Ken talks to Neil Mills - Part 2, The Decision That Changed Everything

After years of living on the edge, Neil reached a breaking point—and made a decision that changed his life forever. In the second half of the podcast, he shares how he quit drugs overnight, rebuilt his life through discipline and hard work, and eventually discovered endurance running. What began as a personal challenge has grown into a 950-mile run across the UK to raise money for Young Lives vs Cancer. This part of the story is about resilience, second chances and proving that your past doesn’t have to define your future. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We are talking about it. Neil Mills, we will carry on now and we're gonna be moving forward. Let's let's talk about uh a little bit about the area, and you ended up in uh Billington, I think. I don't know Billington, but I know Leighton Buzzards and I know you said they're very very close together. Um what drew you there? How how did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Boy so I moved to Watford. We've talked about when I sorted my life out. I actually sorted my life out in South London, faced it out. I used to go out raving and drink water and bits and pieces, but then I decided to take the next step, which was to just clean start, get out of the area. I wanted a new identity somewhere where it's very hard to leave a life of crime and drugs behind you because everyone wants to bring you with them. So I moved to Watford first, moved into Watford, uh lived there for 10 years. But when I first moved to Watford, I got a job there as a bricklayer because I'd by then I taught myself to lay bricks. Um and a guy in the gym, first gym that I signed up to, he offered me a job as a foreman. I was like, I can't do that. And he Brendan Flahive, I'll never forget the guy. He showed so much faith in me, he went, I see something different. He went, what you're gonna do is you're gonna go to the job if you don't like it in two weeks. He went, Don't take it. He said, I'll just put you somewhere else as a brick now. So I took it. Um I worked for him for 15 years, six maybe longer. Um in that time he had died, his son took over the company, another great guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

What the guy that would that guy, what was his name?

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Brendan Flive.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Right, so he he was someone that you clearly respected.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

He from nowhere, he trained in the gym where I was. I started talking to him one day, he asked me if I was a bricklayer, he gave me a job. After two weeks, he wanted to promote me to a job that as far as I'm concerned, is way beyond my capabilities. He didn't think you could do. No, and he clearly did. He said, Yeah, he said, I think differently.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

I um and what you do now with the construction company and you could do that, you could have done that job then, you just didn't realise it.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah, oh well, it's why I am where I am now. I wouldn't own my own company now if it wasn't for someone like him showing me that I could actually do because being a bricklayer and being a bricklair and foreman and learning to read all the drawings and learn all the different things that go with it, and running jobs and schedules, and my brain couldn't comprehend that. Like, I'm I'm no way, like yeah, I can get the gist that I can be skillful with my hands. So he I'm just like okay, I took it, and yeah, I respect that guy so much because like I say, he believed in me like massively, and I even though my life had turned around, I didn't believe in myself like that. That was that's beyond me. That was really beyond me. Um and to be fair, I probably still feel that same person now where I still I used to call it riding my luck, um and I know it sounds fair, but I just think I like to stay modest sometimes rather than go I'm the best. I used to say I'm riding my luck, like because it keeps me striving a little bit more and pushing.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Do you do you think there's a little bit of imposter syndrome in there sometimes?

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Big time, yeah, big time. I don't know lots about that because I've also trained I've trained to be a life coach because that's one of my aspirations. That okay. Um I've got all different accreditations that I've trained for, which comes in handy because I get a lot of apprentices.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Um it helps me deal with life and things and people, but but again, you learn to learn um teaching yourself to bricklay first of all, but do you find as you get older you you you want to learn more and more and more because you've learnt to learn your way as a prescribe as been as opposed to being prescribed by a school to learn their way.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

