When @jackultracyclistofficial devised a plan to ride one million meters of elevation in a year, including 52 Everests on 52 different climbs, he wasn’t quite sure how it would all pan out, but he successfully completed the challenge and raised $500k for charity in the process. This year-long, World Record-breaking effort was par for the course for Jack, who has built a career around feats of endurance that hardly seem possible. But his journey to the heights of extreme ultra cycling had an unlikely beginning. Diagnosed with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder in his early teens, Jack struggled with addiction and spent time in rehab before channeling his focus and passion into cycling. Quitting his career in construction with little plan aside from turning non-competitive cycling into a full-time gig, he found a niche tackling solo ultra challenges and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for mental health charities along the way.
Jack sat down with Payson in Girona to talk about growing up in Perth, Australia, his struggles with mental health and addiction, and breaking into the ultra cycling world by deciding to do the Taiwan KOM climb — considered one of the toughest on earth — four times without stopping.
Chapters:
00:00:00 Career overview and discovering ultra cycling
00:12:20 OCD and depression
00:17:53 Growing up in Perth and struggling with addiction
00:35:15 Finding purpose in endurance cycling
00:48:30 The 1,000,000 meters and 52 Everests project
01:08:39 Readjusting to normal life after the challenge
01:13:17 Moving to Girona
01:16:21 Upcoming projects
01:26:08 Nutrition and chronic fatigue
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Um okay so I I’ve known of you for a good handful of years uh you’re accomplishments make headlines plenty frequently um so I I became familiar with you I think just by uh I don’t remember what it was specifically but it was probably some absurdly big ride it
Might have been the the chasing tour uh project you did uh a couple of years ago um but I first caught sight of you at Sen uh the other day which is um kind of a performance training center um that a lot of um cyclist here in town use a lot
Of the pros use um and I was like man he lives in the drona area as well that part had had gone over my head I didn’t know that he’s in the bubble he’s in the bubble he’s escaped the bubble um so straight away you went on my list uh of
People I’d like to talk to um and of course we’ll we’ll spend plenty of time going over your background and and some of your different accomplishments but kind of the way selfishly and jealously I’ve I’ve come to look at you is your you’re sort of someone that does a lot
Of the stuff that I want to be doing but don’t have the time right now to do like the the fun adventurous creative um sort of longer distance Ultra cycling uh writing styles and and just challenges that you cook up for yourself oftentimes for a good cause that I try
To jam in at the end of my Race season but you’ve made a full-time gig out of it um and there’s obviously been a lot of years of history and and different interesting twists and turns that have gotten you to this point but can you
Just as a jumping off point give us a a thumbnail sketch of how you would describe yourself as a cyclist you know if you’re in a restaurant of course many people are like oh do you ride the you’re a pro do you ride the tour to
France no do you do Red Bull Rampage no okay what do you do how do you make what kind of cyclist are you so how would you describe to that sort of person the kind of cyclist you are um I guess I’d say I’m I’m a bit of alone
Wolf like I like to do things alone um I’ve got a background where I suffer from obsessive compulsive personality type and so I find I guess I enjoy going away and doing things um longdistance things by myself so typically every year I do two or three Ultra style um events and when I
Say events they’re not events as in races because I don’t really like to race they’re all coming up with some sort of idea or some sort of concept working out how I could bring it to life preparing for it and then going about undertaking it and typically we shoot a
Film around it um so that’s sort of how I I spend my year um and as as you touched on a lot of them are for you know non for-profit or working with a series of schools to raise you know the awareness of mental health issues within adolescence and there’s always a second
Story line to which of the projects that we undertake yeah so for most uh professional cyclists their year you know on the road they’ll might have anywhere from 60 to 100 race days a year off-road Racers might have you know 12 to 30 um how many events quote unquote
Or or specific goals um comprise your year I know it’s it probably changes quite a bit year to year I think 2022 is maybe a pretty unique year which we’ll talk about um but how would you kind of Define that I would say like actual event or you know working days where I’m
Sort of going and putting myself in a bit of a hole trying to achieve something I’d say anywhere from yeah 15 to 20 days a year oh wow that’s that’s even more than I do but some of them are multi-day yeah yep so so yeah that might
Include like a 7-day trip here or a 3-day trip there and then the total of that is about 20 to 30 days I’d say a year yeah what that kind of reminds me of actually is um some of the the highlevel uh ultr Runners and and Mountain running athletes I I have a
Couple of friends in that world and was just kind of Blown Away by the fact that they really have to focus on three maybe maximum four events per year just because they do put you in such a hole yeah and I think also there’s the there’s the athletic side that everyone
Looks at it’s like oh you’re fatigued because you’ve been doing this but it’s also the the preparation side of it not even the training side it’s like how do we bring the project to life and get the sponsors on board and how do we make it
You know a success as opposed to going and doing something and nobody actually hearing about it m and I find that’s where a lot of the energy goes in preparation it’s not just the training it’s the making sure it actually sees the headline or it actually gets c yeah
Yeah interesting so at what point let let’s I do want to talk about your early life people will be able to hear in your voice that you’re from Australia um but before that before we start kind of moving backwards I’d like to hear at what point you discovered
This style of cycling and decided that it was going to be the style of cycling for you because I doubt it was your entry point no so without going right into my childhood cuz perhaps we’ll touch on that later it was in around would have been around 2018 so
I just come 20 2016 I’d say I just come out of rehab with the drug addiction and when I came out my dad said to me hey look maybe you need to get back on a bike and this is a way for you to sort
Of get back on track and I didn’t really like the idea of going and racing again like I’d raced as a as a as a young guy growing up and on the road or on the road yeah I’d enjoyed it but again I hadn’t enjoyed the racing aspect of it I
Enjoyed the training to go and race and the going and doing the long rides and preparation for the race and so when I did get back on a bike dad sort of pulled my arm and twisted it and I eventually went for a ride with him
Around the river in in Perth where I grew up I decided to you know thought maybe I can sort of just go and explore and that’s my way of using the bike as a bit of therapy and growing up my dad had set himself this wild task of actually
Riding his bike around the world so he he was off doing these Adventures as we were growing up and I think that rubbed off on me and I thought well maybe I can start doing these Adventure style things and I started doing a little bit of work with tourism boards looking at doing
Sort of longdistance events in different countries and trying to promote the country as a cycling destination uh and I kind of worked out wow this is this is what makes me tick like I like to go somewhere different I like to put myself out there I like the
Travel aspect of it how can I make a career out of it and it was sort of this wild plunge like yeah I was working I’d studied at Uni and was working in that field and yeah it was just a risk I took I thought if I’m not happy doing what
I’m doing I need to make a change and the change was all right I’m going to try and become a professional cyclist but I’m not going to race did you have any mentors or folks that you were kind of looking up to other than your dad
That made you think that that sort of thing could even exist growing up we we followed like surfing snowboarding like Mountain Sports and we’d always go and watch like the Warren Miller films and like I think that without knowing it at the time that was almost the inspiration like guys and
Girls going and doing adventures and whether it was kaying or snowboarding or Big Mountain skiing like how can I do that but do it on a bike yeah and I think yeah in hindsight that was probably inspiration growing up that’s cool bringing me to where I am now yeah
Yeah so what was what was the first well actually before we talk about maybe your first kind of idea or project um at what point did you start kind of pushing the boundaries of endurance your own personal endurance or Adventure style riding and having it feel like a
Positive thing where what was the light bulb moment where you’re like whoa pushing deep pushing far this lights me up so I was I was working at the time like a typical 9 to5 and I remember thinking I Was preparing for for you know a series of events that I wanted to do
Locally and before work like I said I’ve got a bit of an obsess of personality so I set myself a goal all right before work I’m going to ride 100 km every day for a week and then I’d go to work and I found like well I’m super tired at work
But I actually feel bloody good because of it and that was almost like the Tipping Point that actually doing the long distance was sort of keeping me in a really good head space it was ticking a lot of boxes it was a routine I felt good because it was exercise I felt like
I’d achieved something and I’d go to work and I was sort of like what am I doing at work you know I want to be on the bike and that was the Tipping Point then I realized all right I need to work at how to make this into a career interesting
So was it the was it the goal of 100K every morning like as someone that has obsessive compulsive disorder does that kind of light up your brain in a way that really gets you focused and happy and excited and and gives you some level of purpose is there a connection there
Or is it that maybe plus the ACT I guess what I’m getting at is like were you at that time when you were first kind of um dipping your toe in these Waters was it checking off these goals that was really exciting you or was it also the
