 Welcome to film my run, my name is Stephen Cousins. Here we are in Bristol today. We're in Bristol to meet a very special ultra-runner who is from the USA but currently lives and works in the UK. So John Kelly Welcome, welcome to England. Thank you How is how is England treating you so far? Pretty well as long as I can stay dry That's the thing, is it the wet? Yeah, well the you know, overhead is one thing. I can deal with that. The worst is the wet underfoot. You know, the mud I'm used to is dirt with a bit of water mixed in. I think here it's more water with a bit of dirt mixed in. More of a soup. Yeah, it can be that. What's um thinking about like your life in the USA and your life here. What in general is like a culture shock that you've had coming to England? What's made you go, what? You know, a lot of small things here in there. Really nothing huge once we got settled. You know, some different food items, some different phrases and ways of saying things. Yeah But really the you know, once we got over the initial obstacles of doing all of our paperwork and whatnot to get civil then and get our account set up and Yeah get a place to live it's it's been pretty smooth. I've got my driver's license. My wife should have hers within a week and Did you have to take a test? Oh, yeah. Had to do the the theory and the practice test or practical test. Well and the theory one took a bit of studying just with the different road signs and whatnot. Yeah How to negotiate roundabouts. We don't have those in the US. And how did you negotiate them? Are you all right with them? Yeah, yeah, doing pretty well with them now. So Yeah, pull on UK driver's license and everything. And I hear you've discovered jelly babies. Yeah, yeah, those are jelly babies and a number of British snack items that I've taken a liking to. I find it really hard to believe that the US has nothing similar to the jelly babies. I mean we have, you know, gummy bears and jelly worms and those sorts of things but Jelly babies are pretty unique. You know, they're kind of like, I guess it's a yeast powder on the outside and the texture of them. It's just a bit unlike anything else I've had. They are British standard marathon runners food handed out by every unlooker to a tired marathon runner. Well, that's how I discovered them. Someone came out to see me along my route for my attempted connection of the classic fell running rounds last year and handed me a bag of them and I went on my way and broke into them, I think a few hours later. Are you, you're Tennessee born and raised? Yep. I lived there until I was 18 and went off to college and lived in North Carolina and in Pittsburgh and in the Washington DC area. Okay, so you have moved about a bit. So this wasn't, I mean it is a bit of an upstix but you have moved before. Oh yeah. So maybe it wasn't quite as much of a big thing as if you'd never set foot out of Tennessee before. Right, and you know, moving between different areas of the US like that, I mean that can be about as big of a culture shift as coming all the way over here. Share, you know, more of the same products in the grocery aisles but going from Tennessee to the North is a, you know, pretty big difference. Yeah. And a big difference in the weather too. Yeah, well this place is so big isn't it? I've only ever been to Texas and Florida. Ah. So what do you do John? What's your day job? What brought you to the UK? I mean I know it was work but tell me a bit about that. Yeah, so these days what I do is called data science. So analyze large complex sets of data and use fancy algorithms and specifically what we do is try to quantify cyber risk for companies in order to price cyber insurance. So we came over here because that's where most of the business was and set up the tech team out here in Bristol where it's a great place to live. Good sources of talent here and a bit cheaper than setting up shop in London. So this is your company? Yeah, I'm one of the founders. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about running maybe. Shall we? I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. Tell me, for those who don't know, how did you get into running in the first place? Like way back, what happened? Were you a college runner at school? What happened? No, I mean I guess it stemmed largely from chasing my brother and my cousins around our farm and around the mountains out in Tennessee and then my brother ran track and cross country, so I ran track and cross country. I was by no means great at it in high school. I was a good contributor on a good team, I guess you could say. Yeah. But then I basically took ten years off from it through college and grad school and came back to it after that just to kind of... I'd always wanted to see what I could do at longer distances, so I signed up for a marathon and things snowballed from there. What was your first marathon? The Marine Corps Marathon. Oh, very famous marathon, yeah. It was not pretty for me. Oh really? I did not sufficiently train or prepare at all. Come on, what was your time? What was your time? It was in the 340s. Okay, well that's the first marathon, isn't it? Yeah, around mile 18. I mean it was like someone just wrapped two live electrical wires around my legs and just everything. We all know that feeling at mile 18. So what year is this approximately? That was 2013. Okay, so not actually all that long ago. When did you first hear about the Barclay Mountains? It's something I kind of known about on the surface of the bubble. For quite a while I grew up right across the road where the race takes place. So you virtually live right by Frozen Head State Park? Yeah, my family's