118 The Aussie Legend Who Ran From The North Pole To The South Pole
Want a workout that actually works? Hydro delivers a full-body workout that hits 86%
🎙️
Published 9 days agoDuration: 1:291116 timestamps
1116 timestamps
Want a workout that actually works? Hydro delivers a full-body workout that hits 86%
of your muscles in just 20 minutes. Rowing with Hydro combines strength and cardio,
with thousands of workouts led by Olympians in breathtaking locations. No wonder 9 out of 10
members are still active one year later. Try Hydro risk-free at hydro.com and use code ROW
to save up to $475 off your Hydro Pro Rower. That's H-Y-D-R-O-W dot com, code ROW.
Worried about what ingredients are hiding in your groceries? Let us take the guesswork out.
We're Thrive Market, the online grocery store with the highest quality standards in the industry.
We restrict 1,000 plus ingredients, so you can trust that you'll only find the best high-quality
organic and sustainable brands, all free of the junk. With savings up to 30% off and fast
carbon-neutral shipping, you get top-trusted groceries at your door, and you can stop
worrying about what your kids get their hands on. Start shopping at thrivemarket.com slash podcast
for 30% off your first order and a free gift.
I'm Mike Boris, and this is Straight Talk.
I was ready to die. Temperatures of minus 30 degrees.
I was bloodied and broken. It's like hell on earth.
Ultra marathon runner Pat Farmer, he circled Australia before and run from North Pole to South.
When did you first find this out? Like, how old were you when you knew you could run a long distance?
Well, I took up ultra running when I was 18 years old.
I was inspired by a cliffhanger.
Cliff Young in the first Sydney to Melbourne race.
Cliff Young.
And that was all it took to ignite the spark inside me that allowed me to go on and do
all the many things I've done for the last 42 years.
Can you take me through some of the more interesting marathons you've done?
I did a run, basically North to South Pole via the Americas.
Well, they're touting it as the greatest run in history. It's the Pole to Pole run.
10 months, 13 days later, I finished at South Pole.
What kept you going?
My wife passed away a few years before that.
And so the only thing that kept me from doing myself in, it was the simple fact that my kids needed me.
I mean, that's a pretty hectic story, to be honest with you.
Like, your mind must be, you've got to be able to keep your mind level.
Most important thing I live my life by is finish anything that you start.
And then the second thing is...
Pat Farmer, welcome to Straight Talk, mate.
Mate, great to be here. Thanks very much.
You're looking awesome.
I don't know so much about that. I wish you'd tell my wife that.
No, you look fantastic. I mean, I'm looking at you now. You're looking very, very trim.
I mean, I guess you're training for something.
Yeah, I'm just getting back into training. Of course, I finished the run around Australia six months.
I lost a lot of weight on the road. I was doing six months, approximately two marathons a day,
every single day for six months around the country.
And as...
As you would know, the last six months of last year was incredibly stiflingly hot,
especially at the top end of the country and in the centre of the country,
which is where I finished in Nooroo.
That was a run for The Voice.
I was speaking at functions every single evening.
So there's a lot of pressure on it.
And consequently, you know, I lost a lot of weight.
So it wasn't like a standard sort of race thing.
No, I guess that's what I want to get into.
Like, the obvious question is why.
But let's sort of go back a long, long way.
So what, you're 61 years of age?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I remember, I think I might have made a smart-ass comment to you earlier on.
It looks like you've got a kilo per year of chronological age.
So that's like, what are you, 66 kilos now?
Yeah, about that.
Yeah, about that.
Yeah.
And what we...
By the way, what would you normally walk around if you're not training?
If you haven't been training?
Look, my race weighed at 61 kilos.
Yeah.
So I'm fast when I'm 61.
If I'm 59...
I start to lose a bit of energy and anything below that, I'm just lethargic.
Anything above 65 and I'm lethargic again.
So, you know, I always find that sweet spot and, you know, that's homeostasis for me.
It's where my body just feels good and I run well and I'm strong.
That's interesting.
I mean, I did want to talk about your youth, your young years.
I know, Will, I'll park it for a sec there.
You said homeostasis, which is a function the body performs generally.
Speaking of functional body performance, make sure you've got the right amount of salt,
the right amount of glucose, the right amount of water, blah, blah.
Your body's always adjusting and sort of re-leveling.
So homeostasis for you, though, in a physical sense, when you feel good,
is in that range, that weight range.
But what you're saying, I think what you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong,
you feel right.
In other words, everything is in good shape, ready to run, ready to compete,
good to walk around, healthy, around 60-something, 61, 62, 63 kilos.
Yeah.
Above that, we're only talking a kilo.
There's not much in it.
There's a very small number for sensitivity in a sensitivity sense.
Above that, like, and or below it, you don't feel as though you're right.
Well, that's exactly it.
Mark, you would know, you know, you're somewhat of an athlete yourself,
but you would know that what happens with the human body is,
it's basically two mechanisms.
There's the mind and the body.
The body has this zone where it is best at,
and it goes to find that zone on a regular basis.
I'll give you an example.
I've run across the deserts of the world to some of the driest places on the planet,
some of the hottest places, and indeed some of the coldest places on the planet.
And during the course of those journeys,
my body has just come to a point where,
it almost refuses to lose any more weight.