Uh moments in the bike ride itself what what does that balance look like does that make sense the me it was more ticking off the goals and I’m still that way inclined like every morning I’ve got a list of stuff I want to achieve in the
Day and then I feel good because I’ve achieved it yeah and I’ve only sort of realized now the power of having that list but back then not realizing it at the time I think it was because all right I’ve set a goal I’m going to go
And do it I went and achieved it boom there’s a tick on the paper and I felt good about that tick that i’ achieved what I wanted to do and it gave me a sense of control I think at work being a young guy in the construction industry I
Always felt almost inadequate I didn’t feel like I had control I felt like it was always your boss that had control or the guys that have been there for longer and for me this was suddenly I was in control of what I wanted to do and I
Could then go and do it yeah interesting interesting so did you find over time that you cuz when you’re checking off a big even just 100 km ride takes a little while to get to that check mark point to to complete it um there’s plenty of time to be in your
Thoughts um take us in your inside your head a little bit like as you’re going on we’ll just use 100K ride as an example right now um are you just kind of like counting down the kilometers or are you a little bit more immersed in the experience has that changed over
Time like what what is all what is the bike riding experience like for you when the check mark is so key so I’m a bit obsessed with symmetry uhhuh it sounds like a bit of a funny thing but so I get like a great sense of satisfaction out
Of thinking about the Symmetry on the bik while I’m writing and and that almost becomes like a bit of a meditation like thinking about the left leg and the right leg and you can maybe relate to that a little bit as well of course and then that combined with music
And beats per minute in like a song combined with like what’s going outside where the sun’s rising and you’re on the bike path and you know there might be a spider web or you know just the different things you see it all sort of for me combines into a bit of an
Experience and I’ve sort of started using the term like meditation and motion for me it’s I I can’t sit still and when I’m on the bike although I’m moving that’s my sort of meditative state where I’m actually my mind feels still because I’m sort of yeah I’m in
Control of what’s going on ah interesting yeah it’s funny so I don’t know if this will uh be if this will sound familiar but um I’ve noticed for myself in in rides sometimes little actually even just dayto day I’ll make it more than bike riding I have some
Little Tendencies as well where if I I don’t know if I’ve ever said this out loud Nicole might laugh she’s in the room here but if I uh if I’m riding and I brush the inside of my knee against my top tube I really have this desire to
Brush the other knee against the top tube to balance it out and usually I do like I I make a conscious decision to do that yeah exactly so I’ve I’ve wondered you know do I have a little bit of OCD as well in in your journey of learning
About it um is it sort of a spectrum where people just kind of follow along the Spectrum like what cuz you’ve been uh diagnosed yeah with this uh what have you learned about it do most people have some of this sometimes like some of the stuff I
Do is almost like a little bit crazy and I think that’s probably quite high on the spectrum of OCD as an example I went through a stage where in order to give me that sense of control I had to Blink my eyes twice close with my lips and then nod my
Head like this with my hands closed and like that was extreme because that was almost controlling me and that’s when I was seeing a psychologist and trying to work around it but I think having a little bit of OCD you can almost use use it to your advantage it’s not
Necessarily a bad thing I think when it is you know you’re doing the blinks and the weird things with your hands that’s yeah definitely high on the Spectrum but it sounds like you maybe do some little things as well that are you know quite low on the Spectrum but is maybe still
An OCD tendency yeah I find I don’t do it anymore but I used to like if I liked someone I’d wink with my right eye and if I disliked them no way wow just weird little things and I feel weird I feel sort of silly that I used to do it but
At the time it was like that was serious for me and if I didn’t do it something was going to happen and that was my sense of control so interesting so we’ll I’m really excited to talk about how this is um shaped your bike experience and kind of how it’s um inspired different
Things and in a lot of ways like you said it becomes a superpower like some of the things you’ve accomplished on the bike no doubt have um been benefited by by really caring about process and numbers and regularity and all that sort of thing um but before we we talk more
About bike riding I think I saw that you were first diagnosed with this when you were 13 years old yeah um and uh as well was it depression at the at the same time it was depression I was diagnosed with to begin with and then yeah basically we noticed I had some weird
Tendency that were then diagnosed as obsessive compulsive so I guess i’ I’ve been medicated for depression for 20 odd years now and like I say it’s a um an achievement it’s not an achievement it’s just a milestone in my life is that I recently came off all the
Medication came off the medication yeah oh wow um partly because my partner’s a psychologist and she sort of said hey perhaps it’s not a good thing to be on medication for this long perhaps you should try coming off it and and I was always of the opinion you know if it
Ain’t broke don’t fix it and I sort of felt good and I thought I don’t know if I want to come off and over a period of about two months I slowly weaned myself off what I was taking and I actually feel feel great for it so I’m I’m super
Stoked about that but I I’ve also never had a stigma um with taking medication uh if it’s needed and yeah I spent most of my my life on medication trying to um combat the depression that I was suffering with um and yeah I think the the medication
And more recently like using the bike has has actually been a way that I deal with the dark times so I mean you almost just made it sound like coming off the medication was easy was it pretty smooth it was pretty smooth up until probably the last two weeks I started having some
Quite bad withdrawals um almost like dizzy spells when I would stand up like low BL blood pressure kind of Vibes um but to be honest aside from that it wasn’t too bad I just did it really slowly I didn’t I I was like one tablet every day I went to
One tablet one half tablet every second day and slowly slowly slowly came off it um and yeah like who knows maybe I’ll go back on it but for now I’m I’m I’m not on it and and I feel pretty good so yeah happy days do you mind me asking how
It’s kind of changed your your day-to-day life not being on the medication yeah it hasn’t really changed anything like I would take one tablet at night time when I went to bed and you know as far as I was concerned it wasn’t really doing anything that was just part
Of the routine then and I just figured I was in a good head space because I was taking it and it wasn’t until I sort of challenged that whether I needed it and I did come off that I realized perhaps I actually didn’t need it for so long and
Yeah it hasn’t changed anything yeah that’s interesting yeah okay so let’s rewind a little bit um even pre 13 years old old so you’re from Perth which is the on the western coast of Australia um it’s a Australia as a whole is a place that I have a lot
Of curiosity about um it just feels so foreign and like you know as someone that enjoys being outside quite the place to explore so much potential um we’ve spent quite a bit of time in Tasmania about I guess 18 months ago maybe a little less and it was funny
Hearing about as we were just kind of beginning to glean little bits about Tasmania specifically and then just kind of Australia as a whole and how the rest of Australia looks at tazzy and how it’s a little bit of this forgotten Island to an extent and just kind of off toing it
Something but the western coast of Australia also kept coming up in conversation as kind of having people have sort of a similar perspective about it sometimes like it’s a little bit of the Wild West it sounds like it’s it’s the second most isolated city on earth apparently really yeah wow
So we’re closer to Indonesia than we are to any other capital city in in Australia wow a fun fact crazy so describe Perth for us how big a city is it and what was it like to grow up there so there’s about 50 people live in Perth
We’re still horse C okay that was okay that was the first impressively Dead Pan delivery I’m I’m on guard now no like I off the top of my head I think I could be wild I think it’s I don’t know what the actual population is Perth like think of like Barcelona for example
Perth’s similar to Barcelona in size oh wow but perth’s spread out so like the city itself is 200 o km in length so we have this massive sprawl along the coast so you need a car to sort of get anywhere um like it’s a city like we’ve you know there’s big buildings and
There’s everything but sort of once you’ve away from the city it does get quite remote and you sort of find yourself in you know the typical sort of Red Dirt which you may have seen in tazzy and that sort of remote wa um remote sort of Australian Vibes that you
See in the movies but Perth like was a great place to grow up where you know had the beaches we had good surf we had you know everything you could want as a kid um yeah it’s just if you ever wanted to travel anywhere it was a long way to
Go yeah yeah yeah interesting yeah so one of my best friends is from Springs oh really yeah and he also a professional cyclist and he’s uh I’ve never visited there but same sort of thing you know Australia just has these places because we think of speaking of J to positions I mean
Europe versus where we spend most of our time in the west Southwestern us Southwestern us feels very wild and open you know you you have to drive our our biggest major city probably is Denver and that’s six hours away okay um but Australia is just on a whole other level
Man like hearing about Alice Springs hearing about Perth and just the sheer vastness of it is is really amazing um what are what are some of the main kind of uh ways of life and industries and and that sort of thing in Perth what are what do people think of so Perth I
Guess famous there’s an island off Perth called rot Nest uhuh which is where that used to be sort of like a prison Island where they used to keep people it’s 20 km off the coast which is now like a a nature reserve um we’ve got the famous
