S2 EP05 Dan Humphreys - the Lakeland 50, Surviving the "Pain Cave," and the Mental Health Battle Behind It

So let's come back to the ultra marathon and for a moment, just go back to France, because at the time we did a little bit of a run.

We ran up the hill and came back down again.

I say hill, it's a mountain.

It felt like we ran uphill forever and ever.

And it was exceptionally disappointing when I then looked at Strava and it's like, you've done 200 meters of elevation.

You're like, oh, really? It literally felt like we had climbed a mile.

Two things that you chatted with me about and whilst we were there were bootpacking and ski touring, wrote it down just in front of me.

And I'm just wondering about what sort of impact they will have had on your training and your readiness to run an ultra.

Because firstly, in fact, why don't you just explain what they both are? Because honestly, they sound completely psychotic and the sort of thing that completely deranged people would do.

But completely deranged people run ultra marathons.

So it kind of checks out.

Yeah, so they are similar.

You have the same goal in mind, but you have a different way of doing it.

It's like whether you walk or you run it.

Bootpacking and ski touring, I'm going to focus on what they are together, but it's usually like you go out for a sunrise.

Sometimes you will walk up a mountain and start at like 4 a.m. Or for instance, I did one where I started at 1.45 a.m. And you walk up to the top of the mountain for the sunrise and then you ski down afterwards.

Other times you will bootpack or ski tour during the daytime, but you will go off-piste, away from the piste, up the hill where there are no lifts so that you can get the nice powder lines.

You often do it for the nice off-piste that you'll find.

For the

fresh snow.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

And put that into perspective then for us.

When we talk about climbing the mountain, that is literally, you are literally climbing the mountain.

So, I mean, from where we were, so we were in Maribel, which I think the hotel, not the hotel, the chalet was about 1400 metres.