Race Across America

And and we did a part of team events I did as part of the charity world.

I got invited to to do the race across America with an eight man wounded team of like minded sort of veterans and eight of us together in a constant perpetual relay.

We did 3,100 miles across USA on racing bikes from West Coast to East Coast.

Four of us hand cyclists and four of those guys, bless them, were blown up in Afghanistan with typically IED injuries.

And brilliant charity.

And they put, you know, a lot of guys into treatments with therapies and physical type of treatments as well.

But also they were the ones that were instrumental behind the project for the Race Across America.

Yes.

know, how fast can you cycle around the world? And for me, that's always been the...

ultimate expression you know there's lots of other great races over there but i don't understand why so many people race each other on say race across america when there's clearly a next level you can take this to everyone's busy racing each other but the ultimate expression of what's humanly possible is is is the world and the ultimate hat trick for me and you said in the instruction is the length of the americas the length of africa and around the world that's the you know that's crossing the inhabited continents of the world and that is the ultimate and if you can do it under your own steam you know, what's purer than that.

So that's why I've always had that singular fascination with the biggest ultra endurance rides on the planet.

And your question is ultimately around intrinsic motivation.

Mark, the Cairo to Cape Town record has got 10 Everest of climbing and you did that solo.

We talked about the ability to suffer.

Do you find that the ability to suffer is easier or harder when you're doing a solo race as opposed to something that's like race across America? Or are you still, because you've said earlier that you're racing yourself, do you visit, do you sort of view all of these attempts as solo? Yeah.

They're definitely not all solo.

But I didn't really think about it until like 2021 when I decided to look deeper into this because I did the previous project honoring a Taiwanese-American who died in Iraq back in 2004.

There was a TV series about it and I did a little like Race Across America event with TAC-DC.

So I had the experience of dealing with content like this and more and more that I read about not only Ming-Hao's story but the other stories.

It got me thinking because it kind of reminded me of how the memorial set up because it resembled the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. And I used to go to the memorial when my jobs were on the National Mall.

Next question is, where do you go from here, especially related to swimming? Because I'm not letting you get away.

Well, it's funny you say that because my coach, Robin Brew, who trained me for Race Across America.

So actually, you probably know who Robin Brew is.

He was an Olympic swimmer and won fourth place at the LA Games, which is his remarkable story, having set a new Commonwealth record, I think, in the heat.

Anyway, he... is an incredible triathlon coach.

So hence training me for Race Across America.

Also turns out he's a bloody good rower and competed at all sorts of levels and has been European champion at some point in his life.

And so he's coaching us at the moment.