Quackers on the island which likes of Roger feder everyone gets a little selfie with the quaca while they’re in on is a bird or it’s like a cross between a wombat and a rat like a big rat okay kind of weird looking things um T like Tasmanian Devil relative sort of
Or could be a long lost relative I’m un sure who down think about a little kangaroo it’s like a little kangaroo Okay Okay um yeah like there’s a good surfing in Perth like we’ve got the Margaret River Masters down in the South good wine um the big thing in Western Australia is
A big mining sector so a whole lot of the state is actually mining um it’s used for mining so there’s gold there’s iron there’s nickel um but that’s sort of a long long way away from Perth so we’re talking maybe 1,500 km away from the city itself the city itself is like
Like I say it’s like any other city in Australia it’s just we’re surrounded by a lot of desert it’s a long way to get anywhere else yeah yeah yeah um and yeah it sounds like you come from a family of of sort of international explorers and travelers I
Mean your your dad riding around the world that’s incredible that’s very unique I think your your mom has summited Everest I was reading so she’s been to base camp at Everest which sounds humble but my folks have done that too and they have quite the stories
And photos it’s no small thing it’s no small thing yeah I remember we were all having dinner and she called us from one of the phones at base camp and she was crying because of the altitude and she was all emotional uhhuh and my dad my brother and myself were sitting around
The table laughing at her for crying brutal wow but yeah and my brother’s probably the most well one of the the interesting facts about my brother is his he’s World Mr physique yeah I read that too yeah currently so last year 2023 20 no 2022 he won that wow so he
Retired after that he was like I’ve hit the top step it’s only downhill from here uhhuh but he’s still the guy you don’t want to go to the beach with just because you feel inadequate yeah yeah yeah interesting yeah I mean that’s a whole other talk about Divergent paths
You’re you’re those are two very separate athletic paths you can take yeah he’s an eating machine like I think the as cyclist the nutrition’s important but then if you look at the guys and girls doing the bodybuilding and the physique stuff the nutrition’s on a whole another level and it’s been
Interesting actually chatting with him about the nutrition side of things just because he has such a good knowledge of it and trying to apply some of that stuff to you know if I go to the gym or if you know just trying to work out like
How insulin spikes work and that sort of stuff that’s really valuable for them trying to take that and apply it to myself it’s been yeah it’s been interesting huh and what’s your brother’s name Chad Chad so both you and Chad end up being very high level
Athletes um growing up did it feel like you was there any almost Destiny involved there with the way your your parents were did did they raise you sort of with similar values to the ways that they were spending their spare time Globe trotting adventuring did you did
It feel like that was something you wanted to to gravitate towards I think we were always just brought up with the idea that we could do whatever we wanted to do like they would support whatever we wanted to do and I think that goes a
Long way mhm I know like I had mates that when I was at school or uni there was always a pressure on them that they had to go and study law or they had to go and study medicine and there was always an expectation that we would go
And do tertiary study after school but when we got to the point where that wasn’t working out or we didn’t want to do it there was never any obligation for mom or dad that no you know you have to continue doing that if they thought it
Was the right thing to do they might have said hey look we think you need to finish the degree and then maybe you go and do something else but if we were you know properly against it they were like all right well we support what you want
To do um you need to work out a way to make it work financially but you know if you can do that then by all means go for it it’s your life you get one shot at it go and do it Y and I think that was
Looking back that was pretty powerful as a kid growing up having that yeah yeah makes sense so as you were growing up did you have any ideas about about what you wanted to do what what was what were what was Jack dreaming about as a young
Teen or or were you yet oh so I studied construction management and economics and that was off the back of I was watching home renovation shows on TV and I like the idea of buying a house and renovating it and selling it and making money yeah and so I went to the careers
Advisor and he was like construction management and economics that’s the degree for you and so I went and did it and I had I hated it like I got the degree and I worked in the industry I had no idea what I wanted to do I just sort of you
Know knew that uni was a good option I should go to UNI that’s what he said I should do I was lucky I applied and I got a scholarship to go and do it um but looking back it wasn’t yeah it was a stepping stone to where I am today yeah
Interesting how much did the so you going back to your diagnosis at 13 how much did that shape your adolesence do you think did it cuz it doesn’t sound like you found sort of a a life’s passion until a little bit later in life yeah um and you you kind
Of had to walk through fire a little bit it sounds like to get to that point I struggled a lot at school okay like I was always almost like the weird kid I didn’t have a lot of friends I struggled that social interaction I struggled with
It um I I didn’t want to be at school I hated having to be there from 9 to 3 or whatever it was like I I felt like a sense of um entrapment at school and even going into University I think that was partly to blame why I ended up sort
Of using the drugs is I was almost trying to create an identity of myself and I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing and at the time you know you turn 18 and you go out and you start partying if I took more than everyone
Else was taking then you I was sort of Superman and you know this has led me down this sort of dark path coupled with the obsessive personality I’d do it and then I’d want to do more and then I’d want to push the boundaries always and so it was a it
Was like I didn’t have a bad upbringing but I struggled all throughout my childhood and through the teens just because I didn’t know where I belong where I where i’ belonged I didn’t know who I was I was still really trying to find myself and I’d say it’s only
Recently I’ve sort of worked out who I actually am and what I want to do and I’m 35 now yeah yeah yeah yeah well some people never figure it out you know yeah um when did the drug use start that was around 19 so initially like finished school drinking partying and then one
Thing led to another led to another and it got to the point where it was daily use of gear you know I was going to work I was functioning I was study so at the time just to set the scene there was a construction boom in Perth I was
Studying construction management so most of the guys and girls in the course could go and get a job while they were still studying and they were actually making good money like we were making good money while we were studying cuz there was a demand for us and I was
Living at home I had no real expenses aside from you know going out and partying um and yeah I I abused I abused it and I got to a point in 2020 so I must have been around 21 22 years of age where I ended up having to go into a
Rehab facility and just try and get my life back in order so what year was this this would have been um not 2020 um I would have been 2021 22 so this is going back for 13 years so this must have been 2010ish yeah gotcha gotcha okay yeah um
What sort of drugs were you using basically Coke and ecstasy were the main ones M and it was more like that nightclub sort of scene um house music just disappearing into another world and I like for me I enjoyed that aspect of Disappearing because I wasn’t happy with myself and
What I was doing and I think that’s why I ended up sort of going down that route mhm um and playing with it yeah and it was a really dark time and I I feel for my parents and everyone that was surrounding me because it was a little
Bit touch and go I sort of had suicidal ideation I didn’t know what I wanted to do if I wanted to be around what was going on um but I had the support of people around me and yeah managed to come out the other side so I wouldn’t
Change what had happened yeah if I could go back and change it I’m I’m just glad I got out the other side yeah yeah yeah yeah so was it sort of like an intervention type thing with the folks around you you or how did you end up
Going to rehab basically I got home from work one day and I went up to my room which is on the second level and laid out on my bed was all of the the gear that I’d been using that I’d sort of hidden in jackets and stuff in my
Wardrobe and it was actually a guy at the gym the trainer at the gym that had said to my mom hey look we think Jack’s probably using something you know he’s not himself he’s quite aggressive um you know you can see under his eyes like he’s he’s you could sort of tell I
Wasn’t healthy and Mom had actually gone through my room looked at everything and it was all laid out and I sort of came home and I was like w this is not good yeah and I went downstairs and basically my dad said to me straight off the bat
He said unless you stop you can [ __ ] off like we don’t want anything to do with you anymore wow and you know I said like this family was always really supportive of everything I wanted to do and so to hear that from him was a bit of a slap around the
You know slap around the chops and I I basically came cold turkey off from there and it was basically coming off cold turkey the withdrawals everything associated with that was when I went right off the deep end uh and that’s when I went into like a psychiatric um
Facility in Perth and I spent about two weeks in there um basically with Psychiatry and psychologists and a bunch of other people that were going through different things um and yeah it’s all a bit of a blur that time to be honest yeah yeah it seems like
Um you know many people have had that moment with families before and sometimes it it seems like it could go the other way where the kiddo decides okay I’m I’m off on the streets and I’m going to I’m I’m going to chase that that feeling more yeah than you know
Deciding to try to salvage I think that’s where the power of like having the support of parents growing up is so important cuz cuz I always respected them so to hear it from them it was like wow I’ve got to stop now yeah no kidding wow what was rehab like
