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Discovering Extreme Endurance Sport - a conversation with Jack Harrison. image

Discovering Extreme Endurance Sport - a conversation with Jack Harrison.

Fit For My Age
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The Star described Jack Harrison as Britain’s the fittest madman in Britain, which might be a but harsh. But across all forms of media Jack is renown for his fitness and his sense of adventure.

I topped the three peaks in Yorkshire a few years ago. Jack did the same sort of thing, but his three peaks were the highest in France, Austria and Italy, a task he completed in just one week.

On dry land, over snow, and either in or on the waterJack is working his way through the 15 sports that have endurance events, for the fun of it!

Now he had created his research into a book, The Toughest Endurance Races, that is sure to inspire many others to take up extreme sports challenges.

In this episode of the Abecederpodcast Fit For My Age you will hear Jack explain to host Michael Millward how a suggestion from his father led to a life-long passion for fitness and extreme endurance sport.

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York Test provides an Annual Health Test. An experienced phlebotomist will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace. Hospital standard tests covering 39 different health markers are carried out in a UKAS-accredited and CQC-compliant laboratory.

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Visit York Test and use this discount code ABECEDER2.

Fit For My Age is made on Zencastr, because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform, that really does make creating content so easy.

If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.

Travel

Get to your extreme sports events at the minimum price by accessing trade prices on travel as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club. Use our offer code ABEC79 to receive a discount on your membership fee.

Find out more about both Michael Millward and Jack Harrison at Abeceder.co.uk.

If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests or if like Jack, you have something interesting to say Matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made. Use our offer code MILW10 for a discount on membership.

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If you would like to be a guest on Fit For My Age, please contact using the link at Abeceder.co.uk.

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Transcript

Podcast Introduction

00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Hello and welcome to Fit For My Age, the health and wellbeing podcast from Abysida. I am your host, Michael Millward, the managing director of Abysida.
00:00:19
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, Fit For My Age is made on Zencastr.

Zencastr and Special Offer

00:00:26
Speaker
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make making podcasts so easy.
00:00:33
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysseedah. All the details are in the description.
00:00:45
Speaker
Now that I've told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.

Guest Introduction: Jack Harrison

00:00:57
Speaker
Very importantly, on Fit For My Age, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. Today, my guest, who I met on matchmaker.fm, is Jack Harrison.
00:01:10
Speaker
Jack is based not too far from where I am now, in Yorkshire. but he travels the UK and indeed the world to participate in extreme sports and ultra running events.
00:01:22
Speaker
So, hello Jack. um michael Hi Michael, how are Hello, how are you doing today? Yeah, I'm good, I'm good, thank you. Good, pleased to hear it. Now, please could we start by you telling us a little bit about you and how you came to be an extreme athlete?

Jack's Endurance Sports Journey

00:01:36
Speaker
Well, how did I become an extreme athlete? Good question. It sort of began for me with, I guess, just sport in general from quite a young age. So playing football at school and all the other sports that you do in PE, really. And then that kind of transitioned into endurance side of stuff, just through my dad's advice of what he thought I would be good at when I was around 13.
00:02:01
Speaker
And that was triathlon and mountain biking that he suggested, primarily just because he hadn't interested in them too. And yeah, and from there, I sort of, I was just hooked after my first race. I just, he entered me in a race. I had no idea what I was doing.
00:02:17
Speaker
Barely had enough kit to do the race in the first place, but I went ahead and yeah, I just fell in love with it and every year from then to about the age of 18 it just kept getting more and more competitive more and more hours of training and um yeah it just became my life really and then ah about 18 it sort of comes to a period where you have to decide if it's going to be something you're going to do professionally or if you want to go down a different path and um For me, it was that I wanted to do it professionally, but I just didn't quite make the cut really. So I left it at 18, came back to it at 21. And then i actually had some luck. I just did 12 weeks of training and am I managed to get a personal best, which was fourth at the British Triathlon Championships in the 18 to 25 year old age group. So I was happy with that. And then again, left sport until I was about 25, 26 years old. And then
00:03:15
Speaker
of well, re-found a passion for endurance racing, basically, only now, instead of racing the shorter distances competitively, I've gone into ultra endurance, as I've kind of termed it, which is where, well, being an ultra endurance athlete, I've termed myself, which is basically where you don't actually have a sport, you'll just do any endurance race.
00:03:38
Speaker
And that pretty much takes me to where I am now. Wow. I have to say wow, because one of the things that's just sort of rolled off your tongue there was that you did 12 weeks training and ended up fourth in the triathlon for the UK after 12 weeks training.
00:03:58
Speaker
yeah The other people had flu or something on that day. Yeah, it must ah it must have been a poor field. I must have got lucky.

