant thought was like , oh , I can't be that bad . Then if he was running 10K with me , they can't be that bad .

But then I actually started looking into what Cystic Fibrosis actually meant and , yeah , it's really a silent disease . So a lot of their work with Cystic Fibrosis is done of a morning and afternoon . Like they've got to always do physio to clear out their lungs and , yeah , like there's many of different .

The thing with Cystic Fibrosis is that's a whole , that no one , no two people with Cystic Fibrosis have the same condition , so everyone's different .

Like Brad himself , he has CF , then he also has liver disease and he's got something else I can't remember exactly what it was so he's got he's got three conditions that he's got to deal with that have led from CF , and then , yeah , there's different grades of CF as well .

So , yeah , it's one of those things that it's really a silent disease that no one talks about because they don't feel entitled to talk about it . And , yeah , it was one of those things that once I met Brad and me and Brad got along great .

And then I've also got a mate up here , Rory Morgan , who was the first person with Cystic Fibrosis to complete an Ultraman , which is a 10 K swim , 300 K sorry , no , 450 K on the bike and then an 84 K run , so that's over three days . So he was the first person with Cystic Fibrosis to complete that . Wow , yeah , which is amazing .

Yeah , so just having those people around me , I was like I feel like Cystic Fibrosis has to get more light shown on it and , yeah , that was . That was a big challenge for me . Over my challenge , I was trying to share as many stories as possible of people living with Cystic Fibrosis .

Yeah , I'll ask as well , because I know a lot of our audience are busy men in their corporate careers and trying to climb the corporate ladder and they don't make time for things that are important . There's always excuses there around time you were doing , let's what , six hours plus of exercise a day , plus then recovery on top of that .

Yep , how did you manage to make your relationship work as well ?

during it . So we knew that I wasn't going to be my normal self after completing six and a half to seven hours of training well , not of training of the half Iron Man's every day , and I guess it's just being moody and whatever it was so for me .

We'd already had this discussion that if there does come to a stage where I don't need a girlfriend and I need more of a partner , or like a partner in crime , I guess , for those , however many days , then that's what I was going to have to come to , which I didn't end up having to come to that stage .

But there was a lot of time where our communication wasn't as good as it normally is . Like now we've got great communication , we can talk about anything , and that's what that's one of our best things , like one of my best traits that I think about my girlfriend is like she's so open about everything , like the first time that we met .

We're talking about stuff that I've never spoken to anyone about . So , yeah , I think it's all about setting really stick boundaries and then also being super open , like having nothing on , the like putting all your cards out on the table and saying this is who I am . This is the worst bits of me . This is hopefully the best bits of me .

But yeah , like it's all about being super honest and just sitting down like expectations , because if you don't accept those expectations , then you're really you're setting yourself up for failure , I think .

And for me I knew this is a tough topic for me to talk to her about because she's been swimming her whole life . So it's like I got . I got no idea about swimming , I suck at swimming and but it was more about me trying to be there for her to talk to , so it was me .

I was like , as much as this is going to feel weird for her , I'm like is everything going okay with swimming and XYZ ? And it was a tough conversation for her to then have that . It allowed her to then trust on me a lot more .

So it was always tough conversations that we do have that I think sometimes you just got to rip the bandaid off and it's not going to be anywhere near as hard as if you let that go down the track three years down the track and then it's like all these communication breakdowns . You just better off ripping the bandaid off and having those tough conversations .

I think next year it'll be more about trying to sort of train or put it for maybe like an event that might be over the space of two or three days , I think , or maybe a big event , maybe a big run I think could be in the cards as well , maybe something around 100 mile or plus , so maybe 200 K , I think , or , if not , a bit more , just really see how

far I can push the body . But yeah , I think for me next year big focus is just I just want to try and see how far I can push the body in one big , one , big go . So it's like , whatever I decide that that thing is , I'm just going to see how far my body can actually get pushed in the space of one , two or three days and just really see .

Yeah , because , like I said , like I had a 36 days but I was having times of recovery , but I just want to see once I can really set my mind on something how far , where is the actual limit ?

Where is the end that you get to a stage where you just got nothing left in the tank and because I really think , even over my challenges some days are , like I said , I found were hard , but there wasn't any days where I was going to quit .

So I want to get to the stage where it's like you're telling yourself to quit and you've already told yourself to quit another 10 times before that , and I want to see where that , where that mark lies , where it's like all right , that's your limit and yeah , then hopefully , hopefully it's a long way away , but yeah , it could also be a lot sooner than you

think and you go holy shit , you've got a lot of work to do .

You know , when I was doing the marathons as well rowing I wrote a few before I started the challenge and there was things like gripping , like wearing gloves I was like I'll never wear gloves , that's lame . I was like why don't I do that ? I'm going to be bleeding everywhere . Then it was like how to position your hips so your ass doesn't hurt .

And then like getting chafed under the armpits , like all these things that I wouldn't have known . How do I not , you know , possess started it and failed it a few of them and then been like okay , this is how I'm going to improve it next time . I think there's the possibilities that come from . Failure is huge .

And then , yeah , you surprise yourself and you can use that in other areas of your life .