Tim Don - The Ironman Champion

Full transcript: Tim Don on London Real

6:42 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Tim Donne, the triathlete, Olympian and Iron Man world record holder, originally from London who now lives in Boulder, Colorado. You are the four-time world champion triathlete, a three-time Olympian and on May 28th last year, you set a new Iron Man world record of 7 hours, 40 minutes and 23 seconds at the South American Championship in Brazil. Then, two days before the coveted Iron Man World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, you were hit by a car while cycling and suffered a hangman’s fracture to your neck, spending the next three months recovering in a medieval-looking halo brace which was screwed into your skull.

7:20 Last Monday, six months after being injured, you returned to compete in the Boston Marathon, your first marathon ever, where you clocked the incredible time of 2 hours, 49 minutes, 42 seconds. Tim, welcome to London Real. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It’s great to have you on here.

7:36 Well, first of all, what’s it like being back in London? I mean, this is your home, right? Oh, it’s awesome. I haven’t been to London for about two years now. So, yeah, I’m staying right near Tower Bridge.

7:46 So, yeah, I went for a nice run this morning along the embankment and crossed over and came back on the south side. So, yeah, when the sun’s out, London’s a great place to be. It really is. Do you ever miss this country as far as a place to live? Oh, every day.

8:03 I mean, I love living in Colorado and Boulder. It’s ideal conditions for my job, and that’s why we moved is because, yeah, we just don’t have the quiet roads, the good running, with all the facilities that we need as a professional triathlete. But, no, I mean, as I say, you can take the boy out of London, but you can’t take London out of the boy. I’ll end up back here once I retire. I’m absolutely sure of that.

8:32 Okay, now, Boulder, it gets pretty cold in the winter there. So, what do you do then for training? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it does get crazy cold. Like, sometimes it can be minus 15 degrees, but we have 300 days of sun and there’s not much humidity. So, I can go run in and we can have half a foot of snow and my feet don’t get wet because the snow’s like a powder.

8:54 So, again, I mean, I’ve done rides where, if you’re dressed correctly, my water bottle’s frozen, but I can still ride outside and you get a burnt nose. So, yeah, it’s, you know, what do I say? It’s not bad weather. It’s like inappropriate clothing. But we do do, obviously, when we get the big snow dumps, we do train inside, do lots of zwifting on my bike and running.

9:15 But I swim outdoors. The pool I train in every day of the year is an open-air swimming pool. You know, come rain or shine, we’re training in it. So, you just get it done? Yeah, I mean, yeah, there’s no, with endurance, there’s no real shortcuts at all.

9:30 Yeah, you’ve got to get the miles in. Yeah, well, look, I want to hear about your childhood as far as why you even got to this space and then all the things that happened to you. You had a crazy year. But first, I have to say, I got you here for a bit of a selfish reason because out of a weird change of circumstances, about two months ago, I got challenged to run my first Ironman 70.3. I’ve never done an endurance race or a triathlon or any running race or anything.

9:56 And so, exactly 30 days from today, I’m in Chattanooga, Tennessee to run my race with John Joseph, who is a hardcore punk front man of the Cro-Mags band. He’s been doing triathlons for a while. He’s got nine full finishes, two at Kona, and he’s challenged me to do it on 100% plant-based diet. And so, he’s been in my ear the last few months. I’ve been struggling.

10:18 I’ve been getting a great amount of respect for what you guys do. And I’ve been training every single day, sometimes twice a day. And I was wondering if you could just, first of all, give me some thoughts on what I’ve been going through, what I can expect on that first day, and then what Chattanooga is like. Because you, 70.3 was one of your specialties, wasn’t it? Yeah, 70.3 is a great stepping stone for Ironman.

10:41 So, yeah, most of us primarily race 70.3s, and then we do maybe two Ironman a year, maybe just one. But you, what you just said, you hit the nail on the head. With endurance, especially triathlon, consistency is king. So, the fact you’re saying you’re doing something every day, as opposed to kind of being a weekend warrior and training seven, eight, nine hours at the weekend, then having Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off, you know, that’s not the best thing.

11:06 For your body to adapt, especially if you’re new to endurance, it’s a little and often. And then, hopefully, as your body adapts, it’s a little bit more, but very often. And I think, also, it’s hard to find that balance because of the swimming takes such a different demand on your body than cycling, and then the same with running. And it’s getting that balance of all three disciplines going forward. Do you train your strength so you’re going to make more gains up, or do you train your weakness to catch up?

11:36 Yeah, there’s so many different ways to do it. But, no, I mean, I think you’ll have a great time. We had the World Championships in Tennessee last year. And it’s an awesome, it’s a great little city, and the course is really, really challenging, actually. I think you set you up a little bit there.

11:54 Challenging? Wait, tell me more about this. The swim’s great. Upriver at the start of the swim. But it’s a fast swim because, have you done much open water swimming?

12:06 No. It’s a little bit different. I mean, maybe you probably won’t be able to get in. You may be swimming the Serpentine this weekend, if you fancy it, in a wetsuit. But it is a different feeling.

12:15 There’s no black line to follow with a wetsuit on. I’m not sure if Chattanooga will be a wetsuit swim. It’s temperature dependent. But it’s hustle and bustle. You’re going to get dunked.

12:25 It’s a bit water polo-esque. But you need to get on people’s feet to get the draft. And then with the current, because you swim with the current towards the end, that gives you confidence. You feel you’re going well. And then the bike, literally at four miles into the bike, it’s very flat through the industrial part.

12:44 And then you hit a climb. And it’s a four mile climb. I don’t know, have you ridden out at Richmond Park? Not yet. No.

12:53 So Box Hill, Newlands Corner. Yeah, no of them. So it’s like that, but four miles long. They’re about one and a half to two miles long. It’s a really honest climb.

13:01 And the worst thing you can do is feel like a king because it’s early in the bike and go too hard there. So, you know, later on when the crosswind comes in, which it always does for the last 20 to 30 kilometers, you’ve absolutely spent your pennies on the climb. Okay. And the crosswind just makes it harder. Yeah, because it’s coming from the side.

13:23 So, yeah, I mean, you know, you’re trying to be as aerodynamic as possible and the wind predominantly comes from the right. So, yeah, and it’s just energy sapping. Yeah. I’m not selling this to you, am I? And then…

13:38 Honestly, honestly, I’d rather tell you it’s hard and you’re going, wow, what was he on about? I want to be thinking about Tim in mile four. I’ll be like, all right, here we go. And then the run, there’s bridges and things involved. Yeah, and they’re pretty solid.

13:49 First of all, you go out actually on a freeway. They close one side of it down, and that’s really fast. I think when I raced there, the first five kilometers we did in like 16.08. Yeah, 16, so it’s pretty quick. Then you come back along a beautiful path, you know, along the river, and then you cross the…

14:07 I think it’s the Tennessee River, the Big River. And then you hit the suburbs, and it is like honest hit. Like there’s, you know, within London where we are, you know, along the river, there’s no hill like that. It’s a real, real honest hill. And then what you’ll find is, ah, get to the top, I’m running downhill.

14:24 But by then, your quads are probably a bit fatigued from the cycling, so you need to make sure you’ve taken enough electrolytes, enough salt, so you don’t start cramping up, because then you kind of go across a block, and then you come back up the hill, you’ve gone down, then back, and then you go over this beautiful wooden bridge, just pedestrian across the river, do a loop. You can see the finish line, and then you’ve got to go and do it all again. But yeah, I know, the far side of the river is really hilly.

14:51 It’d be worth, if you could get there a few days earlier, maybe not to run the whole course, but just to look. And because the world champs were there, I think it was on NBC, so you might be able… It could be worth watching some of the pro races just to see different aspects of the course and hear what the commentators normally are pretty clued in, how they describe it, just to give you, but don’t tell John that. Okay, all right. And what about just the anxiety of everything?

15:17 I mean, is there any way to just to kind of… Because the first one, you can’t really teach that, right? Do I just have to stay calm? Yeah, but it’s maybe not as easy as that. No, definitely.

15:29 Everyone deals with it differently. How I like to do it is I’m very practical. Kind of like when you get to transition in the morning, you actually have to do a lot of things. You’ve put your bike in the day before, just for that’s what they make you do. But you kind of have to check your tires, make sure you’ve got enough area and you want to make sure you’re in the right gear.

15:53 So when you jump on the bike, you’re not going slow. You’ve got to put your water bottles in, your gels, your running shoes. Often you’ve got to put your running shoes in a bag and you hang them up on a hook. There’s going to be 2,000 to 3,000 people racing. So can you imagine 2,000 to 3,000 bikes?

16:07 You want to know where your bike is. So you’ve got to walk from the swim exit. There’s my bike. Where do we go with our bike? What’s the shortest way?

16:15 So for me, you know, to calm my nerves, I just go through the practicality of what I need to do, how I need to set up. It might even be worth writing down a bit of a… Maybe this is a bit geeky, a bit of a timeline, because you have to be in your corral at a certain time, so you want to work backwards. You know, maybe you want to do a little jog warm-up. You know, you’re going to need to stop in the port-a-loo probably just to, you know, before you put your wetsuit on.

16:40 Don’t forget anything. Got your Vaseline so you don’t get chafed with your wetsuit. So I like to think of all of these practical things, you know, so hopefully, you know, you’re not too caught up in losing energy, wasted energy through being crazy nervous and whatnot. Okay, now I’m more nervous. I agree.