It helps me break the school system down because I remember I remember having arguments with the school because I give the right answer but not worked it out the way they wanted me to work it out. So they've now failed me. So this is going back to school. It's my early interpretation of actually am I failing or is this now I look back, the system fails because in my head, surely if my brain thinks differently and I get the right answer, it doesn't matter how I got there.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Like with you 100% on that is one of my big things. The system is wrong.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Yeah, the system's really wrong. I've I've recently had something with my friend's daughter, and they failed her at school for the same thing because she shut and I'm like, This is so unfair. Like this this and that's how you ruin morale in a child's head.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Is okay, that so you're in the Leighton Buzzard area.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Well, so I moved to Watford, so that was relevant. Um I got in with Flahiva. A lot of their work spread out, so they're a massive company. Um, they at one point they held over 300 brick lads plus labour, so it's 400 strong force of that's a big brickwork subject. Yeah, yeah. Um, but their work would venture out, so Milton Keynes area. Um so we did a lot of work in Burke, Hampstead, Hemel Hempstead, Um, Boxmoor, Milton Keynes areas like that. So I'd worked on site, so I got in with a lot, a lot of the guys that worked for me were locals. Um, a guy that worked for me, George Moore, he was toying with the idea of moving to Leighton Buzzard. Um, his girlfriend had found me there in and around. So we sort of talked and talked, and then I'd met my wife, so we was I was sort of to and fro to Manchester visiting her. She fell pregnant with Charlie George, that's my youngest son. So we then decided that we needed a fresh start, but where do we go? So I'm literally putting Leighton Buzzard on the radar. I'm like, if you have a look at it, the future was to build the M1, so you've got that option, the train services are pretty good, but they're even expanding them. Properties are cheap, that was a good turning point. We like the countryside feel, but the fact that it was also town, community, building, not so much city, but that sort of vibe. So we sort of tested it and said, right, we'll rent. So we rented in Billington, Great Billington, just outside, it's literally a quarter of a mile from Leighton Buzzard to where I live now. Actually, I could it's funny enough, when I go running, I run round the route, round the outbacks, and I end up back on the road where I used to live. Right. Um tested it for just under two years, and then went, Yeah, it's the right thing to do, so let's buy. Sort of looked on the market, it shows you how the market was growing because I said it's a great time to buy. The houses were cheap. Like if you bought in Hemel Hempstead at that time, it was the same house we bought was over£400,000 just for that postcode for a little bit further in. Um, it was actually£280 when we looked. Right. Within a week it went$290 because we just missed the click. Right. All right, right, let's get on it now. So we got on the housing ladder, we've moved in. Um, yeah, it's been a good, really good move for us.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Um and so places that are important to you in that area. Uh with we've touched on the uh the canal. Now, a lot of people around here, Bedford and beyond, probably haven't even got a clue that we're blessed with the Grand Union Canal not very far away from us.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

It's funny enough because I share a dream that you've I've recently found out you did, and that's to run the length of that canal to a certain point. So the canal for me, um I used to avoid the canal because I used to have it in my head that it was a straight road, very bleak, not many turning points. So when I run, sometimes I like to loop because it kills a bit of mileage because you'll know in your head when you've got one straight line, it's it's like never-ending, yeah. But then one day I looped onto the canal and I just stuck with it, and as I actually found that it's the thought, it actually allowed me to think, and I I always associate running with not thinking because it's yeah, everything's but it actually gives me thinking space and breathing space. So the canal now is my place to go. Recently, actually, I've hit an injury four weeks ago. So when I go running, I go to the canal because it just allows me to think what I can do, chill out, keep my paces down, chill. Um, yeah, it's a safe place, and it's it's and running.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

I find running next to water really, really comfortable, com um comforting. And so for people who might not know the canal so well, um somewhere to look out for is a sort of three locks area. Yeah. And you've got an amazing pub there for a start, um, which is brilliant. Um but just I I I did it in sections over different days, but the sec the second day was from sort sort uh somewhere in Hertfordshire to we finished at Milton Keynes, and the best section of that canal by far was as you were approaching Leighton Bussard and the bit into Milton Keynes that that stretch there. Now you've got some really lovely areas as you go north and coming out of London, but that was one of the nicest, most scenic, relaxing uh parts of the canal.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