been out there on the same farm since 1814. And so one of the mountains alongside the course, which I ironically found myself lost on one year that I did it, is named Kelly Mountain. Awesome! So that was quite the meaningful connection for the race. Absolutely, yes. And so at what point did you say, having died a horrible death at the Marine Corps marathon, at what point did you say, right, I want to run 100, whatever it is, miles over the mountains of Frozen Head State Park? So I mean it took at least a year and a couple more marathon attempts. And really it was something that had been in my head. This would be something that would be fun to do. Yeah. But it'll probably never happen. And then as I kind of, you know, I did that first marathon and said, I didn't respect that one properly. I should train a bit better and see what I can actually do. Yeah. That repeated itself a couple of times. And I improved enough where I kind of got it into my head. You know, maybe I'm actually not half bad at this stuff. Maybe I should. How old were you when you said to yourself, actually, I'm not bad at this? I was 30. Okay. So we come to your first Barclay attempt. And this is where I first heard your name. Because you were kind of the valiant guy who failed. Yeah. Just tell me what that was like and how that felt that first time. Well, I mean, I really had no idea what I was doing going into it. I had prepared the best I could, studied everything I could, trained as well as I could. But there's certain things you just can't learn any other way than by experience. Yeah. And I didn't have a ton of experience doing things of that magnitude. Do you think the Barclay is a classic race for, you will never do it first time. You absolutely have to learn from the guys who've done it before. Go round the route a few times. I know it changes, but... So, I mean, there have been people who have finished on their first attempt. Okay. I think... Well, I know John Faggressi did. I think... Was that his first attempt? Yeah. Wow. Breton County did. Jared Campbell did. And so it does take just an immense amount of preparation. John Faggressi, I think if you had blindfolded him before that race, he could have drawn you a full contoured map. Yeah. Yeah. And then he's the classic case of a runner who nobody would have given a hope to, really. He was, you know, he's not, he wasn't an elite runner. Right. And, you know... Now, with all that said, I don't think anyone's ever going to go out there and just from the get-go run by themselves and be able to finish it. I mean, everyone, their first time out there is going to try to latch on to a veteran for the first two or three loops. Was Bret there on your first attempt? No. So he'd done his by the time you started. Did you? I think Bret's, Bret's last one was, it was either 2012 or 2013. Okay. So quite, yeah, a couple of years before. My first, yeah, it would have been 2012 actually. And mine was 2015. I mean, you must have, obviously you learned a lot from Jared, but you must have looked at Bret as well and those guys who really crushed it. Yeah. I think the biggest for me cross whenever we came here. Jared wasn't there my first year. I learned a lot from Bev and Alan Habs. Oh yeah. And then from Jameel Curry. It was Jameel and I for the second and third loops on that. That's when I first really got into that, that area that I had never experienced before. You're the guy who will forever be known as the guy who finished Barclay wrapped in a plastic bag. Yeah. Tell me how you came about wearing a plastic bag. Tell me how you felt finishing Barclay methods. So I mean, the weather got really bad about halfway through my last loop. Heavy rains, wind, going up Ratchah, fully exposed. It was just, it got pretty cold. I had equipped myself that loop to a point where, you know, I knew I had to go a bit light and I knew that if I couldn't move fast enough to keep myself warm that I wasn't going to be able to finish anyway. So at that point I would just have to bail no matter what. You said I had to go a bit light. Does that mean that you left items that you might normally have taken with you in the van or at HQ so that you wouldn't be carrying as much stuff? Yeah, so I mean it all depends on kind of what kind of conditions you might possibly encounter and how far out there you might be. I mean at Barclay, as remote as it might seem at times, you know where you are. You're never far from an escape route. Okay. And so I knew that again, if I did hit a bad spot, I could get out of there with relative ease or someone could get to me with relative ease and the conditions while they might make it nearly impossible to, for example, get up rat job and back down in any sort of good shape. They weren't going to get bad enough to where I couldn't find shelter and be fine. And safety wasn't really an issue. So it was more of a performance trade-off in terms of am I going to be able to keep myself comfortable and if I'm not going to be able to keep myself comfortable then, you know, I'm not moving fast enough. So get on with it. Yeah. So you were the 15th person to finish Barclay, is that right? And nobody has finished it since you? That's right. It's now what, we're in the third year now aren't we, nearly, two years with no finishers so we're coming up to the third year. And that also means that you've now been in the UK for a good, what, nine months now? Moved actually the week of Barclay. The week of Barclay, yeah. So it's, yeah, coming up, yeah, nine or ten months now. So since you've been in the UK, you have, your name has kind of popped up in two places. The grand round and the spine, which was the