Modern Wisdom - #406 - Rob Pope - The Man Who Ran 15,000 Miles Across America

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

Rob Pope is an ultra endurance runner and an author. For 20 years, Forrest Gump's famous route across America 5 times has stood as pure fiction. Not only had no one completed it, but many runners claimed it would be physically impossible and that the punishing 15,000 miles would claim any athlete who attempted it. Then Rob came along. Expect to learn why Rob committed to one of the toughest races of all time, how Twixes and Gas Station Sandwiches fuelled his performance, why he got chased down by a neo-Nazi, how it feels to watch a lorry jackknife in front of you as you're running toward it, the most brutal and most beautiful conditions Rob ran in and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 20% discount on all pillows at https://thehybridpillow.com (use code: MW20) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://bit.ly/cbdwisdom (use code: MW20) Get perfect teeth 70% cheaper than other invisible aligners from DW Aligners at http://dwaligners.co.uk/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Buy Becoming Forrest - https://amzn.to/3ojbOzM  Follow Rob on Twitter - https://twitter.com/runroblarun  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Rob Pope, he's an ultra-indurance runner and an author. For 20 years, Forest Gump's famous route across America five times has stood as pure fiction. Not only had no one completed it, but many runners claimed it would be physically impossible, and that the punishing 15,000 miles would claim any athlete who attempted it. Then Rob came along. I expect to learn why Rob committed to one of the toughest races of all time. How Twix's and gas station nutrition sandwiches fueled his performance.

Why he got chased down by a neo-Nazi, how it feels to watch a lorry jackknife in front of you as you're running toward it, the most brutal and beautiful conditions Rob ran in, and much more. Rob is an absolute legend. you as you're running toward it, the most brutal and beautiful conditions Rob ran in and much more. Rob is an absolute legend. The guy's a scouser, he's unbeatably positive about everything, and this achievement is completely insane. Running across America five times, he got his misses pregnant during this run as well, and then proposes to her at the end of the run on the finish line surrounded by Native American Native Indian people. It's crazy. Sit back and enjoy this one. But now it's time for the wild and wonderful Rob Pope. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one.

I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. Rob Pope, welcome to the show. It's a very, very pleasant reminder to hear that accent

while I'm out here in Texas. It's same as well, man. I hope you spread the jersey logo over there. When I was actually in the States, nobody actually thought I was English, by the way. Most people thought I was Australian. Well, it's just such a strong accent, right? It's not exactly... When people think about Britain, especially Americans, they think about like Pippit, Tally Ho, what, what? Go party, governor. And then you come in, fucking hell, alright mate.

What the fuck is going on there, Lah? It's not. I was relying on the Scouts Act to get me out of trouble if I ever got into it. It, it, it, it, it, it, everything, it's just some real shit, you know. And it's sort of actually almost got me into trouble once but I'm sure we'll get to that later. So, a funny story about my accent, in 2006, right, I did my first ever Boston marathon, and if anybody's done a marathon in the UK or elsewhere in the world, they've not done Boston, you've got to do it, it's like the best. Myel 13, you've

run past Wellesley College, which is the biggest all-girl university in like the United States, probably the Welles. And when you go down it, it's like what it was like being in the Beatles. So everybody's screaming and the signs up saying, well, kiss any Mexican guy, well, kiss any Japanese dude. And I saw one, I wasn't going to do a PB. And I saw one, we said, well, kiss any Brit. And I thought, yeah, that's going to do a PB and I saw one, we said, well, kiss any breath. And I thought, yeah, I'm going to have a bit of that.

And I just, I just lent him for the peck and it ended up being something a little bit more. And I just said, so I've got to go. And I just ran down the road. I heard it just go, oh my god, he sounds just like Prince William. You've never heard Prince William have you? You're so confused. No, no, no. Oh, fuck.

Well, yeah, I mean, I understand what you mean when you say that you rely on your accent as another layer of defensive armor, because there is something about the Scouse accent, which is essentially weaponized. Like, it is, it is broadly, for the people that are listening from America or elsewhere

that don't understand, to hear Rob's accent in the UK is to, it's to fear that he's got 10 mates and they're all going to do you in next to the Kibab shop. That's kind of, for instance, I wouldn't want to work with a Scouse psychotherapist talking about my past trauma. What would be the American equivalent? Would it be like you're joysy or something like that? Yeah, it's like a kind of an aggressive, yeah, it probably would be a New Jersey one maybe. But that's the thing is what we're like the friendliest people, like everybody likes to come to Liverpool and then just like they hear the voice and then they just say, oh my god, and then they just go, where

about to you go, mate? I'll take you there and I'll just go and then myself, just call with me and they're like, okay. Fuck man. So what's your background in running? You mentioned that you did the Boston Marathon, is running something that you've done all your life? Yeah, well I did do it at school, I saw the like Liverpool is such a football city

in my schools, one of the schools that didn't play 40, so it was cross country or rugby in the winter, so I did cross country because I was too little. And I did that at school, but when I actually went to university, I switched and played football. I did a few marathons, but I was only like training in the way that, you know, the average person would train to do a marathon, you know, if I was doing a 40 mileathons but I was only like training in the way that you know the average person would train to do a marathon you know if I was doing a 40 mile week I'd be very happy with that but I moved to Australia for three years in 2012 and I decided to join the athletics club just because I wanted to get a circle of mates and I didn't think sort of I thought my football days

were low but anyway just because I was getting a bit older and I joined this club and it got really weird because I'm naturally competitive to the point of which stresses me out a bit but like I'm much prefer to train rather than race but when I train I train really hard as if I'm going to do a race even it's not one schedule and I start to get really quite good and ended up getting picked to run for Victoria, the state of Victoria in the Australian Madison Championships which is part of the Sydney Madison. The first mile went really well and I started behind this huge fella. It was actually on Telly. He must have been about 6'4", 6'2", he was tall and he had these

marijuana socks on and the commentary said out we've got a hometown here out here and he dropped back and I thought I was going to drop back with him but I stayed with these lead guys and eventually yeah I come 10th in this Sydney marathon and I go over the line and the coach from Victoria goes congratulations congratulations, Rob. You're Australian champion. And I was just like, me? You know I'm English, right? And he goes, doesn't matter, mate, you've been here long enough. And I go, okay, I get the medal. And I look, you don't say another word until I get the medal in case someone just said, excuse me, he's not, he's not Australian. And I got it it and I took it off in the way that often, like, you know, people take off their second place medal

because he don't want it. But I was just taking mine off, so I could put it in me pocket in case anybody came up and said that there'd been a dreadful mistake. And I was going to go, mate, I know I've lost it. But I still got it downstairs. I should have brought it up. But I think it got more surreal after that.

Because I'm walking down the street since Sydney when I get a phone call from the head of athletics Australia and he goes, congratulations, Rob. You know, today was the double I double F gal voice and I'm just like, yeah, and he goes, do you know what that means? And I'm like, no, and he goes, because you came in the top 10 night, it means you've automatically qualified for RIO. And it was just like, like, as in, like, the Olympics, not like the fizzy drink or the kids' feel.

And he says, yeah. And they go, what does that mean? Does that mean I'm going to the Olympics? And he goes, well, no, because there's some other people who are going to try and get the qualifying time. But at the moment, it only won. It's got the time and there's three spaces. So if they don't get the times, would GB be prepared to switch nationality?

And I was just walking past the tattoo shop as the call happens and I was thinking about just going in and getting the, the stuff in cross the number I am. But unfortunately, I think three more got the time and I was fifth and nobody got injured. the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, yeah, yeah. So, what a great story for the pub though. Yeah, it's not bad. Roll me forward from there then. You decide to do this rather ridiculous journey across America. Where did the original idea for this come from? Ah, so the original idea, you know, sort of,

all the best ideas I think are slightly plagiarized. And I read a book by a fellow called Nick Boldoff who sadly isn't with us anymore. And he ran across America like in the early 2000s, maybe even in the 90s. And it was just such a great story the way he painted all these landscapes I thought I'm going to do that one day. And a sentence in the email 2006. And it was entitled Forrest Gump to because of course everybody who runs across the States, you know, you're going to get the Forrest Gump comparisons. And it was super supportive and said, oh, you know, this is all what you've got to do and it's quite a lot that goes into it and never really had enough time and it was

only actually coming back from Australia. I came back to a job that I thought was going to be brilliant and it ended up being not brilliant. I didn't have any time to ruin them. At this point, I was slightly harboring ambitions that I could maybe get to. Next Olympics, I thought, why not? I've never trained properly before. So let's give it four years. And then never happened. And I thought, I'm not going to get to the Olympics on a three-year training cycle. So I thought let's do this America, let's get it done. And the training sort of didn't really pick up what the plan is. And I was looking at routes and I had always had this idea of the follows gunproof and I remember reading an article in a newspaper of a guy who completed it and

I thought oh god there's no point doing it now, somebody else has done it and then I read the article but he's only done one of the five crossings he'd gone from Santa Monica to Maine and I thought right this is it if I'm reading this article and thinking oh wow that would have been brilliant to have done someone else's reading that article and we've just got to go. And we actually looked at when Forrest started, we just set him to the 15th and this was in March and we were like, right, six months, that's probably enough to think about it and plan in there. As it happened, there was another guy who probably read that article and he was going to go for it as well. So it made it a little bit awkward.

