On our very first podcast episode (Ep 1) we interviewed Freddie just before he jumped on a plane to go and compete in the worlds coldest running race - a 230km jaunt across the Arctic Circle.
In this episode he has done it. He survived to literally tell the tale.
He recounts how the silence of snow-covered expanses can be deafening, and yet within it, there lies a space for growth and self-discovery.
Freddie and I dissect the psychological battle waged against the elements as well as the practical experience of just how insanely hard this challenge was.
Freddie can be found on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Coal Mine Rhythm - Short Version B by Dan Ayalon
On our very first podcast episode (Ep 1) we interviewed Freddie just before he jumped on a plane to go and compete in the worlds coldest running race - a 230km jaunt across the Arctic Circle.
In this episode he has done it. He survived to literally tell the tale.
He recounts how the silence of snow-covered expanses can be deafening, and yet within it, there lies a space for growth and self-discovery.
Freddie and I dissect the psychological battle waged against the elements as well as the practical experience of just how insanely hard this challenge was.
Freddie can be found on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Coal Mine Rhythm - Short Version B by Dan Ayalon
In this follow-up interview with Freddie Bennett, he has just literally finished running across the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 1:In episode one we talked to him about what it was like to think about running across the Sahara, let alone doing it, and we finished that episode with him about to get on a plane to go and run across the Arctic Circle in the middle of winter.
Speaker 1:During this podcast, freddie is, as I say, not long having just completed the race in the Arctic and we really get into that story. The Wi-Fi in this interview is not the best and we've done our best job to try and edit it up and clean it up a little bit, but we do apologise if you hear the odd little bit of let's just call it sub-optimal audio. But look, let's enjoy this interview with Freddie. Oh my God, we are back here with Freddie Bennett and we are on the other side of him doing a run that he talked about in episode one of the podcast, where he shared his story, shared his origin story, talked about how he got to be running across the Sahara a few years back and when we left that podcast he was about to go off to the Arctic Circle and run across the most crazy environment no one to man. He is back here, freddie, you're alive.
Speaker 2:You made it. I am alive. It's great to be here, greg. You know what they say. You only appear on this podcast twice, once on the way up and once on the way down, but it's good to be back. So I'm very delighted to be here and you're right, I'm delighted to be here in one piece, fairly defrosted and only with a little bit of frostbite remaining. So yeah, we're all good. I'm excited about this next conversation.
Speaker 1:And so frostbite on the fingers or in places that you'd rather not talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just frostbite on the fingers, thankfully. So yeah, it could have been worse, it's fair to say, but I did pick up frostbite on my first day running through the Arctic, with three pairs of gloves on as well. So certainly covered up and, as I'm sure we'll dive into, the cold was scary. It's been a long time since I thought something actually wanted to kill me, but the cold was that thing. So, yeah, definitely some frozen stories to tell.
Speaker 1:Well, let's start with your journey. So you had to travel I think, some ridiculous number of plane flights and trains or all sorts of things to get to where you needed to go. Take us through the journey. You left us and I think about maybe a week after we recorded episode one. You were on a plane, so take us through it.
Speaker 2:Definitely. So, yeah, we're all on a journey, as we say, but this was a literal journey as well as a spiritual one. So so, yeah, left the Bay of Plenty, where we're based here in the North Island of New Zealand, plane to Auckland, followed by a plane to Doha in Qatar, followed by a plane to Stockholm, followed by like a five hour wait, followed by a plane to a town in the north of Sweden called Luella Apologies for the pronunciation because I am not Swedish and then, following landed in Luella, had what is going to be described as a sense of relief that was so deep I could physically cry when I saw my bag appear off the plane, because that had all of my food, all of my equipment, snow shoes and so on. Then hug out in a abandoned train station in Luella for three hours without any internet or phone signal, hoping that a train was going to arrive. Miraculously, the train did arrive.
Speaker 2:That was then a three hour train journey through north north Sweden into the Arctic Circle, to land up at this tiny Arctic town called Gallivare Apologies for the pronunciation and it was there after about 45 hours. Since I left New Zealand, I was able to wade through thigh high snow pretty much and get to my hotel, check in and actually fall asleep. So it was a hell of a journey, nonstop for, say, around 40, 45 hours, and leaving where we are here in the Kiwi summer and then finally stopping in a place that was in the middle of an Arctic winter was certainly out of my comfort zone in more ways than one.
Speaker 1:So how much time did you have between falling into your bed in that hotel room in the Arctic Circle where you're about to start the race, and starting the race? You would have been knackered right. You would have been so tired.
