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Nick Butter - 1st person to run a marathon in every country in the world!
58 Plays4 years ago
Nick is an Endurance Athlete, Speaker, Author, fundraiser and the first person to run a marathon in every country in the world.
Nick is currently running 100 marathons in 100 days from the top to bottom of Italy and we catch up with him on a day off due to injury in Bologna!
You can pre-order Nicks book "Running The World" due for release on 11th November 2020 here.
Follow Nick on Instagram
Nicks website https://www.nickbutter.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Nick's Achievements
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to this episode of the UK Sports Chat podcast. I'm Joe Williams, and in today's episode, I speak with Nick Butter. Nick is a British endurance athlete, speaker, author, and fundraiser, and Nick
00:00:15
Speaker
was the well is the first man to have run a marathon in every country in the world which he finished last November 2019 he has a new book coming out about this journey in November on November the 11th
Current Marathon Challenge in Italy
00:00:32
Speaker
and he is currently running from north to south of italy completing a hundred marathons in a hundred days i've caught up with him on day 35 i think he's currently injured and he talks about amongst other things his run around the world how he got inspired to take up these challenges and how he's going to complete this one considering that he's
00:00:59
Speaker
that he's got this challenge ahead of him of this injury. Enjoy. Morning Nick. Good morning, how are you? Yeah, I'm very well thank you, how are you? Good, I'm in good spirits despite the recent slight little injury.
00:01:23
Speaker
Yeah, so go on, tell us about your challenge that you're on at the moment and what's happened. I've been following along, so I know what you're talking about. Just describe it for us.
00:02:17
Speaker
we thought what can we do where we can actually get to a country that's relatively safe now and I thought well it would be nice to go and do a trip that's running point to point and part of what I hope to be in the future is to run lots of north and south of countries and circumnavigate countries and just to be honest just have a laugh and enjoy what I love doing which is running.
00:02:46
Speaker
Have a few days in Sicily for Christmas. We are about a month and a bit in now. It's day 36 today.
Coping with Injuries and Endurance Mindset
00:03:27
Speaker
bit too much and I thought it was a tendon problem in my shin. It then transpired that it probably was shin splints and then what I did wrong, because I'm not that experienced with injuries to be honest, because I've got away with a lot of injuries not happening. And I think it's just transpired
00:04:00
Speaker
and heal myself and I tried to get out for breakfast in the morning and I literally couldn't make it past the next bedroom along in the corridor. I was just absolutely agony. So I spoke to lots of physios, had some incredibly lovely people on social media message me and give me so much advice and I just took every bit of advice. I watched hours of YouTube stuff about what I could do better.
00:04:29
Speaker
The honest answer is I have no idea what to do with an injury. Everything is individual and you don't really know what's going on. And even if you go and see specialists, they might have different opinions and all this sort of stuff. So you just have to listen to it. So yeah, that's the long answer. But I'm running north to south of Italy and a couple of days you had an injury. So the plan is to still complete the challenge, of course, because that's the whole point of endurance, just get to the finish line.
00:05:10
Speaker
when my leg is properly healed. So that's the plan. Let's face it, we don't know what's going to happen. This kind of injury, sometimes you're told it can take three, four, five, or maybe six months to heal. But I've had fractures before running, and I've healed in a matter of weeks. So we're going to give it a full week off and then run, probably on Monday. That's the plan, fingers crossed. Okay, cool. I love our
00:05:38
Speaker
I love how I lay back you are, so your quotes there, it's a bit of a jolly. Yeah, you've just done 33 marathons. Yeah, a bit of a jolly. And yeah, well, I think to me, if I'm going to go and run them at like 130 miles or something, then that's a brutal run. But the beauty I love about running is people always say to me, oh, how do you do it? How do you do it? Well, I just run really slowly. You know, I'm not going to have a drink every now and then.