Did he end up doing it? He ended up starting it, but he had some, well, basically, I think we both ran into problems in Houston, mission control and all that. So mine was with injury and his with logistics and I don't think he fancied the solo crossing so early in it and so yeah, 4G he couldn't continue because it was been quite fun to have a little bit of a race across the country but it was just me. So what did the plan to do it look like? How do you begin to plan running across America five times? Well my original plan was just the athletic goal and I just saw if I can do one cross it, then I'll always have a thing to hang my hat on. You know that's just such a great story. There's only 300 people who've ever like ran across, yeah probably like a few more who've like walked across.

like Ran across, yeah, probably like a few more who've like walked across. So I thought when we're going to start, so Greenbow Alabama doesn't exist, they made it up for the film. So in the book, Forest is from Mobile, so I thought right, let's start then, it's actually quite cool because it's only like a marathon or so away from Baila battery, which is what a Bubba's from. So I'm already going off course. I take a little detour down to the sea and see the shrimp and boats come in. And then it's basically set in a course for Santa Monica. No real goals on the way. I thought I'd love to go through New Orleans. We had to go through Houston because we were going to be getting an RV. That was a sort of thing. Then onto Austin, which is like still one of my favorite

American cities, went through Texas to El Paso. And so this is just all part of a route to get to Santa Monica, but from there, you know, five times, no one's ever done that, no one has ever liked to have run across the America, I think four times at that point, you know, instead of, so I was just like, right, it's going to go once, step beyond. And there was a chap who'd borrowed a map

from behind a newsreader for a skunk and he calculated pretty much an entire route and he'd made it out to be 15,248 miles. Now, I, Iinkered with that a bit because he'd missed out a couple of waypoints like a Glacier National Park up in the north and then and I thought I have to hit at least everything you can find where a scene was in the film I've got to go there. And so I went down a proper procrastination wormhole of like sort of a you know where all these cool places can I swing by Vegas on the way yeah probably can then the next sort of thing was like how the Dickens are we gonna afford this because the reckon when you've got any sort of expedition like this you should really plan it at least 18 months out and

by the time we decided we're definitely going to do it, we booked the flight so we had like three months and so sponsors were going to you know touch you at the barge poll. Somebody with yeah I've run a few marathons but I had no ultraform at all and proposing to do something nobody had ever done. In fact there's an article that says like what is run even physically possible and so is somebody really going to hang the hat for somebody who in all honesty in all likelihood was just going to be a spectacular or even an unspectacular failure because who wants to tie their company's brand to that you know oh this is a guy who went through a run 200 miles later, realized he couldn't hack it you know this is my this is my brand.

And so we thought, we'll get to Santa Monica, someone will pick it up. Nah, that didn't happen. We'll get to New York, someone will pick it up, that didn't happen, and that was the ongoing story. So, myself and like the partner, we saved up money for a house, and we thought, right, well, that is at least get us to, you know,

California and a bit back the other way and hopefully that's possible but it never did and we were thinking about the best way to do it which is higher in RV now you're looking at three grand a month to expensive higher car and motel still a one way. So we gambled on buying this old RV, like a proper, like sort of rumberg and detaque special and then selling at the end to see if we could recoup some of the money and even though it didn't work out like that, it gave us enough confidence to say, let's do it and once we had our 30-foot long cruise liner, we had to at least make it to the bloody Pacific, didn't we? on cruise liner, we had to at least make it to the bloody Pacific, didn't we?

And that was all the planning. I only had a 90s A.B. So I wasn't confident I would go the whole sort of five-crossing. In fact, Nadine was the only person who ever believed that I would. What made you think given your limited experience at doing altruars that you would be able to do 15,000 miles. It was a sort of knowledge that people had run across a minute before and I've sort of found that with any sort of like sports cycle and training it takes you about a month to get into it and it sort of spoke to a couple of people who done it including one guy who's the only guy to have run every

marathon. He was an invaluable source of experience. And he said, the first three weeks will be the test. If you get through the three weeks, you know, that is then basically your setup to do it. You know, the pace that you're going to be able to do it at. And then after that, it's a question of hanging on. So the thing is, it didn't really matter to me about getting much beyond Santa Monica. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to. If I had finished after two and a half legs, would I have

been disappointed? Absolutely. But I think I'd have been able to look back at it and just go, I still did quite a bit, you know, I got to Chicago, you know, so that'll do me. But like, it would have been cool because Forest didn't set out to run five times across America. It was never his goal. In fact, I'm the only person in the world who's goal. It probably was and went out to actually achieve it. And he just ran until he was tired. And I figured, as long as I get the haircut the start, and then grow the beard, and run till I'm tired, that's at least a good

tribute. Was the worst part of the entire trip getting that haircut at the beginning, that high and tight thing? It was so weird because like I've never had short hair before, like even when I was a little kid, so it was 38 degrees in a mobile that day and I walked out of the barbershop and my ears were cold. I just said, what's going on? It was so funny in the barbershop because they were convinced it was a hidden camera thing. You know, when I went in the show, the picture of the forest gun thing, dressed up like sort of, you know, not like forest gun at this point.

And then like just pointed to a picture on the wall, I believe it was number 24. And the guy's like, he's just like, his expression was just one of sheer like, me, you having me on, he's just like, are you kidding me, man? And of course, I didn't want to think I was taking the piss because you know, if I go in there, like just like random English dude into this barbershop you know I don't think there's ever been many brawls in a barbershop but I was probably close to incite one that the most people and he just went that's what you want it sat me down and like said I swear I can actually hear the like the chunks of hair hitting the floor just like I'm

hear the chunks of hair hitting the floor. It's like, oh, I'm doing it. But you're going to do something like this. If I'd have run it, and the whole time I was in perfect, it'd be spoke sports kit, and I just was like, you know, not cutting my hair and making sure I was clean shave, and so I wasn't getting all sweaty and crusty, I'd have regretted that so much. Why? I think it's just like if you're going to do it, it's like if I've succeeded, will anybody be bonkers to try it again? Because it's not as if it's like the 100m at the Olympics, it's done a four-year cycle. This was a thing, it was a dream, but it's also a cycle. This was a thing, it was a dream, but it's also extremely far and extremely difficult logistically to pull off. Like I still swear, people said like what was the one word that describes how you got through the run. And people are expecting things like grit, resilience.

I just go look and there was so much look involved in every turn. Like, yeah, of course there was a lot of effort that went into it. But just like Miss Depp's here, you know, I sort of get hit by a car in New Jersey, you know, it's the, if that had been any worse, that would have been it. You know, I tore a quad in a cross in the Mississippi. And like, why was that a quad injury like I could walk through and then run through, rather than something that was just like, you know,

look, that you out for eight weeks and after that, did you really run continuously? Because that meant a big thing to me. It had to be a continuous thing. The only scupper in that was because I wasn't American. And that's my big advice. If anyone's gonna try and do it again, be rich, be American, and then you don't have to come home

and renew your visa. But I console myself at the fact that even though people say, well, you did have a break because you came home, I was just gonna give in my high teeth not to come home. Because when I did come back to the States, well, it was back to those three weeks of hell every single time because you detrained so quickly on some flight that and I put on so much weight. I was like 10 stone two, I think it's a start and I think I was 10 stone three when I finished, but when I was home, if I was home for three or four weeks, I would go up to like 11 and a half

stone just because I was eating 5,000, 6,000 calories today on the run, and it took a while from a stomach not to what that. And it was usually just about normal level when I went back to the States, and then I had to work out how to get 5,000 calories in me again. Fuck.

So, high level, what did you end up achieving? How long did it take, how far did you go, and what were the records that went along with that? So the skinny of it was like 15,621 miles. Give or take, you know, sometimes I'd stopped for a wee and then remember that lot's start me watching. So at the start, I was so obsessed with doing this right. I would actually run back 400 meters to the point where it had me wee and then do it. But towards the end, probably just like, I think forrest was getting a bit sick of it, you know, I'd be like, if I was going to cheat, I wouldn't have cheated by 600 and 2 meters, yeah, so on we go. And I didn't know quite the spring would be

step at that point. It was 422 days, such an average of 37 miles a day, I'd say, roughly a marathon a half, and we'll call it a marathon a half, because I'll end up having to walk to places and get you fluid and stuff like that. It was 43 different states, but it was probably about 65 state crossings, 33 person shoes, including the Nike Cortes, which I wore as a ceremonial thing at the start whenever I reached an ocean. And we talked about Boston before, I actually did Boston marathon competitively as part of the run. I almost got to the start line, when I told my quad it put me back back about a week in terms of pace and so I ran the Boston Marathon got lift from New Jersey from a local runner and then he came and dropped me back

there like a couple of days later and I then ran to Boston and ran the marathon but with no crowds this time which was a real real moment because you're going that's a fire station. And last time there was like, so you know, 6,000 people here. I went past Wellesley College in the, there were no signs, that's not gonna be kids, anybody, you know, no, no, no, no, well to be fair, there was not in the competitive marathon

this time because I added a little bit of a silly, silly idea around mile 11 when I went past that fire station because there's a guy in a Manchester United shirt there and I'm a Liverpool supporter so I saw that he was heckling some people but in a nice way I thought I'm going to go over and have some fun here and when I went over I saw he was actually offering people some of his good light and so I just go past and I just go thanks very much mate take the whole bottle and I'm running along mile 11 and I'm drinking away from this beer and there's sort of unwritten etiquette in a marathon run of it you don't get to an aid station because you're right in the middle of the

channel generally there'll be a runner next to you I'm just gonna make you on some of this water and so my instinct was just going to the fellow next me, make you on some of this. They just looked at me like I had two heads and he was like, no! So I drink this beer over the course of the next mile. And then I started writing it back because I got like a late entry. And I thought, oh, that's what pace of I got to do to get under three hours for this marathon? Because I thought to start, right, this is all about preservation. You're doing a much bigger run. Don't be an idiot and run fast in Boston. But then the crowds there, this is the reason why people should do it, like, so good. I was just like, oh my god, I've got to give it some beans

here. And I saw what the pace was. It was going to be just over six minute miles. I did one and it felt all right. So I did another one. And I ended up getting in into the three hours. And I got into the B by CBS at the finish line. For sure, I didn't have the beer on me, but they knew about it.