Speaker 2:I was shattered and I hadn't been sleeping anyway because of the. Obviously there was the jet lag, but just the nerves. Before the race I mean after we spoke before the race, I was obviously packing, prepping, getting ready to go the nerves were picking up at that point. Then, day by day, it's almost a bit like the you know, when you know you're first child's going to be born or you've got your wedding day or something. It's always on your mind. I had this nervous energy that was half fear, half exciting. So I was only sleepy a couple of hours a night anyway. So I was shattered.
Speaker 2:I had that day in, as I say, this tiny town in the Arctic Circle in North Sweden, which was weird as well, to do nothing. When do we actually have a day where we can do nothing? I had no work to do, I didn't know anyone, so I purely just walked around in the snow which was a novel experience and drank coffee, basically, and it was just playing the waiting game, knowing that something really big, something really tremendous and challenging was about to happen. But at that stage I had no control over it. It was just about sitting, playing the waiting game, trying to acclimatize myself as much as possible in 24 hours and then just wait for this big challenge to start.
Speaker 1:What goes through your mind at this point. So you haven't had the final sleep before you get onto the start line. So you've got this day. You've probably got almost too much time to think. So what are you thinking? Does the brain start to go into the whole and you talked about this on episode one their self-doubt. What have I done? Am I, you know? Am I? Is this going to be way harder than I anticipated? Have I done enough training? What's happening?
Speaker 2:There was certainly self-doubt, and it really gave truth to the phrase an idle mind is a devil's play thing, and I was filled with doubt. Around my equipment was a big one. Now, I was actually in the cold because, don't forget, I trained for this race in 25 degrees in a New Zealand summer. Now, here I was in a European Arctic winter. That's what I really start to think Wow, I knew it would be cold, but I didn't know it would be this cold. So I think I was thinking about my equipment. I was thinking about my training, my preparation.
Speaker 2:These are when the doubts go into your head. Someone described as being like an exam at school or uni, and you're all outside the exam room and everyone's thinking did I do enough study? Did I learn the right thing? Did I practice the right thing?
Speaker 2:All of these, these doubts, do go through our mind, and I did find a way to get around this, though, and that was kept on coming back to a phrase that I kept on telling myself that has, and it's approach that has helped me get through some difficult moments of self-doubt in my life, and that phrase is don't flinch, because it's so tempting to flinch right at the end, right at that moment when the time for talk is over, the time for preparation has passed, the time for training has moved on, now it's time for action.
Speaker 2:That's always the moment when we flinch, where we try and pull back, where we say it's not the right time, I'm not the right person, I haven't done the right preparation. But that is the moment when you have to just hold firm, stand fast and don't flinch. So I had this day of very much trying not to flinch and trying to occupy my mind, because I knew if I just sat there and just started to think about the grand scale of the challenge, that's what I'd start to freak myself out. So I had to keep myself busy and keep focused on what I was there to do.
Speaker 1:And then you've got your final night before the race, did you sleep?
Speaker 2:Not really. No, I had the jet lag. I think I probably got about 90 minutes sleep, which was ridiculous because I was so tired, so jet lagged. And then you do reach that stage where you just want it to happen Again, a bit like that exam thing, like I'm sick of waiting, I'm sick of doing the preparation, let's just go and get this done. And there was that feeling. There was very much a hurry up and wait element of it Because, as you said, I was in the place, I was waiting for a day, and then you have to get collected by another bus because they had to take you into the far, far, far north, whether until the roads run out, and then you have to have your kit checked and get the safety briefing, which was absolutely terrifying, and all these bits, all these steps that you think is going to be the final step.
Speaker 2:Then the final step, and that could play with your mind as well. But when you think this is the moment, this is where it's all going to happen, there's something else happens out of your control, which means it isn't the moment. You're on this, in this constant state of semi-alertness, which means you can't sleep, you can't rest and you just have to try and surrender to the processes as much as possible.
Speaker 1:And I saw some stuff on social media it might have been on Instagram where you kind of showed the kits that you take and you talked about you know, the kit check. What sort of things are you carrying with you that you need in the environment?
Speaker 2:This is really funny. I reveal a lot of the kit check secrets on my Instagram, at the Freddie Bennett is my Instagram. There are some quite scary and some quite compelling videos on there. But the kit we had to take was varied, to say the least, and those obviously. I had a backpack. That's kind of like an usual trekking bag. It weighed 12 kilos in the end and the vast majority of it was food. So I took about 3000 calories a day, which was cutting it. Fine, it turned out. That's another story.
Speaker 2:And then there was a wide range of survival kit that we had to take, so everything from from distress beacons that we were given to survival blankets, waterproof matches, there was glow sticks, there were compasses, there were spoons to eat our food with, there were tampons. Quite randomly, I don't know if it's always better to be prepared no matter where you are, but it did turn out there with a fire lighting. So it turns out wow. I only realized this actually when I was halfway through the race, which was probably a bit late. But we were given all we were told to bring all the safety kits and the tampons and the waterproof matches and the glow sticks and all these different bits and pieces. No one actually told us how to use them, so I could have been trapped there on the ice in a very dire situation With some matches and some tampons. I could probably put two or two together and work out how to maybe make a fire from those things.