And actually, you now you say that. So I did a the closest I've got to my challenge, I've done a 45-mile run. So I've ran that canal. I did, I ran to Watford and back from Leighton Buzzard. Yeah, um, so that canal, I always pick it, and I used to moan about it a little bit, the the area you're talking about, it's a bit rough and a bit rocky, and a bit, but it's not until you get to Hemel Hempstead that you realise how nice, like you say, that part is, how well treated it here is because you get to Hemel and it's all grass and mud and you're slipping all over the place. I ran to Hemel via the Leighton Buzzard Road and thought, you know what, it's going to be busy when I come back because that was four in the morning. So when I come back, I decided I decided to go back to canal, but I was on it for a mile and I went, Oh my god, I love where I am now because it doesn't matter if it's raining, it's not like that. That was slippery and horrible. So, yeah, I appreciate what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

So, you can highly recommend for people listening then because we always like to point out somewhere that's special to go to, it's worth getting on the canal around the Lake and Buzz area, be it running, walking, whatever. From yeah, cycling.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

From the grow what's the there's a pub further down which is closer to where I am. It's not the three locks, it's the one further down. It's the globe. So from the globe to about just before you get to Bletchley, it's a lovely stretch. Um once you get to the Bletchley part, it starts becoming it's nice in the summer, yeah, but in the winter it's a bit muddy, a bit slippery, and if you don't want your hip to slip out, then so Neil, how did you get into running?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Because you said you couldn't run. Now you told me you've you've already run a marathon, you've run a 45 miler. You told me you couldn't run though.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Um what happened? So we have a standing joke, me and my wife. She's she was in the army, and I always say I was built for the army, and she laughs at me and she says, You've got no discipline. And I know what she means when she says no discipline, she's going back to the school days of do this, do that, and I'm like, I don't want to do that, stick one up yours, blah blah blah. That's what she's talking about. I'm talking about discipline that switching your mind to something, yeah. Um and we used to get I used to get obsessed with who dares win. And during COVID, I said I'd love to do that. So my wife entered me into it. 43, I was, age 43, and she entered me into it, and I was so complacent that I didn't think I needed to train to run. Bear in mind the one habit I never gave up was smoking, so smoking is gonna be quite relevant, to what I talk about next. So, as much as I've been bodybuilding all my life, um I smoked, and it's the weirdest thing ever. And I hate smoking, and it literally was the one killer habit that I used to cry about and go, I'm never gonna be able to give it. I felt it owned me. It's torture, it's worse than any drug that I've ever took. It's literally torturing the fact that it's so hard to give up, and I'd sign myself up so I'd never get up, but it hadn't in my mind affected my health because I'm still training in the gym. I'm this big, strong, 18-stone muscly guy. Um, so she entered me into it, and it was because it was COVID, it was all done by recordings and Stravas and people following me with cameras. I got through every single round and I got to the running bit, and my wife kept going, Are you gonna do this run? You're gonna do this one? I just do it closer to the time. I had less than a week to go, and she went, You better do it now. So we went out. I had to do, I think it's army rules, I had to do nine and a half minutes, mile and a half. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I went straight out and I got 500 yards down the road, and I went to my wife, I give up, and I never give up on anything in my life. She went, No, no, I'm I'm not gonna do it. Have a look at the time. I'm it's impossible. I'm not gonna do it. I'm puffing, I'm panicking, I'm like, I'm ready to be sick. I went, I'm not gonna make it, so I I didn't make it and I didn't get through, and it scarred me a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

How far was you I know nine and a half minutes, but how far did you have to go?