Man, that's taking Scouse culture international. That's exactly what a Scouse should have done. How did you get on with your marathon? Well, I'd have to be a halfway round and I finished it in under three hours. Exactly. Well, Bud likes just a nice it's on the sport, stringed, grayly, though, isn't it? So everything is fuel.

All right, so you have got this plan in place. You have an understanding that you're going to get yourself from Alabama where you begin up to Austin, Texas or up to Texas to pick up your RV. Who's with you? What's the support team look like and what's the kit that you take out? So I had a really excellent support crew. I had a driver, I had a crew chief, I had a navigator, a psychologist, and the only issue with that was it was just one person, and that was my long suffering girlfriend, a dean who took on every role.

That was needed. I don't think she'd ever driven her left hand drive before, and certainly neither was left-hand drive on one of the busiest interstate systems in the world. I love the fact that the guy in Houston who sold the RV was a guy called Randy Lay, which is the most Texan name I've ever heard of your life. He had a huge tash, he had a proper like steps and stuff like that, to be fair to him. There were a few issues with the RV, but you know, we were spending like sort of, you know, $18,000 on something that would have probably cost about

$150,000 when it was new, you know, so we didn't blame Randy for that. And then, yeah, and so now the site was just so good on the run. And it, because of course, like, it was my dream, and I was seeing all these incredible sites, but of course, a lot of the time, and it, because of course, it was my dream, and I was seeing all these incredible sights, but of course, a lot of the times you was just sat in the RV, and it was hot. It was really hot, so yeah, I had a diamond with me. It's a team sacrifice across the board. So all right, you get yourself out there first three weeks,

you get running, what was some of the first things that you managed to encounter between on that first leg to get yourself out towards Santa Monica? It's just one of these things where everything was so new to me. Like I remember like starting like the first day we found a house that looked very much like the gun board in house and the local TV crew came there and I was dressed in the chinos, the cheque-share, the cat. This is the actual cat by the way, and you see it's a nice pink there, but that's the inside of it, so that's just the sun that has bleached that so much, so it's seen some sights this. And then the next

day it turned into a proper like sort of you know monsoon and I was running through like the car pipe water. But then you just getting to pop a bio country and I was listening to Credence and I was soundtracking my life and then got into Mississippi. First of all I crossed a great state about it and then got into Mississippi and I sort of rode kill thing on the road ahead of me and I thought it was a deer There's only when I got close to it. It was like a six foot gator But you know basically all the bones were there, but then you can see the scales and then I was gonna take one of the teeth

There's like a little thing and you know make it to a necklace afterwards and just as I went down to touch it a Huge flock of birds just scattered and I just thought, oh man, there's some bad voodoo about this, I don't know, leaving that right there, you know. I just sweated my way to Texas and ironically the first hint of trouble came as we were approached in Houston. I had a good school pal, I've not seen for 20 years, comes out and runs with me for a couple of days, and we're sitting around having lunch, and Nadine just says to me, you are smashing this, so you're gonna do this so easy,

and I was, hey, I was still tired at this point, by the way, and I said, we'll say that when I'm about 10 miles from the end, and I got up from this chair and I had this pain in my machine for the last couple of days, and I got up from this chair and I had this pain in my machine for the last couple of days and I got off and I heard like this freaking noise and I just sat out of the chair and then I carried on walking and I could hear my leg was making a noise and it was basically my tendon so inflamed within the sheath that it was actually rubbing that much. It sounded almost like a cricket.

And I was just like, oh my god. And I did all my Googling, I spoke to Fisio and Liverpool. And he said, this is like an eight week layoff type thing. What can you do in terms of rest? And I said, well, I've got tonight. And so I spoke to Chris, the guy who had run across before and he'd looked at all my sort of striver data and he said Rob, you're running too fast and Nadina told me that as well, but like I didn't feel it at all.

I was just like this is great and then I left the sweat in but it's like 40 degrees. And he said you just need to start taking walking breaks in the day. And he said, I said, I'm not walking across America. I'm running across America. And he goes, yeah, nobody who runs across America looks the whole way. He said, you have to record that on the job, because if you're don't, your bodies, you know, what you're expected to do, it can't rebuild while you're breaking it down simultaneously. You've got to give it some sort of a chance. And somehow, I saw a physio in Houston and I just loved the fact that she was called Whitney.

You know, and it only dawned on me after I'd left. You know, it's like one of these things may have an argument and then you think of the best thing to say in the world and like yeah so we're in Houston save my life um I got to El Paso the other side of Texas and that's when I started just to fall in love with the with the desert you know Is it just great? I had one day where I was running down this hill and then I was sort of Back and forth with two mexican vacados cowboys who were on a 60 mile ride that day and

then we just like proper road warriors you know like we tip our hat to each other as we past each other and yeah like getting through Texas was something huge to me because the biggest thing in distance in the UK is probably a land-rengeoning growth so for like people listening abroad that is the very top of Scotland to the very bottom of England. And just to go across Texas, he's about 50 miles further than that. So I was like, this is the achievement.

And when I got injured after that, I got Achilles tendonitis in Phoenix. But I didn't care. Because I just thought, well, I'll tape it up, like I'll tape the shinoff. But I've still run across Texas, and that's what gave me the confidence that I wouldn't have been super, you know, lifelong disappointed if I hadn't done the whole thing, you know, I certainly would have had enough to look back on. I think I'd have only got a upset about it when somebody else did it.

I remember that you got a great podcast about sort of people who achieve a lot and sort of a But they also contend to be very jealous now. I'm just a bit like no, I'll be absolutely fine Apart from when I read it in the paper that someone's done it So I couldn't stop that it's a great source of motivation Where are you sleeping? Once you've picked up the RV are you parking up somewhere by the side of the road, are finding a truck stop and then just keeping in the RV overnight? Yeah, well, you came up with two of the three options there. So the third option would be the campsite. We'd have to do that every three days because you've got like your gray water, which is like your shower water and your dishes and things like that.

And you've got your black water, which is the other type of water that you need to get me off from it. And so I knew the sort of Nadine was going to be, you know, the one for me for keeps when we are both holding a pipe and a sea in sort of the previous days meals are disappeared in front of us. Yeah. Yeah. Who thought that RV in was so glamorous, right? But they sometimes we'd say truck stops. And we had a hilarious time, we're in Kingment, Arizona, which is on Route 66. And the unwritten rule of RVs in truck stops

is you do not park where trucks should be because they've got a sleep, they're doing a job, be because if they've got sleep they're doing a job you know and if they don't rest the dangerous and so they're just like you know I couldn't believe it was a bloody trailer there when I arrived so we get to this place and it's empty so we just park it randomly and we've gone to bed about 10 o'clock and we shouldn't get a hammering on the door and it's just truck driver and I'm just like me what's the problem? It just goes you're in my spot and I was just like as they reserve these goes I just

want to park here move your RV and I just thought I am not arguing with the truck driver and so we leave it over the road now we just filled up with petrol that nice and first of all it wouldn't start and we were like oh God. So it's got like an emergency star button, which gives it a massive portion. Yeah, it got over the road. And we noticed that the fuel had gone down to zero. And I just saw, it's best install now fuel. And I was bouncing off the walls.

And I went over and I was at it in the service and said, if you've got CCTV, like in the car park, and you're like, yeah. And I was like, boo, police said, yeah, we've been here, someone's install now fuel they come around they took a photo the fuel gauge They get access to the CCTV. It's quite late And then he said we'll come in a sea in the morning Turned the morning they come in knocking they go hi. How are you? I'm like great because we're a bit worried

This guy was gonna come over and do something anyway, you know, and so he just says, yeah, we just need to like, you know, move you or something. I can't remember, he did return the ignition and the fuel needle just go ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, I was a pretty stuck needle, wasn't it? I think it was so good that that was the copper who'd seen it at empty the night before with the engine running. And I was just like, me, I'm really sorry, is this a problem? And he just like closes his notebook and he goes, not for me. And so, yeah, truck stops were great generally, because I actually, I love the truckies.

He was like the only mean one that I think I encountered the whole way. You know, to be honest, he was probably just tired and he didn't want to walk further to the bathroom, so I'll let him off. But then the other places and the team was an expert at finding these, was like the rogue campings, so it was so great in the desert, it's like really hard to do in California, they don't like you, they're all, the fourth category is Wal-Mart car parks. They'll often let the RVs park up there because they know you're going to go in and buy some food. But we've spent these nights in glorious isolation. You know, sort of with no light pollution, just seeing all these stars. And remember, we're only a couple of days after I'll pass so in New Mexico, and I found this perfect place on the sat nav

and I said, right, I'm going to run to this and I'll see you there in a bit. And when I get there, there's a board of patrol car parked up there and I'm just like, oh no, he's so knocking on the letters camp here. So I knocked on the window and he had so much armor on him, he was so tooled up and he was little and squat. He looked like a turtle. And so I was having to stifle me, chill calls and I said, make sure you're in, mind if we park then, sleep it overnight. And I said, no, that's fine. So we'll keep an eye out for you, like, so if you're here or anything tonight, just make sure your doors are locked.