Speaker 2:But you never know, and I think there's always a metaphor for life there somewhere that we believe we need so many different things, yet we never stop to think how or why we might use them. So, yes, I had a lot of kit that was that was covered, that I had to carry, but, but it was. It was weighing me down both physically and metaphorically, thinking not only do I have to carry this, but also this is everything that I need to survive this race. There's no kind of finishing every day and popping out for a burger and everything else. It was very much. I have to run this incredible distance through the deadliest place on earth with a backpack about the same size that you would take if you went for a hike one Sunday afternoon. That was the kind of size we were talking about, so it wasn't much to carry to not only help me survive but also finish the race.
Speaker 1:And obviously, because you're in the snow and you must, the surfaces that you must run on must be, must be phenomenal. What? What do the shoes look like? Because it's not like you're skiing. How do they work?
Speaker 2:So you don't get again. I gamble on this. I actually took my my standard trail running shoes and it's fair to say that I it was one of the worst cases of impostor syndrome I've I've ever had, because all these people that they were, they were proper athletes they were. They were international runners, they represented their country, what they were Olympian. There there are people that were seasoned adventure racers.
Speaker 2:It appeared to me that everybody knew what they were doing. Everybody was better prepared than me, everybody was having more fun than me, and it's very much that kind of that first day of school feeling when, when you're there in the playground on your own, trying to fit in, trying to look cool, trying not to look, everyone around you, everyone seemed to know what they were doing. They all, to me, exuded this feeling of calm, happy confidence, and maybe they were. But that that's certainly how it felt to me and I was. I was just trying to keep it together and I think the the enormity of the challenge that I was about to undertake really hit home. It was very much the case. There are, there are, no excuses. You're, you're actually going to have to go and do this thing.
Speaker 1:How much camaraderie is there on the start line? Is it people trying to sort of psych you out, or are they actually very inclusive and want everybody to to get across the finish line?
Speaker 2:But, yeah, there was definitely supported there, there wasn't any negativity. But at the same time, everybody was was looking after themselves. I mean that in a in a positive way, not a selfish way, and I think that it was certainly a rule for life for me that it is not selfish to put yourself first. It is not selfish to to look after your own needs and your priorities first. It's for this race, for this adventure for our life.
Speaker 2:There are so many times when, even though we feel a bit selfish, we know that if we are going to achieve our goal, if we are going to reach our own personal finish line, then we have to put ourself on the edge of our priorities first and then, once we've done that, then obviously and absolutely we could help other people. But there was there was no point in me trying to help everyone else if I was going to fall apart two miles down the road. So there was very much trying to focus on on our own game, our own tactics, our own mindset, and make sure that we were physically and mentally ready to take that first step forward, are you?
Speaker 1:trying to beat these, these guys and girls, or are you just trying to finish after the 300 K? What's your? What's the mindset, my mindset?
Speaker 2:shifted. So, on the start line, after the fear and the nerves of the imposter syndrome, when the countdown starts, when they're counting down from five at all of the, the two years of planning and the years trading and this being something that has been a challenge, has been by every waking moment for the last few months and then you hear them counting down the final five seconds. That's what everything, all the fear, all the drama, all the imposter syndrome, all the self doubt, all the negativity gets forgotten and you just take that first step and you go. And I went, and for the first I was in third place, until the first checkpoint and through through my mind, I was there say this this is great. I measure the headlines back home and I thought well, what was I worried about? What was I worried about? This is going to be great, third place, maybe I'll win the thing, who knows? And that carried on for about 45 minutes.
Speaker 2:And then we hit the snow, because the, the races started along a small trail that was kind of quite compacted, a bit like a road, and then you kind of hit the, the real snow for the first time, and everything just fell, apart from then, basically, you know my, my pace slowed. I hit the hills, I had to debate whether to put my snow shoes on or not. All the all the challenges started to mount up very, very quickly and I had gone from, perhaps quite arrogantly, thinking I've got this, I'm in third place, I'm going to smash it, this is going to be easy, I'm going to, I'm going to represent New Zealand in this race. It's going to be awesome. All of a sudden, it all fell apart, which very quickly then started to hit me mentally. And again, don't forget, this is kind of within the first couple of hours of the first day of the race. I slowed right down.