SPEAKER_00 14:15

I to what they much did they want you to do to a mile and a half in in nine and a half minutes. No, and I I literally by a quarter of a mile, I'd failed. I knew it, I'd failed. There was no way I could do I can't remember the paces. I just looked at my watch and I went, I failed, I'm not gonna do it. So I just I don't like and of course I can't enter it anymore, so that got me, and then my son, my son, I went out with my youngest son for a park run and I ran with him and I had to drop out and it ruined me. I went to my wife, oh my god, but there's a secret to the smoking, is my family didn't know I smoked, my wife didn't even know because I was ashamed of it. It's it's it's the most unsociable, horrible drug on the planet. I didn't want my wife.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Why could your wife not know?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Because I didn't want her to know, more so that I didn't want my kids to know. Because my plan in my head when I met my wife was I was always going to give up smoking, and you always like to convince yourself that you're in control of that, but I wasn't, so I in my head she'd never have to know because I'd give up by the time she ever found out. Um, she knows now, so well, she definitely knows now. Um, but we've had that conversation. My kids never knew I smoked. My eldest son knows I smoked, my kids never knew, they do now. Um, because I didn't want them to know because the person they looked up to, because obviously I've changed my life, the person they look up to most that's fit and healthy is not as fit and healthy as they think. I ran this park run and I dropped out and I went, Oh my god, I've got to do something about this. Opportunity and adversity. Someone at work went, aha, big body. They heard about me failing on the who dares wins. Ha, see, big bodybuilders. Now I know it's nothing to do with bodybuilding, it's the smoking. Big bodybuilders can't run, blah blah.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

So we we know again. I always bring CrossFit when it went stuff like that. CrossFit proves that you can do strength and cardio, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah, so this conversation happened, and this guy went, You'd never run a marathon. So I went, Alright then, and I literally signed up to the Brighton Marathon. So it was just coming out of COVID 2021. I actually wore the t-shirt running this morning. It says the comeback's always bigger than the setback. I absolutely love the t-shirt and the concept behind it. So that challenge came on. I had eight months to get ready because it was in September that year, Brighton Marathon. Um, and I did. I literally went, I remember the first day I went out running, but I stopped smoking just like that.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

I thought you were gonna tell me you still smoked.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

No, no way, no. I still I haven't smoked since that day. So I went out and I ran and I I couldn't run a mile. It took me two weeks to run my first mile. Um, this is where the thing where I salute my mum come from. That when I reach my first mile, I salute my mum, and I do it every time now. When I see the moon, there's a song that used to play on my Spotify, which is See the Moon. I can't remember who sings it now, but every time I see it, I salute my mum now. Literally, when I'm running, when I run a marathon and it gets a bit hard, I salute my mum because I'm convinced that she was the person that I reached out to and I thought it was like because I don't God help me, there's no God help me. It's fucking if you're looking like help me, and I literally got my first mile. Um, so I did I ran the Brighton Marathon in four hours and 50 minutes. Um but I was still a big guy, yeah. But still I'm still a big guy now. I so I still hit the gym seven days a week now. Yeah, um, but I did Brighter Marathon, but in that time, this is where the challenge came. A guy called David Brahmer, he's worked for me for years, um, he said to me, You should do Lanz Ante John O Grotes, and I went, Okay, that sounds good. What is it? And I looked at it, I thought, that sounds good. He meant on a bike. So I'm looking at it, and I've got in my head, my I'm always looking for the next thing, so I'm always thinking, and ever since that day I've thought about Lanz Entergiano Grotes, Lanz Enter John O'Groats. So I talked about it, a couple of guys was gonna do it with me. We sort of started training for it. I looked at them and I went, it doesn't look like you like taking this too seriously. I'm gonna tell you something about it. I'm gonna do it in 21 days, and I want you to know that I'm not waiting for you, like the the world's not waiting, I'm not getting to checkpoints and waiting. We're doing it or we're doing it, so we sort of come to agreement, they dropped out. But in between this, I run Brighton Marathon for Alzheimer's just to run for someone because I always want to strive to do something for someone, and then I got in with I actually got injured the next year and I cycled for the London to Brighton because I couldn't run, I wanted to carry on running and keep training. I cycled for Young Lives Versus Cancer. Um got in with a charity, I loved the way they worked, it's intimate. I wanted to run for mind, I'm massive on mental health. Obviously, mental health's huge for everyone, but I just found that some of the bigger charities I approached, you were just in a generic email letter, and I wanted it to be a bit more intimate. Whereas Young Life, there was you had this engagement manager, um Eleanor used to talk to me, and I said, Oh god, you're actually part of this, like let's make this a big thing. So, we as a company signed up to Young Lives versus Cancer to help them, and we've done loads for them. Actually, we've we've been around some of their houses for some of the young men that have had cancer, helped do up their properties to give them a better start in life and whatever, like clean paint, flooring down. Um got really intimate with a charity. I mean, I last year I ran back to back. I did Manchester, that wasn't last year, it was the year before. I did Brighton, Manchester, London, then Berlin Marathons, one after the other, apart from Berlin's later on in the year. But I did three back-to-back stress fractures and everything. But this in my head is all training for what I'm doing now. It's not now I know a lot more about running. It's not okay, right.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