Um like if I didn’t know what it was like I would say like rehab is you know sitting around like chained up like it’s not a mental Asylum you know like it’s like we’re normal people we’ve just you know gone down the wrong path and so it
Was stuff like talking with a counselor but like in a group and it was obviously like I had no access to substances while I was in there and there were girls in there with anorexia there were guys in there that had drug addictions there was
A whole it wasn’t all just sort of drug addicts in there and so I think just being around other people and actually talking about the different problems that we had it gave it all a little bit of perspective I was scared as hell to go in there because
I like similar to the first time I had to go and see a psychiatrist I thought that meant I was crazy interesting just that word the Psychiatry psychology especially as a young child it’s quite scary um and then having to actually go into a facility for me was like what
This is it almost the sever severity of it all became very real and I thought no I don’t want to be in here anymore like it was fine to be in there it was safe it was a you know the environment was fine but I don’t want to go back there
And I didn’t want to go back there and so I made a real effort in there to try and do everything that I could to come out the other side in a position that I could then go and live a normal life and I was just lucky that Mom and Dad
Supported me after that I had a boss at work who supported me so I you know I wasn’t working while I was in there but I had a job when I came out and I had a whole support network around me that made my life a lot easier yeah
Interesting yeah i’ I don’t know why but I’ve always pictured it as just sort of like a a bit of a boarding school kind of feel almost it’s kind of weird because like you go and you have your breakfast together your lunches together your dinner together and but you don’t
Know anyone and it’s sort of it’s kind of weird because everyone’s in a pretty bad place while they’re in there yep so it is a bit like a boarding school except you’re not having fun and you you don’t know anyone everyone’s pretty low yeah yeah interesting so you graduate so
To speak yep and how long was the process in the in the facility yeah about two weeks two weeks yeah uh and then then you go back to construction work yeah so it was like a slow I slowly eased my way back into it so over a
Series of weeks I’d do two days a week then I’d do three days and I didn’t go straight back full-time because I think then I would have probably relapsed um and it was during that time Dad said hey why don’t you start doing a little bit
More exercise and and yeah like I said I didn’t want to go out with Dad because I sort of felt he was a bit the enemy he’ sort of caught me and ah interesting there’s a little bit of tension there uhhuh but I went on this ride with him
And that’s when I really got the buggy and I was like w like you know racing around the river albeit against old guys in like like I love the competitive side of it yeah and it sort of sparked something in me again and it gave me a
Bit of a focus and the focus was away from the partying and the night life because I I lost a lot of my friends during that period because they perhaps continued and it I couldn’t be friends with them if I wasn’t going out so it
Sort of was a divide in my life and it forced me to sort of find new friends and at the time was my dad’s mates like I was going and riding with them and having fun with them and going for coffee with them and they were twice my
Age yeah um inter and then slowly I met you know people my own age and started doing my own thing on the bike and yeah wow so give us a bridge between so I think I saw you have a great website by the way folks should
Should go check that out but I think it was around 2018 that you really launched into doing this at a high level and committing the majority of your time to it the bike how did you make it to that point how did you go from riding around
With your dad’s friends and working a construction job to being a professional cyclist and doing things that literally no one else has done so when I started on the bike again like I said 100 km ride for me it was like all right next
Week I want to 120 then I want to do 200 then I was always pushing the envelope to challenge myself and then I seen there was a a race advertis in Europe called the Transcontinental and this became for those that don’t know the Transcontinental Was a Race it is a race
That goes well at the time it took you from Belgium to Turkey and there were various checkpoints along the way uh and it was basically the plan your own route F the fastest person wins and for me this was like an amazing goal it’s like
Oh I could go to Europe and I could like have a bit of a holiday while I’m riding my bike and you know I can push myself and as a bit of a cowboy I said all right I’m going to go and do it and I
Signed up and I and I got a position to go and do it and I went and did it and I had no experience whatsoever but I can still recall the first night leaving Belgium all of the sort of tail lights flashing at night time and then everyone
Sort of goes their own way this sense of wow this is really living like I feel alive mhm and I spent the next it was 10 or 11 days or something um you know absolutely battling my way around Europe no idea what I was doing and I finished
In turkey and my dad had flown over to meet me he’d been sort of following along as as a DOT Watcher yeah and anyway we spent two days in Turkey I was absolutely knacked and he said to me look well you how do you feel about
Going back to work and I said what it’s the last thing I want to do like I’ve had such a good time here and he said to me he said why are you going back to work I said well we need to work don’t we
And he said if you don’t enjoy it you shouldn’t do it and that was like this light bulb moment of all right maybe I could make a career out of writing a bike H and so when I got back to work the first day back I said to my boss all
Right I’m going to hand in my notice I don’t want to work anymore I’m going to become a professional cyclist and this is like 2 years after coming you know not long after coming out of rehab and he sort of looked at me a bit funny and yeah I did two weeks of
Work and then I left and then it was like how am I going to make money and I was lucky a position came up it was on Facebook of um cyclist magazine was looking for somebody to go to Thailand and basically spend 5 days in Thailand uh and basically produce an article
Around cycling in Thailand and so I I said yeah I want to go and do it and I got the opportunity to go and do it and then I saw this unique area of like cycling and tourism and you know then pitching to different tourism boards you
Know I’m going to come to Indonesia and I’m going to ride there and I’m going to produce an article and all you’ve got to do is cover my costs and that I started doing that and at the same time I was you know working a few odd jobs at home
And trying to make ends meet and through doing these sort of Tourism trips I realized oh wow maybe I can ask for some sponsorship from different brands because I’m getting articles into magazines and on websites and so I started sending out the emails to to little Brands and I got a couple of
Little brands on board and you know this is all over the course of a couple of years and then it was actually I had this idea of wow I want to do something extreme I was like what could I do and I was brainstorming with a mate back in
Perth and it was middle of the year so the sort of season in Europe was finished and we were like wow how could we do something and take advantage of existing media so that we don’t we don’t have the budget to to do anything but
How can we sort of try and get on the bandwagon with some media and there was the Taiwan K event oh yeah oh maybe we could go to Taiwan and do this K and I’d done a little bit with tourism in Taiwan before so I reached out and said I
Wanted to come and they’re like yeah it sounds good quickly describe what that event is for folks so it’s a it’s a hill climb event and it’s basically a climb that’s I think it’s 80 odd kilm in length that takes you from sea level up to around 3,400 M it’s one of the
Longest climbs in the world yeah yeah and we said all right let’s go and do that and I was like H but it needs to be different I don’t just want to go and do the event because there’s hundreds of people that do it I said well maybe I’m
Going to do it four times nonstop and we’ll do it like three times before the race and then we’ll do it with the race and then hopefully because I’ve done that there’ll be media that’ll talk about it a little bit H interesting
And so I got my dad I got my mate and I got a who’s a photographer and another mate who had just started film film making he was 17 or something at the time and I said look I’ll pay for all your flights you’ve just got to come
Over here and document it and we’ll try and put something together and we went over there and we put this little film together and it was quite a success and at the time there wasn’t a lot of this happening in the cycling world so it got
A bit of traction when what year was this um this was 2016 oh yeah you were way ahead of the curve yeah interesting and um yeah to begin with on YouTube it wasn’t doing very well and then suddenly the views started going like skyrocketing I remember I was just like
Updating the feed and it was just going up and up and up and this is like sort of back before the like in the scheme of things it wasn’t a lot of views but for me it seemed you know 100,000 views this is [ __ ] Bonkers totally yeah and um
And then off the back of that I started approaching some Brands and trying to put a bit of structure around I want to go and do a couple of extreme things in a year M document them and in return like provide content and um you know this is almost the beginning of the
Whole content game yeah yeah yeah uh and it sort of just grew from there and it’s yeah it’s been I don’t know seven years now yeah doing it and it’s it’s obviously the landscape’s changed a little bit and I’m I’m sort of doing things a little bit differently because it’s all well and
Good going and doing extreme things but you have to make a like a salary out you have to make you can’t just do it for nothing and so that sort of shaped things a little bit but essentially yeah it’s where we’re at now doing a couple of extreme events a year and putting
Them a film around them and trying to engage with different brands and communities and trying to make a project out of it a social impact style project yeah how did you I’m still stuck on the Taiwan K here for a second how did you arrive at 4 that’s a good