Speaker 2:People were overtaking me, people were asking me if I was OK, and you ever have that situation where you feel perfectly OK and then people come up to you and say, oh, oh, you are, you, are you OK? You don't look. So Then all of a sudden you start thinking, oh, hang on, maybe, maybe I'm not OK, maybe I'm not very good. So my, my mindset and my mental strength, love and did, plummeted quicker than the temperatures were falling At this stage. It was minus 20, minus 25 degrees by the time I reached the second checkpoint again of just of the first day, the second checkpoint. So not even halfway through the first day I was, I thought I was on my way out, I thought I wasn't going to finish that first day and I just was filled with with fear, with despair, with shame, with anguish that, after everything through, just to keep going.
Speaker 1:What was it that made you suddenly think that you know, or that you were like, why, after a couple of hours, were you struggling? Was it fitness? Was it just actually you're finding it hard to run on the snow, like what's going on?
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, what's going on was a question that was going through my mind a lot. The temperatures played a part. It's amazing, isn't it? With the power of hindsight, I know, in our first podcast I was probably making a bit of a joke of it. I was saying kind of, oh yeah, you know we're in the Kiwi summer and I'm going to be going, and yeah, haha, on the beach.
Speaker 2:But now I look back and I think that was bloody stupid. I had the best that I could, but my prep. I'd basically broken all the rules of proper preparation. I hadn't tried to recreate the conditions. I hadn't tried to recreate the circumstances, the stresses, the challenges, the dramas I might face. I mean, I look back.
Speaker 2:I think, Jesus, I was training for the coldest place on earth by running up and down a beach and shorts and T-shirt, so that it wasn't the fitness as such, it was the terrain. The mountains were bigger than I thought they would be. Again, I thought the race would be quite flat. I was going up some serious mountains, some serious snow, which my fitness, my strength, my legs wasn't designed for, and the cold as well. I knew it had been cold. We all joke about the cold and the frostbite gloves and my outer gloves with these big, heavy mittens. I'd have to take my mittens off, stop, pull out my drink, have a drink, put it back on, try and get my mittens' glove back on, start moving it and that minute that I stopped my hands would be numb for an hour afterwards and I'd be really having to clench and unclench my fist trying to get some blood pumping into my fingers again. So any decision around going to the toilet was even an option, Partly because I was so dehydrated because I wasn't daring to stop to drink.
Speaker 2:Do I put my snow shoes on? Do I take them off? Someone compared that to like a Formula One race. When you're debating, do I go on to wet tires or do I keep on dry tires? These big tactical decisions I've been prepared for, but I hadn't been so prepared for the thing that I joked about earlier and that fear of do I stop? Don't I stop? I'm really cold, I can't get warm, I'm really thirsty but I don't dare have a drink. I need to go slower but I can't change my speed because I'm just trudging up this hill. The snow's too deep. Do I put the snow shoes on? Do I keep them off for another kilometer, All these things just going around my head, and there was me thinking I'm just going to enjoy the view and enjoy the experience, when really every step was filled with terror and it felt like every decision I had the sword of demaculis hanging above my head. Is this decision going to mean I can continue or is it going to mean the end of my race?
Speaker 1:And this is on day one.
Speaker 2:This is like a day seven.
Speaker 1:Is there a seven day eight?
Speaker 2:day five day Race in the end. Okay, so this mental anguish was all before lunchtime of day one.
Speaker 1:And so how did you manage to finish that first day then? What did you tell yourself to get to that first day finish line?
Speaker 2:It honestly felt like a miracle sometimes that I hit that first day finish line. Firstly, it sounds simplistic, but it was about always going forward, and I had a crash course in the principle of imperfect action and idea cross singing to myself leading the pack that all went out of the window. They was replaced by the concept of imperfect action, which was it doesn't have to be pretty, doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be glamorous, all you need to do is keep moving forward. That's all I told myself. Just keep moving forward, just put one foot in front of the other. And that's what I really learned.
Speaker 2:This process of the fundamentals beat tactics every single time, and I've been so caught up by the perfect tactic and the perfect strategy and the perfect hack and what's my heart rate going to be and what's this plan?
Speaker 2:And none of it was as important as the fundamentals, which was keep going, try and keep hydrated, try and get some sort of food in you, because if you get the fundamentals wrong, that's our race over. And I think that applies to life, certainly the time we want to jump to the advanced stuff and just think how am I going to get really good at this, whether it's an Arctic race, whether it's a business, whether it's a career, whether it's a hobby, the masters in this game are the people who are better at the fundamentals than anybody else. And that's what I was trying to learn as quickly as I could. Just focus on the fundamentals. The pretty stuff around the edges that will come if I get to day two and if there's time and if I get better. But unless I get the fundamentals, the basics, right, then day two is never going to happen. That's what I really learned the fundamentals beat tactics any day of the week.