16:59 Whenever you get anxious, you should go back to preparation, right? Absolutely. And just go into it. I guess maybe that’s true about even a race, when you get anxious, then put the time in, right? So the T1 transition, though, is the tricky one.

17:11 I mean, it is, but if you’ve prepared, you know, like bad preparation, bad performance, you know, it’s often where people get the highest heart rate, believe it or not, just because, you know, they’ve been prone for so long swimming, they stand up and they’re going, they’re sprinting, oh, I want to beat him, he’s just in front of me. But in the grand scheme of a five, six-hour race, rather just relaxing transition. I’m not saying have a cup of tea and sit down like some people do, but don’t, you know, if you’re going to catch them, you’re going to catch them.

17:41 But yeah, you don’t want to get flustered and waste energy and stress and you don’t want to get those stress levels up at that stage when you need to calm down, get on your bike and get back into the zone. Okay, I can see you’re passionate about triathlon. Oh, I mean, sugar, I’ve been racing since the early 90s. Hopefully, you know, you can see, it’s just a great way of life. I mean, I’m living the dream.

18:06 How does a nice kid from London even start this whole process? What made you do it? It’s a peculiar, funny story. I used to run and swim and I love mountain biking. I kind of swam for a squad and I was in the B squad and there was an A squad, so as we would finish our training, the older, the better kids would get in.

18:25 And the coach was a guy called Malcolm and there was always this guy that used to run halfway down the pool and dive in and the coach would always go, Spencer! I was like, oh, crazy. And then I found out he was a triathlete and then the next year I found out he was the world champion and then it’s about a month after I found out that and he must have been like 20, 21 at the time. He turned up in his convertible Mercedes, undid the boot, got out a fluorescent pink bike with these funky wheels and I was like, I want to be that guy.

18:57 And that was how I found out about triathlon and this was all in West London and that’s how I found out about triathlon. And then I used a lifeguard at a Hampton Open Air swimming pool and they had a triathlon club called Thames Turbo and one of the coaches there, you know, I swam with them and he said, oh, no, you’ve got a good swimmer. And I joined the club and the club coach decided he wanted to coach me and I said, yeah, cool. So he gave me some coaching and, yeah, before you know it, I was 14 and I was representing my country for the youth age group at the European Champs and I got fourth and I was like, wow, I’ll take that.

19:40 I got to fly to Finland for a race and, you know, and I say maybe I’m not being totally telling the whole story here. I did get fourth but I was the third Brit. So you’re like the fourth in Europe but you’re the third in Britain. So there was just this era of there was East Grinstead which was maybe, I don’t know, 20 miles away and there were these brothers, the Herbert brothers and they were all three of them were representing Great Britain. There were two other guys who were representing Great Britain as juniors.

20:09 Myself and another guy who I grew up with called Stuart Hayes who he went to London Olympics for triathlon so he’s okay. You know, and it was just a hotbed. And then I joined the running club and then there was a Sam and Ben went to my school. They’ve won medals at European Junior Track Champs. They’ve been to the Commonwealth Games.

20:27 Then after about two years of that, this young guy joined called Mo, our run group. So it was just like running in Bushe Park, seeing the Kenyans running. It was just, I was just, I wouldn’t say born, I was just in the right place at the right time and I really loved the feeling of pushing my body, of running, of swimming and the fact we can put it all together. It was just, back in the day it was just like cool and unique. Yeah, really strange.

20:57 There’s something in the water out there. And that young kid named Mo is Mo Farah who went on to win Olympics in London and in Brazil as well and he’s running the London Marathon this weekend, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, his second marathon, but the first marathon he’s ever prepared for. He’s got his new coach, Gary, so yeah, I’m expecting big things from him. And so you were basically in a hotbed of triathlon activity and it suited you somehow almost perfectly.

21:26 Why does it suit you? I think, you know, I think first of all, you are at an advantage if you’re a good swimmer because it’s the only part of the sport that’s really technique-based. You can be as fit as a fiddle and do one length and your heart rate’s 180 because you’re just thrashing. So I did have, I wouldn’t say an advantage, but I did have that on my side. But, I mean, I like to go to uncomfortable places and the best way for me to do that was like, see how fast I can ride up Box Hill, see if I can beat my lap round Richmond Park.

22:02 And I had all these guys that wanted to do the same as well. And it’s a real, it was a real sense of community. I mean, I was a junior at the time and there were amateurs who were in their mid-20s who were obviously a lot bigger than me, you know, because I was 16, 17, you know, and I was just hanging on to their coattails. And I really liked that. And, you know, you’ll see when you go to Chattanooga, there are a few triathlon geekies out there, but on the whole, everyone’s done the hard work.

22:30 Everyone knows what everyone else is going through. There’s a great amount of respect. And I think there is a passion because to do a 70.3, look how much you’re committing. You know, it’s not like, oh yeah, I’ll do it this weekend. You’ve got a coach, you’re looking at your diet, you’re downloading your diet.

22:46 You know, it is an all-encompassing way of life to a degree. So you don’t want it to get carried away with it, with family and friends. It causes divorces, right? It does, yeah. And the problem is when you buy the bikes and all the equipment, you maybe say, yeah, the bike was only $3,000, you know, when it’s really worth 10.

23:09 And if anything happens and your wife sells it for what you told her you bought it for, then you’re in trouble. But no, I mean, it’s a healthy way of life. It really is, it’s awesome. Yeah, and you said you like going to uncomfortable places. Why do you think that’s true about you?

23:25 I don’t know. I mean, I’m not saying you get bored or I get bored, but you know, life can be so, there’s so much out there to do and I just like challenges and most of the challenges aren’t easy and I fully accept the challenge and I think that’s always been a part, you know, yeah, even when I was younger, I just like doing things, yeah, that are different and when I finished my education, when I finished school, I realized the weather’s not the best to train. So a friend of mine lived in Zimbabwe, so I faxed him back in 97 and he said, yeah, come out.

24:03 So I got a fax saying, yeah, come out. So I told my mum and dad I’m flying to Zimbabwe in a week and I went there for three months and I ended up staying nine months because the weather was awesome, the training was great and I don’t know, it’s just, it’s just, it’s a sport you’ll see that really, really is really self-rewarding and I think that sense of achievement, you know, because I’m sure you’ve got goals with what you want to achieve, I’m sure what you tell everyone, your goals are just a little bit, a little bit above them and I think, you know, that’s what really I love about it. Yeah, for me, I mean, I ran my first like 22K ever and 25K ever and I’m finishing these distances and I’m just like, I’ve never done this in my life and I’m turning 47 soon and it’s just, yeah, big accomplishments, swimming, I’m just getting a little bit better every day and I swam like 3K the other day.

24:52 I mean, I couldn’t swim 300 meters four or five months ago, you know, and I was the guy you described, flustering mess, you know, and so it’s been fascinating just to see a little window on what you guys do. Is the Iron Man full of a bunch of people that are somehow crazy, dysfunctional, addicted to these things or what? I would say half of them, yes, but you’d be amazed, I mean, I’m sure you can look at statistics. There are so many first timers at every event I do.

25:21 You know, dare I say, Iron Man 70.3 to some people has become the new marathon. Hey, I’ve got to do a marathon. I think triathlon is such a young sport. I mean, I couldn’t believe. Boston Marathon last weekend is the 122nd running of the event.

25:37 I just, when I think triathlon had the first world championships in 1989, you know, it’s not, it’s grown at such a quick rate because it is so appealing, it’s so challenging, and anyone can do it, and you’re going to do it and there is going to be professionals there and you’re going to see their times and you’re going to go, I know that course on that hill, on that swim, how, you know, there’s just that sense of not togetherness, but, you know, of like everyone’s in it together. Yeah, I think that’s pretty cool about the sport. And for someone listening to us that has no idea what we’re talking about, what is triathlon?

26:14 And I remember my coach said one time, it’s not three different sports. It’s actually one sport with like three disciplines. Can you explain to people what it is and then the different distances too? So, you know, triathlon is swimming, cycling, and running in that order, and they have various distances. And I would say that the three classic distances are what we call the Olympic distance, which is 1,500 meters swim, 40 kilometer bike, and a 10 kilometer run.

26:41 And then you jump up, roughly double that, to 1.9 kilometer swim, a 90 kilometer bike, and a 21K run, which is what you’re doing, the 70.3. And the reason they call it 70.3 is the whole distance in miles is 70 miles .3. And then you go to the crazy, the full Ironman, which is a 3.9 kilometer swim, 180 kilometer bike, and then a full marathon. And if you’re really crazy, there’s something called the Ultraman, which is a 10 kilometer swim. It is, I think in total, 280 mile bike and then an 80 kilometer run.

27:21 But that is not for the… That’s two bonkers for me. And they do that in Hawaii usually? There’s qualifying races, and then the World Championships are also in Hawaii, about normally early November. Is that what Rich Roll did and got things for?

27:36 Yes. But you don’t play that? No. Is that also a recipe for injury, or is that just a different kind of crazy? It’s a different kind of crazy.

27:45 I think the mental side of that is very large, and you’re pushing your body in different ways, kind of like up to Ironman distance and shorter. You’re on the edge, your heart rate’s close to that red line, but you don’t want to go above it. But with that, you’re kind of going relatively slow, but it’s just that mental game you play with yourself as the endurance goes. And it’s not a professional sport, really. So it’s hard to kind of make a living doing it, which is what we do.

