 The podcast is back, baby! That's right, Timbo. It's been a while. We literally, we had a little bit of a break for the summer. There's been a number of obstacles in our way that have stopped us from recording our highly regarded, anticipated podcast. Everyone we were so happy to hear was back on the internet airwaves, Jacko. There had been some requests of like, what I haven't known what to do on my Wednesday when the podcast that I was thinking at this point, Jacko, we need to quell any rumours that we have not fallen out. A few people have gone, what's going on? Have you guys had an argument? No, we haven't had an argument. There's been other live events have got in the way, like Jacko running far too far. Well, one thing I was thinking about in the early hours of this morning, not to, it's relevant. We're like a few statistics. I was thinking, I think we're in an A like this. I think this is episode 234 and we don't tend to ever have a break apart from at Christmas because, you know, you've got to go and deliver some presents. So we must have been doing 50 episodes a year. So if my math is correct, like we've been doing the podcast every single week for between four and five years. So I think that deserves it. And that's why people are, oh, God, something must have happened. We actually decided to have a little break. Yeah, just, yeah. People have been like, I could tell you've been doing it that long because you were not a content voice. We've had two months off to think of some new ideas of things that we can talk about. Yeah. So I've decided to go and run an ultimatum. So we've got something to talk about. I mean, that is the ultimate in scraping the barrel for content. We need to do stuff. So we've got things to talk about. That is the world. And I've definitely got something to talk about for you today. I'm interested to ask you, I am going to be question master today. And I'm going to quiz Jacko with the intention of bringing up some raw emotion and hopefully making him cry. Because I want to try and make you cry. That would be the real gem. No one's ever seen Tim cry. No, they haven't. It's, yeah, we'll talk about that. It's not about me today, Jacko. I don't even, do we want to roll a jingle or not? Yeah, of course, yeah. OK, we'll roll a jingle. All right, so let's not after that, but like a proper roll the jingle. Yeah, OK. So we're going to dive into a conversation today. It's all about Jacko's Ring of Fire, which is not an actual ring, not actually his ring of fire, but it's the Ring of Fire. It wasn't like I had a night out and went to Sapna's in town. Yes, usually imagination. So sit back and enjoy Jacko talking about his Ring of Fire. I can't take that seriously, but roll that jingle. Listen, players. You're listening to the movement, strength and play podcast by the School of Calisthenics. Here are your hosts, Tim and Jacko. Right, so let's have a conversation about the Ring of Fire. So, I mean, if you haven't been involved in our socials or Jacko's socials and you are wondering what indeed is the Ring of Fire, Jacko contextualized what it was that you decided to embark on this summer. Let's just clear up two things. It is number one is the Ring of Fire. And number two is what it is. It's a three day ultramarathon, which it does help if you know what you're doing is one of the things I've learned. OK, so let's start at the beginning. Why did you decide to do an ultramarathon? So like I'd started doing more running. Or I think actually it started in South Africa. Everyone says that's a long way to run. Now, as in the idea with we were we were in South Africa with you guys and Matt and Gemma, friends of ours. And I remember talking to Gemma, because I remember trying to separate my toes and I couldn't. And she was like, we're going to anyway. And so I got on to talking about marathons. Maybe she'd done a marathon or Matt done a marathon. And I remember thinking to myself, oh, yeah, you've always said you would have liked to do a marathon, but you never did because you was playing rugby, blah, blah, blah, like you're not allowed to contracts and what have you. And then I was like, oh, at that point, I think it'd been seven years since I'd retired. And it was like, well, what's your excuse? So I literally like the following week just signed up to a marathon. And then I really enjoyed the training. I enjoyed using the run as a chance to like get away, connect to myself. And actually it became a very good tool to actually like practice breathing better or train my breathing. And I was going down that rabbit hole at the time. So it was, yeah, it was good. It was almost like experimenting with my breath as I was running as well as practicing and honing it. And I had two rules for that marathon. One was enjoy it. And the other was you weren't allowed to stop yet to keep running. He did a trail based marathon, didn't he? It wasn't AM. It wasn't like a. It was a trail. Yeah, it was it was off-road trail in Suffolk. Bits fit on the sand on the beach. It was actually good preparation because the the ring of fire was 90 percent trail running around Anglesey Coastal Path. But anyway, essentially, I enjoyed it and wanted to enjoy it because I'd like the training. So I didn't want to like finish that marathon and be like, I never wanted to do this again because absolutely I've bodies ruined and hate it. And it did. I was pretty. I mean, I think I've talked about as far as pretty stiff and like walking was difficult the day after. But the following day, that's the first matter and like I actually trained again. I was like recovered pretty well and was pretty good. But what blew my mind was like the idea of running another marathon the following day. And so. I was looking for I was looking for a multi-day event. This one propped cropped up and it just ticked and were boxes round Anglesey in North Wales. Like my mum and dad are from that area. My sister currently lives on Anglesey. It was like to go and visit my sister and do some recces of the route. And that type of thing. It was just the idea of spending three in my mind. It was like, oh, running around the whole get to see the whole coast of Anglesey or the beautiful beaches all the way around across three days is going to be amazing. And what actually happened was I didn't see any of Anglesey other than just, you know, one foot square around on my feet were on the on the floor. And that was if I could see through the tears in my eyes. It started off as that would be a really enjoyable few days to actually like descend of the reality as I can gather from what I've seen so far was somewhat different. Yeah. You know, what's what's the worst that could happen? We're just going to like go around Anglesey. That would be nice. Yeah. So what I said, OK, so we've got so it's three days. Just just again, just finish this