Speaker 1:And you eventually get to the end of day one. How many hours are we talking between start and finish on day one? That was around 10 and a half hours, it's a long time, a long time to be really cold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd consider my here. In the everyday world I could run just under a three hour marathon. I used to do 42 kilometers in three hours. This was 50 kilometers in almost 11 hours. That was me going all out and pushing myself to my limits. So, again, it wasn't something that I was used to, even things like 11 hours on your feet. Let's ignore the fitness, the race, the coldness, all of these things. When was the last time you spent 11 hours just walking or running on your feet? Even my body wasn't used to that. I was used to say three hours, but these different things that we don't think about until afterwards.
Speaker 1:So you get to the end of the 11 hours and then you get to a beautiful lodge with a king size bed to sleep in that night.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was it, the lodge, and the hot chocolate and the cake was there. Someone took off my backpack and they rubbed my shoulders. Then I woke up from my heart and reality hit me. We are a combination and I use that word loosely very night by night. Some nights it was a teepee on top of the snow, so you were literally sleeping on a reindeer skin on top of open snow in a tent. The first night was a tiny little. I guess you could call it a cabin, but again that's a very grand box made of wood. It's probably a better way of describing it.
Speaker 2:No electricity, no running water. The only heating was from a tiny log burning stove and there were 10 of us cramped into this thing and it was about the size of your average storage cupboard 10 of us. There were not even bunk beds. There were triple bunk beds on top of each other. Then that's the thing, because all you want is to stop and sit down and sleep and rest and cry.
Speaker 2:But I had to go into this room, try and find a tiny corner to sleep in and then you have to take all of your gear off. I was wearing three layers, so it was all either wet with sweat or wet with snow. Try to hang it up around this tiny fire when there's also 10 other people trying to drive, so you're fighting against 10. Or if everyone's got three layers, that's 30 pairs of socks, 10 pairs of underwear, 30 pairs of tops, 30 pairs of leggings and all these things, then you have to wait half an hour for your water to boil. It's like being in the 19th century put your water on the stove and wait for it to boil.
Speaker 2:Make some food, eat the food, put on your dry gear that you've been carrying and then try and get some sleep. Then you get a few hours sleep. Wake up the next morning it took two hours to get ready. That was just to basically get warm. Make yourself some breakfast it was like dehydrated porridge with boiling water Then get dressed and then get back out to the start line. That was the relentlessness of it. Every day an ultramarathon, then go through those things. I need to get up tomorrow, run another ultramarathon. The next day, another ultramarathon. That was just mentally toiling on our senses.
Speaker 1:So you were saying you didn't have enough food. The calorific intake might not have been high enough to match 11 hours in snow and you've only got 3,000 calories to replace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess it was a lesson learned. I cut it fine, definitely, but it's a balancing act because I was burning about 10,000 calories a day. Are you right? I took 3,000 calories. You don't need to be an accountant to understand that those maths don't really add up. I always knew I'd be burning more than I was consuming. I also knew that obviously, the more food you have, the more food you have to carry. The more food you have to carry, the heavier your backpack, the heavier your backpack, the slower you move, the more calories you burn on the ice. So it was always a balancing act. I would say I cut it fine, definitely.
Speaker 2:There were many moments because there were checkpoints every 10 kilometers, which again was a TP pitched in the ice, hunger when your stomach is growling. But I knew I'd cut it fine on the final day when I hit the final checkpoint and literally ate my final energy bar and I had no food left. So I cut it fine. Definitely I could have taken a few more bags of chips and brownies, that's for sure, but I just about made it through. But yeah, it was again. It's a scary feeling, knowing that you're hungry but you can't stop at rest. You have to keep moving, even though that hunger is gnawing away at you.
Speaker 1:And is that in essence? So I was going to ask you the question. I will ask you the question what's harder the Sahara and the heat or the Arctic and the cold? Is it the inability to be able to stop that? And therefore, in the Arctic you can't stop because you're going to freeze to death? Is that what makes? Is it harder because of that, or is which one's harder?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, the cold and the fact that I couldn't stop at rest definitely played a part, but it was also the extra admin. As I say, the Sahara desert. You'd run your ultramarathon for the day and then, effectively, we were only sleeping in the dirt under a tiny cover, but you had nothing to do. Basically, I'd run my race. I almost got bored. I'd just sit in the sand under the cover, wait for light to fall, have a sleep, get up, do another run.
Speaker 2:But, as I'll say, here here in the Arctic, even when you've finished running for the day, it's the equipment and then the drying, and then the thinking where am I going to sleep? And then having to take all of your wet clothes off and then find your dry gear and put all of that on, and then think right now I need to heat up the water, and then, all through the night as well, I need to keep feeding the fire because, as I said, there's no kind of room service that comes in and then just make sure your fire is nice and warm. If you want to keep warm during the night, then someone has to put wood on the fire, so always having to do that all night as well, and that's all of those, those logistical admin type tasks on top of a tired, malnourished, dehydrated brain really, really grounds us down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine, and the fact that you had such a rough first day did it get better mentally as you went into that second, third, fourth, fifth day, Like what was it worse? I?