Question I think I just thought a four sounds extreme like we were lit just sitting over having a coffee I was like four times yeah and he was oh and I was like yeah four it is you know what’s the elev what was the elevation
Gain on that do you remember um I think the total elevation over the four climbs it would have been around 14 15,000 M jeez so triple Everest double ever almost a double double Everest yeah did you was in everesting even a thing that you knew
Of at that time I was probably aware of it but I didn’t have stra at the time right like I I I was always against it I was like oh no I just want to be like the the loner that’s going and doing it and then somebody’s like oh that’s the
Guy that went and did it and sort of just trying to sort of Be On The Fringe a little bit Yeah interesting and then I sort of fall yeah I’ve got straa now quite valuable having it it is showing people what you’re doing and there’s nothing like massive numbers that no one
Else has done um wow but we were full Cowboys yeah it what was it like to quote unquote race the fourth time up did you were you fell I just remember there was gumbies going past me like I was hardly moving yeah but in my mind I was like as soon
As we hit like a certain point they’re going to be coming backwards cuz they’ve gone out way too hard and like the elevation starts to kick in and it’s that sort of happened so to begin with I was quite embarrassed like w you know there’s people going past me I’m nowhere
To be seen and then towards the top I just started slowly catching and catching and catching um and then yeah arriving at the top was amazing cuz we achieved that first goal we wanted to achieve and you know my dad was there and my mates were there and then we had
A couple of days in Taiwan just soaking it all off and it was yeah I’d like to do more of that sort of it was just off the bat you know like we just went and did it there was no real planning involved it was like that’s a cool idea
Let’s just go and do it yeah yeah yeah so when you think back on that first one is it the same sort of thing that you were describing with your H 100 kilometer rides before work where checking off for a sense was like the the big dopamine hit yeah or did some of
The adventure component start to seep in and and you felt value and kind of the shared experience of having your dad there and having your buddies there and being in a foreign land and and discovering a new place how how much value did that component have for you
That probably sunk in more so afterwards one we when we’d actually finished and that’s when I realized like I can’t just do these things for the end result it’s got to for the whole process and like to actually get to travel with my dad and do these things is super cool and then
To have two mates with me in a foreign country staying in weird hotels is also super cool and but that’s been a bit of a process realizing that I need to enjoy that I am a little bit like driven by like I just need to do that and then
That and then that and I often forget about the process or the all the stuff that happens in between and that’s something that I’m still working on trying to be a little bit more wholesome with it it’s not necessarily about the end result it’s about getting there and
You know making sure it’s fun well on that note I mean I I want to in a minute talk about some of the other big extreme challenges you’ve done but have there been any where you came up short or they just fell apart for one reason or
Another and what was that like as someone who has the the psychology that you do yeah I had touch wood I’ve been quite lucky like I haven’t had many fall short I had one in Tasmania actually really yeah huh my uncle was living in Tasmania and I had this idea I wanted to
Go and do like a bit of a figure eight around around the island and um low key things I took a road bike and I was doing it on like 25 mil tires and it was wet and you know it’s cold gets cold and
Tazzy and on day one I had like six or seven punches like I was using the sticky repair things and it just all fell to bits and my phone and got water logged and it just it didn’t go to plan and I remember then that was that was
Almost like the realization that it can’t just be about the end goal it has to be about everything that leads up to it the time with my uncle staying at his you know vintage house like the the travel over there and the people I meet
On the plane like it’s all it’s not it sounds corny it’s not the I forget the the term it’s not the end result it’s the journey yeah yeah and it’s like that’s corny but it’s it’s true yeah yeah so what is one of these that you
Hold dearest just in terms of the like this was one of the challenges that I’m most proud of like when I am am looking back on the sunset of my career my athletic career you know not necessarily the one that got the most views or the
One that people bring up when they run into at a coffee shop but one that you really hold dear for one reason or for me like without a doubt it was in 2022 the 52 Everest million M yeah like a yearlong project because it was so [ __ ] hard okay yeah let’s talk about
It brutal so how did you arrive at those other than them being very nice obvious round numbers at what point did you start thinking about putting together um a year-long So there wasn’t a lot of thought that went into it so I set the scene I was in Portugal yeah and my I had this idea for a project in 2022 that I wanted to do um basically in Everest and each of the municipalities
Of Portugal and use it as like a way of promoting Portugal as a as a cycling destination MH and that fell through and we were in Portugal at the time and I was thinking what am I going to do I’ve got this whole year free now and I
Literally like on the back of a little bit of paper I started like doing some notes and I was like a million meters and then I broke that down into 52 how much would that be in a week I was like it’s 20,000 m a week but then a an
Everest would be half of that almost all right an Everest every week gives me roughly half of a million meters and then I need to make up the rest of the meters elsewhere and it was that quick I called my dad and I was like all right
I’m going to do a million meters and 52 Everest in a year and he was like what have you thought that through yeah it’s happening I did it on a napkin trust me and I kid you not the first week I started I did it and I was doing the calculations and I
Was like I’ve done the calculations wrong I’m short no way the first week I was 2,000 M behind and I was like oh this is going to be serious now wow and yeah the year began and it was just like this war of attrition like trying
Not to get injured trying not to get sick trying to think of a new climb to Everest cuz my own goal was to do a different Climb Every time trying to work out you know the weather’s shitty here how am I going to get there and not
Lose you it was just this m game for a whole year um and obviously I was getting more and more tired as the year went on and I also set myself this goal of trying to raise a million dollars for charity which became almost more of a stress than the
Riding because I wasn’t getting close to the figure and then I felt like I was letting people down and I was it was this oh wow constant sort of you know mind [ __ ] wow um yeah amazing year like super cool to have achieved it would I ever do a year project again [ __ ]
No no way so okay it sounds like like you came into it a little bit by the seat of your pants um started off behind which is wild that’s crazy how how did the logistics of it all work did you start here in Spain
Yeah so I was here I did most of it in Spain from Jona and basically I had sorry to interrupt but I am so regretting that I was not more plugged into your stuff at this point and following real time wor this would have been unreal to follow throughout the
Year to be honest it probably would have got boring cuz every week was like a repeat of the week before a repeat of the week before and I’m just looking more hagged and more hagged every time a photo goes up yeah but it was like I
Just broke like everything I do I just break it into a manageable chunk so I said all right Friday is going to be the day that I Everest so every Friday it was an Everest that is such an insane thing to say dude like what you just
Said is unreal yeah just because weekly Everest okay that it sounds crazy but then when you you put a day on it like this is what I do with my Friday some people have Friday pizza night you have Friday everesting day I had Friday pizza
Tonight as well but I had four or five piz so God like a typical week is like Monday was a bit of a recovery day 1500 met Tuesday which for for for the silly Americans listening is 4,500 ft a little more Tuesday 2 and half th000 m and that
Was typically eight repeats on the back of L’s eight repeats on the back of L’s yeah oh my God Wednesday uh was another 2500 M and that was typically three rocker coras so I what dude okay so I did Roku Cora for the first I’m going to keep interrupting
Because I have context for all this now Roa corba sucks and I think part part of it is the time of year like it was just oh it’s slippery now wet and dicey and was like I’m I’m good on that I’m not going to keep doing that but it is steep
And it’s such a fake news climb where the average grade on straa says I think 8% yeah it’s more it has two descents in it yeah for sure it’s [ __ ] hard so it’s like 12 to 16% during the actual climbing parts and it’s not like tarmac it’s like you know
It’s like the concrete blocks and then it’s sketchy corners and slow but for me mentally I could break that down I’ve just got to go up three times and then my day is done and so i’ typically ride out uh typically drive out cuz I didn’t want to be doing junk
Stuff and I’d just ride it three times then I’d get in the car come home VI the gas station and it was always a magnum a little like ice coffee and like a couple of Snickers or Twix like that was just my reward yeah um so that’s the typical
Wednesday then Thursday was like getting ready for Everest 15 00 M and that was almost like a again a recovery Loop Friday Everest day and it’s like where am I going to Everest so sometimes on a Thursday night I’d drive for an hour to the base of a climb and stay in
A little Airbnb or like it was a logistical absolute nightmare because I wanted to do it on a different climb bless your fiance man I’m so lucky she still with me this is C and then Saturday again was like a recovery day 1500 M after the Everest
But I typically try and get a little bit more so I knew if I got around 1,800 at the end of the year I’d be able to if I did that consistently for a number of weeks I’d suddenly be knocking days off it so it was like 1800 M on a Saturday
And then lights out Saturday afternoon right off Sunday absolute right off and I was probably the grumpiest bloke in Europe I reckon yeah yeah interesting can you what is the meters per week breakdown to to knock off a million in a year 20,000 met every week so that’s over 60,000 feet of
Climbing per week yeah wow and I had one week off in the middle of the year because I was cooked and I’d actually built up a bit of a surplus so i’ with my coach at the time we said look I’ve got this Surplus your coach you’re poror
Oh right I forgot about that there’s probably a coach involved with this there wasn’t a lot of input from him that year other than like how are you alive the TSS weekly like the average was 1,600 oh my God which was what did your CTL get to uh is this I forget the
SE the fitness yeah that’s a chronic was 250 what that’s sort of where it peaked out I have never heard of such a thing but I think that’s just like I’m not a big training Peck Science Guy so I don’t really understand the science I think that’s just because like I wasn’t
Resting it was just always load after load after load I know it has to be like to to to get 65,000 ft of climbing per week I mean you have to just like there there is no bouncing back yeah at that point what was it like to take a week
Off what did your body do that was the risk hey because my coach was like either you’re going to get sick in this week or you’re going to be okay but the following week you’re going to suffer and luckily I didn’t get sick but the following
Week it was a mental battle because it’s like ah I’ve just had a week off and now it’s finding that rhythm again and telling yourself you got to do it 26 more times and that was like I can’t even think of 26 more climbs that I want
To Everest like the list was done after week five like I had five climbs that I wanted to do and then it became like every Thursday night scrambling around on commo like where am I going to do one oh is there a hotel there oh yeah book
It and you know pack the esies take all the stuff and i’ just gone do them alone and I’d have two eskies and I knew exactly what I had to eat at what time like I had it down to an absolute tea there was never any leftover food there
Was never any anything I didn’t eat it was just like I’m going to work and I’m going to do that and then I’m going to go home and it was like I had to be like that otherwise it would have just been too much wow did you what was the
Percentage of enjoyment to just like this is my lot in life and I signed myself up and I’m counting down the days the enjoyable days were like the 1500 meter days okay like and even still now if I go and do 1500 MERS I’m like well
Like [ __ ] I was doing that as like an easy day and it was but I I got the enjoyment out of again ticking the box of there’s another session completed I’m working towards the end goal and you’re probably getting this sense that like I’m a big
Box like I love to just tick the box I love the routine I love to just work through it slowly yeah I got a lot of satisfaction out of that and then you know there was so many cool memories of like different climbs I didn’t know
Existed people who came and joined me um conversations I had with people in the middle of nowhere that were asking what I was doing and like it was a I did a lot of it here but it felt the whole year was an adventure like of emotions
Of of everything yeah how close did you you get to quitting I didn’t get close e like I was just so focused on doing it that I like that wasn’t an option so I got about 3 weeks from the finish and it was obviously getting cold
Here and we’re like all right let’s go to tenor for a week and I’m going to do so it got to the point where because I had some travel planned I needed to do well I had travel planned and I had also worked out that maybe doing tour rever
In in a week was easier then doing one Everest a week and lots of kilometers around it interesting so by doing two in a week I was knocking off say 17 um, m in 2 days and then I only had to do like a 3,000 M day and the week was done MH
And so I said let’s go to tannerie warm weather I’m just going to knock off a heap of Everest so we did oh so many one liners just knock off a heap of Everest two weeks for Everest on the island but when I got there I had this
Issue going on with my knee and I’d had no issues at all how strange telling me no I couldn’t walk like it was like my kneecap was like locked oh wow and like I I didn’t want to say anything to anyone I was keeping it real like this
Is my thing I’ve got to deal with it because you know what social media is like you just people don’t need to know this stuff there’s weirdly so many doctors in the comments that come out of nowhere it’s shocking every time Google and uh yeah I so I started this Everest and I
Was like I can’t finish it like I can’t even get up the climb like my knee is so sore and I was like it’s got to be coming from something like I’ve got to work out what’s causing it and anyway I started like massaging the um the VMO
And like really getting like into the kneecap and like pushing the kneecap and I think what had happened the kneecap had just got like stuck and it wasn’t moving and I needed to like loosen up all the muscles around it and it eventually started moving and I got
Through an Everest with it dude and then I went Ham on the massage like you know you asked Mary like I was on this all day every day like Fring up the knee and like it came good and like that was the closest I came to sort of stumbling with
It all um I got sick one week but I I made a plan to sort of make up the stuff that I’d lost and yeah like I still can’t believe that I I did it like I don’t know if I could do it again wow
And also to to be fair you you mentioned that coming up short on your fundraising goal was a a tough thing mentally but I mean you still raised over 500k right yeah unreal man yeah thanks half a million dollars is just unreal what were the organizations that you were
Fundraising for so one was outride the charity link with specialized um kids help line in Australia which is a basically a call line that kids can call and um there’s always somebody that’ listen and then an African charity Mak strong Minds which was basically it’s a scalable charity where um the women
Actually get education on how to how to Mentor somebody else so that then within the community there’s an ability for people to sort of mentor and um and help others and yeah like like yeah but it was a disappointment and that was something that was out of my control and
I think that’s why I struggled with it the writing I could control and like I could go out and I could ride for 3 hours more and do a little bit extra but the fundraising I I I couldn’t and there was a limit to how much I could say hey
Hey like I need your money like it’s for a good cause yeah and I just sort of had to like put that aside it is what it is anything we raise is great and just do not anymore but for a long time it did yeah for a good for that whole most of
That year it did because I always felt like I was behind and then when I finished I was like half a million dollars is still massive yeah man and it’s just so interesting too because if you had just I don’t know how the those finances were at what point they got
Distributed if you just had one recipient come and meet you face to face and and put some Humanity behind you know what you done with your numbers based goals I bet that would have made any frustration Melt Away pretty quickly yeah 500k I can’t imagine how far that’s
Gone the one learning we did get from it as far as Charity goes is perhaps choosing three Charities was a mistake if we’ chosen one yeah it perhaps would have been easier brand brand is a strong thing a United sort of yeah but then having three around the world some were
More sort of willing to promote it than others uhuh it sort of lost but hey I’m not I’m not sour it is what it is we yeah we couldn’t have done more that’s incredible man that is so cool um did you have a favorite climb you know I had
There’s a couple but not because they were amazing climbs so there was one I actually did in the states in um mil Valley yeah in close to San Fran one of my favorite places to ride yeah super pretty spot it was like a residential Road it was amazing because I got to
Know everyone on that road like people would come out they were bringing me like food they were like cheering like and that was cool because it was a Vibe yeah do you remember remember the name of the clim um I don’t uh I could no not
Off the top of my head if I had a map I could find it but like proper just residential I think it was like 100 m up 100 m down repeat sort of jobby um that was great and then I did like some locally here on climbs that I just didn’t know
Existed so there was there’s a couple near Rocka corba there’s a couple of great little climbs that are just sort of goat tracks that go up uh I don’t even enough if they’ve got a name um difficult steep jobbies um things that get you vert
Quickly yeah I did one in London so I traveled to London and did one like residentially in London H don’t know if it was my favorite but it was cool because like being in London doing one like not the sort of place You’ think you could do an Everest yeah uh and then
Ten Reef for me is like that’s Paradise ten is such an amazing spot the the climbs the climate the people like as an Aussie growing up going to Barley for me like tenor is like barley for Spain it’s just like untapped yeah wow man we could
Talk for a while I’ve got so many followup questions this is cool did you do uh I I’m still not quite to the point where I get all of the syllables correct was it m Delmont M Delmont yeah did that one yeah did you so we did that one
Quite early it would have been probably week four of the year um so for those listening M delmont’s like one of the famous climbs in the Jona region it’s how high is it 1700 M I think it’s a bit lower bit lower okay but it’s it’s an or category climb
For sure it’s over it’s over a th000 met uh from bottom to top but I’m not sure what the Summit is okay spectacular climb though like vs are amazing and I feel like you go through different Landscapes as you climb it and you get to the top and you’re sort of on the
Moon and then you get down you’re in the forest yeah and so it was cold when we did it because it would have been January Feb um but there was it was the season where all the little um the caterpillars were crossing the road oh
Yeah in their trains yeah oh cool and at the time I thought oh this is super cool and then I realized that I was allergic to the caterpillars no way so like they were flicking up off the wheels obviously cuz you can’t not run over
Them and I was just like so itchy my legs and everything was so itchy and then somebody said oh yeah some people are allergic to them I was one of them what but yeah that climb was amazing so were you were you doing the full like hourish long version uh were you cross
That Main High because the bottom is pretty gradual it’s definitely not the most efficient so the there’s the two ways you can go up it one is the really small little tight one that’s the one I that’s the way I went up yeah yeah man that must have taken a while cuz
Descending yeah that thing you almost have to come to a track some of the switch yeah and when it’s cold like it gets a bit icy there as well yeah um yeah that was a that was a great climb early on though so I didn’t say anything
To anyone that I was doing it for about 2 or 3 months I was just sort of logging them they were going on straa like Everest 10 and no one knew what was going on interesting and I thought oh that’ll build a bit of hype yeah and
Then so at that time nobody knew what was going on so nobody came out and saw but then it was cool as like I started to announce oh next week I’m going to do um I don’t know St grow or you know Golf Course climb down at the beach and yeah
Yeah oh that’s cool that’s really cool so obviously you get huge satisfaction I feel like we’re broken record here but checking that big accomplishment off the list but even so was it weird to be done like did you have a little bit of a withdrawal period that was challenging ing definitely yeah
I I struggled stopping that because it had been like a year of doing it yeah and I was back in Australia when I finished so it was like summer I had the beach there and I decided I was going to just have a full month of not touching
The bike and that was weird in itself because I just become so accustomed to being on it um and I actually put on a lot of weight up I say a lot of weight I put on like seven or eight kilos after that just because I was still so hungry
All the time time and I was still eating the same amount and it took a real concerted effort last year to to rain that in a little bit and say you can’t eat that much food anymore because you’re not doing that many hours on the bike yeah um yeah there’s definitely
Like that postevent blues uh that I struggled with but for me that’s where like the hobby of say like surfing is something that’s completely different from bike riding but it’s something that is like meditation again for me and because I’m not doing it all the time
Anymore here in Spain like I’m a bit of a rookie at it and so it’s like a learning process again and it’s different and it’s fun because there’s like other toys to look at and play with and yeah that takes my mind off it yeah and I found that’s really powerful
Having like a hobby yeah so I’m glad you reminded me about the surfing I think this is really interesting so for one it’s not as common for really Elite level cyclists to have uh another Sports that they enjoy dedicating time to um but I think it’s especially interesting that it’s so
Different I have a couple of friends that uh really enjoy surfing and and are high Lev bike riders but it’s not super common I don’t think and um especially learning about you and how much you enjoy kind of controlling the process and and chasing these different benchmarks surfing seems almost polar
Opposite to that in some ways you know it’s just it’s so free form you’re completely at the whim of whatever break is happening whatever swell is coming in uh sometimes you’re just sitting out there on your board for ages just waiting for something to come in so it
Kind of in a way it surprises me that you gravitate towards it I think it like because it’s the opposite I almost enjoy it I think like for two re like the cycling was the Hobby and then it turned into the work uhh and because of that I sometimes feel
Like I need to escape it which was one of the like we said one of the reasons I left Jona was because I I needed something else like I didn’t necessarily always want to be about bikes and it wasn’t because we wanted to move to the
Coast so that we could surf it was that separation and so for me having the separation and I’ve only recently realized how important it is um having the separation is really good for my mental health and something completely different yeah and the surfing is completely different like you said like
You might be sitting there waiting for a wave there might not be any surf you know you a wave might come and you might cook it on the takeoff and like you’re just a beginner and I think being the beginner again there’s something fun in
That yeah I looked back to when I first started cycling and it was fun because like you were getting to know it and you were getting to work out what you were good at and what you weren’t so good at and what you could train for I like that
Aspect of Surfing it’s like oh how do you do this better or when is there going to be a good swell and what breaking you know where is it going to break and yeah it’s different and I love that it’s different that’s cool what is the surfing like down there cuz you
Don’t we were talking about this before we started recording you know you don’t hear about it as like a a surf destination per se northern northern Mediterranean coast of Northern Spain it only really breaks in winter when there’s like a big winter swell Okay and like sometimes there’ll be a knee high
Wave breaking sometimes there’ll be a chest high wave breaking I went down last year when there was a big winter swell and I kid you not like it would have been triple overhead like you couldn’t surf it like just big storm waves but like I’ve never seen the coast
Here like that before and so you definitely do get surf but it’s just picking where you surf depending on the conditions and I think having a wet suit that’s thick enough to keep you warm in Winter CU it’s cold yeah yeah yeah interesting and at what point did you
Decide to move here what how did you make the leap because it’s pretty common almost right of passage for Road cyclist Professional Road cyclist and cross country mountain bikers too increasingly gravel now yeah um but obviously you you were kind of doing your own thing so what Drew you to
This place so we did a i I’d actually been to Jona once before in 201 13 2014 just sort of when I got that bug of cycling again and I went and did a race in Belgium uh series of Kes in Belgium with a few mates and we thought
Thought oh let’s come to Jon like this is a bit of a hot spot and at the time it was it was sort of big but it wasn’t like it is now and I came and to be honest I didn’t really enjoy it huh I
Was sort of by myself my mates had gone home and I was sort of you know frolicking about trying to make friends I didn’t speak the language and it was difficult yeah and then fast forward a couple of years we’d actually done a project where we’d finished in Andora
Where it was this three Everest three countries 3 days and we finished Andora and we said hey Jona is just there like why don’t we go to Jona again and and so we came here and I was like w like you know the cycling was sort of more a
Passion for me at this stage like I wanted to make a career of it and I was conscious that living in Perth probably wasn’t the opportunities in Perth to make a career of it you’re always dealing with the Australian component of a brand or yeah you’re always seen as
Being a long way away yep and I’m lucky cuz I’ve got an Irish passport so I didn’t have Visa issues H and I just said hey I’m going to take a lease on a place for 6 months and just see what happens and did it and the rest is kind
Of History like it it’s been four years now yeah cool cool interesting um sorry you mentioning Andora just sent my mind on a a little bit of attention did you do any Everest in Andora like as part of your yearlong no I didn’t okay so I was a bit phobic
That the altitude would cook me yeah fair fair yeah and then the idea of like traveling to Andor and yeah I was just having that like safe space here was really valuable I knew where I could get the food I know where I could sleep on
You where I could do everything and like like I’m a sucker for routine yeah so like Jona was where it was happening yeah yeah cool cool but I should have gone in like in summer when it was hot here it would have been amazing up in
Andora yeah yeah yeah but you had uh you did do a Ting there at one point I did yeah we did one back in it was 2016 yeah do you remember what climb you did there Ina so we literally went through the middle of town all the way
Up to the top and just did that climb oh interesting there was a shocker just busy Roads Traffic it was probably the worst climb you could ever us there that’s funny but we we got it done yeah yeah I think I may go there for a little
Mini camp um yeah cool later this week which is why I’m kind of curious um cool man H what’s your Comfort level talking about some of what you’re going to get up to this year do you want to keep that kind of on the back burner and I’m happy
To talk about it yeah yeah yeah um so obviously 2022 was a huge year at this point in your life how do you go about choosing what you want to tackle next because I’m sure you have no shortage of ideas yeah um we T again we
Talked a little bit about this before we started recording but what’s the decision- making process like of of what you want to do how you plan your year uh and maybe we can talk a little bit about what you’re planning to do this year yeah it’s a good point because like you
Said there’s hundreds of things you can go and do and like it’s Limitless what you could go and do but it’s like at the end of the day it’s a job it’s a profession and it needs to you know you need to generate an income you need to keep sponsors happy
Like there’s a you know it doesn’t just you don’t just get to go and do all this stuff for free yeah and so I’m always thinking all right how can I pick a project where look I’m going to get a buzz out of it I think there’s a record
That could be broken in the process and I could tie it in with sponsors and and more importantly like I could actually make an impact in the area that we’re doing it in whether that’s through media or PR or so it’s almost like all right
There’s a project does it tick box one 2 3 4 no all right that one gets scrapped for now and then it’s trying to find the projects where you can actually tick all of the boxes and get the funding to to do it mhm um and so yeah I learned in
2022 that Binding off more than you can chew might make for a cool story but it’s not sustainable yeah and I’m 35 like I’m not 25 and I also realize that I can’t do this forever so it’s trying to work out ways that I can do stuff that’s sustainable so that I can
Continue doing it I’m not beat up for months and months afterwards and still sort of have fun and tickle those boxes along the way so we’ve come up with couple of cool projects for 2024 um one of them locally here in Spain uh Camino to Santiago uh fkt which is the distance is
767 km um and the current record is around 24 hours so that one it’s like s of need everything to go to plan weatherwise and so you know you sort of can’t set a date it has to be like a period and then you have to work look at the weather
Forecast and um what is that route so it’s basically you have to forgive me the names of the towns in Spanish I don’t remember but it basically crosses from the far Northwest of Spain across Spain to the East and it’s the sort of religious uh typically a walking route
But the actual record is set on the roads as opposed to on the walking trail so you said the North Western like Galia okay acoss sort of towards San Sebastian gotcha interesting that’s a big one have you ever thought about and I’m there was a period of time
Where I like to keep these things a little bit closer to my chest but I just don’t I know what you mean because otherwise you feel oh someone else is going to do it yeah and but you come to appreciate just how much is involved in
In doing them um and also my with the little I’m going to use the word little because compared to some of what you do the the things that I’m enjoying tacking onto my year at the end of a Race season whether it be like Iceland or Tasmania they’re smaller than what you’re doing
Uh geographically um I’m at a point where I don’t want to feel competitive about them yeah I just want to do them more as an experiential thing y so one that the the one that’s sort of hanging over me that is a long-term goal that just one
Day I want to do and I don’t know exactly how we would route I want I would want to kind of punch straight through the Pyrenees um is an Atlantic to the Mediterranean just punch straight through the mountain range like a trans panes trans Pyrenees style thing
Sebastian to kakz sort of thing yeah exactly rosis kakz whatever I mean you could even because Jona is the way it is you could even roll through gona’s like a last head to the coast um and you can’t really do it under 400 miles or I
Don’t know how many KS that is 700 something KS and would you do it on the road or off-road I that’s where it starts to get that’s where I need to do a lot more exploring and and just because I would want I would want to do
It where I kind of check off as many of the big famous climbs as I could yeah Toral whatever all the all the famous big climbs and then also you know as you’re rolling through Andora for example maybe there’s some just massive dirt road climb that that
You just want to hit point is it would be an absolutely enormous bike ride um and the I have mapped a couple of options and the elevation gain just gets really silly really quickly cuz you’re obviously just punching straight through the Pyrenees no way no way to avoid that
But have you have you thought thought about doing something like that on the road not that one to be honest I know there’s the route the trans I think it’s a race the trans Pines race yep um but it’s not I don’t think it’s a like no
One tries to single push it it’s like a stage thing I think okay I think I could be wrong I’ve not looked at it to be honest yeah if you came to do it we could do like a partnership dude that would be interesting or even like a cuz
I’m so frequently drawn to the off-road side of things do you get Offroad as much a little bit like I’m trying where we are now there’s pretty good Offroad so yeah yeah I’m doing more but I just I always look cuz if you’re if you’re like me you’ll appreciate this I’m just
Looking at Maps constantly yeah and sometimes you you’re eye just keeps going back to one place and just there’s something about the way those two coastlines kind of pinch together a little bit at the borders of of Spain and France it just seems like it’s it’s calling to be ridden across there’s
Definitely a cool story to tell across there I reckon yeah I think you could yeah anyway so let’s talk about that was a Tanger but let’s talk about some of the the other ones that you have on your list that’s one that’s the fkt and then Japan North the South record which is
Huge yeah that’s quite a big one so that’s 25,000 km yeah um current record is about 5 days just over five days by a Japanese guy holds that record uh and like I’ve I’ve actually ridden North the south of Japan before I did a bike packing trip with my dad and
We had like an amazing time doing it we did it over three weeks not over 5 days and I remember like Japan is amazing but it can be very chaotic yeah big cities lots of people so I think the challenge isn’t necessarily riding as hard as you can
For 5 days it’s like picking the route like is there a set route like we spoke about before is there a way to you know Route Around Tokyo that you might you know might be 100 km more but you save a lot more like there’s a whole lot of
Logistics to go into that one uh and then like how how do we get like a cool Japanese like an assah or somebody on board to actually help it be more than just of course you know a fringe athlete coming and doing something that you know nobody really cares about yeah yeah yeah
One thing that we haven’t really discussed is that you’re so you with these uh big challenges you’re very very performance driven with them and so they’re uh supported effort it’s not uh cuz in the states obviously and and I guess globally that a dumb thing to say
Bike packing is very much of a global thing but I feel like culturally there’s sometimes this thing in the States where there’s this very strong like self-reliance sort of ethos and do it self-supported and like this is it’s this core way of of doing Ultra cycling yeah um
And you have this different approach where you’re just kind of going for maximum efficiency maximum speed and so there’s a whole other level of planning required yeah I think like it it’s often well I think they both have their um pros and cons like the supported versus
The unsupported y for me the reason I do I prefer the sort of un the supported stuff is like sharing it with a team totally and like it’s the I never say it’s like I broke the record I say we broke the record because without you
Know the guy driving the car like we couldn’t have done it we couldn’t have shot the film without somebody being there following it 100% And I like that like yeah I don’t have a massive group of friends but I’ve got like a group of close friends that if I can go and share
Something with that’s pretty valuable to me and that’s why you know decided like that’s the route I want to go on like I don’t necessarily want to be alone for days on end like I want to be able to have some fun along the way and talk
[ __ ] and yeah you know yeah I mean still to this day one of my favor favorite alltime cycling quotes is Lachlan during his alt tour where he just says I’m not doing a loneliness contest yeah exactly like [ __ ] know yeah we don’t need to be alone yeah yeah yeah fair enough all
Right man we should get this wrapped up um the last thing I I wanted to touch on that I haven’t here that I had in my notes was I know at some point uh you dealt with some chronic fatigue yeah but maybe to the surprise of folks
Listening it was kind of before 2022 and all of this so can you talk a little bit about what happened there how you got through it and then I mean kind of the word I want to use is like having the audacity to do what you’ve done post chronic fatigue I
Think that’s really interesting it seems like since then you’ve done everything you possibly can do to reacquire chronic fatigue but so the big thing for with a chronic fatigue was not eating enough ah and I think like in cycling circles there’s this you know I don’t want to
Say eating disorder but like there this we look at as we need to be lean we need to be you know these super skinny guys and girls on the you know edge of what we’re doing and I was sort of chasing that and I was you know following these
Silly diets these paleo sort of diets and these high fat low carbon I was just killing myself on the bike and then not replenishing myself and I’ve since learned like you need to eat and like I don’t treat anything now like yeah I follow diets but they’re not diets
Calorie restriction it’s more like perhaps change what you’re having directly afterwards and change the makeup of your meals a little bit yeah yeah it’s basically all because I was starving myself and I lost a lot of weight while I was doing it and my performance turned to [ __ ] and I
Spent months on the sidelines not being able to ride because I was just sick I couldn’t recover I just was unwell and so now my focus is like I never say no to food like I’ll I’ll eat and like I’m not a skinny cyclist I’m like 80 odd
Kilos um but like I feel like I’m pretty resilient because of that because I’ve got the extra weight and if I’m riding for four or five days and I’m you know I don’t have enough fuel on board like i’ I’ve actually got the sustenance to push
Through that because I am a bit bigger yeah and now I try and use it to my advantage yeah yeah no it totally makes sense it’s interesting at this point um do you manage your diet much or is your burn so high that you’re just sort of no
I I manage it so I’ve got at Senate um the nutritionist writes a program for me based on like the training that I’m doing um but it’s I feel like I’m at a point now where I know roughly how much I need to eat and I’m never hungry like
If I’m hungry I’ll eat yeah I’m never doing this silly I’m not hungry but I I want to lose a bit of weight so I’m not like it’s that’s not sustainable so it’s like I’ve got a diet I don’t follow it to the tea every single day but I know
All right roughly I’ve got to have a big thing of rice after I finish a ride and some form of protein and then for dinner I might not have a whole lot of carb I might have lots of egge and some protein because look I’m actually replenished
After the ride because I fueled on the ride I fueled after the ride and I’m going to fuel tomorrow before I ride I don’t need carbs before I go to bed right and it’s like just you know being a bit more calculated with it no it totally makes sense yeah fair enough man
Well there’s I mean I feel like we could talk another hour and a half but that was awesome you’re a beast and that was a beast of an episode nice to chat man thank you that was really enjoyable um is there anything else else that comes
To mind that you like to touch on or share obviously you have some really awesome films uh out on YouTube um you have a great website is that just Jack ultrac cyclist.com yeah the website’s Jack ultrac cyclist.com and YouTube’s the same Y and then uh Instagram the
Same Jack Ultra cyclist yeah cool man well thank you for for taking the time it was really awesome to finally connect with you and um probably see you at Senate let me know if a swell is on the way cuz I haven’t been surfing in quite
Some wet suit for you well it sounds like I mean it sounds like you know kind of empty empty beaches this time untapped
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Mega pod! So inspiring to hear someone doing their own thing through a unique path.