28:22 Wait, so the Ultraman are a professional sport? I mean, it is, but I don’t think there’s any prize money if you win, and so forth. You get the trophy, but yeah. It’s not something you make a living in? No.

28:35 And then when it comes to transition between those disciplines, that’s where it kind of gets interesting, right? And how you train for one and not train for the other, and that’s where the science comes in, and I’m sure you’ve developed all this intellectual property for the last 15 years, but you must have found ways to figure out how to do this, and how to train your body, and you must have developed all sorts of things. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the, you know, it isn’t a swimming, cycling, and running.

29:00 It is one sport. When I first started, everyone was, oh, what are you? I used to be a cyclist. I used to be a runner. Now, I’ve seen on the British Triathlon website, there is a junior development series for seven-year-olds as triathletes.

29:14 So the sport is evolving, and yeah. And I think the biggest thing I can say is it’s the synergy, the synergy of your week. Your coach and yourself have to understand what the energy takes from a run and a cycle and a swim, because you do a hard run and then you’ve got a hard bike, but you’ve got to know, even though it’s a slightly different muscle group, it’s still maybe the running might take more out of you than this, than the biking, so you need to find that balance so, you know, you’re not having like two days hard one day off, three days hard one day off.

29:47 You really want that kind of flow of the week, and for someone like yourself who’s very new to the sport, I can imagine that was challenging for you guys. You know, you were finishing sessions going, I’ve got to run this evening or tomorrow. It’s the weekend. I’ve got to ride, you know, 30 miles, and it is, you know, having faith in your body and fueling your body right. So that’s why, especially you going forward with plant-based diet, it is key not to think I’m hungry.

30:13 If you’re thinking you’re hungry, it’s probably too late, you know, and again, you need the right food groups, you need to get more protein in, more carbohydrate in, to get ready for recovery. But yeah, no, and that’s the challenge. You know, I always say it’s simple to be a cyclist. I’m not saying it’s easy, but you know, just one discipline, but with triathlon, just think of the equipment bags you need in the back of your car. It’s just, yeah, all encompassing, it really is.

30:41 Yeah, I think last weekend on Friday, I swam like 3K and I had to get my wetsuit and go out in the thing, and then on Saturday, it was the 22K run, and then it was Sunday, it was a 75K bike followed by the 5K run, and it nearly killed me. And I was like, white as a sheet. My wife, she’s like, are you sure? I got to do the brick. And I’m running down on my jelly legs, and then Monday’s back to the swim.

31:02 And it’s just like, that’s what you guys do, and you probably do double and triple that. I’ve seen some of your videos. So yeah, it’s much respect to that whole mindset, and it is quite complicated, and there’s gear with each stage. And yeah, nutrition and all that stuff. But after you did that weekend, how did you feel?

31:18 Like, I did it. You know, so I felt great. I did it. And now, funny enough, my swim days feel like rest days. Yeah.

31:24 And so… Active recovery is golden. It’s just this weird thing. So I’m really loving the challenge. I’m learning a lot.

31:30 But I have bad days too. I have bad nutrition days. I get nasty and angry. I’m sure you have some nasty times too. And so you started getting into this, you started getting good, and you started going to Olympics.

31:41 I mean, you know… Yeah. Well, you make it sound so… Yeah. You know, that’s me.

31:46 No, I think… Yeah. I mean, I was… In 1998, I won the Junior World Championships in Lausanne, and that’s where the Olympic, the IOC, are based. And that was the year they announced triathlon will be in…

31:59 For the first time, it will be in the Sydney Olympics. So I went from a junior to like, wow, that’s in two years. If I can pull some things out of the bag, I might be able to represent my country at the Olympics and that was one thing that was gutting is, you know, as a top athlete, you dream of going to the Olympics and my sport wasn’t an Olympic sport. But then it became this Olympic sport. And yeah, over the next two years, 2000… No, sorry, 1999 and 2000, I was able to improve and I got selected, you know, because I did well in the races.

32:32 And I mean, like, there are a few countries where triathlon is huge and Australia is one of them. I mean, it’s a summer sport, let’s be honest. It’s hard as anything to train in the winter. And at the time, they had some world-class, you know, triathletes and it was the first medal event was the women’s triathlon and they won silver. And then the next day, the second day of the Olympics was the men’s race.

32:55 And, you know, it’s in Sydney, it’s free to watch. It’s a multi-lap course because, again, with the Olympic distance for the professionals, normally the swim is two laps and the bike can be anywhere from four to eight laps. So it’s short criteria, lots of corners. And then the run, this was round… Is it MacGregor’s chair down George Street?

33:16 So I think it was two laps of 5K. Oh, my gosh, the crowds were just insane. And I remember I was on the start line, I was myself and a Spanish guy, Yvonne Rana. We were the youngest two who were there. And I remember just looking behind me and I got to Sydney Opera House right there.

33:34 That’s where we dove off. You’ve got the bridge and I’m thinking, wow, man, this is like… And it was the second day of the Olympics and then I could enjoy watching the rest of the British team compete. And, yeah, I always say this and I highly recommend it. If you can, go and watch an Olympics.

33:51 You know, it’s just all encompassing. It’s just fantastic. The whole city comes alive. I mean, when I was here for London watching and how cool was London for those two and a half, three weeks, it really is a celebration of sports. Yeah, it’s amazing.

34:08 One of the highlights of my career going to the Olympics. It’s going to the Olympics, okay. And what is the Olympics not? Like, what would we not know what it’s not? I mean, is it difficult?

34:17 Can it be anticlimactic? You know what? Yeah, I mean, it’s depressing. I would say there are, you know, in most sports there are three type of athletes that go to the Olympics. There are the athletes that just want to go to the Olympics and they qualify and they have won because they’re representing their country.

34:33 There are guys that are fighting for a podium and get fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and they’ve put four years, four years of their life, like a business meeting, four years of your life and you just miss the contract. And it’s 24 hours a day training, you know, what we do. We can’t turn off. And those guys, it’s hard. It’s a hard pill to swallow.

34:54 And then there’s the guys that get on the podium and that’s why we’re there. That’s what we live for. But because of that, and there’s only three and it’s every four years, man, it’s hard as anything to win an Olympic medal. That’s why anyone that’s won an Olympic medal, I’ve got so much respect for, and anyone that’s won, I don’t know how, Stephen Redgrave, five days over a period of kind of 20 years, he was the best in the world in what he did. That’s just like, that’s just mind-blowing, yeah.

35:29 That means like every hour of every day, you have to be physically, emotionally, doing the business, prepared, everything. Yes, I mean, you know, it’s kind of like, you know, you’re almost, you are kind of, in a way, you’re self-employed, but the harder you work, the better you become. So the more you put into it, the better the result will be, the better the performance will be. And I’m not saying, oh, you should go to bed at 9.30 every night and not have alcohol and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

36:02 But there has to be a balance because, you know, too much obsession is very unhealthy in anything in life. But definitely, there is, yeah, it is work and reward. It is especially triathlon. The endurance sports, you know, there’s, again, I’m probably an annoying, you know, there are some sports which talent, you know, golfers. I mean, those guys train hard, but sugar, I could train 10,000 hours.

36:25 I am not going to hit a golf ball in a straight line. But with endurance sport, as you’ll see, you’ve done how many weeks training now? Yeah, probably 10 weeks. And how much has your swim improved? It’s massive.

36:37 And that is just through hard work, you know, good coaching, hard work. And the reward for that for you is just like, you know, when you look back on this, whether you do another triathlon or not, man, you’ve learned, you know, you’ve learned something, those dark places on those 5K runs off the bike, you’re learning about yourself and, you know, that commitment you have. And I think, yeah, definitely endurance sports and triathlon really, really shows that because it is so hard to balance the three sports.

37:04 You seem like you could get obsessive about that. That’s what my wife says, Kelly. I guess that’s why I’m still doing it. Was the family in a bit of a way to get you off being too obsessed? Do you have things in your life that give you balance?

37:20 Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I do. My wife’s amazing. She’s so grounded. And I’m lucky. She used to be an international runner, so she gets the not going out at the weekend, the sleeping in the day.

37:33 The fact that my training isn’t just the training. You know, when I finished, you know, a 200 kilometer bike ride and a 10 kilometer run off it, she can’t just go, here’s Hugo, our three-year-old. You’re looking after him for the afternoon. She knows I need to eat something, have my protein shake, you know, do some stretching. You know, but no, definitely my rock and my balance is my family.

37:53 I mean, I’ve got a three-year-old son, Hugo, and a seven-year-old daughter, Matilda. And, you know, in Colorado, we are lucky. We can go outside, you know, so we’re always going for walks. And Hugo’s on his Strider bike. Matilda’s riding.

38:06 She goes to run club at school. And definitely my family is definitely my balance, absolutely. Nice. Yeah. How did you get into Iron Man then?

38:15 You know, Iron Man is, again, I’ll take the running comparison. You know, I did the Olympic distance racing, which is a one-hour 40 to one-hour 50 race. And that’s a bit like track running, 5,000 and 10,000. Right. I’m not getting any younger.

38:30 And as you get older, you lose your speed. And it’s also a very demanding circuit, the world triathlon circuit. So you have to travel all the time and be there. Absolutely. Okay.

38:42 I mean, you know, the first race is normally in Australia. Then you’ve got two in Japan. Then you maybe go to Canada, America, back to Europe. Then Bermuda. You know, and then you’ve got to go a week before, stay a few days after.