contextualization. It was three days. It gives us the breakdown of what you had to do each day. What your time cuts off. So then we can get into what you learned and the process that you went through. So and there's different levels to the learning. If anyone is going to go and take on some sort of challenge that they've never done before, I can give some surface level stuff. And then we can go as deep as you want to go. So it was one hundred and thirty five miles in total, which is two hundred and sixty kilometers on day. What they annoyingly, they don't spread it out evenly. And they they like squeeze it. So you start one o'clock Friday and you finish at three thirty Sunday. So you start one o'clock Friday. You've got thirty five miles to do and you've got nine hours to do it. So cut off ten p.m. at night. Day two, you start at six o'clock in the morning. My first one of my first mistakes was like, well, finishing at ten, starting at six. Eight hours. That's not too bad. Standard. And yeah, and it's not like you finish at ten and go to sleep and then wake up at six and start like there's a whole. Anyway, in your mind, you've got like blue blockers on. Get my red light. It's just like, okay. Might take you a bit of time to travel, but yeah, it was. And then anyway, so then day two started at six. That was then the big day that was like more than double. So it was 60 or about double sixty seven miles, one hundred and twelve kilometres or something. And you had eighteen hours to do it. That's a long way. So it's six in the morning till midnight. And then day three again, started six in the morning and then you finished at three thirty. It was only thirty three miles and they were nice. They gave you an extra half an hour. So you had nine and a half hours to do it, but that's. But that's because they gave you half an hour extra because you had to go over Holy Head Mountain, which is like it's not crazy high, but it's five hundred metres across the whole three days because the coastal path is quite up and down. You do four thousand metres of elevation. So it's like going up and down Snowden four times. And the thing that just one related to these timings is there was then like actually they were the cut offs. And this is where my poor preparation before the event started in the I saw those as cut offs. And this is like this is ridiculous. I was even like, you know, at some point I was like, you know, on day two, you've got eighteen hours to get down to Newborough. Love it down in Newborough. I might go, it might go in the sea. Might stop off at the pub and grab us some bite to eat and then get. You're literally thinking you can have an half hour break if you want. Yeah. Whereas they are checkpoints not specific, not every every two hours, but roughly every two year showers, the checkpoints range from anything as short as like 11 K up to I think the longest might have been 18 K, 19 K, something like that. But that meant if there was a short one, you'd go, oh, brilliant. It's only 11 K. But then what that would mean is it would be like a horrendous terrain for 11 K. So and depending they couldn't do the checkpoint. It had to be a natural sort of break or place within the trail where you could actually get a car to in the support teams and all that sort of jazz. So, yes, I had very much had a love, hate relationship with these checkpoints, which started two weeks before the event when I actually decided to do some research and found out what the checkpoints were. And I was like, in all of my training, I'd never, ever, ever once ran for time ever. So it actually already started stressing me out. One that I didn't like being told I had to get somewhere for a certain time. And then the other thing was like, you could literally get you could you could get timed out after like literally 10 K. The first checkpoint, I think it was 11 K. But yeah, it just meant that you were constantly on the clock on the clock. And I, you know, I went into it saying it wasn't a race. Yeah. And it very, very quickly became a race. I mean, the other context is like. Day one was OK. Some basic sort of challenge on day one was this year they decided you could just do day one if you wanted, and they called it the fire starter. So you were like running along with people at the start and there's people going quite fast and then you're like, oh, they must be doing day one. Or you'd be you'd be trying all that was different was like when your number it was like a red thing rather than a black thing. So you'd be asking people, you know, is as you can imagine, quite excited at the start and you walk, I remember walking towards the tent for registration, the guy's like, are you doing the ring of fire? Or are you doing the fire starter? And I went, silly, bloody question, mate. Yeah, which, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, things. Yeah. I say, I'd the third is that run in a day before this was 30 miles. So one of the problems I had was like day one was actually a PB. Never done that before. Day two was like a double PB and then day three was another PB. And yeah, I think you like we spoke about this a while before you had the event and you were like, you actually can't train for an ultra in a sense of you can't just go out and run 35 clock, 35 miles in three days to see how you get on and do that for training. Like, so there's always going to be a certain amount of unknown, at least in the first time you've done one, the second time you've done one. And OK, you've got you kind of know a little bit more about what you're going into. But your first kind of like foray into the marathon marathon world was always going to be quite difficult. What did you, because you managed to maintain a quite a high level of like a buoyant attitude. So I remember seeing you in the morning before the race and you like got his new shoes, got some like, like before you had everything going on. I was like, oh, it's great. Jaco's is ready to go. But like, were you at that point already bricking it? No, no, was it? Did you not did not hit home until you actually started the race? No, I was I was I couldn't. So it started Friday, Wednesday and Thursday night, I found it hard to sleep. I was excited. OK. And at that point, I thought I was well prepared. So I was like not necessarily I knew I was going into something I'd never done before. So I was there was a confidence is probably the wrong words. They just definitely knew I didn't know what I was doing. But it was like, I'm I'm happy with what I've done and I've done with what I've done. Something I'd something I'd said. Previously, it's like, if you can do half of something, I believe you can do all of it. And from a mindset perspective, it sounded a bit silly, but like also rationally, like, because you know, once you get halfway through something. You know, we only have to do