And I was just like, because we're right by the Mexican border. So it's like, you know, real big patrol area. And we're in this place and we're like, what do border so it's like you know real big patrol area and we're in this place and we're like what do we do there's nothing brandy to do and we realize that we were in an RV in New Mexico and we got breaking bad on DVD and so we literally we watched and we'd never seen any of it so we watched the first series of it and we're like this is amazing you know sort of like life imitating art so much and yeah it was just the whole sort of culture of America like permeated the whole run and so I've something completely random like that like I never thought

part of the culture and I would experience would be like you know all about gangsters and meth dealing yeah feeling like you're on version of Heisenberg running across Texas in New Mexico. Yeah. Well, that's what I thought was going to be the trouble after that, you know, because eventually we'd see these Border Patrol people, and they'd always stop and check if I was okay. You know, and I was always expecting a bit of an extra question, like, you know, you see anybody around here, and we'd like, we've like no just me and vultures. What was your recovery like? So you're running how many hours a day you typically running? You said you're doing about a marathon in a half so about 37 miles a day

on average. What's that you're getting up at 8 a.m. take me through a typical day. Yeah I get up about eight and so, like I'm not a morning person at all and desperately trying to become it cause I just know my life would be so much better if I could get myself up reliably. That's my mission. That's my news resolution for 22,

trying to get a morning routine sorted. And I'd usually have something like a protein shake before I go out the door, and eventually I'd actually start throwing, you know, there's sashays and boats. I'd just throw one of those in, and just swirl it around and just get it in. I wouldn't take any water with me on the first run,

because I was probably over hydrated overnight. Get to the, do about like eight, nine, 10 miles, have my second breakfast, which is usually something pretty filthy like donuts or like twixies. Elite nutrition then. Exactly, it's real top-notch stuff. And I actually call the gas station nutrition, because it's just literally what we get in the gas stations and dollar generals, because you know, shoestring, tastic. I do that then we go through to lunch and I had this set routine every single day apart from the old time we go to like a fast free

joint. I'd have ham salad and cattalina dressing sandwiches. Now I've never even heard of cattalina dressing before I was at the States. It's like this sort of long as like a red, creamy vinaigrette. And it's so nice. And I just thought I'm having this every day for lunch. It's going to be a thing that I look forward to, part of the routine. And yeah, I think pineapple fancy as well, was my lunch time drink, you know, and so is it. It was so forest in its way. You can imagine that's the sort of thing that forest would do. And then it head out, you know, so generally, if I could have like some three runs before lunch and marathon in the bag, that'd be great. And then I tend to do like about another, you know, eight or nine miles after that, and then a shorter one, but quite often it was dictated to where the rest in place was that night because if we were at an RV park after 32 miles

I would much rather start from where we were in the morning rather than go 8 miles past or 8 miles shy so I sometimes would go longer because then you have to go for the morning, you have to drive back to the line you're drawing the sand or the bowls that you put on the floor, you know, to make sure you're in the place. Now, I'd always go about 10 meters back just in case it moved in the wind, you know. And then off we go. And even even a meal was used like microwave or burritos, Idaho instant mash, you know, God, if I didn't get a sponsorship deal up there, I wouldn't get a sponsorship deal up anyone like, so I lived off that stuff. And then yeah, just pretty much whatever I take on the gun.

Sometimes I hand full of gummy bears and yeah, just pretty much whatever I take on the gun. Sometimes I hand full of gummy bears and yeah, it changed later on. So when I was solo, that was very much more a teenage boy left in the house with a with a fist full of dollars and he can eat what he wants. Fuck, man. And what about recovery? Were you doing foam rolling? Were you doing any sort of active recovery during the day, any stretching routines, or was it just sleep? Yeah, last sleep, I tried it myself on getting eight hours every night. You know, so it was a rare occasion when I didn't.

And I would do some stretching, always at the end of the day, but the amount of stretching I did was clearly not adequate because the second half of the run I was basically, I wasn't fighting fires that were started, there was just a fire and I was just having to stop it going out of control because everything was so tight, you know, in my pelvis and my glutes because I just wasn't using these muscles, they just turned into like fire rest traps, who's on the function with like trap my sciatic nerve and you know I've been running down the road sometimes and I literally just either give out a scream because of like a massive jolt of pain going down my leg or I'd actually almost fall over

because without any pain my leg would just collapse underneath. Not tired it would just be like sorry no nerve impulses have gone to your muscle this time. So down you go, sir. What was the longest that you ran in a day? It wasn't actually that spectacular like some real ultra-unus going, oh my god, like, so this guy must be a maniac, must be doing like, you know,

and it was 20-mile days. It was a 63 miles in Colorado. Everyone just goes, oh my god, that's up mountains. Well, I was in the east of Colorado, which is super flat and super gorgeous as well. It's like late autumn. And I was trying to get to this place for new rain at that night. And I knew that there was a cafe there that like shut about six o'clock. And I really enjoyed my breaks during the day I'd speak to people sometimes I just go such a lovely place. I'm just gonna sit here for an hour and watch the world go by and I realized I wasn't gonna get there for the cafe and it was such a small town that was not gonna be anywhere

but I could ask anyone to stay knowing I couch surfing but the post office lobbies in the states no one on couch surfing, but the post office lobbies in the States opened 24 hours, it's because people can just go and pick up the mail whenever they do, you know, because they work so hard over there. And I thought, right, I'm going to go and stay there, but I get to this new Rayman's pitch blacked-out, and I think, I'm just going to try this cafe, you never know. And I go there and there's a light on, I think, oh, it's going to be so good. I had like a half a subway left me dinner. So I wasn't bothered about dinner, but I was just hoping that somebody there

was going to be able to put us up and open the door. And it wasn't just a cafe, it was a bar. And I was like, oh, yes. And I go in through the door. And this guy, a fellow called Jeff Stelter, who's the loudest guy I think I'll ever meet in my life, he goes, oh my sweet Jesus, Forest Gums here, praise the Lord! And I just go, oh hey mate, I just sit down the bar and he goes, what's your name?

And I go, oh hey Rob, he goes, Rob's here, everybody, Rob, come on, are you drinking, Rob? And so, I think I have to make a move. I've got to go out and do more running tomorrow. And so he's like, where are you staying? And I was like, in the post office lobby. And they were like, no, where are you coming back to us? And so they were like, they're about oil drivers. And so they had a trailer. They took his back to the trailer, a few more beers.

They offered me a bull's testicles, prairie oysters. And I was just like, I'm going to go out and do my own. I was like, I'm going to go out and do my own. I'm going to go out and do my own. and so he had a trailer and they took his back to the trailer, a few more beers, they offered me a balls testicles, prairie oysters and I was just like, I'm going to pass on them, man, I need my protein, but eh? Not that badly. Exactly, and so they went, oh, you need protein and they just gave me a tub of protein powder for the next day and eh, and that was just great.

And then the next day, I think I did like 55 miles as well. And at the end, I could string together like still, you know, 10 days and 50 miles and it not even be a problem. It just be like a normal day at work, which sounds like almost as if I'm being like, you know, like cocky about some superhuman feet, but that is just what the body is able to do. You know, still about I wasn't unique.

If I was unique, imagine the chances of the one guy who could do it being the guy who decides to do it, it's just not going to happen. You know, and so it does show that the limits that we perceive to be there are only deceives. That's really, that's really interesting about how adaptable we are. So I've got a buddy, Will Goog, who just ran, you know Will, you've been following his 4830. Exactly, yeah, brilliant. Yeah, man. So for the people that don't know, Will ran 48 marathon in 30 days. For his mum as well. Yeah, I think it was Mick Millen Canso that he did it in collaboration with. And was it all 48 counties in the UK?

I think, yeah, so he ran all 48 counties, 48 marathons in 30 days. One interesting thing that he talked about, he did a little bit of post run analysis on his running style and his stride. And he has a very short stride, relatively quick turnover, but it's a bit of a shuffle. It's kind of like a little steps, he's not really doing much.

Did you notice that you're running form cadence at all? Did you twist that and change that as the run progressed? Did you find a rhythm that was appropriate for you? Yeah, I think you sort of did. And that's actually one of the real niche things that I know know about the films. That's seven minutes slice of movie history where Forest does this run. You see him nice around that corner in Greenbow and he's like, you know, he's up right.

He's got a lovely sort of choppy cadence, he's got great stride length. And then you still see him doing that, like, to the midway through, you know, Glacier National Park, but when it gets to the likes of sort of Arizona, then onto Utah, it's such a shuffle. And for me, like, I tried to have a low carriage, basically, because if you are sort of, you know,

not going up and down, then it's going to be less bang, bang, bang. But the difficulty about trying to alter your gate is you're open yourself up to injury because, you know, I'd run 38 years and so, well, probably 36, I don't think I was running when it was born, like, maybe, you know, I was going to ask people. And so I was trying to avoid this impact, but then, of course, I was supposed to go to the hospital and I was trying to avoid this impact but then of course I was probably irretain my hip flexors from a really early stage and then later I had to ultima gate because I had this like awful, awful pain and so for the last 5,000 miles or so my left leg would hurt with virtually every foot stripe and I was taking 60,000 steps on an

average day and sometimes my right would be upset as well because it'd been doing some extra work for the legs so sometimes in a day I was going to get these 60,000 jolt of pain and to be honest it became noise you know so it wasn't really you know sort of like sort of stabbing pain, it was just out, out, out, out, out. And you would, you'd tell your gay to it. But if you'd have asked me at the very end, you know, if you'd have put a suitcase, $10,000, $1,000 miles down the road and said, God, just another thousand, I'd just gone, no, I'm just being, I'm done. You know, seven, that point, like Quiff Horace turns around and he says, I'm pretty tired, I think I'll go home now. I just knew exactly sort of what he felt like.