38:55 Then you have training camps at high altitude. And it is very taxing. But it’s more, you know, and now I’ve got to the stage where as I got older, I was losing the speed. You know, so like running, you maybe go to half marathon and marathon. So then you go up to 70.3.

39:10 And it took me about a season to find my feet and change the style of training because it is very, you know, very different. And then you make the decision, do you want to do an Ironman? Because if you’re doing an Ironman, it’s feet first. It’s all in. And I liked 70.3.

39:27 And I said, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. So I did my first Ironman in 2014 in Mallorca. And that was, yeah. And then, yeah, I did okay. So I thought, yeah, I’ll do a few more.

39:40 Is it double the training for the full Ironman or is that not the way of looking at it? It’s not the way of looking at it. I mean, it’s not double. It’s maybe only a quarter more, but it’s just the style of training. You know, maybe you do slightly less swimming.

39:53 You have to do more biking because for me, it’s roughly an eight hour race. But four hours to four hours 20 is on the bike. So that is, you know, similar to when you race the of your overall time, the largest section is on the bike. So that’s where you can, that’s where you can afford to give more energy and you get such aerobic crossover from the cycling. That aerobic, you know, when you’re riding for two, three hours, that’s going to help your, you know, your aerobic capacity on the run and on the swim.

40:23 So that’s really good as well. Yeah, but it’s more of a, it’s a different sort of mental. You know, I described the short Olympic distance racing. It’s a nice pick to the leg. It’s painful.

40:35 You’re running out of transition as fast as you can go. There are tactics involved on running on people’s shoulder. If you attack, I attack and you’re in pain. Well, Ironman is, you can’t race like that for eight hours. So it’s like a toothache.

40:47 It’s just that dull ache. And who can, who can sustain the most amount of toothache is often the winner. Who is the Ironman, the strongest athlete that can get to the line? Yeah, that’s definitely. And it’s different, all of a sudden nutrition becomes key to keep your body functioning for four hours and then for eight hours, you need to take in calories, take in electrolytes, you know, Hawaii.

41:11 You know, we start at, I think, 645 in the morning. So we’re running the marathon midday and in Hawaii, it’s 85% humidity. It’s like 30 degrees. You’re already fatigued. So there are so many facets of the sport, which I, you know, which you’ve got to focus on as well.

41:28 It’s not just being hard and going out riding on water and was it a bulletproof coffee? Right. So it’s that going to the pain level and not trying to go all out. It’s just that weird mental state and then having the body and the nutrition and everything. Yeah.

41:43 And so you kind of put all that together last year to get this world record. Can you tell me what that was like and did you see it coming? And did anybody see it coming? I think my coaches saw it coming. I didn’t see it coming at all.

41:57 I mean, I’d won a few Ironmen in the past but not a major championships. And, you know, to be competitive in Kona, Hawaii, the world championships, you want to put a fast time. So I really, and I knew the course was fast because in 2016, Brent won McMahon, a Canadian, and he missed the world record by about, the then world record by about 40 seconds. So it’s a fast course. But like anything, like marathon running, London’s a fast, Rotterdam, wow.

42:26 It’s a crazy, you need the weather though. You know, you’ve got to have the weather. So my goal was to be competitive and hopefully win, get on, you know, because I got second in it the year before so I really wanted to win a major Ironman. And what is the mindset? Do you go in saying, I’m going to win?

42:42 No, that’s arrogant. And arrogant and can hurt you. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it’s such a long day in the office, you know, that there are so many ups and downs and you can control what you can control. If you’re riding quicker than me and I’ve got a certain plan and I change it with that attitude, I’m going to win.

43:03 I’m going to blow my socks off. And, you know, so you have to have, you have to have confidence in your own ability and the training you’ve done, the coaches you’ve got. You know, there are some things you might change on the fly slightly. You have to have that, you know, what if this happens, what if that happens, etc. But on the whole, it’s a very individual race.

43:22 You are racing, you know, for the first part, you are racing yourself. You know, obviously the latter part of the run, if someone’s a minute ahead or a minute behind, then you are playing that game. When you get splits on John and you’re like, am I going to catch him, am I not? You know, that’s when that side of the fight or flight kind of comes in. And do you have a mantra that you say in your head?

43:45 I always say train hard, race easy. You know, and some people misinterpret that, that train hard means absolutely killing yourself every day. But it’s having a training program, looking at it, believing in it and doing what your coaches say. That to me is training hard. It’s not a case of always swimming at the front, running at the front, going as hard as you, PB, PB, PB, you know, training’s smart.

44:11 And then race day should be relatively easy in terms of the execution because you’ve done the work, you believe in the work. Your coach has said you can do X, Y, Z. And that’s all you need to do. It’s an expression session of all of those hours of training that no one sees. And what goes through your mind on that race day?

44:31 Are you thinking about the practicality of what’s happening? Do you kind of, does your mind wander? Do you think about being on the podium at the end? You know, on the whole, I like to, you know, you actually have to think quite a lot within the race because, you know, as the races go in, there are lots of things you need to do. You know, in the swim, you need to make sure you’re swimming in a straight line.

44:52 You’re following the right person. You know, your goggles aren’t leaking. Then towards the end of the swim, you’re kind of, where’s my bike? Okay, here. You know, and all of a sudden, that’s the first hour gone.

45:03 Then once you’re on the bike, you need to make sure you’re, you’ve got your nutrition strategy right. Your water bottle hasn’t jumped off going over a speed bump. You know, your pacing’s right. You can’t ride, this is another, you can’t ride too close to the person in front. So, and we have, we call them draft busters on motorbikes saying, you know, so you have to make sure you’re not too close to someone.

45:25 But if you’re too far, someone’s going to overtake you and then if everyone does that, you’re just going backwards and everyone’s, so there are lots of things. So I’m very much focused on the process, not the goal. But in saying that, of course, the winemund, you know, you’re having a good race or you’re in contention at certain points and you’re like, wow, what if I, oh my gosh, oh wow, what this, you wanna be, you know, of course you do. I’m gonna be honest.

45:50 And what was it like that last five miles, none of that race? You know, it was, it’s still hard. You know, I mean, I guess arguably I had, I mean, I won the race by over 20 minutes, so I had the race sewn up. But you’ve done so much that I would rather, rather race scared than race, hey, I’m the man, I’m the king. You know, that’s, for me, that’s just, you know, so you’re still thinking don’t cramp, you know, don’t go too quick because you don’t wanna make sure, you know, I’m still taking, you know, I’m still sticking to my strategy of my energy gels, my water, you know.

46:25 And one of my good friends, Leo, was there with about a kilometer and a half to go, I guess a mile to go, and he’s like, you’re gonna do it, you’re so close, it’s awesome. And when you’ve been racing for the best part of seven and a half hours, it’s like, you’re gonna do it, you’re really close. Does that mean I’m like 10 seconds above the world record or a minute or two minutes? So I’m like, wow, I can’t really enjoy this too much, I can enjoy it, but I still had to, you know, you couldn’t start kissing the guns by fiving everyone and so forth.

46:55 And I remember turning into the home straight thinking, oh, and the clock that has the finishing time was facing away from me, so when they take a picture of everyone crossing the line, it’s got their time. So even then, I wasn’t sure if I’d truly done it, and it wasn’t until I crossed the line and I could look behind, and it was more then, it was more like relief. And then it was like, wow, I just beat it by four minutes? And then it was like, oh my God, what did I just do?

47:24 Yeah, I mean, yeah, you dream of those days, but they come across so seldomly where, you know, it wasn’t perfect, but 99% of seven hours, 40 minutes went right for me. And you can have days like that, but it’s a tough course, and you can go 20 minutes slower, but it’s just as good as performance. So I was lucky I had that performance with fantastic weather conditions on a fast course. And you were 39 years old at the time. I was 39, yeah, yeah.

47:55 And how did your life change the next few months? I mean, was there a lot of recognition? No, I mean, I still had to put the rubbish out when I got home. You know, I still took my daughter to school. No, triathlon, it’s, you know, I mean, it’s getting more recognition in the mainstream media, but no, my life did not change.

48:16 If anything, it put more pressure on, because all of a sudden, I went from someone who could be a contender to someone who is a contender for Kona. You know, I had a week, 10 days off, went on holiday with my family, but you’re only as good as your last race. So back to the drawing board, you know. Let’s try and make me bulletproof. And obviously, preparing for different races, you know, we do our research.

48:42 Hawaii is a lot slower. It’s a lot hotter. And also, there are so many Ironman and 70.3 races. Very rarely are more than five of the top best guys in the world racing each other on the same course, while in Kona, everyone who’s anyone is there. So the dynamics of the race changed, so you have to take that into consideration.

49:04 So for me, it was like, I’ve proven myself, I still want to be the world champion. Right, and you were feeling good, and you were ready to go at Kona. Yeah, no, I was feeling like my numbers were better than they were leading up. I was in a good place. I was hanging out with my friends.

49:22 I was relaxed. Mentally, I was not as nervous as I was the previous years going into Kona. Yeah, I was really excited. I was excited. Yeah, I was looking forward to racing.

49:33 Now, I was just watching you when you described the Sydney Olympics, and you said, I turned around to look at the Opera House, and you turned about this far. And so most people watching us think that, you know, you’re just a normal guy, and you’re completely physically fit, but something happened two days before Kona that’s defined your life for the last six months. Can you walk us through those events? Yeah, I mean, talk about life turned on a dime. Yeah, it was a Wednesday, the race is Saturday, it was a Wednesday, went for a nice swim.