what you've already done and you've already just done what you've done. So, you know, you can do it type of thing. And for the marathon, I'd never ran more than half a marathon, which people told me you should, you know, in your marathon training, you should run at least up to 18, 20 miles or whatever. And I just I didn't more so because I didn't have time in that type of stuff. And doing half of a marathon and then being able to get comfortable half marathons. Meant that marathon was all right. The trouble I had was I massively disrespected the challenge of the distance and what a multi-day event is like. So I thought by doing what I did manage to do in June in Xmore was a 40 miles over two days. There was this 30-mileer and then they had an extra 10 miles of a separate race on the sat on the following day. And that was good for me to like run the next day and actually feel like you're stiff as a board. And as soon as you start running, like you start freeing up. And actually, I felt better on the second day than the first day. But it was only 10. It was only 40 miles in total. What a top level or surface level sort of lesson for me is back to what I already knew, like you need to do half of it. Like, so what I needed was I needed a 70-miler over two days in and I feel like the. We've talked about this before with some of that like Gemma, who the who mentioned for the physio at British Athletics. You're most prone for injury when you PV, when you're at your best because your body's doing something it's never done before. It doesn't, your nervous system just doesn't know what it's like to experience that or fire like that or whatever. And I've definitely felt it now afterwards. It's like having done it and actually survived. My running now that I've recovered feels amazing. Went out for a run this morning. And I'm like, I've seen my old SNC coach, Joe Brun. We had him on pockets, actually. And he was like, he was like very clear on sort of like two things. He was like, well, what he was like, you've basically done probably six months of training and squeezed into three days. So he's like, if you let your body recover, yeah, you're gonna, you've got that those adaptations. But he was like, your body is gonna pay you back for this. This was like once I'd finished. He didn't think I'd do it just being honest. And I actually really, there was two people that said that to me. One was my sister's neighbor. He'd never said it before, but afterwards he was like, he's a Jordy. He's like, I tell you what, Jocko. I didn't think he was gonna do it, man. Like, and he was like, don't take this the wrong way. He was like, just you haven't, like he'd know, I'll be taught quite a bit when I visited my sister. He was like, he knew how much training I'd done. He was like, he hadn't done enough. So you're not like, you can't. It was like, the body did, she did well not to actually like, get injured. But I feel like the nervous system needs to get an experience of a certain amount before you then wanna go and overload that. And I feel like a halfway point would be decent. I've got nothing necessary to back that up, if you know what I mean. But, and I definitely feel it now in the system, if I go, having recovered, run now, and it's like the amount of foot contacts I've got, like just my achilles and calves and things are just like bang, bang, bang, bang. It feels good. So yeah, that was definitely, that was definitely, it's weird, right? Because it's like, I wish I had have done that, but then some of the biggest things I've got out of it as an event was because I wasn't that and I wasn't ready and I wasn't prepared. But in terms of being excited before and buoyant, it's like, yeah, I was. I was almost like, I knew I was like letting myself be, because I was excited, I was letting myself be excited. Yeah, at US Catherine, she was like, bloody hell in the morning of the thing, he was pissing about and doing in this one his camera and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was like, it was getting all the food ready, it was getting all the drinks ready, muggins over it. What a boy. Yeah, she was absolutely like, we can get onto it later. So yeah, I think interesting though, because you say like, there's been a lot of experiences where you've not done something of that duration that's not going to be over quickly and your brain and system doesn't have the concepts. There'll be a lot of surprises that would have come up along the way. I've gone, well, I didn't expect that because you'd never done it before. Whereas that's when you see people with like experience of these sorts of things like you're going to go and do an event and things that happen, feelings that you get, your body's response, all that sort of stuff. You're like, I've been here before. And I guess that's probably where the challenge came from not having done that kind of amount of running, as you said, like half of it before. At what point when in the event itself, did you start to kind of go, oh dear, like I haven't either, I haven't prepared optimally for this or I'm in over my head or I'm like, when the word of the world kind of closes and go, okay, this is serious. It, so I say day one, I was hoping to do it in, what do we have here, nine hours to do it. And I think I was hoping to do it in about seven and a half and it's only eight and a half. So it was a bit slower. It meant we got back a bit later, to bed a bit later, had an ice bath. I felt better after the ice, but it was like, okay, that was harder than I was thinking it was gonna be. And day two is like, just don't know what day two is gonna be like. And it was the case of like, okay, lie down in bed. Alarm's set for half four because we had to get up and then drive half an hour to the start of the next checkpoint because I chose to like have the base and the sister's house because it was about half an hour drive from any of the checkpoint, any of the day's starting points. So it squeezed that time from like, okay, probably got in bed at about half 11, 12. Alarm's set at half four. System couldn't turn off. Brain, like all night, nervous system was just like, well, I don't know about you, Jacko, but I'm ready to go running. And I was like, so couldn't sleep. I reckon I slept like two or three times for 10 minutes, something like that. But again, there's a bit of an excitement of like, day two is like the thing. It's like, it's the double distance day. Well, if you can do day two, like your statistically history has shown that like only one or two people in the final day don't make it type of thing. If you make it to start day three, you're very close to doing it. And in my mind, I was very much like thinking that was the case and a lot of people talked about that. There's one person, Brian Keane, who's another fellow ultra runner that isn't an ultra runner. We