Speaker 2:was going to say did it get better or did it just get, not worse? It was different. I remember waking up on day two just thinking, wow, how did I get through that? Then the race leader came round and he was like well, you know guys, and stayed the hard day. I was like what? And stayed the hard day. I thought, yes, there was pretty much the hardest day in my life. He's like no, no, no, yeah, that was the warm up, but now it's going to. People start to fight it tough now and that was difficult for them to swallow.
Speaker 2:Again, in our everyday lives we like to say I don't feel like. I don't feel like doing that thing today, so I'm not going to do it. But this is what I had to very much focus on commitments, not feelings. If I was acting based on my feelings, I wouldn't get out of bed. I would have said do I feel like getting up? No. Do I feel like venturing outside? No. But I had to say to myself I've made a commitment. I've committed myself to this race. I've committed to my clients, to my family, to the whole of New Zealand. I've made commitments on the media. When I've made a commitment, that means I have to take the action, regardless of whether I feel like it or not, of whether it feels like the thing that I'd love to do or not. And also this is why I had to shift my mindset, because I had to view this as something empowering.
Speaker 2:I always believe that we can't change our circumstances, but we can determine how we react to them. So I could look at this situation two ways. I could say, holy shit, it's day two. How did I get through day one? There's no way I'm going to get through day two. Or I could say right, I get this opportunity to embark on another race through the ice. I had a race yesterday. Today's a brand new race. I got through day one and that means I can get through day two. And it was understanding. It's not saying I should do this, it's saying I get to do this. It's not saying, oh, I suppose I better do this. It's saying I will commit to doing this. When I started to be very direct and focused in my actions and had my actions determined by my commitments and not by my feelings, that was how I was able to pick myself up, get my snow shoes back on and get out there into the frozen wilderness and start running again on day two.
Speaker 1:It's. I'm always fascinated by people who push themselves to the ultimate physical levels of endurance, people who are right out on the edges. Did you find there were times where you almost needed to switch your brain off, so it wasn't even necessarily giving yourself positive things and positive ways to view the problem that you were in or to be able to reframe that, as I get the chance to? Did you ever have times where you just actually I just need to turn my brain off and just keep moving the legs.
Speaker 1:Does that ever happen Is that not a thing for you.
Speaker 2:No, no, it did definitely, and it's strange because, again, this is something that us in our everyday modern world, where we live in more of a civilization type place, don't encounter. Because the race was over such a vast, barren landscape, it was like being on a different planet and everyone was quite spread out. So what that meant was the majority of the time I was on my own and my entire race. The entire time I spent running was 45 hours. So if you imagine 45 hours over the space of five days in your own company, with no podcasts, no music, no birds singing, no sound of traffic, just pure abandoned arctic silence, it does very strange things to your mind and you're right that our mind wants to wonder. We go sometimes to some quite dark, distant places mentally, but there were absolutely times where I had to just shut off my brain and stop thinking, stop intellectualizing, and this is why I chuckled to myself where do we see I talk about the slogan dispensers that you see on the internet and on LinkedIn and places just firing the motivational quotes at you. There was one bloody motivational quote going through my mind when we are facing real adversity, when we are facing real challenges, stresses, hardship in our lives, be that running across the arctic, starting a business, changing your life, adopting a habit. When we are really in the thick of it, when we are doubting ourselves, when we have despair coursing through our veins, there ain't no positive thinking slogan that's going to help us. We switch our brains off and just focus on taking again that bold, flawed, imperfect step forward. And there was one moment in the race where this happens. I talked about this on my Instagram at the Freddie Bennett. You'll see it on the Instagram, but I think it was day two or day three. It may have been Again. It was a tough day More mountains, more snow, sometimes was waist high, more dehydration. I got to the end and I saw the finish line for that day a flicker of light from a fire and some pine trees that could hear a few voices. And then you think, oh, it's funny.
Speaker 2:On day one, I was in these cabins and teepees thinking what the hell is this? By day three, I felt like a five-star hotel and I was like I'm so close, so close I could literally almost touch it. It's a couple of hundred meters to go. I trudged forward. I was stretching out my arm, almost wanting to grasp it by my hand and I looked down at that outstretched arm and I thought, oh, that's unfortunate, I'm missing a glove, oh no, and I realized that my outer glove was three kilometers back up the top of the mountain where I dropped it the last time. I stopped to have a drink.