What was the darkest place that you got to psychologically throughout the run? There was, the intense one was in Houston when that pre-cappened' in my ship and I got to a gas station and a lady asked what I was doing because I wanted to see what's the dress like, the normal. And I told I gave her one of my handwritten cards that my social media details on, which is Rublar Runneth, anyway, was to follow.

I handed that last one out and I realized it's probably the last one I'm ever gonna write and that was literally a lightning bolt to my like tear The looks and I just saw like not like a little you know a little heavy breath and this is full on Blooming and so the lady came out from beyond the counter gave me a huge hug a Co-worker came out did the same I went over the road huge hug. A coworker came out, did the same. I went over the road and cried for about another half out before I got on with it. But that was like an acute thing. And then once I got through Texas, I don't think I was, I wasn't immune to that sort of thing, but it would have took something pretty biblical to have got me there.

The rest of it then was just the worry, you know, because I had this, the worry of injury being possible, but the financial worry was always there. It's just like, I didn't, I couldn't check the balance. I would just basically put my card in a thing and just go, worked, X, keep, yeah, exactly in there. It happened once where I did that in a motel and they said, oh, sorry, it's been declined. And I was just like, oh, no, no, pretty certain. I'm actually all right. And I looked in, it was like $36 and that's all I had. I was, you know, maxed on my overdraft at home as well.

And I was in the middle of nowhere. And again, another example of accident bars saving my life. I went and just sat down, local one, and I figured, well, I'm going to camp somewhere somewhere tonight and I'll go and grab a pint. Of course, I didn't pay for that pint and bartender said, where are you staying? Yeah, she took me back to her, since you had a couch in the garage and then I left the next morning to a really nice note from a guy that I didn't even meet that night and he just said, I just found it amazing what you're doing. Thank you so much for like staying in our house and so I was just like wow if this kind of thing happens I've got a chance of making it so I've already less about the money kind of things

but The darkest I ever got it wasn't really dark so so much it was more of a resignation and I came home at the end of my fourth crossing and I managed to hit the Atlantic for the final time the day before I was due to fly home from Avisa and I'd got some huge news from my girlfriend she came back out when I went home in the summer and we found out when we were in Minnesota at a time you look at a place called Fergus Falls,

that was gonna be a debt. And I don't know how you had the energy in you. When you're doing a marathon in a half a day, how have you got the energy left to pump on a night time? This was on my trip back to the UK in the summer. So I came back for like three weeks since after I got to Chicago. and we went to see Phil Collins I'm not being funny I reckon there were a lot of babies made then I after that you know

Yeah, I should actually it's a shame that B wasn't a boy we maybe we'd have had fillers in middle name Oh Fergus I'd feel as a middle name, you know. Oh, Fergus. Exactly. Well, that actually was seriously debated. You know, I wanted to call him, if it was a he, Alexander Douglas, because I got massively obsessed about Scotland on one day when I was running in Idaho, because it was like Scotland on steroids. And I went back and I told the Dean that I think we should call the boy Alexander Douglas and she was just like no not a chance

and I was just like okay and I said I am name I am naming the boy though and she was like no you know I've got the name so I'm just so what am I meant to do and then she told me and she's gonna name our girl B like-E, and of course that wasn't what I'd been thinking of at all, and so it's just like, okay, well now I obviously love it. The run changed after that because I, despite injury, despite you know, still worries with traffic, despite running through supposedly rough areas which were always fine as they always are unless you're doing something stupid and they love them out you know it's just normal people who live there and everybody the super time. I felt bombproof you know I had a few near death

experiences but yeah it wasn't first. A breath for that then. It was like if a car got too close to me, I was like, you know, I had this massive sense of my own mortality. And then of course, when we got to San Francisco, which is a close-out third leg, Nadine had to go home, hey, because we had no more money left, and she just needed to go and prepare, and of course she couldn't fly so late. So the fourth leg, which is the one that I called the middle child of the room because there weren't many exciting venues that I was going to hit. It turned out that some of the absolute best moments of the whole trip on this one, but I wasn't excited about it. I knew Winter was coming. I didn't have Nadine there anymore and she was now out and prepared for this baby and so I go home in December and she's just looking like stunning, you know, it's the big old bump on her, you know, and yeah, just so beautiful. And I spoke to her mate about the fifth leg and I was like planning the, oh yeah, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. And he's just like, you don't

want to go back, do you? And I just said, no, not really mate. But I didn't know why. It was the obvious answer. And I was thinking, oh, because I was injured, I don't know, money, it was still going to be cold. In fact, it's going to be more winter when I went back. Because I thought it was going to be nice and a warm in Alabama in January. But no, it got down to minus 19. And it was pretty frisky.

And on one day, when it wasn't so cold in Alabama, I was going to be cold. and it was pretty frisky. And on one day when it wasn't so cold in Alabama, I was lying on my back, I just crossed into Mississippi actually and it was a lovely sunny day and I just had this urecha moment and I realised that the reason why I've been so upset the whole thing was because I knew that the finish would mean nothing to me because Nadine and B weren't going to be able to be there. And so having this amazing adventure, I would finish it.

And then in future years, I would be sat there around dinner table, telling everybody about how amazing it was. And Nadine had sacrificed so much of her time. She was with me for about 7,000 or 7,000 or 15,000 miles. And I would be like, oh, it would have been great if you were at the end. And I just thought, well, I just not have at the end. And there was no way she could come out on the schedule I was on. Because I was scheduled to finish, I think, on the 18th or 17th of March,

and B was due on the 27th. It was cutting it fine as it was, you know, she was early. I did say to her, I said, even so much of a rumble, whatever I am, I will be on a plate, I will be home within 24 hours, I don't care what it costs, you know, so, you know, I'll rob a castation, I'll get that accent out, you know, I'll actually, I'll just use my charm, I'll get that accent out, you know, actually, I'll just use my charm. I use my charm and there's some more of that in the flight. And so that never happens. And what I just said I'm going to do is like, right, let's focus.

I'm going to go and see first, we'll see if I'm going to pass for a very young baby. And then I knew I could. So I called up Nadine and I said, if I couldn't hope before the birth, would you consider coming out almost as soon as we physically can to finish? And she was just like, is that possible? Could you get a passport? I'd get a body research that.

So I decided to get my foot down and do the distance that I always intended to do, the 15,248 miles and get to a really cool landmark break off with a significant distance still to the auto monument valley and come back and then basically we're going to have like a lap of honor, you know, three of us and I finished between arrows which is a point in the film where Forest gets the yellow t-shirt does the have a nice day and it was such a poignant place to be because it's like it's in ribbons now you know so you still got a huge giant arrow sticking into the earth but it was just

the air and I looked around me and completed my miles and I just went home to become a dad and kept myself busy wasn't quite on their wheels, but I did do three marathons in three weeks, under three hours as well. And I managed to do the last one in a world record for the fastest film character ever, to complete a marathon. And you probably guessed who it was, yeah. And yeah, so we flew out the very next day from London.

B was, I think, three and a half weeks old. Yeah, so we flew out the very next day from London. B was, I think, three and a half weeks old, and we flew into Vegas. We drove back out to Flagstaff, got to Twin Arrows, and there was 200 miles left on the clock, and so we had five days to bash that out. Man, that's so amazing. So the fascinating thing there for me is that Man, that's so amazing. So the fascinating thing there for me is that

there's a degree when you're being a pioneer or an explorer, the liberation that you have, where you have nothing to worry about dying for, was what gave you the degrees of freedom to feel comfortable. But as soon as you know that you're going to be a father, that changes your own sense of life and death and mortality and why you're doing things. And to see that, to have a sample of before, during and after, and be able to look at your own psychology and say, I was a person that was carefree, bulletproof, didn't feel like anything was going to hurt me, and then watch that transform as you realize that there is now something bigger and greater

than you that shares your genetics that you need to look after. That's amazing. Yeah, it's almost like a fast forwarded version of life because you know, when you, like, you, you stuck the anacar that's going really slowly, and you're overtaking, it's like, you know, like, one of the more senior members of the population,

and you think they're probably just thinking, life is so precious, I ain't gonna be bombing through this red light. I'm not gonna be sort of undertaking somebody, I'm getting through today, and like, so the fact I'm gonna see my grandkids and everything. I had this like thing just like fast forwarded. It was, you know, the whole year was, well, year and a half was like compacted down almost into like into a moving of sorts. And, you know, it had a very spectacular

end and it had its trials and tribulations, but there was a huge amount of, you know, it had a very spectacular end and it had its trials and tribulations, but there was a huge amount of, you know, people obviously like, what did you learn about yourself? My answer to that, I gently, fairly corny as you were the manager in terms of like, you know, that I could achieve something very dramatic and, you know, that I was, you know, able to do this huge thing, but that's not the interesting answer. It was more what I just learned about life and the fact that, you know, it's sort of how precious it is

and the fact that I wasn't caring that I got cleared out by a truck in Tennessee or something like that. It'd be like, but it's for these people that I'm leaving, you know, and maybe that's the sort of thing, you know, and maybe that's that sense of thing, you know, and maybe that's that sense of collectiveness is what we need now and why everything seems to be going

to shit so much, because quite often in the media they're trying to take away that collective and make everybody either, you know, by parts and, or, you know know sort of just at each other's throat. So like you know talk about the partisan thing. So when I was rid of the states it was the first leg was surrounding the build up to the Trump election and we actually watched that the election night in a saloon in tombstone Amazon and the site of the gunfight of the okay Corralge. I only found out afterwards took place at a range of six foot. You know, when you think about a gunfight, I imagine people like behind barrels and across the street, they sort of placed over six foot, you know, and of course maybe not quite the same range, but the big fight was after in in Washington. And the country was very, you know, and I don't even think they were necessarily there

for their respective representatives. It was teams, it was red, blue, republic, and death. And the media was just like, you're either withers or you're againsters, it was like, oh, they've actually got really good policy, but they can compromise. But what I found on the ground, is it wasn't like that, it just wasn't.