50:01 There’s a catamaran about 400 meters out with coffee. I swam out, had a coffee, you know, seriously. Follow me in Hawaii. I know, it’s awesome. And then came back, had breakfast with some friends, and then I had my last bike ride.

50:14 I was riding easy in the cycle lane on the Queen K, and once you get past the airport, there’s less traffic, so I was going to start my session, and there was a petrol station, I’m on the right side of the road, there’s a petrol station on my right, and then a car coming towards me, or there was a truck coming towards me, thought he’d zip in front of me to get petrol, and unfortunately he either didn’t see me, or didn’t, I mean, I wasn’t going crazy fast, I was going maybe 21, 22 miles an hour, he didn’t see how fast I was going, and I got T-boned, and yeah, I was unconscious for the best part of an hour, and after multiple scans, cat scans, MRIs, X-rays, unfortunately, yeah, I broke my neck, and I couldn’t race, which was very disappointing, let me tell you.

51:00 What was that like getting that news in the emergency room? Oh, I mean, heartbreaking, I mean, I’d had a few scans, and you know, I had a stiff neck, and I’ve never been hit by a car, a vehicle before, but I’d crashed before, and my shoulder was really, really sore, and I thought, oh, I’ve broken my collarbone, the old classic, they X-rayed that and said, so I was like, brilliant, it’s a bit stiff, I’ve got three days, my physio was there as well. You’re still thinking you’re going to race?

51:26 Well, yeah, I thought I’d whiplash, they put, everyone puts the collar on, you know, when you have a head injury, I had big indentations here from the helmet, from where I’d hit it head on, and I thought, yeah, it is a bit sore and stiff, but to be honest, the pain was mostly coming here, because you’ve got so many tendons and ligaments, you know, if they get all annoyed, that it’s quite painful, and I remember it was the second MRI, I was laying on the bed, and they slipped this silk, but it wasn’t silk, like a piece of material under me so they can drag me across easier, so a nurse would hold my ankles, I think it was my hips and my head, and they’d go one, two, three, put me on the MRI, and then the MRI machine would come up, and when I finished, they’d take me off, and I went in for the second scan, and then over there, you got the ear things in, they’re saying, yep, you finished, and all of a sudden, eight nurses come in, and I’m like, oh, what’s going on?

52:21 One gets my ankles, one gets my calves, my knees, here, and all of a sudden, I’m going, what’s going on? What, what, what? No, no, no, we can’t, and obviously they can’t tell you, and then I was like, nah, this is not good, why have they gone from this to that? Everyone’s going, okay, on three, not, you know, everyone’s like, and then even walking in the corridor on the wheelie bed, instead of just one nurse pulling me, there’s like two at the front, two there, you know, and I’m just thinking, oh my God, and I get back there, and my manager Franco’s there, Julie, my coach, Pat, one of my best mates, and great good training partners, he’d flown out just to watch me race, there, there, and they’re like, oh, how, and I said, oh, we don’t know, but it’s not good, oh no, you don’t know that, and I go, look, and they were like, oh, okay, sugar, and I guess they saw things differently, you know, and then, yeah, the doctor came in, and the scans had been sent on Lulu, and they said, yeah, you’ve fractured your C2, and we need to do, you know, some more scans, but you’ve broken your neck, you’re not racing, because at that stage, they said, well, maybe in five weeks, you know, you can race, and I’m thinking, well, it’s October, so there’s a good race I want to do in Pukon, Chile in January, there’s also South Africa, yeah, so I could do, yeah, and I’m thinking like this, and then once they tell you you’ve broken your neck,

53:37 You’re like, oh God, then they took blood, so they could, so just in case they had to have surgery, because they’ve got to operate on it, and then it just like, by then, and also then I hadn’t taken any medication, really, because if I want to race, you know, you can’t, and then I said, oh, I’m so much pain, so then they gave me some morphine, and that’s when it, that next couple of hours was, I don’t know, I guess emotional, you know, I mean, you literally go from hero to zero, you know, from wanting to achieve a goal to them locking the door and telling you, yeah, through no fault of your own, yeah, gutting. And so what do you think in your future is at that point? To be honest, right then, I had no idea.

54:23 I mean, I was, yeah, I mean, I was more, Franco was there, and I said, look, you’ve got to tell Kelly, because Kelly wasn’t there, my wife, she was in Colorado, because with social media, there’d already been stuff on Facebook about it, and I didn’t want her, someone to go, oh, Tim’s had an accident, what’s happened? I heard he’s in hospital. You always think the worst, so, you know, there’s some practical things and whatnot, but right then, I literally, I mean, sugar, by then, I kept on wiggling my toes, going like this with my fingers.

54:53 You know, I didn’t know what to expect, and then they said it’s the right lateral mass that’s quite badly broken, and they wanted to do an MRI under contrast, which is where they inject you as you get MRI’d and it sends a dye through your blood, because they were worried that the blood vessels that go up and down, and C2 is kind of like here, so it’s the base of your, you know, when I think C2, you know, I think down here, but it’s actually right up there, and they were really worried that the blood vessels going into my brain might get impinged or blocked, and then you get a small blood clot, and then there, then there’s obviously brain damage, you know, so they were really worried about that, and when they’re describing that to me, I’m, yeah, I’m just, what the, what’s just happened?

55:40 How did this happen? This is insane. And then, yeah, they said after that, the guy, the radiologist guy, or the guy that looked at the scan and said, it’s stable, we can airlift you to Honolulu, and we can, you know, we could fuse it, but it is stable at the moment, so where do you live, and obviously I said Colorado, they said, we give you permission to fly, and then you, but you have to see someone there, and they wouldn’t let me leave the hospital until I had a specialist appointment lined up, so I was crazy lucky that my coach knew someone who I actually, I knew as well, called Dr. V, who is a brain and spinal surgeon, neurosurgeon actually, and he’s also a triathlete, and he was willing to see me the next day, like, no appointment, get off the plane, and my great friend Patrick, he flew home with me, and so he missed watching the race, he got out to watch, so I know, that’s pretty cool.

56:42 So you come home and they give you a few options, and this is when, it’s a big decision for you, you know, you’re 40 at this point, or turning 40? No, 39. And so what are the options they give you, and what’s going through your mind? Well, they say they gave me three options, but really they gave me one option. There were three options, I mean, as soon as Dr. V saw the scans, he said, we need to stabilise this, the better we can stabilise that part of your neck, the more complete you’re recovering, so you can carry on wearing, I think it’s called an Aspen collar, so quite an aggressive neck collar that’s plastic and whatnot, and it comes up onto your chin, but you are going to get movement from it.

57:26 We could fuse it, so they would put two titanium rods and fuse C1 and C2, one either side, so the only problem with that is C2 is left and right and C1 is up and down, so when you fuse them, you’re probably looking at limiting 50% of your head movement and doing what I do, that’s probably not the best. No way, basically. And also he did say, later on in life, which is also really, you know, it’s going to put pressure on the other vertebrae, and there is a chance you might need later operation, another fusion of C3, C4, or you can wear the halo, which is what I recommend.

58:05 I said, cool, let’s go for the halo, and it’s basically a plaster cast for your neck. When you break your wrist here, you put that plaster cast on, you can wiggle here and you can move here, but you can’t, you know, and the bone is set in perfectly. So he said, yeah, you can wear a halo. And the halo looks like some type of really crazy medieval torture device, right? Yes, I mean, it’s called a halo because there’s a carbon ring, and then from it there are these two carbon poles that one gets attached here and here and on your back, and then it’s a big plastic plate all the way down to here, and the same on your back.

58:43 And then how they attach it to your skull is they drill two holes into your skull here, and then they shave two patches and they drill two holes in, and then they get these titanium bolts, which are really quite sharp, and they get an allen key. It’s a torque wrench, and then they tighten it, and then basically from here to here, you’ve got no, you just cannot move. And that way the C2 is in one position, and it calcifies and heals ideally. And then the thing that they really were worried about is also the curvature of my spine and the gaps between my vertebrae, you know, because if you’ve got the soft collar on, you might always favor one side, and the neck has a kink in it, and it can affect your nerves, and for the whole time I had the halo.

59:28 Every three weeks I was going back for scans and X-rays and doctors, and they’d still always ask me, can you feel your fingers? Have you had any tingles? Have you lost your bladder control as well? So it’s not like you get the halo, you’re out the woods. There’s still quite a lot of, yeah, process that needs to go on while you’re wearing it.

59:48 And you’re sleeping, standing up, sitting down. Yeah, I mean, the first three weeks, I was on quite heavy painkillers, not so much for the neck, more for the screws. I mean, you know, they give you a low-clinesthetic, but there’s not much flesh there, so it’s just like, so if they inject it into your gum, there’s quite a lot of flesh to absorb it and spread it. But here, so it was quite painful, I must admit, when they’re screwing them into your skull. And then, yeah, I mean, it’s a foreign body, so every day, twice a day, my wife had to clean them with hydrogen peroxide.

1:00:25 I couldn’t wear, I couldn’t put anything over my head because I’ve got this big thing. I had to cut all my T-shirts, like those guys in Venice, is it South Beach? Yeah, I mean, I slept in a chair. I actually slept, I slept like this because if I leant back here, the brace would angle and then it would, ugh, and it would talk more pressure. So it was painful, so literally, because I slept like this and you can’t, when you close your jaw, you use all your muscles and I couldn’t really use the top one, so I ended up going, with my, and ugh, yeah, it just wasn’t, it just wasn’t nice.