first one when you touched down in England, what was the first one that you said, I'm going to do that? Well, so I mean, I knew that I was going to do the spine. Well, I'd had that on my radar before I even knew I was moving to England. So as soon as we found out that we were moving, I was in on that one immediately. Straight away, yeah. And then I started looking around, you know, what are some other exciting challenges that I can do, some other places I can explore and hike. Yeah, yeah, cross over. Where do you want to cross? Where do you normally cross? Wherever there's a gap in traffic, but this will be fine. Sorry, yes. So, you know, started looking at those, studying them more and thinking how cool it would be to connect all of them and be able to do it by bike. Has anybody done that before? No, so, so Mike Hartley has done all three of them consecutively. Yeah. He drove between three of them, which I actually, I didn't discover that he had done that until I, you know, kind of came up with my plan and started researching it more. Yeah. So what, the time that he put in on that was pretty incredible. I think his total time, Jesus. I feel like it was around 89 hours, including all the driving and whatnot. Yeah. I wanted to bike, not in any sort of way of, oh, the driving bits aren't even done, but just I was, I actually spent a while doing traffic on, so I was technically a pro-trap for one race. I did it for a race and then probably retired. Did you ever do Kona? Yeah, I did Kona twice. Okay, cool. So, you know, I never liked the swimming, but I did always love the cycle. So I thought it would be really cool to kind of combine my two passions there, hopefully avoiding the swimming, although some of the bugs on Patty Buckley made me beg to differ. Yeah. So yeah, it was just, I thought it sounded like something that would be fun and something that would really let me explore. I hop over right here. Okay. A huge part of the country in the process. Well, the thing is, doing the spine and doing the grand round, you've probably seen more of the UK than most Brits in a few hours. Well, more than a few hours. Oh, you okay? Yes. Now, I have to say, right, when I came down here, I thought, oh my goodness, is it going to be like this for a lot of the way? I'm going to need my trail shoes. And I was very careful not to slip over. Yeah. And now I have. So, for those that don't know, the grand round, well, you tell us what the grand round is. So it's the three classic British fell running rounds, at least on this side of the Irish Sea. I started with the Patty Buckley round in Snowdonia in Wales. The kind of general goal of each of them is to do them in under 24 hours. They're each roughly 100K at just a bit longer, roughly 24,000 or so feet of climbing. And so I was going to do the Patty Buckley and then the Bob Graham round in the Lake District and then the Charlie Rancy round in Scotland and do them consecutively to ride my bike in between each one of them. And just to say that riding his bike between each one of them, that's not a half an hour bike ride. This is 220 miles of cycling. Yeah, I think between Patty Buckley and Bob Graham it came out to a bit under 190. Yeah. And if I had made the Bob Graham to Charlie Ramsey trip, it would have been about 230. So, what went wrong? You know, the schedule skipped. The conditions were particularly horrible. Torrential rain and wind on both the Patty Buckley and the Bob Graham. I didn't account particularly on the Patty Buckley, I didn't account for how much those conditions hurt in terms of some of those stretches where you're running across boulder fields. And I mean, there's no way you can actually run across that in any sort of safe fashion. Yeah. So my schedule skipped. As a result, my sweep seriously slipped in terms of the amount I was able to get. And I tried to take off on my bike. To get to the final. Yeah, to make it up to Scott. So I completed Patty Buckley and Bob Graham both in under 24 hours. And got on my bike to head up to Charlie Ramsey. And it wasn't very long into that at all where I just had to see that it would not have been safe for me to bike solo in that state. Did you have support car following you? Well, yeah. I mean, the support car would meet me at various points, various, you know, intervals along the way. They weren't tailing me or anything. But, you know, it's one thing to be running around the fells in a sweep deprived state about to fall over and entirely another one to be on a busy mountain road on a bike. I've done a triathlon at Hellfelling. And I was absolutely scared stiff on the bike coming down some of those hills with big trucks coming up the other way. Yeah. It was not a pleasant thing to do. Okay. So disappointment, but onwards and upwards. And you'd already signed up for the spine. Yeah. And, you know, I learned a lot from that failure. The way I look at it, going for it initially like that, I knew there was a high chance of coming up short. But I learned a lot more from that than if I had tried to bite off smaller chunks of assured success. And so the ultimate goal is to do the whole thing. I'm in a much better spot to do that having failed rather than having spent my time. It strikes me that your makeup is one of somebody who has to try things that you're not entirely sure you're going to succeed at. Because otherwise what's the point? Well, I mean to me that's the entire definition of a goal. If you're doing something and you know that you're going to succeed, that's just a task. Yeah. I mean to me a chore almost. Yeah. Let's move on to the spine. You won the spine. Yeah. I mean, come on. That was one, it's 268 miles the