had him on the podcast couple of times and he did say to me, I met him in Ireland, he gave us some very good advice. And we'll probably come back to this in the story that he was like, no, no, day two isn't your problem. He was like, day three is your problem. And he was like, what is that? He'd done marathon to Sabra and one in the Arctic. And he was like, you might not be able to get out of bed on day three. He said, he says, he remembers his mom and his sister, I think, or his daughter having to physically pick him up to get him out of bed because he couldn't get him going for that final day. And you're like thinking, oh, cry, yeah. But it was good that we heard it. It was good that my wife heard that as well, most importantly. But yeah, so I'll come back to that. Cause day two or day one was the most of the route that I knew. We'd wrecked most, we'd wrecked half of day one. So day two, those bits of it we knew from just being around the area and whatnot. But just some really, really slow bits, really slow bits. And I came into the first checkpoint about 15 minutes early, which was okay. But wanted to start to build up a bit of a buffer for like, okay, I'm gonna die later. Let's have a bit of a buffer. And the next checkpoint, I'd lost five minutes. I was down to 10. And the next one I came in. It sounded like just four cuts off. Yeah, yeah. So I basically was then like, it started to become stressful being that close. And I think before the third checkpoint, there was eight checkpoints on day two. Before the third one, Catherine started running with me. Completely unplanned. She'd run the last section of day one planned because it was in the dark. She was like, it's just nice to have someone with you in the dark. But she started running before the third checkpoint on day two, just because she could see that I needed it. They were worried that I wasn't gonna make that checkpoint because there was a tracker you could see where people are going into it. And there was some funny stuff I'm like, I don't know how much of this side of me you've seen, but like, of just anyone, when you make someone extremely stressed, like the, how you think, you go very primal. And like, we'd started four minutes late on day two. And the guy in his announcement said, you know, we've never ever started late ever. But they were forming, say anyway, I get to the checkpoint at Beaumaris. No, the one before Beaumaris, I think Beaumaris was halfway, but the one before I got to the checkpoint, I was like, to Marshall, I was like, or just sort of, you get there and you're just like, you're trying to be as quickly as possible because there's eight checkpoints. If you spend 10 minutes at a checkpoint, you're wasting down 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah. You ain't got that. So you're trying to be as quick as you can, have something to eat, fill up your bottle again, and like, go. And I was like, can someone confirm the four minutes that we'd like, you're giving us those back. And everyone was like, ooh, ooh, ooh. And then like, so, and I said it a little bit aggressively, by the time I got to the next one when I'd not been given an answer, I was like, can someone fucking confirm that we are getting those four minutes? And someone, it was two minutes that we started laying, I was like, it was fucking far. I was like, those four minutes were like, and sorry, we don't normally swear on the podcast, but like, yes, it was raw. And that was like mega desperate. It was like four minutes meant everything anyways. People just like, okay, tell that crazy guy at the back that like, it's okay, we'll give him his four minutes. Well, that's stressful, right? Like you think about those, like we move from conditioned sessions, it's a bit of a, that's completely different context, but you set those up and it's like, right, we're gonna go every 45 seconds and it's like, you've got running to do whatever. And like, if you're the guy at the front, you get there with like 20 seconds of spare, you like just chill in, like, absolutely fine. You see the like, rugby context, you see the prop forward coming in, like literally on 44 seconds. Right? We're going again. So it's the least fast, least fittest person just gets absolutely shafted in those. So if you're coming in with like 10 minutes of spare, it's not like you can sit down, like take a shoe out of a stone out of your shoe. Like you are literally like running for your life in terms of staying in the event each time with minimal cushion, it's stressful. I sat down once at a checkpoint and that was the penultimate checkpoint on the last day. It's only to change the socks, it's the only time I sat down. But yeah, so as day two just got mingled, but you went through these different stages where it was like, actually would feel good to run all of a sudden, even though you felt absolutely gone. But essentially, my Garmin ran out of battery, flipping halfway through day two. It couldn't even last. So day two ended up being 17 hours, 45 minutes. Came in 15 minutes to spare, yeah. Shout out Garmin, sought me out with a better watch. Son, who's our mate that works with Garmin? Martin Yellin. Martin Yellin, he sort of said, anyway, is that why you just basically bought the cheap Garmin, didn't you, Jack? Yeah, but the GPS on the Garmin absolutely rinses the battery, on all of them, to be honest, like all trackers, it's the GPS track. Anyway, side note, keep going. What it ended up doing was it ended up being like, well, you don't know how fast you're going, you don't know how far you've gone, you don't know how long you've gone. It was a case of like, you've just got to get to that next checkpoint. And it was like, how long is it? How far, right, and that was it. I say Catherine, of those 67 miles, she joins me before we'd done 20, before we'd done a marathon on that day. So she's probably done 50 miles that day. 50 miles. Just up the box. And like, 50, 100 meters ahead of me, some of it backwards, some of it holding a bag full of food, like just incredible. But yeah, we got there and it was like, wow. And we're getting back, having the ice bath, because the ice bath helped last time. Ice bath nearly sent me into some sort of like, thermal shock. I was like shaking, shivering, got in bed, I couldn't get warm. I mean, by the time- The system at that point is like, don't put any more stress in. This is a bad idea. Like you don't stress many more. But my muscles and joints and like, my legs liked the ice, but just like the nervous system didn't. So probably got laid down in bed at like half one. And again, a alarm set for half four. And it was like, well, I know what's gonna happen, because I've just experienced it before lying, if I have to sleep and brain's just going like, let's run, let's run, let's run. Or when are we going running? I'm ready. It's like I'm