00:06:08
Speaker
or so, but I take it easy. I'm in this ball because I love running. I'm not in it to ruin myself despite the injury. It was just a bit of fun. Yeah, I love that. You don't make it easy for yourself. Like I said, I've been following along, but just describe day one of this current challenge to us. Yeah, day one, I don't make it easy for myself, but honestly, that wasn't by design.
00:06:43
Speaker
really much better runners than me. And they said, Oh, you know, it's gonna be quite difficult to get to the most northerly point of it. It's a place I can't pronounce, but it's in the mountains. I knew it was in the mountains. But I didn't anticipate was quite how steep and quite how far away from any main road it was going to be. So as you saw from from day one, it took me a good half a marathon just to get to that most northerly point. And it was
00:07:19
Speaker
and then turned around and came back but you know doing I think in that first week we were doing three, four, five thousand feet of elevation every day and I didn't know if I was sustainable or not but I just kept going. Then we had things like stale go pass which is this beautiful mountain pass in the mountains.
00:07:52
Speaker
I love that misadventure. That's the whole point. If I didn't have Nicky in the van and the dog, I would probably just be running on my own and busy camping and that sort of stuff. And it would be far more brutal. So it's quite nice to have a bit of the balance between it being tough and then I'm currently sitting on the roof of a hotel here waiting for an injury deal. So I feel like I'm
00:08:15
Speaker
it was like in that first week. I'd like to say I've been following along on your it on your Instagram feed and that some of your day two pictures the Dolomites are absolutely stunning some of the places you've seen.
Outdoor Lifestyle and Motivation
00:08:32
Speaker
Lots of people ask me about my
00:08:44
Speaker
people have done some good, but ultimately just enjoy every day. Guys are too short to wish away everything and a lot of people postpone all of their hopes and dreams until their retirement or maybe let's do that next year or we'll save up for a few years and let's do that. That's fine and that's fair enough, but there are opportunities out there that you can do sooner rather than later.
00:09:08
Speaker
some running because it was getting me outside a lot. I found this horrendous thing actually that 90% of British people spend 90% of their life, their waking life indoors. That's shocking isn't it?
00:09:34
Speaker
I thought, you know what, I'm going to try and change that a little bit and be outside as much as possible because this is where the fun happens. That's what it's all about. Yeah, definitely. Like I said, I've followed along with some of the things you've been up to. So for those who haven't followed along before that are listening, so your prior challenge was a little bit of a big one, wasn't it?
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, okay. I'll give you a bit of background of that. So yes, so as of November the 11th, last year, I crossed the finish line of what was a two year journey to become the first person to run a marathon in every country in the world. And that was an undertaking. It was fantastic. It was horrendously difficult at times. It was stressful. It was
00:10:37
Speaker
had no idea what I was getting myself into. If we rewind the clock two years before I even started that trip, that was when the whole thing sparked. I was running lots of different ultra marathons all over the place and I was in the Sahara Desert running the infamous marathon to celebrate and I met, many people would know I met this guy called Kevin Webber who's a great runner in his own right. And he had terminal prostate cancer and he just dropped
00:11:21
Speaker
I needed over that cliff of adventure and I had that conversation with him and then a few weeks later got back and decided I wanted to do something to raise some money for the charity, Prostate Cancer UK, but I also wanted to do something that
00:11:52
Speaker
that big trip and you know I realized I was so surprised actually that nobody had ran a marathon in every country in the world.
Global Marathon Journey and Challenges
00:11:59
Speaker
I'm not. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that was. I thought it was going to be difficult by planning it. I didn't even
00:12:24
Speaker
And then, um, you know, there's countries that came out and they're on this piece of paper, but you know, you go and find your initial list and then you investigate it further. And there's countries that I couldn't pronounce it and never even heard of them. Didn't even know where they were. Um, and then you start to learn more and more and more. And now I can pretty much name all the countries, all the cities, all the capitals, all the political areas. And it was just a huge education for me.