Speaker 2:And then that feeling of thinking, I know, very quickly I knew what I had to do and I didn't want to accept or admit what I had to do. And what I had to do was to turn around, turn my back on that warm, glowing sanctuary that was beckoning me like some sort of siren on the seashore. I had to turn my back on it and it was dark at this time as well Trudge back up the mountain, try and find my bloody glove and then go all the way back down. And it was only two kilometres and it took me over two hours to do. You think the 2000 metres, that's all it was. I used to run that in 10 minutes or something. It took me two hours to get back up that hill in the dark. Thankfully it was on the path where I just kind of stopped and had a drink, put it on and go back down.
Speaker 2:And then we always think of the shortcuts we always think do I need it? Will I be okay without it? Maybe someone will find it, maybe someone will pick it up, maybe it won't be minus 30 tomorrow. We keep on trying to let ourselves off the hook, give ourselves a get out clause from doing the hard thing that we know we really should do, and that's what I really what I wanted to cry, but basically, if my eyes hadn't been half frozen, shut with ice, that's when I wanted to cry and just give up and either say screw the glove, the stupid glove that's out to get me and ruin my day, or just put my hands up and quit. But that was what I had to just turn off my brain, put my head down, start walking and then find the bloody glove and take myself back down the hill to finally get into some basic warmth.
Speaker 1:And this is not the final day either, so it's not like you could have let your glove go right. You had to have it for the next day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I said I already had a feeling that I had frostbite by then. Oh no, it's kind of that thing where I didn't want to be too vocal about it, because frostbite is one of the things that if it gets bad, they'll take you out of the race. And so, yeah, I knew how many times in life do we know what we have to do? And it's usually the most uncomfortable, awkward thing that we really really, really, really don't want to do. But I believe those are the moments in our life that's a turning point, because I was so tempted, I was so sorely tempted to say I've still got two layers of gloves, I can probably get away with it. And maybe, who knows, maybe I could have gone away with it.
Speaker 2:But there was also a big chance me, me literally physically, choosing the other path, choosing that path of short-term comfort. I'm thinking, ah, it'll be okay, I'll get away with this. That decision could well have been the end of my race. I could have been out the next day in real trouble, but it was choosing the path of short-term discomfort. That was one of those crossroad moments that ultimately led me to be able to carry on and continue.
Speaker 1:And then you finally get to the last day and you cross the line. God, that must have felt good. What happens at the line? It was emotional.
Speaker 2:The final day was the shortest, it was 20 or so kilometers, and by the end we were broken. The day before the final day it's been the longest day, over 65 kilometers, and that had to be a long, all day, all night. So again, you think that was day four. I was broken by then, falling apart, malnourished, cold, dehydrated. The 65-kilometer day had pretty much taken me until about 11 o'clock at night to finish, and then 11 o'clock, all the study at the kit, the food, et cetera, et cetera. So I kind of my head, I guess I hit the pillow, hit the floor at after midnight, 5 am, the alarm goes off. You've still got to do more than a half marathon that day as well, and so picking myself up and getting going was a struggle. But also I had renewed energy because, literally and metaphorically, the finish line was in sight and, to be honest, I knew that after the 65-kilometer day there wasn't much doubt in my mind that I was going to finish. I was prepared to crawl if I had to, not through any kind of bravado, not through any kind of macho, nothing will stop me. I was just like I want to get this bloody thing done. And the quickest way to get this done now is by getting to the finish line and running through those pine forests one more time.
Speaker 2:And then we hit civilization and I was fascinated by, as humans, how quickly we adjust to this quite primal way of living, because we all think we're here in our creature comforts and we're used to everything, and then those get taken away, as I experienced, and it's a massive shock, but within five days I say it wasn't easier. I was becoming used to this quite primitive lifestyle without cars, without street lights, without technology. And then you start to hit this tower and I remember seeing like a car went past me and it terrified me. So what's that? This loud, this loud iron horse with galloping past me? And then you start seeing people wearing normal clothes and I was like wow, and I smelled soap, that was the thing. And obviously I hadn't had a shower or changed my underwear for five days.
Speaker 1:Maybe the town smelt you before you arrived as well. I think they did.
Speaker 2:And you know, like smelling clean things and all these strange sensations came up that we always assume would kind of only appear if we'd been on a desert island for months and months. But only after five days. I suppose I was reverting a bit back to my primal, natural self that we all have. But then, entering the town, seeing people smelling soap, I got lost a few times. Where I was again running on streets again was strange. But then I saw they had a red carpet laid out and in the town square, this tiny, tiny little the most northern town, you can get pretty much before the North Pole this tiny, this red carpet laid out, and I just sprinted, sprinted down the red carpet, fell to my knees and pretty much just fell apart as the medal was placed around my neck.
Speaker 2:Because all of the talk, all of the planning, all of the effort, it all comes down to that one moment.
Speaker 2:And there's a quote that I love, which I won't be able to say word for word, but it's something along the lines of all it takes is 20 seconds of insanity. 20 seconds of insanity can absolutely change the course of your life, but it had been 20 seconds of insanity over a year ago that had led me to take out my credit card and say now is going to be the time when I do this. And then I've finished up 20 seconds of insane blistered toe falling off, running down this very random red carpet in the middle of this arctic town to get the medal, which felt a bit like a redemption, like a relief that I talked about this thing for so long. And you talk about all of the journey and the mindset of the sound bites, and then you actually have to do it and I had been so certain on so many occasions that I would fail. But then to actually be able to somehow pull this triumph from a land of disaster and achieve the goal was truly unbelievable.
Speaker 1:You have now done two of the hardest races in the world. You know they are the hardest races in the world. You've run across the Sahara and you've run across the arctic. What did you learn differently about yourself in the second race that you hadn't maybe learned in that first one? Was there something that you went God?
Speaker 2:this is a bit different Interesting question it's often been I can't remember if we said this in the first podcast you may have done. It's often been asked of me am I running to something or am I running from something? And I didn't realise until this race that I was actually running from something. I believe and I probably take a psychologist to have a field day with me there was something along lines of a need to prove to myself that I was good enough, that I was worthy enough, and I think this. As I've always said, I'm not an athlete. For me, it isn't about the running as such. It isn't really about the crazy adventures. It's about proving that the everyday people, the everyday professionals, can achieve extraordinary things. I'm not really a professional superhero and I cared about proving that to everyone and to myself.
Speaker 2:I do think I was also trying to fill probably a hole that had been there for a long time that said you're not good enough. As you are, people won't listen to you until you've got this medal. You will not be valuable either financially, physically, spiritually unless you can attach your identity to this thing, just as in. Someone else feels and I felt this as well you will not matter until you become a director at a company, you will not count for anything. Until you can exit your business, you will not make a difference until you look a certain way or you've done a TED Talk or all of these things that we like to collect. That's what I realized as I was finishing that second race that I had been running from something. That thing that I was running from was the desire to prove to myself that I was good enough and probably to face a few home truths about myself, my life, my relationships as well. And for me, I would rather stick my head in the sand and go for a run than to go for a run, than do the difficult thing and face the truth that I needed to face. So I felt like I did exercise, in the other sense, a lot of demons on that race. I felt like I wasn't running from something anymore, but I do do this to prove to people that they can achieve the things that they believe they cannot do.
Speaker 2:But there's more to life than medals. There's more to life than the statuses, than the LinkedIn posts, than financial status, prizes and so on. What truly matters is the value that we have to ourselves. I believe that, certainly in my case, I was chasing these achievements, I was chasing these accolades because I wanted to tell myself I was worth more, and I wanted to do that because I felt that I was worth less. I felt that I was worthless. I think so many of us have those moments in our lives and our businesses, our careers, where we feel worthless, where we doubt ourselves, where we become crippled by imposter syndrome. But what we do is not who we are. Who we are can never change, no matter what happens in our life. But we get to decide who we are and then what we do next. And now it's all about moving forwards.
Speaker 1:Freddie, that is just such a beautiful way to finish with that message. I am so inspired by your story. I think your story is really a true source of inspiration for so many, including myself. You've made this huge transformation to your life over the last four, five, six years and you continue to help others with it, and I just think it's the most profound gift that you can give people is an ability to look at their lives and, wherever they're at, whatever their situations, that they can achieve extraordinary things and they can have lives that are lives that they know they can, they can lead and can bring them joy.
Speaker 1:I was at a funeral yesterday and I was reminded of this that at some point for all of us it's going to be over, and the one regret we don't want to have is that we didn't live the life that we know that we should have gone and lived, and you are helping people with that. In closing, I just add that I will include ways to connect with you in the show notes across your various social platforms. Freddie, you are an inspiration. You are just a really absolutely amazing human who has proven to so many others that this is, that you can do extraordinary things. So thank you so much for spending the time and coming back today and sharing round two. It's extraordinary.
Speaker 2:Thank you, greg. It's been a pleasure. I love what you're doing. I'm a huge fan of everything you're doing, both in your life and with your podcast and, as you say, everyone can follow me at the Freddie Bennett on Instagram, linkedin, facebook. And yeah, there's some exciting things to share very soon, both in terms of how I'm going to be helping the professional community and in terms of the next challenge. After just saying I'm running, not from something, I'm running to something, I am running to something. Now I'm going to be running towards my biggest challenge yet, and if you want to find out about that, then you know where to find me.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a great way to finish. Thank you so much, Freddie Cool. Thank you.