1:01:01 How do you deal with that emotionally? I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know how I did it. I mean, yeah, it’s hard, I mean, you know, it’s not just the halo, it’s just, what, you know, I’m not saying what got taken away from me, but I never got a chance to fight for it, you know, and, you know, it’s just, yeah, it’s just heartbreaking. I mean, you know, there’s, I mean, you lean on a lot of people, you know, I was so thankful for my family, my friends, you know, even the larger triathlon community, but, yeah, no, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t recommend it.

1:01:39 I really wouldn’t. At one point you said you were trying to get out to the garage to get the Allen wrench and loosen them up. I mean, they gave me painkillers, I think it was like a codeine-based drug, and then you’re really tense, and, you know, they want you to relax so your body, you know, can just relax a lot. So they gave me, I think, like, it wasn’t valium, but it was like a relaxant, and it just did not agree with me. So when you, and I said, I’m going to throw up, I’m going to throw up, and when you throw up, you kind of, you’ve got that, and can you imagine, you just cannot, you know, I’m not, you cannot move it.

1:02:16 So every time I was throwing up, these screws are just digging in, digging in, and I said, Kelly, I’m going to the garage to get an Allen key and taking this bloody thing off. I mean, oh, yeah. As he said, it’s so, like, it is from like a medieval torture chamber. It’s amazing, and, you know, there’s a whole documentary movie about this that’s happening, and there’s a trailer out now, and they can just see what that structure was like. So it’s pretty incredible to watch.

1:02:44 It seemed like the light at the end of the tunnel happened when you were, when you said, when you were able to just start training a little bit, right? And that’s when it seemed like you got back to something that you love. Oh, without a doubt, I mean, when you do something for your whole life, because you love it, and it gets taken away from you, and you’re so incapacitated, sat in a chair. Yeah, it was about a month after I persuaded my manager and coach to take me to the gym, and I just jumped on an exit, not jumped.

1:03:15 I slowly crambled on an exit. A month later, I mean, come on. I should have been three weeks, and I’d be ahead of the curb now. And I just sat on an exercise bike, and, you know, I was riding at about, I think it was about 80 watts for five minutes, and for me, I felt like a king. You know, I felt like I was finally doing something.

1:03:34 It was a release. Yeah, and I thought, you know what? I can do this. We can do this every day. I can do a little bit.

1:03:42 And then I started thinking, you know, there’s not, I can’t go out and train 30 hours a week, you know, like I normally do, but when the halo comes off, and hopefully my neck’s better, and, you know, it’s all worked, I’m going to slowly increase my training load, and my body wouldn’t have trained for the best part of four and a half months. And that’s never happened, not since I was like a little, never, you know. I was always out. I never had a, you know, I wasn’t into Ataris, Commodore 64s, Nintendos.

1:04:13 I was always outside. And I was like, I don’t want to get injured with an unrelated injury. So I said, look, we need to make my legs, my hips, my calves, my hamstrings, you know, my shoulders. You know, I don’t want to get sore shoulders. We need to make everything as bomb-proof as possible.

1:04:28 And that was my new goal. It was to slowly increase my gym work, my strength work, slowly increase that aerobic work on the gym bike. And I was just wearing a tracksuit, you know, to being able to ride on my own turbo trainer, not on my time trial bike, but on a road bike with the handlebars, you know, like, you only do the paper round and you turn your handlebars like that, you know, riding like that. And I think definitely that was a big turning point for me because I felt I had purpose again because when you’ve done something your whole life, and it’s the only career you’ve had, and it gets taken away from you, and you’re like, well, what am I going to do now?

1:05:03 I’m still, you know, I had turned 40 by now. You know, by now, you know, it’s like, yeah, what do you do with the rest of your life when all you know is something and it’s been taken away from you? So, you know, that was a driving force, was to get back to what I love. You know, at that stage, sure, you know, I said, yeah, I want to race again, but to be honest, I didn’t know at that stage. You know, I was living day to day.

1:05:29 You know, I mean, you know, sometimes the screws would come loose, I could feel them and my head would swell up so I’d have to go back and then they’d have to tighten it. At one stage, I actually had to have a CAT scan, not on my neck, but on my halo, because this front screw, they realized that I think it was the fourth time I was going in for them to tighten it, and every time they tightened it, it was going deeper into my skull, and they were worried it was going to punch in my skull, and then, obviously, that’s not so good. Go into your brain, basically.

1:06:01 Basically, so they decided, so they have a retainer bolt, so they unscrewed that, and to give you guys an idea, when you’re tightening up your bike, your seat post, you tighten it up, you torque it to about 4 or 5 newton meters. Okay, until I can’t do it anymore and it’s pretty tight. Your ten is pretty tight. Well, these were done to 8, so the recommended for your bike is 4 to 5, and it was so, however tight you did it, they were having to do these in, and it had become finger loose, and how many times has your bolt come that loose?

1:06:33 It’s quite hard with all the vibrations. So they said, no, we’ve got to take it out, and then they had to drill another hole in right next to it. So I actually had five screws blooming in my head, not four. You get some strange looks in the gym when you’re walking around with that halo. Oh, yeah.

1:06:51 Not so much initially in the gym, but then I became the gym junkie, because I was in there like two hours every day, and I wasn’t, normally if I’m in there, I’ve got my headphones on, I’m doing my thing, and I’m out, but it was relatively, I didn’t want to get my heart rate too high, and also I couldn’t shower properly, so once I started doing more, you’ve got this sheepskin, but it wasn’t real sheepskin thing here. It starts to smell, and it’s so painful and complicated for my wife to have to undo the brace while I’m laying down and try and get, oh, it’s not very nice, but I became, I could see what, oh, they don’t really train, and they have their latte. I became the, I could see all the gossip in the gym.

1:07:32 It was really a different sort of gym life than I’d ever experienced. And so I saw some other footage of you running in what looked like some type of, I don’t know, bladder instrument, like a water bed you were running in. I mean, what was that? So when the last thing I could do through vibration is once the halo was off, was run, because it’s got that oscillation of your whole spine and there’s impact from your feet. So I still had my, by then I’d had the halo off and I had a very severe strong collar on.

1:08:07 It’s called an Alto G treadmill, so it’s an anti-gravity treadmill. So it was designed for NASA to have that weightlessness, and then Paula Radcliffe bought them, not bought them, sorry, they became famous through her, because she used to add supplementation miles. So basically it’s like a kayak, you know, when you put that cover when you go kayaking, so you put these neoprene shorts on and you zip yourself in, you stand there like that, you press a button and it weighs you and lifts you up.

1:08:39 Then it’s, from anywhere in here, it’s totally an enclosed environment and it weighs yourself, works out your 200 kilograms, and then you put a percentage in. So say you put 50 in, it lifts you up 50% of your body weight and then it’s a treadmill, so the impact is a lot. So say you weigh 100 kilograms, it’s like running being 100 kilograms. So for me it was like running like I was a Kenyan and I was like, whoa, and it’s just a way to load impact. So they’re a great tool for when you’re injured, but for me it was perfect.

1:09:10 But literally I started 30 seconds run, 30 seconds walk, 30 seconds run. I did that for like, I think it was like eight minutes and that was it for the day. And then we had to see, was it extra painful? Was it this? So yeah, there were various tools we were trying to use and think to try and get me in the best shape possible.

1:09:30 And then you start slowly progressing. I see you getting on your bike at one point, but you’re over on your bike, but you can’t look up. No. It’s this weird position, so you’re training on it, but you can’t still move your neck, but you’re trying slowly to get closer. Yeah, I mean, I rode indoors a lot on the trainer, but yeah, no, I mean, yeah.

1:09:49 I think the biggest mistake of Dr. V was saying, well, you go at your own pace. But in saying that, every time I went back for a scan, they were always super happy. They said the curvature looks good, the gaps between your vertebrae. So I was pushing it.

1:10:05 I mean, and I was getting lots of physio by now. You know, once the halo was, even when the halo was on, I was still, you know, one of my physios was able to get his hand in here and he’s a Venezuelan guy called Marcus. You’re so tight. You’re not training. You’re still so tight.

1:10:20 Just because your whole body is just so tense. And again, I had massive scar tissue here. You’ve got tiny, tiny muscles that had just withered away. When I took the halo off, my whole chest and upper body, I’d lost so much muscle mass just from not moving, literally, because you just cannot. You hinge from here, you know, you can lift things, but that’s it.

1:10:44 So yeah, there were lots of different challenges, obviously through the broken neck, but that were related to it, but nothing to do with the neck itself. So yeah, that was, in a way, was good for me because I felt, you know, those were my challenges and they were, you know, kind of almost took my mind off the fact I had a broken neck and I might not ever race again. Let’s just focus on the now and the here. And you were swimming with a snorkel on because you couldn’t turn your head to breathe, right?

1:11:14 Yeah. I mean, even now, I still can only swim. I’ve only swam, I think 3,000 meters is the longest I’ve swam without a snorkel. And then what happens is I get out and I go, I didn’t feel so bad, but I’m actually stood like this just because the muscles are just so tight and my stroke has changed a little bit. It’s not as fluid.