Training for Ultra Endurance Events

00:04:05
Speaker
No, I think... I think when you've done so much of it at a young age, you're going to retain some of those benefits that you've got from it. Like even if you see people now who are in their 50s or 60s, but they were kind of a national or regional level swimmer, they've still got it and they're still so quick. And you do definitely retain some stuff, don't you? So for me coming back at 21, it was really just a case of getting back in the rhythm of it and prepping a few race tactics. And then, yeah, it all seemed to come together again.
00:04:34
Speaker
A bit like once you've learned to ride a bike, you you know the techniques that are involved in order to make your body do something which most people don't make their body do. And so if you know the techniques, everything's like, there's muscle memory, I suppose, is one of the phrases.
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And you're never going to lose all that, no matter, even if you leave it for 10 years. If you've been quite high level at something, you're always going to retain it to a certain degree, even if it's just neurologically and it's in the way you do things.
00:05:05
Speaker
Maybe you'll lose all the sort of muscle and tendon gains, but you can get them back through loading. So you're always going to be ahead if you've done something um to a good degree at some point in your life.
00:05:18
Speaker
but I must admit that I started running because the gym that I go to, True Personal Training in Wetherby in Yorkshire, decided to set up a running club because some of the trainers decided they were going to train for the marathon.
00:05:34
Speaker
True in Wetherby is a great place to go. I really enjoy it. And I really enjoy doing the running club. There always seems to be somebody that I can follow. If we put it that way, ah can always see someone else out in front, but i' mean I'm enjoying it. I've got a smile on my face as I do it.
00:05:52
Speaker
Running's become huge recently, hasn't it? yeah It seems like it's just completely taken off. I don't know if it does this a bit, well, like cyclical or or not, but yeah, it certainly seems to be on a high at the moment, doesn't it? Yes.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah. and anyone can do it. For me, it's not competitive because I'm just doing it my way, but... I have picked up all sorts of little lessons around how I can do things differently. And I'm much more conscious of the way in which I breathe and how my feet touches the ground. But because I'm not doing ultra marathons and things like that.
00:06:28
Speaker
what When you say an ultra sport event, you know, what sort of things are we talking about?

Understanding 'Ultra' in Sports

00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, the term ultra probably originated to do with running, and in that to in that kind of phrase, it just means anything over a marathon.
00:06:43
Speaker
But then I've kind of, this is just just me, but I've sort of termed that to any kind of race which is lasting a prolonged period of time that you would call kind of abnormal in a way. so And that that differs between every single sport. So for a running race, like I said, ah over a marathon. For cycling, it's not uncommon for people to do 100 miles. So for cycling, I would say anything over 100 miles is getting into the ultra range.
00:07:11
Speaker
For swimming, it's not uncommon for people to do 10 kilometres, so over 10 kilometres. And that this is sort of how I gauge it. I sort of gauge it off. If I struggle to find a race of the distance, then it's probably an ultra event.
00:07:25
Speaker
That's my rough gauge. How do you train for one of those ultra type events?