I now accept that you can run. Yeah, so I think we should probably move on to the challenge itself. So, um, again, it's for Young Lives versus Cancer. Just explain what on earth you're gonna be doing.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

So I am gonna visit every single one of their home from homes. So if Young Lives versus Cancer, basically, if no one knows, they set up homes near the cancer units for children, and then if your child's got cancer, they the family gets to stay at one of these home from homes while the child has treatment, it allows them to be close without all the expensive fees. They've got places all around England, so I'm gonna run from London to Nottingham, Nottingham to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Glasgow. Glasgow, I'm gonna cowardlessly get a boat over to Belfast. I'm actually only in Belfast for one mile.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Hang on, you're not gonna swim.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

That's another challenge altogether. Yeah, don't talk. Don't talk because it'll come off to Belfast not this time, off to Belfast. I'm in Belfast for one mile, run back to the port, get a boat back to Manchester, from Manchester to Bristol, Bristol to Southampton, Southampton back to London. Just like that.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Wow, that is I I love bonkers challenges. That is as bonkers as it gets. Just if you're in when you're in Belfast, try and make time to go to the Titanic Museum. It's breathtaking.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

I've been doing that, I've been there Belfast a couple of years ago.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

So that is one hell of a challenge. When?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

So I start on the first of April.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

That's appropriate. Some people

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Would say. Yeah, so here's the bit of pressure that I really put on myself. I've set a 21-day challenge, and then when I realised, so I talked earlier that I I never come to terms with my mum's death, or I wouldn't allow myself to. Okay. My brothers every year have always been on to me about they always talk about the day my mum died and her birthday, and I blanked out it's my mum's birthday on the 20th of April. So I've worked it out in my head. If I do an extra two miles a day, I'll be back on the 20th of April, which is my mum's birthday. So, and then I can really salute her.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

It's just incredible. How again, I for experience I know that you don't do that sort of thing on your own. Who have you got with you? What's the support crew? What's the support process have you got?

SPEAKER_00 22:51

If my support crew, this is the bonkers thing, and I've started doing a few jokes because I've got a good friend Sasha, and he is going to drive a camper van for me. Okay, that's my support crew, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

I think it's gonna grow as we go through. I've got there's a point where he's got to be back at work, so we've got to swap over with a guy called Daniel. Um, there's gonna be people dipping in and out, but Sasha he feels inadequate sometimes, so I've started making a running joke on socials about how important his job is. Cups of tea, reminding me this was my idea, taking the glory when we get to the end and bits and pieces. But his job's more important than mine. Like, if he's not there, I'm not there. So we've hired a camper van for I've hired it for four weeks just in case. Well, in fairness, I've hired it for free. The guy who's hiring it so says give it to me for an extra week in case I run over. Um free of charge, fair play to him, and he's done me a deal on a camper. We've booked hotels with a Hilton because Sasha has got he works for BT, they've got little deals with Hilton. Hilton have given us a couple for free, or they've given us a deal with a we've ended up if where you work the deals out, we've ended up. We used MX points to get um. I think the whole thing's freestyle. Um, I keep saying to everyone, you can't train for it. So I've been injured for the last four or five weeks, a hip injury. Um, I'm still gonna do it regardless. And everyone's going, but how do you know it's not gonna go? And I'm like, I don't, but I didn't know that in the first place. I think the injury is a blessing. I always look for blessings and everything. I was a bit scarred the first two days, I was really down about it. Like, I've done a whole 16 months without an injury, and that for me that's good. I had so many stress fractures in the last well, you know, about running. If you yeah, it took me well, I got a running coach in the end because everyone says, Why do you get a running coach? You're so good at running, and I'm very bad at running because I go out at marathon pace every week and then I get injured.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