1:11:32 So we are slowly weaning me off the snorkel. And I think going forward, I believe that’s going to be my biggest challenge. I think aerobically, I can get back to where I was, you know, physically on the bike and on the running. I believe I can, but it’s just the practicality of the rain. You know, they said with the halo, there’s a 90% chance of 100% recovery.

1:11:56 And I said, well, you know, is it going to be like four months after I get the halo off? Is it going to be two months? Is it a year? And they said, look, Tim, we have no idea. What do you mean you have no idea?

1:12:06 They said, you’re so far ahead of the curve. We don’t know how long, but you’ve got to respect it. And, you know, you get to end range doing this, and that’s it, but it doesn’t hurt. When I get to end range, I get like this sciatica shooting pain coming up my neck. And, you know, like if I stand, this is my good side.

1:12:27 And literally, that is all I can turn that way. So there’s still, for what I need and want to do, that I’m still, in some areas, a long way to go. But in obviously other areas, running a marathon, you know, I’m not too far away. Is that your normal breathing side? Yes, and the fracture was on the right side.

1:12:48 I breathe to my left, and normally, oh, I haven’t done it for nearly six and a half months now. I normally sleep on my tummy with my head that way. I dream of sleeping like that guy. So I am, yeah, that is my favorite side. And the physio, again, I get physio three times a week.

1:13:04 I get soft tissue work once a week. I’ve got hours of exercises I do, of stretches, of self-massage, and, you know, all of these things. And the physio was really, you know, once you can start to breathe, it’s that repetition you are going to… And I must admit, as stiff as it gets, once we get these, my range has dramatically increased over the last two and a half weeks where I’ve been able to swim slightly longer without the snorkel. So it is coming, but at the end of the day, I’ve looked at the rules, you can’t race with a snorkel.

1:13:35 Right, so we still work on that. So, yeah. Why run the Boston Marathon? You know, I’ve never run a marathon except in an Ironman, and, you know, this came up through on one of my sponsors. You know, Olivia, who is the founder of the company, they make running shoes, was a professional athlete for 15 years.

1:13:55 I used to race against him back in the day, and through him and Laddie, who’s the athlete manager, they came up with this idea, and they said, look, we want to help you, we want to tell your story, but we appreciate, it’s quite, I don’t know, intimate, but it’s quite personal, you know. And I have a think about it, so I chatted to Kelly, and I said, yeah, OK, let’s make this documentary. I’ll meet the filmmaker and see if we kind of get on and whatnot. And at the end, you could run Boston Marathon.

1:14:27 I was like, what, the Boston Marathon? Yeah, definitely, OK. Kelly’s like, what? What are you running a marathon for? Are you stupid?

1:14:34 And I said, no, no, I’ll be fine. I won’t run it hard. I just run it easy. And I still had the halo on at this stage, and, you know, for me, it was, I had this goal, and, yeah, I think, you know, I think that’s one of the things that’s kept me going, and I must admit, though, leading up to it, my longest run before it was only 27 kilometers, and that was only six days before the race. And I’d only done about, because I got ill as well, about a month before I was in bed with the flu for a week, which normally is OK, but I’m like, I’m on a timeline here.

1:15:07 You know, this is knocking me back. So I’d only done about, I would say, three weeks of good running, but about four and a half weeks of running before the marathon. And I went from, I want to finish, I’d love to run three hours, to someone printed somewhere that I wanted to run 250, and all of a sudden I’m going, oh, my gosh, the pressure, the pressure! Which you responded to, obviously. Yeah, I did, I guess, you know.

1:15:32 And the conditions were brutal. Oh, I mean, if that’s what marathon running is like, I’m not up for that. I mean, it was a point-to-point marathon with a slightly more downhill than uphill, but as I found out, that’s probably not the best because you’re just loading your quads. But we had a headwind the whole way. The wind chill factor, I think, officially on active weather was minus two, and it was driving rain just coming up you.

1:15:56 It was, I wouldn’t say it wasn’t pleasant, but, oh, the conditions were, yeah. I mean, I think the men were over 10 minutes off the time they ran the year before, and the women were nearly 18 minutes off the times they normally run because the conditions were just that brutal. So how did you pull that time out? I think fear of failures, you know, with most things, you know. I guess these days it’s easier to pace yourself because you’ve got your current pace on your watch and, you know, things like that, but, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think it literally was fear of failure, you know.

1:16:34 And, you know, I mean, it was, ironically, I think it was, I don’t think, I know, it was six months and five days since I broke my neck. And I really wanted to draw a line under that and say, that was the last six months. Now I’ve got six months till Kona. This is the next six months. Recovery is over.

1:16:55 And when I say that, I don’t mean, I mean, now I’m another athlete. If it doesn’t matter what’s happened to me when I’m on the start line of my, hopefully, my races, people aren’t going to, my competitors aren’t going to care about my story. They’re going to want to beat me as I’m going to want to beat them. And I wanted to change my mindset of I’ve got a broken neck. I feel sorry for myself to I’m going to try and race this race and try and beat everyone.

1:17:23 And for me, you know, between the start line and the finish line, that was my transition from that mindset to looking forward and believing I can be good. So you’re back. I’m back, yeah. My legs are just back five days after the marathon. But no, yeah, now I’m in it. I’m in it to, yeah, to race, not to compete.

1:17:47 I don’t want to, I don’t want to do races and, you know, this is Tim, you know, he was a good, he was the world record holder. He broke his neck and yeah, well done. He finished 18. That’s doesn’t cut it. I want to, I want to be one of those guys who goes to the Olympics, who believes and they can fight for a medal.

1:18:03 And that’s what drives me. So yeah, I guess I’m back. And you’re going to Kona this year. I’m going to try and qualify for Kona. Yeah, there’s a qualification process for professionals.

1:18:14 So you need so many points and it’s the top 50 in the world, in the world ranking, then go to Kona. So I need to do that first. So you got work to do. I’ve got work to do, absolutely. What’s it like, you know, being famous now or more famous?

1:18:32 What’s it like watching your own movie? It’s the man with the halo, right? That’s right. Yeah. Well, everyone gets seven seconds of fame.

1:18:39 So, you know, but no, you know, I actually I’ve seen I’ve seen the documentary once and it hasn’t quite finished because they need to edit the Boston Marathon into it. And the first time I watched it was with was in Zurich, on the head office. They rented a movie theater with all the employees. And it was it was weird because I I’m not saying I’ve seen myself on television a lot, but, you know, you know, on that when you’re competing some of the highlights on television, but that’s different because that’s me doing my job and that’s what I do.

1:19:13 But, you know, and I think it’s different to maybe watching, I don’t know, someone like Tom Hanks, watching a movie because he’s not playing himself. He’s playing a character. And that’s how he’s been told to portray it and he’s been directed and whatnot. But, you know, I sat there and I’m like, wow, this is like people are going to see who I am and how I am off camera, even though it’s on camera because the, you know, they’re following me. So I think I enjoyed it, but it was really peculiar and weird and it’s quite uncomfortable watching it, especially the first time with all these people.

1:19:45 And to be honest, I only knew Laddie was sat next to me and I knew like three or four people in the whole theater and there’s maybe a couple of hundred in there. So it was it was quite quite. Yeah, it was the unknown. And I think I don’t know. It’s just weird watching stuff about so personal, you know, like, you know, like when your wife’s washing your hair because you can’t wash it yourself, it’s quite embarrassing.

1:20:10 Right. You know, it’s yes, it’s it’s real. It’s that’s sugar. That’s that’s that’s that’s what happened to me. I definitely know that.

1:20:20 And you and they were taking footage of you while you’re in this bad state, right? Yeah, I mean, literally every two to three weeks, Andrew, Andrew would come. He’s an English guy based in Portland. Yeah, he would come and I’d email him my schedule, you know, what I was doing. And literally he would just follow me and my family like, yeah, all the time getting all those uncomfortable moments.

1:20:45 Yeah. And yeah, and yeah, all the doctor’s appointments, you know, some of the training and yeah, it was. Yeah, I think at the time it didn’t bother me. You haven’t. But yeah, when you see it, yeah, I realized how.

1:21:01 Yeah, how how I guess I don’t know. Yeah, it’s just it’s just weird watching yourself in in that state, not in a professional state where, you know, normally I’m doing an interview. How’s your form? Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. I’m hopefully going to have a good race.

1:21:17 And I’m really happy with the support I’ve got. You know, to sugar. I can’t do this. Oh, no, he’s here. And I said do 10 reps and I can’t do 10.

1:21:27 It hurts too much. Do I stop? You know, it is. Yeah, it was. Yeah, uncomfortable at times.

1:21:34 But hopefully people can see that, you know, with hard work, you know, with an amazing support network, you know, yeah, stuff happens. It’s how you deal with it. You know, and people can. Yeah, use it. Use it however they want in their own lives.

1:21:53 And what do you want people to learn from this? When they watch that documentary, when they’re watching. Do not break your neck. And if they say you’ve got three options, do not pick a halo. No, I’m being deadly serious.

1:22:05 I would not pick that halo again. Absolutely not. You wouldn’t do it again. No, I’d have the fusion. Knowing what I know now, I would definitely have the fusion.

1:22:12 It is, I couldn’t describe, you know, I say I’m comfortable, but how painful, how it changes your life. It really does. And, you know, I mean, have you ever seen anyone in a halo? No one ops for all of them. You know, Brian, he worked for the company, I think it was called Hangar, and they do like knee braces, elbow, and they design and make the halo.