Nutrition's Role in Ultra Events

00:07:32
Speaker
Well... The ultra type events are definitely very different to training for that triathlon. That triathlon was only sprint distance. So it was 750 meter swim, 20 kilometer bike and five kilometer run.
00:07:44
Speaker
And speed is really the essence in that. That's what you need. And you can get that quite quickly. um But for ultra events, it's, yeah, it's a completely different way of training and just preparation in general.
00:07:59
Speaker
um For a one hour sprint triathlon, for example, it If you're looking to win the Olympics, obviously everything matters, but if you're just trying to finish one, it doesn't really matter what you're eating or drinking, you're probably still going to finish. Whereas in an ultra endurance kind of race, like a 100-contro ultramarathon, for example, your nutrition strategy for that is so pivotal and it's definitely something you should be preparing in training.
00:08:26
Speaker
And then you can even get as sort of panickety as getting down to training in the kit that you're going to do the actual racing just to make sure nothing rubs, making sure the backpack you're wearing, for example, fits, making sure you're accustomed to using running poles, just anything that could go wrong on the day.
00:08:45
Speaker
It's basically good to practice that before you go into the race because you can get away with minor inconveniences for an hour, and maybe two hours, three hours, but... When it's getting to 12 to 24 hours, even something minor like a little blister is going to really start playing on your mind. So it is just a completely different way of training and in terms of everything, really.
00:09:05
Speaker
In terms of the actual sessions as well, over 12 hours, you're really going to want to just stay in zone two, which is that aerobic sort of energy system where you're You want to not be exerting yourself too much, putting too much strain on your muscles and just being as sort of conservative as you can for the whole of that race while still making some form of pace. So I'll take ultra running as the example.
00:09:34
Speaker
In a normal kind of 10k, if you saw a hill, it's probably very beneficial to run up it just to try and gain gain on whoever's ahead of you or knock some time off. But in an ultra race, if you run up the first hill and then the second and run up all the hills you can see, eventually it's there's probably a good chance it's going to catch up on you. So, yeah, you see a lot of people walking any inclines and then running the other sections. And that, that again, is just something I found out the hard way, sadly.
00:10:03
Speaker
But there's so many little tips to it and little tricks and things that you just learn through experience really. Or you can always do your research,

Pacing and Energy Conservation

00:10:11
Speaker
but um unfortunately experience is always the best way of learning things, I think. It teaches you quite a good lesson.
00:10:18
Speaker
I was going to ask you about things that you that you'd learnt that you wish you'd known earlier and that there' there's no shame in walking up the hills because you've got a lot of miles to do.
00:10:31
Speaker
So you can serve the energy and make sure you've got the energy for the final part as well. What you've just said is one of the hardest things actually and pacing for shorter races, it doesn't really matter too much because if you do get it wrong and you go into your what people say is their red zone, you can just come out of that, give it a few minutes and you're probably going to recover. but If you're in a 12-hour race and you go into that red zone for a prolonged period of time, it is going catch up on you towards the end or at some point for sure. And if you're doing that multiple times, it really is going to hit you quite hard. And running is a bit less unforgiving than a lot of the other sports I do as well. So cycling, for example, when I've done two hundred mile bike races
00:11:19
Speaker
it's more beneficial in some ways to stay stay with the pack and go into the red zone to do that, if that's an option, because you're going to gain a lot more speed from drafting. whereas um And you can recover in cycling as well. It's non-impact based.
00:11:34
Speaker
You're not looking at your tendons and ligaments as something that might degrade throughout it. It's purely just about your aerobic ability and your muscular endurance, whereas running,
00:11:45
Speaker
When you go into that red zone, you're predominantly putting a lot more stress on all the structures around your body. And that that will catch up on you once you're 50k in and you've been battering yourself along the pavements all day. And