furthest you've ever run in one chunk. Well, I threw in some bonus miles. Well, we always do, don't we? With some navigational areas. Of course. I think I at least made it over 270. But yeah, it most definitely is. So that's definitely something that you may not have succeeded at. Yeah, definitely. I mean, so it was the furthest mileage, it was slightly time-wise. It was, let's cross here. Okay. It was slightly shorter than tortoise yant last year. Yeah. But that experience definitely helped prepare me for the spine. But that, I guess, was my first time doing anything like that. Yeah. And my sweep strategy, my nutrition strategy, just my overall race strategy for something like that. I needed some work. Yeah. So that's where I got that experience. So you went out pretty hard in the spine. Yeah. You started, I've seen some videos of you guys running across the top of some of those, you know, for a 268 mile race, you are not holding back. No. I mean, I know I'm not going to be able to hold that pace for the whole race. No. But at the beginning there, I knew that we had a stretch, a time window, before the conditions got particularly atrocious, before Storm Brendan rolled in. Yeah. So I wanted to take advantage of those. I also wanted to kind of feel out and test my competition and see if I could push things from the beginning having, you know, I have to have the confidence, if I'm going to compete in that, that one of my greatest strengths is my longevity and endurance. If I can kind of run everyone out of gas, including myself, I have to have confidence that I'm going to run out a little bit later. Yeah. And it's not going to hurt me quite as much when I do. And the risk of it was, of course, that that wouldn't work out, but over the course of the race, you did change lead a couple of times, but gradually you basically stretched out a lead. It was exciting because they kept going back and forth. At first it was Eugenie for a while, and then it was Ian, and then it was Eugenie again. And then Jason came out of nowhere. That's it. At the end and really put on the strongest downside. He was catching for a while, wasn't he? Yeah, and I mean, I didn't even know he was there until he had almost not. And then he pulled out. Was that a relief or was that bad news that he pulled out? Well, I didn't know he had pulled out until I was pretty much at the, almost at the top of the last climb, at the last sort of refuge point, seven miles from the finish. Yeah. So I mean, up until then, I was still racing. And that's coming out of that last checkpoint where we actually crossed paths. The next stretch of that, I just, you know, I really laid down everything I have left and put down a pace that hours earlier before I knew he was there would have seemed absolutely impossible. Did you know you had that left? Did you know you had something, were you surprised that you had anything? So I mean, at the beginning, when I was, as you said, kind of pushing a pace, I was trying to continually ask myself, you know, is this a pace that absolutely had to, could I extract this from myself near the end of the race? And if the answer was yes, or maybe, I hope so, then I would continue. It's always maybe, I hope so, isn't it? Well, I mean, you've got to know your own limits. Yeah. And if the answer was no, I can't do this no matter what. Even if it's a neck and neck sprint to the finish, I cannot do this pace at the end then I would back up. And so coming out of the last checkpoint, it kind of did come to that point where I said, okay, John, you've been leading from the front and pushing the pace for the whole race and it bended off challenges and now we're, you know, 72 hours into this thing and you've got someone right on your heels. And so I, you know, I extracted everything I could from myself and I did, I guess I did on that stretch probably do a bit better than I had even thought that I had in reserve. That's something you said just then. So you've done, you've done the barkley. You've finished the barkley. You've done towards John, which is no mean feat in itself. You've won the spine. You've done a really fine effort at the grand round. Do you know your limits? Do you know what your limit is? That's a tough one. You know, these different challenges I think kind of measure that in slightly unique ways. And so I've definitely found portions of my limit through all of those, but I'm still trying to figure out what sort of creative ways I can get around or get over or maybe extend some of those just a bit. So that leads me on to what's next. Well, so right now I do have to take a quick break here. One of the, well, you can leave that going, but my son is really into Pokemon. I cannot believe it. It has been quite the match made in heaven where I can pull up this Pokemon go game every day I might commute home and hatch a few eggs and whatnot and get home. And he says, ah, what new Pokemon did you get? How old are your kids? My oldest, you see there, we got that catching. What's it going to be? My oldest is five and then we have twin three-year-olds. Oh my God. Your wife is a saint, is she not? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, we all go through it. I've got two kids, they're a bit older. But wow. So you, yeah, you have to give your wife wife points every day, I would imagine. Yeah, it's been great for at least for us to get to that point where, you know, our oldest is in school now and the twins have started going to pre-school twice a week for six hours each time. And so, she does have a little bit of time which you think might be to herself but really it's to get other things done. She can't do the rest of the day. But you know, at least to step up from having three under three at the same time. Does she understand you? Does she understand what you do and why you do it? Oh yeah, and I mean that doesn't mean she wants to do it herself by any means but she definitely understands it and gets why I do it and why I need it. You see, the only way I could get my wife to get what I do is by getting her to do it. And she's now an ultra runner. Oh wow. And you know, I very much recognize that this kind of thing is not for everyone. It's for me something that I've chosen to do because it allows me to challenge myself and explore these aspects of myself that I never would have otherwise known while also enjoying going on wonderful runs through the mountains and through the countryside. For everyone else, they might enjoy a different activity more for seeking that same sort of thing. So how much longer do you think you'll be in the UK? So I mean the initial plan was for about two, two and a half years. My current visa expires November of 2021. So that's pretty much all we could do for now. So we'll kind of see how the business goes and what makes sense. So let me throw some things at you and you can say yes, no, or give a slightly longer answer. Appalachian Trail, FKT. Oh, I would love to do that. That's been something I mean, probably even predates Berkeley. Something that I would love to do. It's right there again where I grew up. I have done FKTs on a couple of sections of the AT. But that's something that even at FKT pace, you've got to dedicate about almost two months to doing that. And that's something that where I'm at in my life right now, my job and my family, I just, I can't do. So hopefully one day, if I'm able to find that chunk of time. Western states. I keep putting my name in the lottery. One of these years it'll pop up. Do you still have to put your name in the lottery? Do you not get invited? No, I mean, there are golden ticket races for Western states. And I like to think that if I, you know, there are one or two of them well suited for me that I could go for one. But to be honest, Western states is something that I want to do and I want to experience once and see how well I can do. But it's also not exactly well aligned with me in terms of my competitive strengths and in terms of what I enjoy. Yes. Relatively fast. I was going to put that to you. I was going to put that to you about is that race, you know, a relatively fast, kind of easy terrain 100-miler is not you really? No, I mean, the steeper, the more technical, the more miserable the conditions and the longer generally. The better. I do better. And is that? The exception on the miserable conditions being that me and Heat don't always get along. Which Western states can very much have. And is that why Tour de Géon and not UTMB? So I mean UTMB is again on my list, which I'll do that one day and it definitely appeals to me much more than Western states and as far as aligning with my race strengths, being an awesome course I'd love to explore. I don't know how I feel about doing a race that's that huge of an event. When I was at Kona last year, well I guess now two years ago, someone asked me, are you going to do UTMB? It's like this, but ultra-riding. By response, what's going on? Oh no. You do know that's one of the reasons that I'm leaving traffic, right? This sort of big hype and big type of event just doesn't, you know, it's great for some people, but it's just not my personality. I think, you know, if you're quick enough, you can get far enough ahead of the main chunk. I mean, people like me are going to be stuck in a long, long line of people hiking up a hill. Yeah. But guys like you, you know, you can get away from all that I think on the whole. And then, okay, since you're here in the UK for at least another year or a year and a half or so, is there a UK race that you've heard about, that you think, do you know what I might go and do that? Yeah, I think it's, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there are definitely a number of them on my list. It's a matter of figuring out what will fit into the schedule when. There's one thing that I kind of learned the hard way when I first came over last year and I got a bit overexcited and I said, oh, I'm moving to UK and there's all these races there and in Europe I need to do that one and that one and that one. Lavorado, Mozart 100. Yeah. So I overloaded myself. My performance wasn't where I wanted it to be. Yeah. And so I'm going to kind of take it a race at a time and see how my body recovers and responds in each one and try not to do that again. Can you give me any names? I mean, Ark of Attrition down on the southwest coast path is definitely one that appeals to me. You know, I would spend a few weeks or spent some time with my family in Cornwall a few weeks ago and it's just a beautiful area and I'd love to see more of that and that would be a great way of doing it. So I won't feel so bad then when I'm doing social media next year or the year after and I stick a camera in your face because you'll know who it is. There you go. John, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. I hope everyone watching has been able to see because it's got very dark here and we've kind of run around a housing estate for 20 minutes just so we don't have to go into the darkness of the hills which is where John's going now. But we did have light at the beginning of my run which is not something I've had on my commute. I don't think since like... It's going to get lighter and nicer. August or September. Yeah, your runs are going to get lovely. Well, thanks very much John. Thank you very much.