1:22:37 So he had to bring a couple of sizes. They come in sizes. I was medium. And then the doctor actually screws it in, but he’s telling them how to put it together. And chatting to him, you know, I was like, oh, you know, brilliant, this is your job, blah, blah, blah.

1:22:52 And he looks after 11 hospitals in the Denver area. So there’s a good couple of million people here. And, you know, we’ve got the mountains just up there. Everyone goes skiing. You know, you have accidents, you know, neck, upper body.

1:23:05 He does three a year, three halos a year. He tells me once they’ve started screwing it into my head, everyone options. You know, if you have the fusion within three weeks, you can be back at your desk with a halo. You can’t even think straight after three weeks because you’ve got so much pain. You can’t move.

1:23:21 You can’t get in a car. You’ve got to back in backwards. You’re banging your head. You know, I couldn’t reach the milk if it was at the back of the fridge because you can’t go like that with your shoulders. You can go like that with your arm.

1:23:34 I would not recommend it. But what would I like people to take that, you know, that anything’s possible. You know, that if you believe and want and dream something enough that you can do it. You can, you know, you’ve got to have dreams. I know that sounds really corny, but like, you know, sugar.

1:23:57 I’ve been a professional triathlete. This is my 21st year. I’ve never worked a day in my life because I’m doing something I love, something I have passion about. And, you know, if people can just take that and walk away with it going fair play with a smile on their face, then that’s awesome. If I was to ask a bunch of your friends and say, what’s Tim’s superpower?

1:24:19 You know, how was he able to do these incredible physical feats and then get through this emotionally? Like, what would they say? I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. You’d have to ask them, I guess.

1:24:31 I think, I don’t know. Just that I guess never give up. Yeah, I don’t like, it’s not that I don’t like losing, but, you know, I think when it comes to sport, it’s that fear of losing, you know, that drives me to that perfect race that all eludes us. And I think, you know, maybe I carried that over, you know, into this. That was the only way I knew how to deal with something this massive in my life was not give up, was fight it, was, you know, turn a negative into a positive.

1:25:06 But yeah, I don’t know. I’m probably a moody bugger for a lot of time, to be honest. Yeah, I can see that. Discipline, too. I mean, you really are very disciplined in your training and very methodical.

1:25:16 Yeah. You have to be. I mean… These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more.

1:25:38 Now back to the rest of the show. What do the next five years look like? Oh, my God. Hey, after what happened the last six months, I have no idea. I really don’t.

1:25:53 I mean, yeah, I mean, I can’t go on forever. Let’s be honest. You know, I’m not getting any younger. If I can race three more years at the top level, I definitely want to end my career on my terms, not on someone else’s or my body’s, you know, and that’s one of the reasons people have said, well, why don’t you just quit now? And I said, well, I don’t want to quit.

1:26:13 I want to retire. I want to have another bite of the cherry. You know, it’s a couple more years racing, and I coach as well at the moment. I coach just five athletes, you know. And yeah, I want to explore that area.

1:26:26 I get real kicks when they do well and perform well. They’re all amateur athletes of varying abilities, from guys who qualify for Kona to guys that, or women as well, who just want to finish a race or beat their friends. Yeah, I definitely would like to do that. I think I’ll always be involved in sport, especially triathlon. It’s given me so much, and it’s what I know.

1:26:49 It’s what I do. I organise a… This is the first year I’m organising a training camp, so hopefully that sells out, and, you know, we can have some fun along the way, and I can, you know, help people on their triathlon journey, giving them my insight and knowledge. So yeah, I’m not sure, but yeah, hopefully it’s good fun. Fair enough.

1:27:10 What scares you? Failure, you know. But, you know, yeah, failure and, you know, just the… You know, what happened to me, it really was the unknown. I mean, we, you know, before a race, professionally, you’re going, well, what if I punch her, if I drop my nutrition?

1:27:34 You think of a million, you know, if this happens, that happens, this… You don’t think, what if three days before I break my neck and there’s a chance I can’t walk and I might never race again? So, you know, I think the unknown, but I’ve realised you can’t control lots of things. Yeah, you know, there’s so many things, you know, I want to spend as much time with my family as possible, you know, and I want them, yeah, to want to do the same. Yeah, I don’t know.

1:28:03 That was all good. Best day of your life and worst day? I think, you know, definitely the best day, you know, is definitely when my children were born. You know, especially Matilda’s are… She’s our eldest.

1:28:20 She got really ill, so that was a good day as well. Okay, I guess you got through that. Yeah. Worst day? You know, I think there are two days.

1:28:33 In Beijing, Olympics, I was one of the favourites and three days before I got food poisoning, so I put four years of my life and one of the last big races I won convincingly, and the guys that got second and third in that race, they got first and third, so… And then, obviously, breaking my neck. Yeah, in Kona, that was really bad as well. Do you think you’re able to look back on that in terms of one year’s time as a great day? I don’t think I’ll ever think of it as a great day.

1:29:04 Maybe a defining day. Maybe that’s what I needed to have that extra desire to win the race. Yeah, definitely not a great day, but definitely, yeah. It’s definitely changed me and changed my life and how I outlook on it, absolutely. And you appreciate things more?

1:29:20 Absolutely. I appreciate every moment, you know, every moment I can go for running, and don’t get me wrong, we still have bad days and when we’re training and days when you’re like, I’ve still got around 5k, and after your bike, you’re taking forever to do your shoelaces up, you’re trying to procrastinate, for sure. But no, yeah, I definitely am making decisions now differently, I think, than what I would have, you know, six and a half months ago. Tim, I always ask everyone a couple questions at the end.

1:29:48 I’m going to ask you, knowing everything you know now, if you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Tim and give that young man some advice, what would you tell him? Well, you know, enjoy every moment. You know, don’t take the wins for granted, professionally, because that could be your last race. And yeah, just keep an embracing life. But yeah, don’t take anything for granted, because you know, you go on a hot streak and win a load of races, it’s not going to last forever.

1:30:21 That’s what I would say. On that same note, best advice you’ve ever received could have been from a trainer or a training partner, but what would it be? I think, again, it was in 1998, the current professional world champion from 97 had won, 97, and had a terrible year. And he was doing an interview, and I was being interviewed because I was the top junior, so it was one of the first big interviews, you know, before the race, and his name called Chris McCormack.

1:30:52 He’s won Kona as well. And I remember he was being interviewed in a terrible year. He didn’t want to be there, but he had to be, because he was defending world champion. And he said, you know what, I learned, it’s so easy to get to the top, but my gosh, it is hard as hell to stay there. And that just stuck with me, that no matter how I got there, it’s going to be even harder.

1:31:15 You know, everyone wants to knock Man City off the top. You know, everyone wants to knock the Patriots, you know, and yeah, consistency is key, but it’s getting there is easy, it’s staying there that’s hard. It wasn’t direct advice to me, but it really resonated with me, and that’s really stuck with me, and that’s one thing that, yeah, sticks with me today. And that’s why you put in the hours, and that’s why you do that. And fear of failure, letting myself down and everyone around me.

1:31:43 I mean, if you can channel that, then that can be an amazing resource. Yeah. Last advice to that 20-year-old that’s out there watching this right now and anywhere around the world in Kona or in China or in South America, what advice do you give to them? What can you tell them about, you know? Just live life to the fullest, you know.

1:32:00 If you have dreams, reach for them. Commit, you know, stay in school. Yeah, like, but no, but seriously, you know, why not dream, you know? And dreams don’t come easy. You’ve got to work hard, you know, and, you know, train hard, race easy, or, you know, work hard, you know.

1:32:20 Definitely, I’m a big believer of what you put into life is what you get out of it, and yeah, so just, you know, commit 110% and don’t look back. Well, you dream pretty big when you have that halo on. I mean, you know, to come back and to be doing the things you’re doing, you know, the reactions has been really impressive. And then to go ahead and say, I’m going for Kona this year, I mean, that’s all. As you said, such an accelerated timescale.

1:32:46 Your doctors don’t know what’s going on. So, look, I really appreciate you being here, Tim. You know, it’s weird because it’s so relevant to me now. You know, three months ago, I knew a little bit about triathletes, but I didn’t know much more. And so when your story, when I saw it, I was like, wow, I really love to talk to this guy.

1:33:04 And of course, John Joseph was really excited that you were here. I think he wants you to write the foreword for his new book, which is Positive Mental Attitude. And so, because, you know, people could have reacted very differently to your situation. And so now, I think you’ve got a whole force of people around the world that are behind you. We’re behind you here.

1:33:22 The Man with the Halo, the trailer looks excellent. I can’t wait to see the movie. And I’m so glad you let people document that because I know it’s uncomfortable because I’m doing the same thing with my training. And they see me on these lousy days. And they see me when I have a bad attitude and I’m swearing at people and I’m talking about things I never talked about because training for this race also brings up a lot of emotional stuff.

1:33:42 But I’m glad people get to see it because it’s real, you know? And so thanks for sharing your story with that. All the best with your training and looking forward to watching what happens in Kona this year. Cool, yeah. Well, thank you for having me.

1:33:55 And yeah, good luck as well in Chattanooga. Yeah, I will be looking at the results. Good. Well, I’ll make sure I get a decent time. I’ll put that out.

1:34:02 I got to get the… I got to start cycling some more hills. Thanks for giving it to me straight. Nobody told me about this. So that’s awesome.

1:34:09 On London Real, we say it’s about the journey. And Tim, I wish you all on yours. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Cheers.