ready, Jack. We're going, anyway. Again, Doze's offered 10, 20 minutes or something like that. I woke up and then that's, I knew it was bad on day two, but then this is when it just, so I wake up and I feel sick. I've got headache. And it was the same type of feeling and sensations I had from a brain injury. And I turned to Kathy and I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. And it was like, I don't want to do it. I feel sick. And she said, you need to try, otherwise you're gonna regret it. Because she didn't say, remember what Brian Keen had said to us, but she was remembering that. She was like, because I asked her afterwards, like, why did you push me? I'm surprised. Not push me, but join, just encourage me. I didn't expect her to encourage me. I was expecting her to say, yeah, like, this is ridiculous. Enough is enough. Like, you've had a good go at it. I like go, I then go to the toilet and I'm like, sat on the toilet and my sisters, didn't even have enough energy to close the door. Little Bobby, her little baby had woke her up, luckily. And she came downstairs to just wish me good luck. She could hear me, wish me good luck for the final day. And I'm like, I'm like, sat there crying. I can't poo. I'm just a mess. And the types of things that go around in my head are like, you idiot. Like, I was actually disgusted with myself of like, because what I felt was like, like, because everyone there was so nice, like all the stewards, it's such a great event and all the other runners and everything. It was amazing. One of the amazing things about ultra running that I really loved was like, you know, you could look at me aesthetically, I'm thin and some muscle tone and blah, blah, blah. An ultra event like that doesn't care if you're 65 or 25. It doesn't care if you're like thin or not. It doesn't care. It doesn't care about any of that. And it was just, you had no idea. You'd look at someone and go, are they gonna make it or not? You're like, I've got no idea. And I disrespected like everything. So I felt like I shouldn't have, I felt like I was sorry that I'd signed up to it. And I was a bit scared like, because I didn't want to go and do it, but then I felt a bit ashamed and I was very, very negative. But I felt just like not un-rational, like rationally negative of like, you are, you're an idiot. Like, and this is not actually safe for you to do and like, you know, stay in your lane. You're not an ultra runner. So don't sign up for stupid things that you're not prepared for. And then to add a bit of taste to it was like, with, there's two, like Vivo bear for an auction advantage at both, because we've approached them to like, sponsor, support the event, basically pay for two guys to come and film, to film it, to make like a documentary of it. Because in my mind, there was gonna be this nice story and out of it, whatever. And I was at that, I'm going like, See the documentary of Anglesey is gonna look beautiful. And it was like, you know, you're an idiot for all those reasons I just said. And it was like, to add on top of that, you've got two people to come and film this and two companies to pay for it to be done. Like, what are you gonna say to them? What's the story now? Oh, we tried hard and we had a good go at it. And it was really hard the first two days, but we couldn't do the last day. But everyone likes to try her. Like, what do you mean? I was literally like trying to go through my mind. Like, what are you gonna do? Like, what's gonna be the story? Anyway, my little sister goes, just try and get in the car. That's the first step. And I like looked up and I was like, you know, my hair is like over my face. I was like, I'll try and get in the car. Cause it was like, I felt like it was a beautiful thing because I'd like, you know, I'd written down like I knew what the checkpoints were, how far to do, but I'd completely forgotten about the ability to literally get to the start. And there's some, there's definitely like a simple, what's the simplest actionable step you can take in something in life when you feel completely overwhelmed and out of your depth. Like there's something that you can do. You can take what is there, try and find that or get people around you that can support you to actually do that. And that's what happened. I didn't, I didn't think, she didn't challenge me. She didn't suggest anything other than try and get in the car. So I tried to get in the car, literally. I was then, I'll get in the car. My sister-in-law Sarah came, she was picking us up. She then sees me on the toilet as well. Like by this point, I've already done a poo in the middle of the street like on day two. Like you've lost, you've got no respect for yourself. It's not the same, but it makes me think if we're like, when Carla went through pregnancy, there comes a point where she was like gonna go and like I always picture the mind, it's gonna be perfect. And then there's have to be like, I flippin' don't care anymore. Have a look at whatever you need to. Whoever needs to come in can come in. I don't care anymore. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So then, yeah, literally, I was like, get in the car. So like, got, I mean, Sarah, Sarah was picking us up in the car. I literally got my stuff together. I couldn't put my left, I kicked it. I've still, my toe is still bruised now. I don't know if I broke it or something, but I kicked a big rock on day one. And that toe had been annoying me on the left foot like the whole time I was limping. It was weird. I was like walking when you see some of the footage, you're like, I'm limping when I walk, but like running's a bit better. It was like worse for me to walk. My walk was very slow. It helps to have a good walk if you're gonna do an ultra. Cause you're gonna walk at some points. It helps to be faster walking. Anyway, I couldn't even get my left shoe on. So I'm like in the car, I think Sarah gave me some paracetamol. I'm thinking, oh yeah, paracetamol, that might help. And I'm just saying, I can't think. Catherine's like got all of my, like I didn't even have my race bib. I didn't have nothing. Catherine got all of my stuff together. Bearing in mind, she'd run 50 miles the day before as well. And she was thinking, you know what I'm saying? She's like, yeah, I didn't think I was gonna be able to run on day three. Felt horrendous. And she was like, then I saw Dave and felt better. And then she said the other thing, she was like, well, and when I saw her I was like, okay, once we'd got to the start line, she was like, well, this ain't gonna last very long. So yeah, I'll start with it. But yeah, we get to the, we get there. I finally get my left shoe on, hobble out. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking I've done an amazing job to get here. And I'm like looking for who's, who are the other guys and girls? They're absolutely fast. Where's my community right now? I need my other, where's the other people that can, you surround myself with yourself and feel better. There's one, there's one guy sat down in this village hall. He's about 65 years old. He might not have even been doing the event. I don't know. Everyone else is like walking around. I'm sure they were stiff and stuff, but walking around, laughing, having a smile. And yeah, I am a bit stiff. Like, but everyone's like doing all right. And I was like, it just sent me into just a pit of just like. Excuse me, I'm here for the pity party. I don't know where, directly to wherever that's happening, please. I was like, literally sat. So I found a chair to collapse on. I was like, again, my hair is just over my face. Cause I didn't want to look at anyone. I didn't, I didn't want to look at anyone in the eye. Cause I'd like, you know, by disrespecting the event, I was like disrespecting all these people who'd come prepared. And I still did. I don't. I don't think cousin it was going to be doing the. Yeah. And it wasn't like, it wasn't like, you know, to cut a long story short, like we completed it. I say we not I, we completed it in the end within the time for anything, but it doesn't change the fact that I disrespected every single person there and the event. I don't know. Why do you think that? Why do you think you disrespected other people by rocking up to an event and having a pop at something that was outside of your comfort zone? Because I can't describe to you how far out of my comfort zone. Like I'm there as a grown man, just crying my eyes out in this room, literally like, like if someone had offered me, if God had just come out through the door should we just go now and you can be dead? I'd have been like, oh, thank God you're here. Like let's go. Like I don't want to be here no more. Like, and we walked out of that door and there was one guy. I mean, they said, they went off and said, you know, people go off gingerly, but it's a slow jog and it's the good people. I mean, the good people are like ridiculously good. And they, when we're finishing at midnight, they're getting in at seven o'clock in the evening. Fish and chips like a pub. Yeah. But anyway, everyone runs off. I can't even remember Catherine, Mrs. Jaco being with me at this point in that it was just dark and I was like, gingerly walking. I was literally hobbling as I walked out. And one of the marshals was like, great energy Dave. Like, and I remember thinking like, you're taking the best, but I had no energy to like do anything. And we had for the first two hours, they'd warned us in the rave briefing there was like a storm with like 20 mile an hour winds and rain. So we come out and I'm like, in my mind, I'm going, well, at least I'm moving. I've started. Didn't think I'd get here. Best case scenario. We'll walk to the first checkpoint, get timed out. All my family's here. We'll just walk the rest of the day. How long is it going to take to limp around 33 miles? I was trying to wait. I was like, I don't know. Will we finish before midnight? I was just trying. And I was thinking, at least I can say I've done it. There's something there. Like I did it, but not in the actual event. I finished the route. It took about 20 minutes to do the first kilometer, which is like, try and think of a word of, how slow it's slow. And the rain was just like hammering that this 20 mile an hour like wind into our face. And you were literally like, this is so bleak now. Let's just get it over with a bit quicker. Like if I can, can we just move a bit faster? So just tried running. And it was like my foot was less paint, like my toe was less painful running and just started running. And then I remember shouting to Catherine. I was like, Catherine, I'm running. And she was like, I know. And I was like, I don't know how. Like it was, that was a pretty cool feeling. It was like, there's this override that makes no sense physiologically. Like it happened a few times. The last 300 meters, I sprinted. And I mean sprinted, fastest I've ran because I haven't done any fast running for a long time. Just sprinted the last 300 meters of the whole thing with it's like, how is that even what's going on there physiologically? It doesn't make sense. Do you think there's a piece there in like the realization of the system? So it's obviously like people have talked about this at length in terms of like the physiological capacity and there's almost like a rate limiter. You've got the whole kind of very simplistically the fight or flight type of response to extreme stress in that sense. Do you think, did you feel like that it was a place of the brain was like, I just want to get this done? Like, and the faster I can get this done, the sooner it's going to be. So you're in a place of where it's like, I don't want to do it versus I just want to get this done. And the quicker I get this done, the quicker this is going to be over. And then it just shifts into that place as opposed to, so basically you go on attack mode as opposed to fearing it and fleeing from it. It when it ended up for me being a case of like, and like I believe in positive mental attitude and positive thinking definitely helps. But it was not a determining factor for being able to achieve something in that I was so negative, I completely given up. There was not a single ounce of positivity in my body. And actually thinking was just like a waste of energy. And it was literally going to like those thinking of like what my sister said to me like an actionable step. And it was like, for me, it was just, it was like don't think about anything. I didn't like try not to think about anything. I just ended up like not thinking about anything. Yeah, what's the next step? Was it literally like what's the next step? It was like breath and step, breath and step, breath and step, breath and step. And that's literally, literally all it was. But you know, the whole time I had, so Catherine ran that all 33 miles at the end. So she'd done over 80 miles across the three days. And she was navigating, yeah, like navigating, drink, water, encouraging, just literally like dragging me through that thing. And. What a Mrs. Jaco. Yeah, yeah. I would not have got anywhere close on my own for sure. Mate, what a story. So it's just, I don't know, let me share a reflection. And I want to give you a little bit of an open platform because I think we could probably talk about this for a couple of hours. But so you hear those stories where people have been to that kind of place. And like the one that reminds me of is, I don't know if you've seen not much of a movie guy, are you? But like there's one called Touching the Void. Whereas it's the guy who basically gets cut off of a climbing line on K2, falls into a crevasse and then like completely busted up and