00:12:55
Speaker
and it's deemed an extreme deprivation and I learnt a lot about various different elements of travelling and endurance and a lot about myself and it was a trip of a lifetime and I'm very very grateful to have done it. You'd be a great team partner in the pub quiz for those geography questions aren't you?
00:13:27
Speaker
I'm still thinking about the planning of that, but just before we go there, you mentioned you're in the MDS and I've heard other interviews of yours. You said that you've got away with injuries in your life and I know that's not the case in every challenge you've been on. So what happened in the MDS? Because I'm interested in that as well.
00:14:37
Speaker
but I was one in the morning. I had loads of blisters on my feet and I was hobbling out of this medic tent, having had blisters and bits popped and feeling pretty sorry for myself and not doing very well. And my ankle, my calcaneum, which is an impact fracture if you were to fall off the building feet first. I just probably over-trained, maybe I didn't have the right bone density or something. And my calcaneum, a fracture of
00:15:12
Speaker
to run, well, hobble. And I was told I would be taken out of the race because I couldn't continue. Unfortunately, some very nice French medics, they found me some crutches. The only pair of crutches in the medics have all these 70 doctors that were volunteering for the race.
00:15:49
Speaker
I bobbled back to my tent with these crutches and completed the last few days of the race on crutches. So 40 miles with a broken ankle, I didn't think was possible but with the help of strong painkillers,
00:16:18
Speaker
So you were off your head on painkillers. I'm just picturing this. On crutches in the desert. So was it? So I haven't done MDS. So I'm assuming the dunes were involved in the part where you were at, were they? Yeah, running up, I say running, hobbling, crawling up big sand dunes. I mean, some of these sand dunes are bigger than buildings. Huge, huge sand dunes.
00:16:49
Speaker
I was absolutely in the hurt locker, I was in a lot of pain and a very good friend of mine, Chris, I met there actually and he's now a good friend of mine, he was with me and all he put up with was just my cursing and screaming
00:17:16
Speaker
want to give up because I went into the race knowing that it was going to be difficult. People say it's one of the hardest races in the world and so I thought well whatever I do I've got to finish. And so when that happened I thought well I don't have a choice even if I crawl I will hide people off me to get me there. I mean sand dunes are half of the problem. It's just the escaping the heat. You want to find as much shade as you can and there just isn't any. Yeah I mean I've had a couple of operations and
00:17:45
Speaker
just pottering around the house after you've had a knee up or something. Your shoulders, your hands get blistered like your feet do on crutches. I'd say you're going through the desert on crutches. Yes, so many blisters on crutches, on my hands. I actually, when you shake the patty barber, the founder of the race, you shake his hand at the end of the race and he gives you your medal when you cross the finish line.
00:18:18
Speaker
my hands by shaking because I had so many blisters. It was one of those moments though, as soon as you've had one of those moments of this feels like rock bottom, you know that there's going to be worse situations, but it just gives you tremendous ability for the future. I can't say that enough. There's so many people focused on the negatives, but right now, okay, I'm injured.
00:18:50
Speaker
So, you know, there's always positives. So was this, so you said that you ran this with Kevin Webber. So was that before you and him has had your chat that you said, you know, kind of changed your perspective on things or was that after? It was during, it was during, yeah. So Kev was, I think it was day, I can't remember what day it was, it was during the middle of the race. I mean, we were sharing a tent
00:19:18
Speaker
throughout in the evenings and even on the plane beforehand but you know he and I had kind of caught that heart to heart during the race and that was during the race that we both had done. Okay so was that before you broke your ankle then or was it during while you were on the crutches or I'm just trying to understand where your motivation comes from because it would have been
00:19:41
Speaker
It would have been easy for you, and it would have been completely acceptable for you to say, right, I'm done. No, true, true. I think, honestly, I don't know, I think I have a lot of stubbornness in there, so the comment I had with Kev was before my ankle happened, and I think there was definitely, definitely some of those things that Kev was saying to me would help, but there's also, there was a double amputee in the race,
00:20:09
Speaker
I think made it to day four because his stunts were so good. He was an absolutely brilliant guy. And when you have the after event speeches and awards at the hotel once you finish, everybody was in tears and it was such an emotional thing. But my perspective on stuff, similar to now and I hope always, is that there's always somebody that's worse off.