You know, so of course you had people who you speak to and you know that they were a classic Republican, but they didn't pay Democrats. And it was the same as the other way around, like sort of people like in the cities, where they go and all like sort of Trump voters, the idiots, you know, but you'd see that on the news. And like you like, why are they finding these people? Because I'm not encountering them on the roads and I just found like a lot of very, very kind people and not just kindness

towards me because of course I was going to receive kindness because I was doing a mad thing. But then you'd hear about like something they would do whether a part of the church group or like so if I met this guy in Upstate New York who And Organizes like a group by fellers for fellers, but it's not like yeah guns hunting women politics It's just like oh, it's just anyone now to fix this trip and every year they organize a huge collection Break into someone's house and, some will replace somebody's fridge

cause you know, it's like bust. Or like, one that really got me, and I just, like he was always thinking about it was a lady sort of who lost her husband, and of course that was with the job, the healthcare, the truck, and they just went and they clung together and they just bought this lady a car,

so she could get to work and drive the kids around and just thought, this lady a car so she could get to work and drive the kids around and just thought this is brilliant. I don't even know what politics really was. So there you go. Talk to me about the near death experiences. What were they? Oh god man, do you want animal vegetable or mineral? All kinds of things, well sort of from being chased down by a bull moose in Idaho and I literally pinned myself against a tree and it duped into the bushes about five foot before it literally. It was chased by a cyclist you see and just completely startled, there's about 200 meters behind it. And then the advice is to hide behind the tree because they got really bad eyesight.

So I tried to do that. I could, because it was like full of thorn bushes. So basically just strap this up to the front of this tree, close my eyes. It was about 30 foot away. And then I heard this trash of branches, which I thought was it disappearing into, you know, well, it disappeared into me. But it was actually going down to a river, and I was just like it disappeared into me, but it was actually going down

into a river and I was just like, oh my god, and that was my Scotland day. And so I put the claimers on after that and like sort of never heard sweet music in my life, you know. But then of course one of the things I've mentioned before was like the cars, you know, I heard when I was running, there was a chap in Ohio called Nick Ashell, who'd actually been cleaned out by a hit-run driver. And the only reason he survived that they found him is that he was on the phone to his wife at the time, and the fellow would actually swim across the road to get him. And I punctured his lung, broke his pelvis, internal injuries, everything like that. And then he's fit now. And he's going to go back and he's going to complete that crossing. So I had a few

things like that. And I was just sort of thinking, was that deliberate swear? But it probably wasn't, it's probably a phone distraction. The biggest example of that was I had when it was in Tennessee and a huge ATWILE W knife in front of me and I was standing there I was pushing my stroller at this point because I was so alone this is stroller carried all my belongings I would face on coming traffic so I was on the left hand side of the road there and I was just trying to long see this truck and then suddenly it just starts screaming it bends double and I you could see the steam coming up from its wheels.

And I'm just stood there looking at it and not scared. I'm not seeing me lying flash before me. I just think that's gonna make me lose. And it would have done, because I was just frozen to the spot. And it stopped about 30 foot child. You know, so the guy just sort of looked up from like his wheel. And I was just like, mate. You know, we're both pretty lucky boys because,

yeah, I think he was on his phone. And, yeah, my, like, highway 190 in a, in Baton Rouge, in a crossing the Mississippi for the first time. It should have been a celebration, but there was no side walk, no show that just four lanes of traffic and a 200 foot drop to the Mississippi. So I knew this in advance, but I didn't want to do another 30 miles. I thought it's only a mile. Out bad can it be, you know, sort of there. We'll go through

a worse mile, probably metaphorically or literary in our lives. So I get to the point where the shoulder disappears into a point and I get my MP3 Played-O's, Engage, Guns and Roses, welcome to the jungle, put that on and as soon as like you know like the lyrics kick it, I go and I go across this bridge in like sort of 543 and the line comes out at the end, you know where you are baby you're in the jungle you're gonna die I did you know I've got some excellent YouTube for the job at there and you'll see that I came pretty close But then the closest I actually came to Genuine Death was um, I was just crossing from St state New York into Pennsylvania and I saw this guy shirtless must-a-weight about I don't know 250-300 pounds maybe skinhead tattoos everywhere and I'm really rattle and he's got this like trash bag in his hand and he throws it across his

garden and I'm like it's a bit weird why would would you do that? You know he's not throwing it in the bin, he's just throwing it across his garden and oh yeah and he just walks up to this bag and as he's there I see the bag move and I realize it's got legs and I thought oh my god like he's just that is dog what do I say? Do I say something? I was just like stuck there watching as well do I say? Do I say something? I was just stuck there watching, as well as that, you know, I don't know, 100 feet away. And I thought, no, if I say something, I'm dead.

And he just strides over and just kicks it, like full punts it in the belly. And the dog lifts off the floor, you know. And this is like, you know, 10 kilo, 15 kilo dog lifts off the floor, the force he puts through it. And that is when I do engage my scary skills voice. And if you listen to the audio book, I don't think I could actually ever reprise it with such furious I did on that day, but I gave it a really good go in the audio book.

We even had to bleep things out because I went over the top. As soon as I said that I just thought that was the stupidest thing you've just done in the history of the world. And I thought let's just hopefully realise this is he was out of order and he doesn't sound scary and he just goes, what did you say? And I was just like, oh my god, I can't back down now. So I went for it again. And then you just start walking over and I get me throwing out, I was trying to take a photo of him, but it doesn't work. And I go mate, I'm just taking a photo of you one more step and I'm calling the police. And so it doesn't just take one more step, you just start running towards

me. But this dog, Wagon, it's tail next to him as it bloody would. So I'm just like, right, I've got to go in and I'm pushing me, strolling, thanking God that it was a flat road, you know, and we go about 250 meters and I realize he's not catching me. And so I sort of think, what do I do? I do say something else to him like, mate, let's just forget about this. Just in case you didn't know me, I've done 10,000 miles. So if you want to keep going between the two of us, my cardio is going to eat you alive.

Well, I might have actually slowed down a little bit to see if he was going to carry on giving up, giving the chase this, because I wanted him to get as far away from his house as possible, because I just thought, oh my god, if he goes back and get a gun, and then so he eventually bends double. But then he turns around and runs back to his house. He doesn't walk back, he was so tired, he had to put his hands on his knees and breathe

but then he runs back to his house and he didn't look the sort to be doing a nice little sort of a dinner for the local church, green ponies stove and so I just thought he's going to go and get his truck, he's going to go get his gun. And so I'm literally steaming down this road, knowing that he probably wouldn't have come the whole way across the road to clean me out but every car and truck that go past me, I'm just like looking at that skin, a guy skin, a guy skin, a guy.

And eventually get to this sort of place and just like sit down and like, sort of think I'd drag so many cans of coke just because I needed the sugar in me. I took a screen grab of where it was on the map and sent the dean a message saying, if you don't hear from me within the next 12 hours, you have to direct the police to this point because they probably will find a body or at least some evidence of where the trail is going to begin there. And she was just like, what's this about? What's

this about? And I just sent that and I ran into it in the early where there was no mobile deception. So that was like it, you know, and so it was about three or four hours before I could get another message back to it. Your missus is an absolute saint. You know what? This is a thought of thing. So I've written my story down and everyone's just gonna go, when's Nads right there, but, and I keep telling her to do, she's got some tails, you know.

Oh, okay, and hell. So what happened with this pram? After a while, your Mrs had to go back to the UK, which meant did the RV go partway through, and then what we do with the pram? But we went to, we went to, we were double back and we went to Tennessee and she was flying back from Nashville and so we put the RV into storage and cookfield. It was actually quite weird because I told my quad when I was going across the Mississippi for the second time and I ended up like literally the last half of that day I was in Memphis

and I couldn't run, I was walking in Memphis man and the irony of that was not lost on me and we parked up in this mobile home place for two days and I woke up the next morning because knew me like was sore but I wasn't like oh I'll talk to him because I've just like yeah I've got a little bit of a cough and I woke up the next morning and it was almost as if someone had stuffed an orange underneath the skin with that swollen, but then I put the finger in it. I just went back really slowly and I just went up to all this and walked to the little wash box which was about 30 meters away and I just couldn't. I had to hop after about 10 meters out of hop,

came back when I said, well, not going anywhere today and that happened the next day. And then I think the Dean was due to fly back in about three days time and I said, listen, I'm just gonna go to the start today. If I can't walk, you know, like a good distance, then I'll just come back with you and this is it. This is our I'm pretty tired I'm pretty torn. I think I'll go home now and so we knew that she was going

So I had some preparation for being solo. It's actually a cramp that I'd bought in Australia Because I thought I might run across Australia and that never happened. The fact that the first time I ever set this thing up and pushed it was in that mobile home park. And you were in four days time, not only was I going to be having to get from A to B with a tour quad, I was also going to be pushing a sled effectively. And so just like this is not good for a quad. And yeah, so I mostly do 27 miles that day, 33 miles the next day. This is walking. And then I'll gradually reintroduce the runs and stuff. And we got to Jackson, we got like a Greyhound to Nashville. Also, I actually drove the RB to Nashville and then we put it in storage just down the rows. I got the Greyhound back to Jackson where I'd

finished running and it was just such a... I felt like I was in a Bruce Spring Stingstone because I just come out, I didn't have my guitar but I had this stroller folded up and I just like put it together and that was it. I had a hold-all with all my stuff in you know, spares shoes underneath, water container on the front, and a wing in a breath. How long did you run pushing a prime in front of you for? 8,000 miles. 8,000. Was it pink? Did I see the photo of it in its pink? Oh no, it's blue. Oh right, okay. I do have a new one though that, which I call in red five. I called the old one, Pramsolo, because I was looking like Chewbacca. So I thought I'd continue the Star Wars theme with

my new one, because I pushed Pramsolo all the way from Jackson Tennessee up to Maine to complete my second cross in Benta Chicago. Then from Chicago I went home for a bit, came back and pushed it up to a Minneapolis and that's when they beat back up. The same, this same Pram. Yeah, yeah, I did change the tyres in Chicago though. I think it had three or four punctures at that point. A good bit of kit to have survived going across America twice. Oh, it's amazing, you know, and we had the RV all the way across the doors, down to San Francisco, and a friend of mine Olivia took over in San Fran.