Effective Endurance Training Zones

00:11:59
Speaker
yeah, so it's ah it's a different kind of ballgame in some ways.
00:12:02
Speaker
Yeah, you've mentioned the word zones a few times now. Zone 2, the red zones. How many zones are there and and what are they? Just as like a general kind of consensus, there's obviously a lot more information on them that people can find online, but a general kind of guide is zone one would just be you're doing something not strenuous at all. So just walking around, your heart rate's not very high at all.
00:12:26
Speaker
I won't give out percentages because it's better that people research that, but just as a rough guide, zone two would sort of be aerobic. So you're using fat as an energy source for that.
00:12:37
Speaker
And again, it's not strenuous at all You could go and do this and you could talk to someone while you're doing it mostly. And there's been a lot of research on this in recent years and it's kind of coming about that this might be one of the most effective zones to training because it puts less strain on your body. So there's less chance of getting injured and you can still do a large quantity of this training.
00:13:00
Speaker
And zone three is, it effectively is just one up from that really. So you're starting to get a little bit more tired as you're doing it. You struggle to hold the conversation a bit more. Zone four, one up from that. And then zone five really is a zone that you can't hold for long at all. It's predominantly anaerobic and you're only going to be able to stay in that for a matter of ah minutes. And it's kind of an area that you wouldn't use much in an ultra race at all, maybe for a sprint finish. And that's about it.
00:13:31
Speaker
It gets quite complex then. Yeah, using those training zones, if you can do some research on them and learn how to use them within your training, and they can be very, very beneficial. cu If you're not accustomed to training and you're sort of not as in touch with your body as some people are, it's easy to just go out and do all your training in that zone three where you're pushing a little bit hard, not your hardest, but just a little bit hard. You probably can't really have a conversation. You're like quite out of breath.
00:14:01
Speaker
But that's kind of the zone that everyone just goes and they just do their training in. And if you do a lot of zone three, it doesn't sort of reap the benefits that doing some in zone four and some in zone two, for example, would.
00:14:15
Speaker
And there's a lot of books on it as well. The 80-20 principle is quite like popular. That's been then studied a lot where they're saying that 80% of your training should be very low intensity and only 20% of that training should be high intensity, which quite a new concept.
00:14:31
Speaker
One thing is that I've noticed, like you say, running is is taking off in in lots of ways. yeah I'm noticing many, many more people out running in the morning, in the evening, people running alone, people running with friends in clubs, so all sorts of things. You've got the big events on Saturday and Sunday mornings, all these sorts of things.
00:14:51
Speaker
But when it comes to these types of events that you're participating in, it's like, you know, I know that there's the London Marathon, and I know that there's the Great North Run, and then we have a marathon in York and we have a marathon in Leeds.
00:15:07
Speaker
How many opportunities are there to actually participate in these events that go beyond marathon? I think you'd actually be quite surprised, to be honest. I mean, I remember sort of similar to what you're saying when I was 16.
00:15:23
Speaker
sixteen Yeah. If someone had run a marathon, that was the furthest you could run unless you were crazy about it and trying to set a world record. But now, yeah, it's quite common that people have done a 50K or 100K or You maybe even meet some people who've done a 100-mile race. For example, I've just entered a 100-mile race for next year, actually, and I was able to select sort of where in the country I wanted to do it, the distance and what what time of year as well. So to have that luxury on a race that's...
00:15:57
Speaker
that most people would think isn't going to be run that frequently just shows how many of them there is popping up. And you'd be surprised at how many entries there are as well. They go up to ah thousand in some, like the big ones, with Ultra Trail Mont Blanc, UTMB people call it. That's becoming a huge, huge series and they're popping up everywhere and they're buying out different races. And yeah, you'd struggle to actually get a place in one of those. So it just shows how popular running really is getting.
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah. That's one of the things about running is that you see a lot of people that run a lot are very slim. And part of that, I think, is because running is aerobic exercise and aerobic exs exercise is fueled by fat.
00:16:43
Speaker
So you burn fat as you run. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Body Adaptations and Nutrition Strategies

00:16:46
Speaker
But yeah if you're actually doing, you know, beyond a marathon type type, the ultra events, does that mean you've got to develop a different type of body shape, body consistency, body functionality?
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah, there's a there's a few theories on this, and i don't think there's any one specific one that everyone has to be. you see some so but while You see all shapes and sizes at these events, and for sure not everyone is the same in that sense, but certainly for longer races there's there's a theory which is quite well known, and it's...
00:17:21
Speaker
It's the one about burning fat instead of carbohydrates and becoming fat adapted as they call it. To do this you're sort of relying on a ketogenic style diet where you're not eating main carbohydrates, you're predominantly looking to burn, well, fat.
00:17:37
Speaker
because so When you're doing a race, you only really have 90 minutes of carbohydrate stores in your body at one time. Whereas I think it's probably about 48 hours worth of fat you have in your body to burn.
00:17:51
Speaker
So the difference just in that on its own is massive in terms of energy stores. um ah Fat also doesn't produce lactate, unlike carbohydrates. So if you can increase your heart rate percentage that you can get to while still burning fat,
00:18:09
Speaker
you won't produce any lactic acid and that for competitive athletes is a massive benefit because obviously lactic acid is what what stops and produces that pain in your muscles so the longer you can delay that the better so that is in some ways the theory on endurance racing but like i said it's very individual you see some people who have no idea about this They just eat as many energy gels as they can and they manage to get through races. And you see some people who do hours and hours of research, look into all this stuff and maybe it works for them, maybe it doesn't. It's very individualized, but certainly that's something that I've looked to be doing because...
00:18:50
Speaker
If you're doing an unsupported race, which a lot of these sort of ultra endurance ones are, that means you have to carry everything that you're going to eat. And if you can carry less, that's a massive benefit because there's another figure for how much more energy you burn per kilo of weight that you're carrying.
00:19:08
Speaker
And it's actually quite astonishing. So yeah, it's certainly the route I look to go down with my own training. Obviously, the if you've got more on your back than somebody else, you're going to burn more energy and because you're carrying more.
00:19:23
Speaker
But at the same time, from what you're saying, you can be just as effective in terms of speed and endurance But use less energy if you have consumed to the right type of foods to create the right energy store.
00:19:39
Speaker
So the battery's got the right type of energy in it for you to be able to then power through the race. Yeah, that's a ah good comparison, I guess. i I would never have thought about it, but there's so many things about these ultra-athletic type activities that yeah I just didn't really know.

Personal Motivations and Goals

00:19:59
Speaker
One of them is that there are so many of these races and that some of them have been around for a very long time.
00:20:06
Speaker
I mean, I've called them races and I've called them events. Are people racing against each other or are they racing against themselves? Well, that's why I kind of intertwine those terms as well, because it's totally dependent, isn't it?
00:20:22
Speaker
The people at the back are just looking to finish and the people at the front are probably looking for a podium podium place. and Like I said earlier, you will get all kinds of people from someone who's 18 to someone who's 70, 80 years old, from someone who's professional to someone who's just turned up on the day. And that's kind of the beauty of it, that everyone comes together for these events. And they really are quite special, especially when you've gone through and amount of time
00:20:53
Speaker
of physical activity like some of these races 12 hours plus or even just three four hours it really does get you quite emotional when you put so much into something so yeah and that's that's partly why i like it in a way well i can see the attraction if you've got to really understand how your own body works and how that is different to other people create the nutrition plan the exercise training plan in order to prepare for this event It's not an addiction or a session. I suppose it's a passion. You have to be quite passionate about it to do as much of this as you do.
00:21:31
Speaker
I wouldn't actually say anyone is kind of born or predisposed to have that passion. I think it's something you get through just doing one and you you realize how good it is and you realize that it's enjoyable and then you kind of make a mental note and you're like, oh, if I was to do this next time, ah wonder how much quicker I could get.

The Addictive Nature of Endurance Racing

00:21:52
Speaker
And then you try that and you get a bit quicker or you have a more enjoyable time because you're not hurting as much after the race. And then you think, oh, I wonder if I was to do that. how And it just gets so addictive. And that that really is how I got into endurance racing when I was...
00:22:07
Speaker
13, it was just through that every race you'd finish and you'd go I wonder if I could get a little bit better by doing this and you're almost using yourself as a bit of a guinea pig just to test different things on and see what works and what doesn't and yeah before you know it you're 10, 15 years down the line and you're hooked.
00:22:27
Speaker
You've got a collection full of medals as well I suppose. Yeah I've definitely got a few race race numbers on my house is full of But there's races, events so all over the world.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah, some some countries more so than others, for sure. The UK and America, obviously really big on them, like like they are with most things. But yeah, there's a lot.
00:22:48
Speaker
and And when you get to the really long-distance ones as well, they become... more kind of randomized in where they're actually held. So to make them more extreme, they'll hold them in places where not many people will go like a rain forest or a desert.
00:23:05
Speaker
And yeah, it gets quite interesting really. as But yeah, all over the world. And of course, when you say it gets quite interesting, it has become very interesting for you because you've written this book Yeah, absolutely.

Jack's Book: 'The World's Toughest Endurance Races'

00:23:20
Speaker
So I've just written a book called The World's Toughest Endurance Races. And what that is, is effectively more of a guidebook, really, because for me, I've been looking for so many races and I just had so many notes that piled up.
00:23:36
Speaker
And one day I was just looking at them all and I was thinking, there's a lot of pages here. There's definitely something that this could turn into. And it almost wrote itself, really, just through my own research, which was which was nice. And, um, yeah, that's turned into the world's toughest endurance races book.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah. And it's not just a list though, is it? Of, of the races. It's, it's like the history of the races as well as what they're like. Yeah, so there's quite a bit on each of them and it's broken down into different sports as well. So there's 15 sports and 200 races and for each race that's in there, it gives you a little breakdown at the top, what time of year it is, how far it is, those kind of things, what country it's in.
00:24:19
Speaker
And then there's an actual profile on it. So I talk a bit about the history of the race, which is quite interesting for a lot of them. Some of some of them have been going on for hundreds of years.
00:24:29
Speaker
You also find in there that some of them are like the oldest race of that discipline. And a lot of them have a crazy story about how it first came about, which will involve someone doing something silly or maybe a war.
00:24:43
Speaker
um So yeah, it is very interesting. And then there's also a few details about people who finished them and then also how to enter them if that's something the reader would be interested in. So it's like a real history as well as a directory of the the big events.
00:25:01
Speaker
And it's amazing that there are, did you say 15 different sports that have ultra extreme endurance type events?

Unique Endurance Sports

00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, 15, I've managed to find. that That was something that took a lot of research as well because there's probably more sort of endurance sports you could say than that, but a lot of them don't really have any extreme races or some there would be only one race for that discipline. So it was about finding all the kind of ultra races that actually had a bit of history to their racing and enough races to put in the book.
00:25:39
Speaker
Okay, so what's the most unusual sport that has an ah an extreme event? Well, for us being from the UK, it's gotta be something on snow. So I reckon dog sledding is probably the one that I found the most interesting. Uh, I never even knew that was a thing to be quite honest. And then I just came about it on an attached article on a web website one day. And, uh, yeah, it turns out they have these dog sledding races. i think the longest one is even up to two weeks. So yeah, it's incredible. And, um,
00:26:12
Speaker
ice skating as well so there's quite a lot of countries where they'll wait for either the sea or a lake to freeze and we'll do a 200 kilometer ice skating race on it so something you'd never think would be done isn't it so uh the book is published when well i was hoping it'd be done by now but with everything i guess you've run into complications but i'm hoping to have it out sometime next week probably next friday right ah okay so it'll be available from all the usual outlets Yeah, predominantly Amazon.

Book Publication Details

00:26:44
Speaker
And then I'll speak to the publisher as well. okay else they recommend on that Right. We will put a link in the description to where people can find that. For someone who didn't ever really consider himself to be particularly sporty.
00:26:58
Speaker
to select join a running club and in week one you run so far and then you stopped for and you walk for a bit. And then week two, you realize that you've actually passed that point and you're still running.
00:27:12
Speaker
I get this sort of thing where you're saying, you know, you do something and you think, well, what should I do differently to be slightly better, to get to the, a little bit further, to be a little bit quicker, all those sorts of things. I did get it. And, ah you know, if, if I wasn't doing the running,
00:27:28
Speaker
I would miss it. I know I would. know because it's very so straightforward to do. The most difficult part, she's starting. Once you've made that decision and you put that into action, you're away.
00:27:40
Speaker
And I totally get how it becomes like a passion for you. But really do appreciate your time today, Jack. It's been very interesting. Very interesting. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Michael. You Thank you for helping me learn more about running and understanding how running can help ensure that I am fit for my age.
00:28:00
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida. And in this episode of Fit for my Age, I have been having a conversation with Jack Harrison, an ultra athlete.
00:28:11
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abusida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. If you fancy participating in extreme sports or ultra running events that are in other parts of the UK or even around the world, the best place to organise your travel is with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where you can get trade prices on flights, hotels and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
00:28:38
Speaker
There's a link and a membership discount code in the description. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Jack.

Health Checks and Recommendations

00:28:47
Speaker
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Jack, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker.fm is where great hosts meet great guests.
00:28:59
Speaker
There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. Before you engage in any extreme sport or ultra running event, it is a good idea to make sure that you're fit enough to undertake the training, let alone the event.
00:29:13
Speaker
So consult your GP or take the annual health test from York Test. York tests provide an assessment of 39 different health markers, including cholesterol, diabetes, vitamin D, vitamin B12, liver function, iron deficiency, inflammation, and a full blood count.
00:29:32
Speaker
The annual health test is completed by an experienced phlebotomist who will complete the full blood draw at your home or workplace or gym. Hospital standard tests are carried out in a UKAS accredited and CQC compliant laboratory.
00:29:49
Speaker
You can access your easy to understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime by your secure personal wellness hub account.
00:30:00
Speaker
There is ah link and a discount code in the description. That description, just like Jack's book, is well worth reading. Jack, what is the title of the book again? The world's toughest endurance races.
00:30:14
Speaker
the world's toughest endurance races.

Podcast Conclusion and Call to Action

00:30:17
Speaker
If you've liked this episode of Fit For My Age, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:30:25
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
00:30:36
Speaker
Until the next episode of Fit For My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.