00:20:34
Speaker
the amplified, because, you know, we talk about how many people coronavirus is killing now, and it's horrendous, don't get me wrong. But there's 5 million, sorry, 2 million children under the age of five every year dying from starvation, because they haven't got enough food around the world, 2 million children under five. And we have the antidote for that, we don't have to have some special vaccine, it's food, and we have enough of it to go around. And so when you think about that sort of stuff, and the amount of
00:21:04
Speaker
people in our daily lives that suffer with cancer, with disability, with inequality. And actually, you know what, just get on with it. And as everybody knows, in the running community, kind of pain is temporary.
00:21:31
Speaker
which always helps. Wow. Okay, so you did MDS and then it was after that that you decided that you were going to run in every country, American?
Inspiration and Philanthropy
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, it was a real pivotal moment and I didn't decide I was just going to run around in every country. I kind of googled all sorts of things. I wanted to do a trick involving a good
00:22:03
Speaker
And I wanted to raise quite a bit of money for prostate cancer. We're trying to raise a quarter of a million pounds. And I wasn't this name of any, but I'm still not, and anybody really knows. And so I needed something that was going to be a little bit longer in time in order to raise the awareness and have the amount of time. So it was quite a practical approach, a very practical person. So I had to think of something that was going to be big enough and in terms of duration long enough to
00:22:36
Speaker
because there was lots of opportunities around the world that I was, you know, we did something like 140 live TV interviews in 140 different countries, and I was talking about prostate cancer, and I felt like what I set out to do, which was to spread the awareness and raise some cash, was actually working. You know, I was having emails from people saying, oh, I've just gone and got myself checked, and I actually have prostate cancer. And so that was, you know, it was incredibly powerful. And so, yeah, I decided to do that after meeting Kevin,
00:23:06
Speaker
Um, having, you know, we met, uh, shortly before I left for the trip. And, um, you know, his diagnosis, by the way, was, was to potentially only live for as little as two years. And it took me two years to plan it. And so what was amazing is that not only was he there to see me off at the beginning, but he was also there hand in hand crossing the finish line with me and Athens. And he was running a marathon with me five years and four days after he was told he was only going to live for two more years. And that's the power
00:23:40
Speaker
very good family friends. My godfather as well died of cancer, not prostate cancer, died of cancer. His attitude was very much the opposite of Kev's and I wish it hadn't and it was one of giving up and seeing Kev and so many others struggle through this sort of stuff, you ask about what gets you through things and it's so easy now, you just think of that.
00:24:06
Speaker
I struggle talking about this one as well. I have a friend, I lost a friend last year, school friend, cancer, and 37, he was 37, three children, one's only 18 months old, but he was, you'd have never known.
00:24:27
Speaker
that he's done well. He was, I mean, when we were young, he was the life and soul of the party. He was the Joker. And he was exactly that, you know, until he passed away. It's incredible, really.
00:24:57
Speaker
you start to kind of well up a little bit it makes you so instantly emotional and I think that's what the impact was with with Kevin is that it was so powerful that I feel like I've been reborn and he says the same is because he's a bit of his diagnosis he's almost given and given a second chance at life and I hope that I mean many of your listeners are obviously runners and they're already doing what they love I hope but we also have the opportunity to go that a little bit further and you know whether it's Harry and Megan's getting on
00:25:29
Speaker
corniest way possible is that our voice is being used for good. We have that opportunity to do it ourselves. Whether it's for our children or for ourselves or for our parents or for our friends, do something that is for you. Just go and what do I want to do before I pop my clocks? Before my time is up, what do I want to do? And go and do it. And we all have the ability and that's what I've learned from
00:25:57
Speaker
freedom. They are living hand to mouth. They are hunting for food and water to live. And we don't take that for granted. So everything else is a bonus. And so let's just try and use all of our time. So I feel very lucky to have had that message from Kevin and now living in a genuinely more
00:26:20
Speaker
yeah nice like your words thank you there i tell you what else i like as well because i know you've mentioned a few already is your stats on your website yeah there's lots of them who was keeping tally of all these because it was a good combination of people so i had a good tally of um well it was very easy to keep track of flights
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah
00:27:23
Speaker
And with a few bits in there that went a little bit wrong, and ultimately it ended up with not 220 flights, but 455 flights. And that shows you how much went wrong. And yeah, so to draw on to your question of who kept Cali of all of them, there was a little bit of hope from Strava and Garmin and Sunter and all the gadgets I was wearing to keep track of steps and calories and stuff, but most of it was just was writing stuff down as we went.