But we'd only got two thirds the way through Nevada. And this dude who was 90 years old, obviously not fear him for his life. This guy, because he was doing about 100 miles an hour when he took Olivia and slammed into a driver's side door like totally in the RV and so I had Tom Solo still but I was not set up for that and I thought I was going to get RV covered to get me down through Nebraska and you know and then I mean relatively southern states and I thought it's not going to be that cold, but then suddenly Olivia is just like, I'll sort this out.

And I'm like, no, I can't leave you to do that, but she was just like this. I don't want to be holed up in a hotel room with you like a cage bear, you know, sort of like, you know, walking around, so just go and sort this out. And so like a few days later, I was in Utah going across the Bonneville salt flats, which is where they do all the speed records. And there was one point where there was literally nothing, like no services, no place to get water for like 70 miles.

And the hot dog at the end of that tasted pretty good. Yeah. And so then all the way across to South Carolina, it was still with Crown Solo and then I went as far as, well just after the exact mid points in Route 66 in Adrian, Texas, I went, I think it did a marathon past that because I'd been laid up in a, in the motel room in Adrian for five days, the longest layout I had in the whole trip. And it wasn't with injury. It was with a dodgy hot dog. And I had food poisoning. Oh no. Yeah. Six kilos. Five days. Shit the bed. Literally. What about temperature? So you've talked about, you've talked about enduring some pretty crazy weather. Was there any extreme winds, heat, colds?

Yeah, like so I was quite lucky sometimes, like I would have a massive, massive tail when I love, I love headwinds normally when I'm doing training because it's just a bit like it's like free heel training, you know, especially liver cords is pretty flat. free heel training, especially in Liverpool, which is pretty flat. But when I had a plan solo, it was occasionally like sort of pushing a sail into the wind. Sometimes you'd literally just have to stop and go, I'll just wait for this gust to finish and then I can carry on. And there was a particularly cruel moment. I was in Wyoming and it was snowing and I was so tired and I just saw, I need to have a break. I was trying to push on, like to go about a lot of 15 miles before I stopped and I was so tired and I just saw I need to have a break, you know I was trying to push you on like to go about like 50 miles before I stopped and I just saw I need to stop I need

to eat but if I stop I'll get so cold and I sat down like behind Pramsela I was trying to get out the worst of the wind just like to eat in like a quicks or some similar nutrition and I was so calm that the time I finished it but at least I was fed and I'm a little bit illiterate, he'srition, and I was so caught up in the time I finished it but at least I was fed when I'm going down the road and about like 800 meters after that, I see a sign saying, rest area, and I'm like, you're kidding me. And I go into it, it was a heated rest area, and I'd let you just sat there, like 45 minutes in the snow.

I was in the toilet, and I was just like, having my hands on the head underneath the dryer. People come and end just like having a wee on the way so like whatever they were driving to and I was just thought, what is this hobo? Who's this hairy man with a wee accent heating himself underneath the hairdryer? Yeah, I mean somebody needs to be told about this. Talk to me about what keeps you going then, because I haven't heard you say at any point here that your desire to keep on going really started to wane.

It seems like in the beginning, you had a goal of getting yourself across to the Pacific. Then from there, it was okay, well, let's do two crossings. Then from there, I guess as you break past halfway halfway it's more about finishing rather than continuing to do little bits, but you know, telling somebody a story about running all of this way and then being on your own hiding behind a fucking pram in the middle of the snow, like having lost five kilos from a bad hot dog and like, what is it that got you up and kept you moving every single day? Was there a challenge psychologically to keep on going or is it just routine? How

did that work? I sort of like it a little bit like to a pyramid and the peak was the ultimate you know, so you know, but you're very rarely at the peak you know, instead of that, that has to be just an end goal. So, your day to day, you're always around the base of the pyramid. Now, that would start with being either in the motel room on somebody's couch or in my tent, you know, sometimes with my water bottles just frozen. And I couldn't stay in that tent. What would I do? Like, lie there all the way to the side of the road, you know, so I have to get to somewhere else. So it's a bit like I call it like my tough boss and it's a bit like you know on a Monday morning you're about a

great weekend but you're really tired and you do not want to go to work. You can't just call off and say I'm not coming in because they'll be like why? And like because I don't want to and they go well I don't want to pay you or employ you anymore, you're fired. And so you go in and then you do it. And then to be honest, a lot of the times when you go into work, you go, I've got to hate this. And you're in there about now and just go, actually, the people I work with are really nice. And then someone will say something, you know, I'll thank you when you didn't expect it. When you go, this isn't so bad. And I found out that, be like that every morning, I'd wake up, I'd be tired, I'd be like, there's nowhere for 140 miles today. But then I you go, this isn't so bad. And I found out that every morning I'd wake up, I'd

be tired, I'd be like, there's nowhere for 140 miles today. But then I just go, well, you run 40 miles yesterday and the day before, so get out and do it, you know, you idiot. What you're going to do liar all day, you know, you've got to get to point B, you can't stay point A, you can't afford to stay point A for a star. So I would just, you know, sometimes it literally was as much as that, you know, if maybe if I've had an extra 40 books in my pocket, I might, I might call it, but I was like, no, there is no option not to do this. You just have to do it. And then the best thing you can do is to make it as fun as possible. So you'll go, well, what am I good things going to be? And in the morning, you're quite often hear a lot of nature before

like the world was too, like, you know, often about. Then I would like get into music. Some days I would select certain artists, I'd a rule that I could never walk when ACDC were playing. So if I ever selected ACDC for the morning, that was going to be a big morning, you know, that did me out of the hole. Like Bowie, did me out of the hole emotionally, a few times, Nick Caved it as well. And then it would be things like, well, it's only two hours to lunch, two hours and 10 miles, so get there. And I know that there's a particularly good fast food

joint there, you know, and there's gonna be air con, and it's hot, or it's gonna be heating, where it's cold. And then it'd be like, oh, it's gonna be end of the day soon. And it'll help surf into nights so you go stage to stage. And then suddenly like in three of the end of the day soon. And I'll couch surf into my seat, you go stage to stage, and then suddenly like in three days, I hit a state line. So those three days would be golden

because you'd be getting there, and then soon it would be an ocean. Now, it's not just this relentless progress. Like people ask me if I ever wanted to quit, and the generally would have been probably after the first two legs that would have been a thought almost every day, especially when I was on my own, you know, I just

there's no way I'm going to finish this, let's jack it in. But I had two major reasons, we're getting to the top of the pyramid here now, and they were the two charities that was running for, and in the film they asked for, he's running across Mississippi, such a central feature for my real nanofil. Are you running for women's rights for homeless? World peace the environment and animals and he gives the line adures for learning And so I do that most of the otherwise I was in the wrong game But I once to get some charities that ticked all those boxes and so I chose the World

Wildlife Fund, which does the environment and animals and Peace Direct, which is a small charity, but they basically, they do things like Rescue Child Soldiers from the Congo, but provide them with homes and jobs afterwards. They empower women and educate women in Zimba have a very traditional, like, macho society. And they basically just, they bring peace, you know, in the tourist sense of the word, not like absence of war, but peace has actually got a very different meaning as basically just being like at one, and they allow families to be families, and it's just such a wonderful thing. And the patron of Peace Directors Mark Rylands and so is Donkirk, Bridgespies and I got a video one day and I just went to the RV and I was just like, Matt, I think

you need to look at this and it was like a video from Mark Rylands just going thank you for all you're doing in the shoot a piece. And I just saw Jesus Christ, man. It's like someone like Mark is saying this about me. There's no way I can quit. And so my tough boss then wasn't just, you know, Beaston, he was also an armor at my shoulder as well, you know, so he's in then collagen boss. And he would like sort of, you know,

I would take sort of great solace in the things that went well rather than just going I'll thank God nothing bad happened today I was just like oh I look you've got from Tennessee into Virginia this is real and the very top of a pyramid comes down to me being a bit of a mummers boy just like forest and this is my mum and she's not around anymore unfortunately. She died when I was 23 and so she'd seen me do a few marathons and she'd seen me like to graduate from uni but you know she'd never saw be she never saw any of the run but she did give me one philosophical thing to hang my hat on, which was to do one thing in my life that made a difference.