You've got to chop and change things.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

I needed someone to make me accountable to tell me to slow down because my personality tells me to just go all in, go all in, all or nothing, all or nothing, and I just kept getting injured. So got running coach Kelvin, he's tamed me down. So 16 months, no injury, and I got this injury. I was like, God, devastated. Um, but then I thought it's allowed me to be fair, all this is happening now because I then found the time to do the logistics because I was getting myself in a right state that I've had no time to email anyone, I haven't sent anything out. You know, I'm gonna do all this run for nothing, but not for nothing, but I want to raise as much money and awareness as possible for young lives and make it bigger. I want the event to be bigger than me, so I want what I'm doing is massive, but I want what I raise and the awareness that I raise to be bigger than that. So the blessing is that I got injured, I've slowed down. That injury might have happened after two weeks or a week, and then I'd be in trouble because I couldn't actually walk for the first two days. I basically besit it, my hips overworked, it's swollen up and it's trapped on my nerve. Um, so yeah, I just looked at the blessing, and like I say, moments like this is what the blessing is for me.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

I'm I'm envious to be honest with you, because I I love these bunkers sort of challenges. I've done a four-day one before, not not the distances you're doing at all. Um I'm not sure I can do multi-day ones now, but um, it's an amazing challenge. So there's clear, you know, you fell in love with the charity really, they uh and partly because it's an intimate, and I get that because we what we're trying to do now with my bed for charity chase and different things, we try to keep everything local, um, and that's not to be disrespectful to the great big national charities, but there is something special about if you can work for a local charity or a branch of a bigger charity, but the local branch of it. So, yeah, how how can people get in touch with your fundraising?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Is there a just giving page or so there's a just giving page that floats around socials? My son has actually just sent me a it's grown quite quick actually overnight. Um Instagram, there's a just giving pages text codes that's going about. Um what what would people search for?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

What what's is a is a name to the challenge?

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Is uh Neil Mills 950 mile challenge, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Um that's quite straightforward. Then people can't go.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Yeah, if you put in SD Carpentry online, it'd turn up on our on our business page for on Facebook and Instagram. But yeah, not Neil Mills 950 mile challenge, it'll pop up.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Well, we will definitely be sharing the details of that, and uh on all of my social media page we'll we'll put all that detail out there. Um so just you and and and Sasha.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Oh I'll share some of the posts with you. Yeah, it's um the standards. We will on social media. It's two men, one camper van, and a really debatable plan. Really debatable plan.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

I'm trying to think what our one was for we we called it run the country. We run from Whitehaven to Sunderland, so west coast to east coast over four days, and uh it was four guys, 400, it weren't 400 miles. I can't think what it was, but it we had a strapline at the time, it really fitted, so uh that's quite important.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

But yeah, I find the I don't know about multi-days because I haven't done it yet, but I find ultra running easier than marathon running. I I think marathon running because it's it's it's a race, it's done at pace.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Yeah, this is it. There's a there's a I I explained this um from my because I run, I do a lot of running with a pack on, and people say, Oh dear, run with a pack on. But when you're running with that, you're you're you you've got a steady pace, you're like a diesel engine rather than a sports car, and your heart rate is always kind of below the red zone, you never really get into the red zone. Whereas if you were trying to run a marathon as fast as you can, you're up there, your heart rate's higher. I find it much, much easier.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

It's how I learn to run. So I used to struggle with my paces. My running coach used to pull his hair out, he's like, You're not getting to the paces. I started running to my heart rate, and like you say, the heart rate is low. I know that if my heart rate's below one what's that one fifteen? I'm running at the pace that I should be running at.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Okay, so we'll we're coming towards the end of today. So there's a a few things if we sort of reflect a little bit. Um I mean, I don't know what on earth. What when you look in the mirror now, how different are you to that man that you feared you you could become, or were becoming a million miles away.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

It's why the name that you chose the minute you said it, it fits. It's like I've learned that life's choices. Um I was just always one choice away from changing what I wanted to all the time. So I look back and I'm like yeah, I I defied I haven't defied all odds because there's no one's got odds stacked against them. Because I think the minute we say that we've got odds stacked against us, I think automatically we're putting weight on our own shoulders. Okay. I just think I proved that we get a choice no matter what, and sometimes a choice might be the harder choice in your head, but it's still if it feels like it's the right choice. So I look back and think eventually I made the right choices. Um like I said, I touched on it earlier. I think I lived a certain way so that others didn't suffer behind me, and I can accept that, and it makes everything alright. It's good, it's alright to look back and say, feel sorry for me. I don't feel sorry for anything, I just feel that that's the way it was, that's the way it was, and that's how I got here. There's no regrets, there's no hating on anyone, I don't I don't hate on my dad for going, I don't hate on my stepdad for going, I don't hate on the world for taking my mum. I just think that that's what structured me to stand here proud like now and look back and say, all that built this. So Wow.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

And what what would you say if if a if a 15-year-old lad stood in front of you and was going to turning into a the person that you thought you could have turned into and they think their life is mapped out and they can't change it? What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 31:38

You're better than you think. Um that's my ideal working platform that as well, young kids that age.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

The world the world doesn't decide who you are, you decide. And if you decide that you want you want to be better than that, you'll be better than that.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah, that's brilliant. Okay. So at the end of your 950-mile journey in 20-ish, 21-ish days, what would success look like in your mind? Because it's quite important to you, but you'll have your own version of success. What would that be?

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Finishing in Yeah. Finishing in 21. I'm not even going to talk about the 20 days, that's just a that's a bonus. But to finish it, no matter how I finish it as well, I've got no even if I finished it on crutches, like I've got that in my head at one point. Um I've trained on crutches before, but I've got it in my head that if something went, if something goes, but just to finish it, to get on the other side, and and success looks like I talk about a lot, I I grow in ten years, so I'm I'm coming up 50, so I'm due I I break life into cycles of 10 years. I think we evolve every 10 years into a newer version of us, we learn, we look back, we reflect, and I think success at the other side would be that in them three weeks I reflect on my last eight to nine coming on nine years and I learn and I jump to another level. That's a success.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Okay, yeah, it's interesting. On the old principle of ten years, fifty when I was 50, um, I did an event called the fan dance, which is the SAS qualification march over Penny fan. Loved it, and I said I thought I'd love to be able to come back and do it when I'm 60. I'm 60 in July this year. I am gonna go back, I ain't gonna try and do it again. But I didn't realise at 50 I'd have all these aches and pains and cropped joints and what have you. So uh enjoy where you are at the moment in 10 years' time.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Oh no, I'm not deluded.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yeah, it's a very different cattle of fish.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

It's a whole new challenge.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

So, Neil, yeah, I I think your your story is proof that your past definitely definitely doesn't define your future, and I think there's the strongest journeys can begin when you actually make the choice, and I think you've proved that. Um it's just been amazing. You're you know, husband, father, uh successful business owner, and you're just about to run 950 miles for charity. I think Neil, uh, your story is absolutely amazing, it's been a joy, it's been a pleasure, it's been very emotional listening, and we will catch up with you after your amazing challenge. Yeah, that'd be good. Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate that. Thanks for watching.