00:27:51
Speaker
yeah brilliant so so for anyone listening have a look at Nick's website nickbutter.com and under his running the wheel there's stats and it's like i could talk to you about everyone 22 marathons with food poisoning what so you were doing three three a week was it for 96 weeks it says on your website is that right yeah wow okay and and like 20
00:28:22
Speaker
Yeah, brilliant. I don't want to keep going on about the planning, but with the UK passport, some countries would imagine it's a breeze to get into, but then others, I'd imagine that some are really, well, some are just really difficult to get into.
Logistics and Support Network
00:28:54
Speaker
So we traffic lighted, you know, amber, red and green for the safety of the countries. And then we also put amber and green for different, the accessibility of the countries and how easy it was to access and then also get out of the country. So you have places like France, very easy to get into. I mean, this is pre-COVID, remember? And then you then have countries like, let's say, America.
00:29:29
Speaker
your visa's on, but it's not impossible. It's not difficult. You just got to get it done. And then you get the next level of the unknown areas, which are the countries that you have to have visas on arrival. I think there's about 60% of my visas were visas on arrival, which means that you don't really know what's going to happen until you get there. And you don't know how much they're going to cost or if they're going to try and extort you, which happened a lot. And then you have the other end of the spectrum.
00:29:55
Speaker
Iran, Bhutan, where they have all sorts of special rules about whether or not you have certain medical certificates, you need an invite from the king or the prince or the palace. And then you also need some of them just simply refused my visas. There was a good couple of dozen places that just refused my visas for whatever reason. But the hardest part of all of it wasn't actually the difficulty of accessing the visas. It was
00:30:22
Speaker
orchestrating them whilst mid trip because you can't just get all the visas before you leave. You have to know it during because they're only valid. Some of them are only valid for 24 hours. And so, yeah, organizing that and then getting my passport in time to then use it and then get out and then get another passport for another place was difficult. We got through nine passports.
00:30:45
Speaker
Wow. I'm just trying to imagine that. So each week you'll run in three marathons, you're travelling between each of them and organise. So how many people did you have helping you? You mentioned you've pushed it on your dad a bit. I hope you had more help than that. The first member of the team really was my sister
00:31:20
Speaker
And then towards the end, I actually met a guy four or five years prior to the trip, we were running the Silverstone Marathon together, and his name was Veton, and we were chatting, it was rainy day, we were standing in the hangar in Silverstone, half marathon, and he said, oh, I'm actually from Kosovo, if you ever come to Kosovo, and at the time I thought, well, that's unlikely, but yeah, I'll take your details, and if I come to Kosovo, then I'll come running with you.
00:31:50
Speaker
And we didn't say a word to each other after that. You know, he was following me on social media. And to be honest, I completely forgot about the occasion. And then five years after meeting him, he was there waiting for me in the airport in Kosovo, having got in touch with Karla at the time, saying, I want to help Nick. And I'll go one step further. I later then found out that Vetson used to work for the UN, for the United Nations, and had huge contacts
00:32:24
Speaker
and in the compounds. And we were struggling to get access to the Afghanistan United Nations base. And we needed some contacts there that were going to help us and keep me safe for running in Kabul. And long story short, I then randomly, out of the blue, asked him if he wanted to become a member of the team and to take over from Karla, who was stepping down as my assistant. Because in a long period of time, this is two years. This is a long, stressful period for everybody involved.
00:32:56
Speaker
and then became my assistant for the journey. And he was absolutely paramount in getting all of the accesses we did. And he had contacts everywhere. So it was, again, the power of just having the most conversation with somebody for a couple of minutes was pretty special. Amazing. And to answer your question, we had about, it ranged from about five, maybe eight people, all the way up to 19 people at one point.
00:33:24
Speaker
performance managers, coaches, but the core team was probably about five to eight, eight people that made the trip happen. Amazing. That's amazing. So he'd actually, you'd met him, you'd followed each other on social media. He saw that you were doing the challenge and got in touch to support that leg of it, which has then evolved into you working together. Yeah, it is honestly. Brilliant.
00:33:58
Speaker
say, Hello, how are you? And you get chatting. But I'm a big advocate for it, because most of my friends and contacts are people that I've just randomly spoken to. Another classic example of that is this brilliant guy called Chris who I met on social media. He was a brilliant photographer. And I said, Well, I need a photographer to come out and take some pictures of me in the pool. Will you come out and get some photos in the pool because
00:34:28
Speaker
well-versed at photographing the mountains. Anyway, long story short, we had a brilliant time at the mountains. He took some video footage. He turned out to be this brilliant director, had a production company based in Fox Studios in Sydney, and he is now in the finishing stages of putting my documentary together with Netflix. Wow, brilliant. Yeah, exactly. It's just a story
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, amazing. I mean, I'm looking at these stats and what, because I find that with the running community that it's close, isn't it? And there's some very generous people. I'm sure you've got more stories of people taking you in and helping you out. You've also got a few on here, three marathons with a kidney infection, two muggins, one dog bite.
Challenges and Beginnings
00:35:12
Speaker
There was some traveling, it's inevitable really, but were there some hairy moments? Yeah.
00:35:22
Speaker
were pretty hairy, pretty scary and sometimes genuinely fearful of if I was going to get through to the end of the day. There's all sorts of situations, whether it be close encounters with animals or just the natural elements. I was running through Hong Kong and there's these huge thunderstorms and there was claps of lightning, more or less every other step
00:35:56
Speaker
You know, I was absolutely fine, of course, but you do have those moments where you don't feel fine. And there was that stress actually, which underlined the whole, was underlined the whole trip because I was, I was worried and I had to be conscious of making sure that I was getting injured or getting myself into silly situations. And when things happened, like they did in Nigeria, when I was in Lagos in the capital,
00:36:34
Speaker
political instability. And I thought, gosh, this is, you know, have I just got away with it? Then how many times can I continue getting away with it? And, you know, you then I was crossing the two places, capital cities in the world, Kinshasa in Brazil, the two capitals of the Congo countries, and separated by the Congolese River. And my mum messaged me in the morning and said, you know, you
00:37:08
Speaker
And I thought, right, okay, well, you know, I don't have another way of getting across. And you know, it's those moments where you think, am I doing something a little bit silly? And because I was on my own traveling for the majority of the trip, you know, and I mentioned my team, they were none of them were with me. And so by traveling on my own, you have to rely on your own decision making and when you're tired and
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I could think all day about this trip. It's some amazing stories. But where does. Did you have this kind of appetite for challenges when you were children? You spoke about the MDS and Kevin, but we, you know, we are very sporty as a kid. I would say I was well, famously my my old headmaster, a guy called David Bentzer,
00:38:05
Speaker
And he wrote in, he was my headmaster, but also took me for PE. And he famously put in my school report, and I quote, not a natural runner. That was very much the case.
00:38:27
Speaker
very, very strange. Fortunately, they sorted themselves out. But my parents were genuinely worried that I was going to walk properly, let alone become a runner. So sport was something that I was I love because I wasn't particularly academic, I was definitely I was dyslexic, I struggled with certain reading or writing and, and I, I wanted to
00:38:58
Speaker
But I actually got into skiing quite young because my parents both skied and skiing became my lifeblood. I wanted to be an Olympic skier, I wanted to ski in the Olympics and I wanted to represent my country and ultimately, long story short,
00:39:23
Speaker
And I was actually getting too old by the time that I realized I was loving it. You know, I was too old, maybe peak skiing when you're 22, maybe. And so, you know, it was a young man's game. And I then had the voice of my dad telling me to get a real job rather than just be a skier. But I still had sport in my, you know, I still wanted to do sport and having being British and not having scenario easily around, I guess running was the easy equivalent. And I do quite like, I say I quite like running, I love running because it is
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you mentioned that you finished, that you ran the world marathons in Athens?
Completion of World Marathon Journey
00:40:13
Speaker
Yes. That's quite a good choice. Yeah, last year we weren't actually aiming for Athens at the beginning, we thought we were going to finish in July, and then things got worse in Athens in November, and we got a little bit delayed, and then we realised that we had an opportunity to finish in Athens in November,
00:40:57
Speaker
Wow okay yes so people are booking what a couple of months before and you've still got X amount of marathons to run which could
00:41:05
Speaker
Any kind of problems could happen. We had a lot of wars at the end and we really didn't know how close it was going to come. I mean, I've said it a few times in interviews, but there were a few key moments in the last few weeks of the trip. Week 93, week 94, two weeks before the end where we really didn't think we were going to finish because I was banned from certain countries. Visas weren't allowed.
00:41:40
Speaker
yes that was starting to become a problem towards the end of the trip so we had to be quite savvy with that and fortunately we made it but yeah the whole detail of that debacle is in there is in the book yeah i was going to say is that all detailed in the book because that must have been very tricky to navigate yeah it was very tricky and it's also actually quite difficult to write about because there's so much that went on i think i could write a book just about the finish day but you know the other
00:42:11
Speaker
And I had a word count limit with the publishers Penguin and they said, well, you can write, we ideally want about 100,000 words, but you can go over if you want 120,000. And I think I submitted just a little over 300,000. And so they had a lot of work to do to edit it and cut it all back. So yeah, it's a big book still. Yeah. Great. And just remind me when that comes out.
00:42:45
Speaker
away about a month away it will be i mean it's on pre-order now on amazon and waterstones and all sorts of different stores but it will be on the shelves and in people's homes if they've already pre-ordered it by the 11th of November brilliant brilliant wow i look forward to that um so so you are currently then tell me where describe to me where you are i am uh on a hotel rooftop surrounded by
00:43:21
Speaker
We've got another, I think it's something like 60 something days until Christmas. So we've got a few more days to recover here, heal up a little bit and then try running again and then run a marathon every day for as long as I can and then do a few double marathons, probably five or six double marathons towards the end of the run and then reach Sicily for Christmas and then have a few days in a night.
00:43:46
Speaker
Very nice. Very nice. I love how you just drop in some double marathons towards the end, wouldn't you?
00:43:59
Speaker
I don't have a choice. I actually, on the UK lunch hour last night, I put out that we were going to interview you today. We've had a half a dozen or so questions. I'm going to quickly fire at you before. One of them from Jill Duds. She asked, what are you most looking forward to doing on day 101? I think it's Christmas dinner. Day 101 is Christmas day.
00:44:32
Speaker
I think it's going to resemble lasagna. We're just better than nothing. It's strange really because I don't know what I'm going to feel like on that day. I hope I'm just going to be able to sit like I am now and relax and enjoy the day.
00:44:50
Speaker
Well food got mentioned in another question somebody asked how are you? What are you eating each night? And I suppose that came back into one of my one of my thoughts about planning But um, you know, do you know where you're ending up each each night on this on this current challenge? Do you?
Current Plans and Engagement with Audience
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah We have so we got 100 rows of a spreadsheet together and I know 26.2 miles in each day and then you're roughly have a look at the map and I think we had about something like 15 points 15 days where we knew almost like
00:45:20
Speaker
like stages or milestones that we knew we had to reach in order to get to the end. But Italy in its length is only about 1,000 miles. And so I'm obviously doing 2,600. So we knew we were zigzagging. We wanted to do all of the good bits. And so rather than just run straight down the middle quickly. So we had a rough idea, but it's quite nice because if I get better again, now heal up and then we run to
00:45:48
Speaker
I'm going to be able to have a good two or three days running around Pisa, a marathon a day and having somewhere as a base. But in terms of food, obviously pizza and pasta is high up there, but I'm learning more and more that I'm going to need some proper nutrition, teamed up with Morten for some nutrition and also resilient nutrition. They do really good
00:46:29
Speaker
and that's why I didn't sleep well. So I would say I rely about 40% of my intake on those kind of decent sports supplements and the other is just, frankly, just junk, whatever I could get out of it. Yeah, yeah. That was one of the questions from Samantha actually, what's your recovery and recharge routine so you get up the next day and do another marathon? So that kind of fits in there, doesn't it? Yeah, I see how it fits in there. I think the only other thing I do is have this tool called the side
00:47:01
Speaker
as a scraping device for muscles, and any knots or anything that gets a little bit tight, which I don't often have a lot of them because I'm running so slowly, but anything that does get a bit tight, I just kind of massage that out, and the only thing that I think shocked people with my routine is that I go to bed at 7pm, most nights.
00:47:28
Speaker
So I'm interested in sport and I'm a big advocate for the more sleepier, the better. So that's a big one.
00:47:47
Speaker
I'll ask him to tweet it to you. And we had a couple of people asking how many pairs of running shoes to go through in that kind of challenge. How many did you go through running the world actually? Do you know that one? Yeah, I do know that one. The answer I got through, it's not as many as you think, 22 pairs, but of those 22, I actually only wore 15 out to the point that they weren't
00:48:17
Speaker
which I know isn't what you're supposed to do, but having access to the right shoes and stuff. So I had 15 pairs, but the remainder, I think seven or eight of those pairs, the 22 pairs were either stolen or lost or soaked because I put them on a boat somewhere and they just got drenched. I didn't actually have, which is quite funny. And I talk about this in my theater tour that's starting again next year.
00:48:44
Speaker
is I had two pairs of my shoes that were eaten by pigs. Completely set foot countries. But I left my shoes outside to dry. One was in the Caribbean and one was in Africa. And one of the pigs just came and ate my shoes. They obviously thought it was some form of cheese, I guess. But I lost a couple of pairs to just pigs. Brilliant.
00:49:26
Speaker
Yeah Yeah, I know what you mean about wearing my I like my running shoes when they're worn they feel It's like they molded your feet, isn't it? Yeah Cool
00:49:41
Speaker
Nick, just remind us where people can follow you and I'd encourage people to follow you on Instagram. I enjoy your photography and you put all sorts of stats up each day and that, don't you, as well? It's good to follow, but just remind us. We have all sorts of stats on my body fat and how I'm struggling while I'm doing this.
00:50:17
Speaker
You'll see all of the stuff that we're up to. And I will just plug the theatre tour next year, which has obviously been postponed for this year. And if anybody wants to come and hear some stories first hand in a theatre, it's a couple of hours, two and a half hour sets where I show some videos and photos and some stories, which I've not told yet. And the final one is Stratler, of course.
00:50:45
Speaker
and you can see all of my slow-proling runs and where I am and what we're up to. And on the website is the tracker, so you can see exactly where we are now.
00:50:59
Speaker
yeah great thank you yeah do have a look at the website everyone they're running the world stats so i found very interesting there's plenty of them yeah well thanks nick it's been great to great to chat i hope that you that you heal quickly um thank you you know the next couple of days enjoy your rest and um yeah