And it's so transpired that all of these little sort of things came together, all these little pieces of the jigsaw, and it was when I was in the early stages of it, because I never really thought I would definitely do the follows gunup skunk run and I didn't have those charities lined up and then I just thought this is just all too perfect. I've done my handgun and this is the thing that I've maybe been subconsciously searching for for like 15 years. Let's try and make a difference and there's one thing that will make you get out of bed and that's not one to let your mum down, isn't it? So whatever she was, I'm sure she could see me in there.

I know that if she was there, if she was in the RV and one day I was saying, I'm just gonna sit off today and not gonna do it, she's just like, you're bloody not, get out, I'll kick you out. Man, that's so beautiful. It was beautiful of us. That's such an awesome story. So talk me through reintegrating upon finishing

what were the emotions when you finished and then how do you integrate back into a normal life in the UK? Yeah, I had like two finishes, one when I got to the distance and the only person that saw that was a friend of mine, Ben who was doing some film and so he put together really cool documentary that should hopefully see the lighter day next filming. And so he's put together really cool documentary that should hopefully see the the lighter day next year. And that was so personal because that was the one that that was the one for my mum because that's what I said I would do. I would do 15,248 miles. And I was in bits there and actually saying this like I'm not on camera and just go oh my god I don't know what I'm going to be like at the proper end. But I realized at the end it was going to be more of a celebration rather than

anything else. And I knew the Dean and B were going to be there. I knew I had people who were coming like my my school friend who heard the Creek, you know, he was coming home from San Francisco, people who I met in Alabama and South Carolina will come in out. And of course, I had a very big surprise up at the end. And so that was, it was all about making it perfect and just getting there. And I got to the exact point where Forest finished turn round and I said the line.

And then of course, I go through the crowd and say, hey guys, you should probably come stick with me. Something cool is about to happen. Don't get too close though. And I went and sought out the Dean and the only sort of reward I could give her in that sense was to thank her for everything that she'd done and for being so awesome because there's no way. It wasn't even just a physical support. She would have been completely within her rights night, offered as well, completely within the right. So I said, sorry mate, you've got bigger fish to fry. And now you've got to come home and you've got to do this.

And so she said she would never have drenched of it. So I got down on one knee, not just out of tiredness. And I asked her to marry me. And she fortunately said yes. And fortunately, I could get up afterwards and there Yeah, it turned into a proper old celebration loads of the local Navajo reservation I just I love the Navajo so much. It's just such a genuine people You know, and they help me so much of those last few days and then to have like my pose or at that point

You know very elaborate stage one, but you know, it just felt right, you know, sort of like the right people were there, you know. And, yeah, so we came back and normal life. And I remember seeing a, there's a Facebook group called USA Crossers, and it's about people who've liked sort of a run or walked across the states. And I remember seeing a post there saying how is everybody dealing with stuff after the run? Like I'm really, really struggling. And I was reading this, going, oh, that's interesting. Well, I said before about me feeling that was bombproof. And I thought, I'll be fine, because I changed jobs in the past, I'd moved country, I'd survive breakups,

I'd survive the deaths of my closest family. And I came to do it, that's fine. I was just like, no, that's not gonna bother me. Of course, I didn't post that because that'd be the act of a douchebag, you know? But I just thought, what a shame these people are feeling like that. And I was, cause my finish was so euphoric

and because I had this lovely new baby and I thought we're going to be getting married, you know, it took quite a while for me to realise I was in a really deep hole, you know, so I was really quite, you know, I turned into a grumpy heart bastard, you know, so the moment I said, you know, where a joke would happen in the past, I wouldn't respond in the same way. And I realized it was, and I hated work even more, even though my new job was way better than my previous one. It was just this sense of like an ultimate freedom

that I had on the run, and it wasn't there anymore. Like, I didn't present looking at it my little girl is the best thing ever. But it was like one of these sort of things were physiologically, but it's just like, why aren't you doing this, man? Where's the end thing ever. But it was like, one of these sort of things were physiologically, but he's just like, why aren't you doing this, man? Why's he endorphins that? Exactly.

And, but the thing is, you go through that and like the whole, you know, when they say, oh, when did you Olympic gold sink in? I don't think it has yet. And you just think, oh, load of rubbish. It was sunk in the moment you were drinking that third bottle of champagne, you know? But it's really not like that. And I think sort of when you, I was just like when you experienced a massive trauma, I think you'd be experiencing a massive like, sort of high like that,

it does take a while for everything to level off and I'm so sort of happier that's happened now. And then, I will be putting it behind me to rather unique way in a few months but we should probably get to that. What can you tell us about that? So I am planning to go out to Monument Valley once again. I am always wanting to run across America and there's always been a thing that was just going because Forest just finished in the middle of nowhere. And as you walk through the crowd, they're like, now what are we going to do? And I always thought about, you know, so what did you do after that? What did those people do? And I said, want to go out and I want to see the people sort of in kayed toast. They might never have our own friends, you know. I want

to run to that ocean, what last time sort of there. I think it will have to be in Santa Monica because if you're a fan of the film, you'll notice at the start, a single white feather floats into the scene and at the end it floats out. And I just reached my first ocean in Santa Monica and Chris Finnell, the fellow runner, said it doesn't count unless you're getting the scene.

So I stripped off, it was the no-goent of the 30th year, it was almost five years, like the day that we're talking, and got in, it was freezing cold, and I came out, I just put my clothes on, I was just like, who put that that? And underneath my Nike Cortez was a single white fella that nobody had done, everyone's just literally just blown in there. And I was just like, this is so true and chiotastic. It's unbelievable. And so yeah, I think sort of that would be the way

that I'll get a nice sense of closure. And I've obviously discussed it in debt with Nadine. And I'm hoping to just wait for it to come out because I do think sort of a, I think Disney World will definitely be on the cards with our little now. But obviously I'll be doing it in a bit in a different way this time. I don't think I'm gonna be pushing it as hard on the miles.

I'm not gonna be running at night unless I'm in the desert in the middle of nowhere. I always actually wanted to have one night where I just ran through the desert, start running at sunset and see a sunrise, and then just get there and see the ocean and instead of turning around this time, just go for a slap up dinner. Man, and then what about Australia? Have you got any intentions to do anything over there? That's a big burden thing, like focused on a medic at the moment. One of the things I do want to do, because obviously it's not the obtuse, it's trying

to raise a shed load of money for a peace direct to WWF as well. But talking about WWF Australia, it's like, you know, it's almost climate change in a microcosm. Is it from the barrier, read through the fires, through the droughts, and they would wear very well. Here is the way over there, you know, to try and see those landscapes. And I felt so at home in Australia, like, you know, I can say I'm Australian champion. And that makes me Australian. Like, even if it's not by birth, you know, like, I'm really quite proud.

Adopted son. Yeah, exactly. I think only one person's ever gone the whole way across from the most eastern point to the western point, the most eastern point. I think I wouldn't mind, but I'm quite happy being the second one there. Why am I the outback is going to be significantly more remote than even the most remote place in America, right? You've just got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles with absolutely nothing. Yeah, like the most remote point that place I was with with Wyoming and basically you were looking at like sort of 40 miles with the sort of the minimum really before you get anything like a gas station.

But yeah, there's a single road in Australia that is 93 miles long, absolutely straight. And if it wasn't for the curvature of the earth, if you shone a laser pointer at one end, you would see it at the other end. And so I want to do that road in one day. That's going to be a thing. That's pretty hard core. Yeah. I want to draw a little in one day. That's going to be a thing. That's pretty hard core. Yeah, I want to draw a little line at the start of yourself. But if I've got a crew, I want them to go.

And you know, like when you get to the end of the formula, one shack and you've got the little checkered flag on the end, I just want that there. Man, Australian gum. Australian gum, I'm all about it. Ha, ha, ha. Instead of the above a gum half, it's going to be one of those little sort of,

you know, the hats with the floor. With the core hanging down. Yeah, there's us, there's Australian people feeling like we're appropriating their culture at the moment. But I'm, I mean, I'm Australian champion. Yeah. It's fine.

I'm allowed to do it. Rob, tell people where they can go to watch and learn more about this. It's such an amazing story. And the audible book with your beautiful Scouse accent, adding an extra bit of colour to it must be amazing. Exactly. As I said, I met because it is generally at the end of the day, this is a love story. It's love for the film. It's love for Nadine and

B. But it's also a love letter to the people of America and the country. It's not about making America great again. It's about stopping America going down the tubes because America has got infinite potential. It always has and it always will be. We just got to stop this narrative that everything's bad. It's got problems. We've all got problems but America's gone into so on. So yeah, it's all about love and we need more of that in the world. And this is the becoming forest, the book. It's out in all your shops. It's out in Australia, New Zealand, I think on January the 5th, and out in the medical on February the 8th. But you know, you can, if you're desperate, you can get it from alternative bandits sources now. And what about if people want to keep up to date with you websites, socials, all that?

Yeah. So like run forest, run, I'm run, roblar run. So ROB LA and I'm on, I'm on most things. I'm not doing the old TikTok yet, but I think if I do go back to the States in February, I think I'll probably have to dip my toes in that water. You're gonna need to translate for the people on TikTok to understand. Maybe I'll just lip-sync the songs, man.

I'm here, that's all the rage. Just do a dance, dude. This has been really, really amazing. I love the story, I love what you've done. I love the fact that it had a higher purpose. It seems like it's been the keystone moment that so much of your life before and after a little bit of closure and then a genesis for something new. I think it's a really, really beautiful story, man. I'm really excited to see what you do next.

Thanks very much, mate. Thanks a lot, you tell it. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah