 Hello, welcome to Film My Run. So the video you're about to see today is of me giving a talk in Cornwall at the inaugural Cornwall running show. It took place last weekend, just gone in April 2022. I was invited down to talk about my running, which I've been doing and filming now for 12 years or so. So the film that you're about to see is the talk that I gave, which also includes video of some of my most significant runs, beginning with my very first 10k run 12 years ago, up until my most recent events. So it's me talking through all that and explaining about filming and also explaining about the events themselves and how I feel about ultra running and trail running and running marathons and all things running. So here it is. Hope you enjoy it. Our next guest is going to talk about himself and his running experiences and his channel, Film My Run. So if you don't know who he is, check out Film My Run, but I'm sure we all do. Steve Cousins, welcome. Thank you very much. See, I didn't listen to Tracy carefully enough and I've overdone this. I could have just put a film on and sat down for 15 minutes, but what I did was I made a silent film. Brilliant. So my first race in Brighton, March 2010, I got a cumcorder. I gave it to my wife and I told her to film. So she filmed me and then this is me finishing my very first 10k race. At this moment, she's looking at me and she's saying, are you ever going to run again? And I say, no, definitely not. However, like every runner still does, I then signed up for my first marathon. Two years later, here I am running the Paris Marathon. Again, I've got my wife with the cumcorder, like an idiot running backwards. I don't know why I decided to do that, but she's filming me in the Paris Marathon. I've run the Paris Marathon every year since then. Absolutely love the Paris Marathon. If you get a chance to do it, go and do it. I absolutely loved it, but what I then started to discover was trail running. And some friends of mine convinced me to go to Wales and run my first Ultra, which was the Brecon Beacons Ultra. And look at that, absolutely. I couldn't believe how stunningly beautiful it was. I couldn't believe that I'd be running all these road marathons or these road races and that I hadn't realised that trail running existed. So I did that, but then this is London Marathon. This is my first ever London marathon. I was lucky enough to get good for age time. You can see how wobbly the footage is there. So at this moment, I've now transferred from my wife filming me to me holding a camera. I'm holding a GoPro on a selfie stick. It's wobbly, but I'm learning how to use the camera when I'm running. This is me finishing, I think I did 3 hours 18 minutes for my first London marathon. Absolutely loved it. Again, if you haven't done the London marathon, you do get a chance to do it. It's one of those iconic events that even if you're a trail runner, even if you don't like these big events, it's kind of something that you need to experience at least once, even if it's just to say you've done it or just to say you've had that experience. They're different things. Running on the trails, on mountains with no one around is a different experience to running in a crowd, in a city. I love them both. So this is when I first discovered that not only you could run on trails, but you could climb up massive mountains. If you could go on holiday and you could take your family on holiday with you and convince your wife that it's a really good idea to go and spend thousands of pounds just so I could run up a mountain. This was my first experience of sky-running. This is a race called the Transvolcania Ultra in La Palma, which is the smallest of the Canary Islands. And again, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. I couldn't believe that I got the opportunity to run on these trails. It was really hot. It was really high up. I was really quite frightened at times with these quite steep drops. You can see now I've transferred to using a motorized gimbal. So I've got my camera on a selfie stick. The selfie stick has batteries in it and it balances the gimbal, balances the camera so the footage is much more stable. Again, I'm learning about editing. I'm learning about how to put together a running film. This is me coming to the end of 76 kilometers of the Transvolcania Ultra. It killed me. This was the hardest race I'd ever done as my son giving me my medal. I was in tears just because I couldn't believe it was so hard. But as you all know, being trail runners and being runners, it grabs you by the scruff of the neck and even though it hurts and even though you hate it every minute of it, you want to do it again the next day. So I went from running trail marathons to 50 milers to 76 kilometers, 100km and this was my first 100 miler 2016 with my buddy Richard. Again, I've got a motorized gimbal. It took me 24 hours, 23 hours something to do 100 miles along the South Downsway in Sussex. It's kind of the iconic 100 miler in the UK. Lakeland again is another big 100 miler. But this was us finishing around a running track in Eastbourne after running the whole South Downsway. Loved every single minute of it. And the only reason this is different to any of you guys who do any of this is just that I do love documenting it all. It's not only for my own pleasure. Sometimes narcissistic as I am, I watch back my own videos because I like to remember what I've done. But I also have this YouTube channel called Film My Run. You can see now by 2016 I'm branded. I've got a little logo and I'm putting it in the corner of my films and I've started the Film My Run YouTube channel. And occasionally Race Director starts phoning me up and saying could you film my race please to do some advertising for the race. And this is the first time that I did a celebrity interview. This is Martin Yelling who many of you will know who did an event in 2016 called The Long Run Home where he attempted to run the whole of the South West Coast path. And this is by accident I filmed him on his final day. I basically just emailed him and said look I'd really like to come and film you running around the coast path. I said yeah come along then why not. So I did but it just so happened that he was injured and this actually turned out to be his final day of running along the coast path and he retired injured after this and a number of other people then took up mantle and ran the rest of it for him. But as a result of that I then got my first paid job and Martin works for the London Marathon and he said why don't we do a series of films for the London Marathon organization documenting what it's like to run the London Marathon. So that's what we did. We got a job, we emailed the London Marathon and said look we've got this idea they said yes go for it. So I basically filmed Martin running around London talking about what it's like to run the London Marathon and how to do it and tips and tricks for how to run the London Marathon. And that is still on the London Marathon Facebook page and every year they seem to put it out again and show films. There was a series of different films. So then comes my love of the south-west coast path and here is my very first archivatrician. You'll know now that the archivatrician is a much bigger event. This was 2018, 17, 18 when there were only 100 runners and we started in Covracas as they still do but down on the road as opposed to up in the car park. This was the toughest race I had ever done up to this point. I mean you all know the archivatrician 100. You know how tough it is, all the weather's like down here but again it grabs you by the scruff of the neck. It won't let go. You have to keep coming back and I've come back either as a runner or as an employee of Mud Crew every year since. I said that race directors often contact me and ask me to work for them and Mud Crew is one of the companies that contacted me after I'd done this film and said come and do the live streaming and do the commentary for us and I've been doing that ever since and this was me finishing just, on this day I was the last person to get in under 30 hours. I think I got in a 10-6, 10 minutes to spare and I got the gold buckle and this was the first moment I ever met Jane Stephens who as you know at the end of every big race comes up and gives each runner a big sweaty hug. It's not her that has a sweat by the way it's the runners. So there's Jane giving me my gold buckle. And this film, that film was one of my most successful thousands of views on the YouTube channel but this one then became the biggest one. I went out to Chamonix to run CCC which is a 100K race around Montblanc. We were lucky enough to meet Jim Walsley who is one of the best ultramarads in the world on that day and this was my most extreme challenge to date. This was the race that I really discovered mountain running really discovered what it's like to run in a big event like this and have my first Chamonix experience if you've never had a Chamonix experience it is something remarkable. A lot of people don't like the UTMB thing because there are a lot of runners. If you like a solo mountain experience UTMB is perhaps not the one to do because there are a lot of runners. But again, I've transferred now instead of using a GoPro on a balanced gimbal I'm now using what's called a 360 camera so it's a camera that has two lenses one on either side which means that you just hold the camera in one position but you get a view all the way around all at once it means I have to do a lot less work when filming because I can get a lot more angles to use so I could use that angle but then I could also use the lens on the other side and point backwards the other way without having to turn the camera around so it's a lot easier to film on the day it's a lot more editing afterwards though because there's a lot more preparation of the footage to do afterwards because you've got so much more footage to deal with and the files are so much bigger so it's a lot more to edit but Mont Blanc amazing scenery amazing place to run again, if you ever get the chance to go to Chamonix and do this it is something to behold I was desperately trying to run the 100K in 24 hours and this is me running down the hill at the end realizing I only had about 10-20 minutes to get to the bottom of the hill and I basically walked for most of it because I was so shattered and I realized I had to sprint to get to the bottom and this is the finish line in Chamonix crossing the finish line just under 24 hours for 100K there's about 6000 meters of elevation gain in that race it's not the longest of them obviously UTMB itself is the longest race which is over 100 miles so you can tell I love running in the mountains this is the highest race I've ever done I went to Tenerife again, all these abroad trips I take my family with me I convince them it's a great idea we go on holiday so they get to go on the beach by the sea and I get to climb up mountains so this is Teed in Tenerife technically it's the highest mountain in Spain but obviously it's in Tenerife it's 3700 meters high but the final 200 meters is a protected area a nature reserve you're not allowed to go there without pass you have to get it from the government to get to the very top but you go to about 3500 meters and again when I did this this then became the toughest race I've ever done because of the altitude but when you climb to 3500 meters I started to get very heady and dizzy one mile took me almost an hour to do so it took me an hour to do one mile the last mile to the top of Teed so if you think about people climbing Everest and you see them doing this one step and this one step I got a small sense of what that might be like however we're now at 2021 July this has now become the toughest race I ever did 10,000 meters you just go from one to the next to the next to the next you get bigger and bigger and longer and harder and harder this is in a place called Vallejo in southern Spain in the Pyrenees last year it's called the Val de Lan 100 so it's 100 miles through the Spanish Pyrenees I don't go as high don't go as high as Teed in Spain but this is the second highest point in Spain a mountain called Annetto there we didn't actually climb Annetto but you've got a view of it so that's me at the top of the first climb and it took me 46 hours and 51 minutes and basically at this point in the video I'm saying this is less of a run and more of a slow hike it was really, really hot but there was snow on the tops of the mountains and I basically took the snow I just rubbed it on my legs and I also put it around my neck or in a bandana these are old mines that used to mine iron ore on the top of the mountains absolutely stunning scenery 10,000 metres of ascent unbelievably hard work two nights of running and two very hot, hot days and this bit is my favourite bit so you go through these old mining tunnels you can see the railway line here where the old mining trains used to carry the iron ore and this is me on the final descent down to Vière at the bottom it's basically a circle you go around and come back to where you started but my legs, see my legs there I just can't run at all and this is me coming into the finish 46 hours, 51 minutes I've never run anything that's taken me that long before I think the longest I've ever taken was 33 hours on a different race so that was something else that was if you ever get the chance to do that race, don't honestly, I'm never going back there again although it was brilliant the thing is about racing, you do end up getting everyone else involved so my wife was never a runner she is now this was last weekend and she ran her first 50 mile race this is my wife, Victoria she has run she started running in 2017 after she had some operations on her legs to cure some knee issues but this last weekend this was the longest race she'd ever done and it's a case of if you can't beat them, join them because I've been running for so long and for many years my wife felt a bit of an odd one out because she couldn't run and she felt like she was missing out but since 2017 she's gradually done further and further distances and basically just like me she has graduated to 10Ks she's a 12 marathon's man she's done a few orchestras before this but this was her longest ever run last weekend finishing the Centurion south down to a 50 brilliant starter 50 mile by the way really nice easy trails comfortable trails and she finished in 10 and a half hours so I was really really proud of her but it's a thing about running that you you get everyone involved and you become a family your own family becomes involved but then you get involved in the running community and the running community becomes your family and here I am in Cornwall and I know loads of you because I've been coming here for five years now to do different races and I speak to all of you on social media and I run with people on the treadmill on a program called Zwift and it's like having my own little online running community that we meet with people all over the world who I chat to and run with on the treadmill and running it's grabbed me in the past 10 years and it shoved me into places and situations that I never thought I could ever possibly get into and I've loved every minute of it and I'm so glad that that one day 10 years ago I decided to get my camp called for filming I hope that the films have inspired people to get out there and run and to do new things that they never thought they could do but from a personal point of view I just love the fact that I can go back and say I remember when I did that that was awesome I'm never bloody doing that again and I've loved it and I thank you for watching my film of the last 10 years of my running which is actually doing that brought back a lot of memories because Tracy said can you show a film I said well what film am I going to show I thought well why don't I just do a documentary and I had to spend ages going through all my old videos and it blinded me didn't I look fat in my first one anyway so there we are thank you very much for what yeah so your running channel has an overnight success 10 years in the making is they say well I mean the thing is I don't put enough time and effort into it because I still see it as a hobby even though I get paid for some things that I do now I still see it as a hobby I'm not very good at marketing and all this kind of stuff many of you will know Lloyd from Run for Adventure I mean Lloyd started his channel really not very long ago he's got double the amount of subscribers that I have because he puts the effort in you know I think for me I enjoy the running more I enjoy the experience of the community I enjoy the experience of exploring these new places and going to mountain runs I enjoy the video editing I enjoy the process but I don't enjoy the business aspect of it I don't enjoy trying to get more subscribers I hate I hate on my videos but I have to do it I hate saying click the subscribe button like and subscribe and comment down below I'm a little bit sick in my mouth every time I have to say it but do you know what I mean? so I'm not very good at that stuff you did very well the CCC clip that you showed of this by the way I just realised we ran the Chancellor Cainey together 2016 honestly although you finished it and I didn't bad times first D&F amazingly hard race but it's it's that inspiration and you tell yourself doing it and you think it's possible and by the way you are an excellent runner and the challenges that you take on have that natural progression where they get harder and harder and I think that's just the way that some of us go certainly the way I've got my things but it feeds the beast seeing all this footage and seeing the experiences and the same thing and it's showing people there's a way to have your passion and still have travel and still take up time running because it's that massive balancing act all the time running versus training versus maintenance versus training conditioning versus going to races and the budget for how are you going to travel what money are you spending on trainers but if you can involve all the family myself as an impact runner certainly all these big sky running mountain races I do I'm nowhere near the front I am slap bang in the middle if you've got a thousand runners I'm 500 and something that's where I am and that's your average runner and I've got a wife I've got kids I haven't got a massively well-paid job and I hope that people look at that and if he can do it I can do it I enjoy running and yes I'm lucky enough to be fast enough to get a good for age for London but I'm nowhere near a good runner I'm not a brilliant runner by any means and most many many other people are as fast or as good at running as I am and I hope they look at it and go as good as him I can do that why don't I go to La Palma why don't I go to Chamonix and run CCC and if he takes his wife and kids with him and they all enjoy the experience my kids are they're still only quite young and they climb up the mountains in Chamonix and they love it your daughter's interview with Jim Wormsley you've got this massive smile on my face can he just get down and go so she starts asking you questions like a professional interview so how did that happen we were in the crowd we knew that the Hoker athletes were there to sign autographs so we were in the crowd and I got Jim to say something on camera welcome to film my run or something and there was somebody from the marketing team watching us and they just spied me and the kids and they said then to come and interview Jim so they actually came up to us and said would you like to come and interview Jim Wormsley we said yes please but they didn't want me to interview Jim they wanted my kids to interview luckily they're not terribly shy and retiring when they get that from and they do know about running so they did a passable job of interviewing Jim Wormsley which was amazing it was brilliant it was one of the years that Jim Wormsley blew up or constantly like he does most of the time but yeah to kind of bring the whole family aspect into it it does open up opportunities and you know whether that's all going for because all these races they tend to have different distances as well so you can kind of for the UTMB week they go straight from I think 10K to Marathon to 50K to 100K to CDS and PTO and everything else so they all do build a bit like that and the fun runs in there and things like La Palma and Tenerife all those Canary Island runs Trans-Grand Canary as well which is another one I didn't feature on there they all do children's races as well so my kids will do the children's race and then I'll go off with my buddy Richard and we'll do the big race and my wife is wanting to do next she's hoping to be able to qualify for OCC which is a 50K mountain race so you know hopefully she'll get to do that as well I think that's something we're kind of missing since we've got any race directors in the audience children yeah the aspect that family approach to it of having multiple generations being able to all turn up to a race weekend and all participate and all are at their own level I don't know if that happens in the UK but I haven't seen them I think you will next year yeah I mean what white star running endorses do races where they try and involve they have kids races so I don't know if many of you have done white star events but they're quite family orientated but Centurion certainly don't seem to do Centurion in Sussex who do the big way and North Den's way and although it's kind of classic 100 milers they don't seem to have children's races I think they are missing a trick I think that's the way to bring the next generation through and people are now I think approaching the next