then crawls himself back down to the base camp on K2. And his mindset is like, can I get to that rock? Get to that rock? Can I get to the next rock? And this guy's like same place in terms of absolutely broken. But there's definitely that thing that I'm interested on your reflections on this of going, like you can hear all those stories and you can watch all the motivational movies around that, but what's the difference of actually finding yourself in that situation to what you are now, like two or three weeks later from a reflective perspective? Has what's changed as a result of being there that you're now in your perspective of life, hardship, resilience? What's the difference? That's a good question. And like there's like, there's two big things. Like one is one's connection in that I went into the event thinking it was gonna be a challenge for me and I was gonna do some like, you know, personal inner work, let's say. What it turned out very quickly to be was like a need and a desire like for other people and to connect. That, and then the second thing being that override and that override that was kicking in for, because Catherine had it as well because she'd not trained for the further she'd run before this was 15 miles and then does 80, like, but that for us, I believe that override was just coming out of love and a need to help someone, support someone. I sort of think about it like this, if you fall over down onto the floor and you need help getting back up, I pick you up. I don't pick you up and throw you in the sky. So I can only help you and show you as much love as you need at that time. I don't recommend it and it wasn't, I wasn't trying to talk to you about this, but I was out in my depth, I was literally at the bottom of wherever and I needed a lot, but when you, I was just forced into that position of being just totally vulnerable and just totally at the mercy or just at the need of Catherine. And it's made me understand some stuff about myself in that, like, you're like this because you will have described me as an awkward hugger, right? Yeah, that would be a fair thing and it's like, I didn't know that it's going into this type of thing, but when I was like, you'd get to the checkpoint, you'd get to that next checkpoint, and one of the things you're gonna get at that checkpoint is some people there cheering for you and if anyone there that I, like, if I saw you, you're getting hugged. It was like, I just desired that, like, physical contact. It was almost like I got energy from the physical contact and there was no awkwardness in it. It was just like, I need you. Like, come in here and give me, give me, it's like I need it. And I've understanding for myself that, like, there's a desire and a want to, like, connect deeper with people, but an understanding that, like, I've an awkwardness to me when I don't know someone. Like, it takes me a long time. So it's not that anything's necessarily changed now in that, like, I'm still gonna be, like, socially awkward around someone when I don't know them, but I'm aware of that much better and I'm aware of, like, what things can I start to do or think about that's gonna help me connect with people without having to, like, absolutely bury myself on an ultramarathon. Yeah, yeah, that's really cool. I'm glad that actually 135 miles are running means that we can actually have a normal hug now. That's gonna be good. Well, if you were there, you would have got one, but what I'm saying now, I'm still awkward at the moment, I'm still working, aren't I? Don't worry, when I see you next, we'll get in there. We'll have a kind of practice in a safe space. Right, so we're 45 minutes in, Jack, and we're gonna bring us in towards the landing, but there is so much in here that you could probably unpack and I could continue to do an excellent job as a question master as I feel like I have to do it. Yeah, you have been, yes. So if you had a platform now, which you have for the next few minutes, what are you sharing? Like, if someone says, like, and obviously it'll be different for different people, but like, what is the biggest thing that you would want to pass on from this experience to other people? I was like forced into vulnerability, but got an experience out of that that I wouldn't swap that for it. So it's this weird, it's this difficult thing of like, I haven't got a David Goggins message for you of like, just hammer yourself and kill yourself because it's not recommended as far as I'm concerned, but I experienced a level of like need and reliance on someone else, like a baby being reliant on the mother or father. And as an adult, we don't do that and a lot of our society will tell us that being strong is that, you know, you can do it on your own. And for me, it's completely flipped up on its head. And there was a bit of a strange parallel that I'll share, but it comes with a caveat of like, I feel bad saying it because it's unfair. It's just, it's not proportionate, but there was a parallel that came out when we were filming some reflections where, you know, when my dad died early this year and I was living at home, helping my mum look after me, he passed from Canton. The last four weeks, like I saw his health deteriorate, but his reliance on my mum, like increased as his condition deteriorated. And it was like the saddest thing I've probably seen, but at the same time, the most beautiful thing I've seen in that I saw a side of my dad that not sort of really seen before. And all he had, he had nothing. His life was just literally stripped down to nothing. He can't do anything. But all he wanted was my mum. I literally remember him sat on the couch and saying that and all he wanted was my mum. But then, and the beautiful thing was all he needed was a, that was it. And there was that parallel for me, which I'll say it's disproportionate because you know, that we're talking about my dad's life, but there was a, there was an, there was, yeah. It's actually, I didn't, you know, I signed up to this event way before my dad got ill. So I didn't sign up to the event to help with the grieving process, but the experiences has given me that out. I felt like I've went to that, went to a place of vulnerability. And I haven't got the answers for people, but I'd encourage people to like, where can you allow yourself to be vulnerable? Because some beautiful things can happen if you go there. Just go there with someone or with people. Good, I'm going to add no comment on that because I think you said everything that needs to be said. Well, we haven't actually, it's finished the story, Jaco. Did you finish the Ring of Fire? Yeah, yes. In the time limit. We're at 15 minutes to spare. There you go. Third from last. Interestingly, five minutes after, you cross the finish line, every failure to take in, and then someone goes, do you want a beer? And I was like, no, can I have some water? And then literally there's like, Marshal was like, looking around, he's got all this beer. And he's like, I don't think we have any water. I think it's got water in it, is that okay? But I sat down, literally hugging everyone, and then once we've stopped hugging and stopped crying, I sat down with Catherine, and I said to her, why do we do these things? And not in a, when I said we, not just me and her, I meant we, everyone here, but I'm just people who do events. It was like, why do we do it? Because I had, I didn't have a sense of achievement at the end. I did have a bit of a perspective on it, that it was like, it's just a stupid run. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, why does it matter? Like, why did we, why did we do that? It was interesting. But the biggest sense of achievement I had, was coming into checkpoint one. This will be the last thing I'll say. The best sense of achievement I had was coming into checkpoint one, about 200, 300 meters before checkpoint one on day three. And I was like, none of you fuckers thought I was gonna be here because, because I was like, I was like, I didn't think I was gonna be here, literally. Right, so 106 people started the whole event. 106, 87 got to day two, 56 got to day three, and then 53 people finished. And they said, statistically, if you get to the day three, your chances are you're gonna finish. So only three people didn't. And I think, crikey, everyone in that room knew that I was gonna be one of those three that were gonna make it. So I don't know who those people were, but what happened to them? But yeah, I was like, I remember coming into that, and I was like, I literally felt like I'd come back from the dead. I was like, so boy, like the energy, yeah, the guys filming will have that one. Cause I'm like, I'm literally like, you know, Frank the Tank on, yeah, I was like, I'm back, baby. You don't like the, they were like, there was bacon and egg sandwiches there. You know, you offer Jack a bacon egg sandwich. I'm like, bacon and egg, but it was no, they meant John bacon or do you want egg? And I was like, both, both. And they were like, okay. And then it was so, and then it was like, John red or brown sauce? Both. Just, but it was that feeling of, it was that feeling of like, I don't know how I'm here. I think that person in front of me, Catherine was like, but I'm here. And it was like, if we can make one, we can make the next one. Yeah, yeah. And then it would literally chip in, chip in them like that. And there was plenty of twists and turns along, along the way. So that, but, but generally speaking, it was like follow Catherine. She's about 1500 meters ahead. Come on, Dave. Come on, Rio. And anytime I was like, yeah, yeah, it was, yeah. Not recommended. Yeah. Amazing. Let's leave it there, mate. Well done. Congratulations on a fine achievement of human performance, resilience and stupidity. Yeah. I was going to say it's none of those things until he says stupidity. It wasn't, it wasn't, yeah. I think, yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, it is, it is all of those things. Because I think it's all relative to each individual. And I think that's what you went in for. Like, well, we maybe didn't know that when you started, but going into these things as an unseasoned marathon athlete with no context of what you were doing, like it was always probably going to be about what you were going to learn. And the fact that you finished it in hard conditions is no joke, mate. So well done for that. And you should be very proud of yourself for completing the Ring of Fire in such a fashion. Yeah. There was so many people we met. You're running along, you're like, is this the first time you've done it? I think I've met one person that hadn't done it before. Everyone else. It was like, oh, tried last year, got timed out on day two. I mean, I remember speaking to someone on the first day. Sorry, I'm divergent. Someone on the first day, this is how, this was what, how stupid I was. On the first day, I was like, oh, have you done it? And he was like, yeah, there's three of us. Last year, we got timed out at the first checkpoint on day three. And I was thinking, this is day one, I'm like fresh thinking, what idiot? Like, as if you'd get to day three morning and then struggle in the morning to get to the first checkpoint. So what did you know? Yeah, yeah. So what I mean is, by that is like, I don't have to go back. And you know, if you'd not done it, you'd be going like, oh, I can see how people got. Cause I was like, why is anyone coming back? But I could see how, yeah, I'll go back as a spectator. For sure, it's a wicked event, but yeah. All right, so we might be, we're going to wrap this one up for today. Thanks, Jaco, for sharing all of that, going a little bit deeper. We may have a small break again. So if you waited for next week's podcast and it might be a week or so, but bear with us, there's just a few things to navigate in our going on, but we are going to be coming back. We are not going anywhere. Jaco, well done. Good stories, sign us off into whenever we're going to be here next. Well, just one thing I'll say is there is, there is a successful documentary to come out on it. Can people still donate as well? Yeah, people can donate. Yeah, I'll put the link in the show notes for the Pettles charity, for the Just Giving page. Thank you for everyone that's already donated. Tell people about it very quickly. What is it, Pettles charity? So it's for families struggling or like dealing with the process of going through miscarriages. Great charity. Very, very important charity. Yeah, so if anyone can donate to that, put the link in the show notes. And yes, the documentary will be out hopefully sometime in November, but we'll keep an eye on sort of emails and socials for any announcements about that. It'll come up because it will be the number one recommended film on Netflix. So everyone can see it, I imagine. I'm excited to see it. It's gonna look great. No, just massive thank yous. I mean, I had so many messages and I didn't even look at social media for like three days. And it was like afterwards, like so many messages from people just wishing me good luck throughout. And it was amazing, amazing, amazing to see. So thank you to everyone that did. Good job. All right, shall I sign this off or are you gonna do it? Yeah, you sign this off. Until next time, keep exploring your physical potential through movement, strength and play. And don't try and do things you can't do. But redefining impossible sort of is that, isn't it? But you know what I mean, do it in a progressive. You are right, you are right, you are right. Do it in a progressive approach to your training. Make sure you do at least half of something. Yeah. Class dismissed. I need to go to parents' eat.