generation like the fifth generation of trail runners in this country certainly fast marathon runners that have come through and are now taking on options they've plateaued shaving milliseconds off their road times and now they've realized that their skills are on the road, Elsie Davis is a local athlete who's just picked up a North Mixed one she's a very good road runner who's transferred her skills to trail and she's excelling at that and I think that's the way it's going to go I think a lot more people will come into the sport so it's kind of dragging the generations with them as well I think it's getting younger as well I mean I've noticed that I think we're getting older no I mean you're right and that means that a lot of races are being won now by 20 something year old kids you know not the 40 year old blokes that we are the chance of a cameo it was my first big international race and I had no idea that they had by the marathons all of the races that ran in conjunction so of course I got to the top I think it's El the first Elpilla so you come over the top you've been climbing for 7 miles on volcanic sand which isn't fun continuously upwards upwards upwards upwards and then you come over this dip and then these kids just came like 17 acres of fly they've only got 300 yards to go they're on the half marathon to the end I'm thinking oh god I've really messed this up I'm not being alone but yeah it's an experience as well worth doing and if anybody is thinking about it the point I was making in a massively long-winded way is that your films are a fantastic almost travel channel for runners oh that's very kind of you to say I think that's good wish we weren't here but yes the often is that the stupid thing about ultra and trail running is that it's when you look back that you realise how awesome it was but sometimes and Tracy was saying about her race when you're there you just want it to end there's moments in those races where you just wish it wasn't happening I wish I wasn't there and then you cross the finish line and you go that was absolutely amazing 24 hours later you've signed up for the next one they should have some kind of sobriety test for SI entries and things like that but you have to a cooling off period before you can get your credit card out Steven that was brilliant anybody does anybody from the audience have any questions we should have pre-warned you see they're sitting there going oh I didn't realise we were going to be involved here well the thing I haven't shown you there are all the DNS so Ben Nevis Ultra it's 50k but it's 4,000 meters of ascent Ben Nevis and then up some Mormon rows I've DNFed that twice the past two years I've got to finish that and then TDS which is arguably the hardest race in Chamonix even though it's not quite as long as UTMB itself I've attempted that three times the first time I was so tired I actually fell asleep on the trail and the back markers the sweepers woke me up so I DNFed that the next year was Covid so we didn't go and the year after that was the year that a rumour ahead of us that we were tired and the whole race was abandoned so three times this will be my third attempt at doing TDS so I've got that in September hello yeah I know right so a lot of people come up to me and complain at me that I made it look too fun and they entered a race because they saw the video that I made and it was horrific and they hated every minute of it why did I make it look like such good fun and I totally appreciate that and there are plenty of moments that I mean I do get sometimes in that CCC rum there is a scene where I'm standing there going I've done 20k I've got 80k to go I don't think I can do it I'm so tired but I throw up a lot and I never feel myself throwing up but of course those are the times that you can't bother to film because you're too depressed so I will try and do more of that just to put people off I wish I would have known that before I signed up for CCC this year I think we had a question over there hello that's interesting because I am absolutely with Tracy gels and sugary car bloated drinks made me sick and even talking about being a fast ruler so I did my first sub 3 marathon last two years ago and I didn't have anything at all so I ran a sub 3 pace and I didn't have any food at all until 20 miles when I had a sip of coke and that was it I cannot eat very much because it just made me feel sick but I feel like I am better fuelled when I'm not shoving sugar into myself I'm burning my fat stores and once you do that a lot your body gets used to burning those fat stores over and above the fast high GI sugars protein gels long marathon real food pizza cake crisps all that kind of stuff on fast road marathons I don't take any gels at all it's hard to do some people love gels some people get on really well with gels and they look at me like I'm mad but I just can't do it and I've just taught myself to not do it and I can still run relatively fast without it there's no excuse for not eating your vegetables any time even when you're running you've got to eat your broccoli thank you very much thank you for coming I've got to go home now though my wife will kill me if I'm not home before midnight I've got a 5 hour drive then is that alright? oh thanks no problem at all honestly don't ever get into an email conversation with Tracy have you done this? honestly I'm joking I'm joking it's been fine Steven Cousins thank you very much thank you guys