And it has an inability to put any more on because I simply can't get my hands on the calories.
And I'm talking about places like the North Pole and Death Valley in the United States and places like that.
So, my body just starts to regulate itself and becomes a lot more efficient.
So, the minor amount of calories that it can get,
it really protects those and looks after those.
And it still functions as good,
with just that minor amount of calories,
where in a normal circumstance,
if I was back here training,
I'd have to be taking in a lot more calories.
To put that in simple terms,
I'll go for a run with other runners,
and they say to me,
we notice you're not drinking as much as we are,
and yet you still seem to be handling the conditions okay.
It's my body has adapted to the conditions.
That's pretty amazing.
When you think about all the narrative that goes around today about longevity and healthspan,
lifespan,
all the stuff that's going on at the moment,
and about,
you know,
right amount of sleep,
right amount of food,
nutrition,
right amount of exercise,
movement,
et cetera.
Most people would not know
where their sweet spot is in terms of physical weight.
And, you know,
sometimes we go to such an extent,
we say,
well,
let's go and get a DEXA scan,
see where our fat's deposited and all that sort of stuff,
and see what our bone density looks like,
and what our muscle to fat ratio is like,
et cetera,
and organ ratio.
Which is fine.
I know I'm a big believer in those DEXA's that they're good.
But what you're saying is you don't need DEXA.
You don't need your metabolic rate test.
You don't need to do a VO2 max test.
Pat Farmer has been doing this for so long,
probably with such intensity,
you know within a kilo where your sweet spot is.
That's exactly it.
But having said that,
let me qualify that.
I have spent time at the Institute of Sport.
I have been analysed by Sam,
many doctors and sports scientists.
I've been used as a guinea pig for everybody,
from clothing designers and special new fabrics,
all the way through to all the way through to food,
nutrition,
supplements,
vitamins,
et cetera,
et cetera.
So I've learned over the time,
I've learned a lot from them.
They've learned a lot from me.
But more importantly than anything,
I've learned a lot about myself.
And this is the key.
Any great athlete or anybody that's really good at sports,
at something,
anything,
they know a lot about themselves.
And at the end of the day,
we are all individuals.
So our environment plays a role in it.
Anything to do with our heritage,
our hereditary symptoms play another role in it.
But then aside from that,
it's about just understanding where your sweet spot is,
where your strengths are,
where your weaknesses are,
and then just going with them.
And, you know,
doing whatever is accordingly for you.
So I find that,
I can run long distance longer,
stronger,
better than perhaps any other person on the face of the planet.
But they are incredibly long distances.
So when did you first find this out?
Like, how old were you when you knew you could run a long distance?
Well, I took up ultra running when I was 18 years old.
Before that,
I was the same as everybody else.
I played sports the same as everybody else.
I played football,
cricket,
when I say football,
rugby league,
a little bit of soccer.
Ah,
and cricket like anybody else.
But I didn't excel in those fields.
Where'd you grow up?
Yeah, so I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney,
out of Granville.
Out of Granville?
Granville, boy, yeah.
Yep.
So I grew up there and it was amazing really,
because I was inspired by Cliff Young in the first Sydney to Melbourne race.
And Cliff,
he ran from Westfields at Parramatta through to Westfields and Doncaster in Victoria.
And he won that inaugural race,
that first race.
He shuffled.
He, well,
he did.
He shuffled along,
but he did what suited him.
So other people couldn't run the Cliffy style and I tried,
but it's,
it's very awkward.
So Cliffy used to keep his arms down very low to his body.
He had incredible economy of movement.
He had bad joints,
bad hip joints and things like that.
So,
and I witnessed in races later on when I was crewing for other runners in the Sydney to Melbourne race in order to learn about that event,
that his hip would come out of place on a regular basis.
And his support crew would lie him down on the side of the road,
push his hip back into place.
And with a yelp like a dog,
he would get it,
he would get up and he would take off again.
And he was tough as nails,
you know,
but a lot of our farmers are a lot of those,
a lot of those tough old farmers.
That's exactly what they're like.
Farmer by definition,
farmer by name too,
by the way.
But you're a,
you're a farmer by name.
But if you don't mind,
I just want to just sit on Cliffy Young for a little bit because a lot of people wouldn't remember him.
But if you don't mind,
I just want to just sit on Cliffy Young for a little bit because a lot of people wouldn't remember him.
But if you don't mind,
I just want to just sit on Cliffy Young for a little bit because a lot of people wouldn't remember him.
But I certainly remember him.
So he won the first Sydney to Melbourne as I recall.
Yeah.
I also recall he didn't have running shoes or something like that.
Well, let me tell you the story behind the myth.
So, yeah,
so the bottom line was there was this great event that was put on.
Westfield decided that they wanted to have a promotional event.
They wanted to showcase their stores around Australia and the size of their stores and get their name out there.
So they came up with the idea of a cash,
a cash prize for a running event,
but an unusual running event,
an ultramarathon.
Now ultramarathons were made famous in the 1800s in England and Europe.
They weren't that big in Australia,
but they were about to be.
So they held this race and I remember the prize money for this event was $50,000,
which was a lot of money back in the 1980s.
You bet.
And especially in running because we get paid peanuts.
And so consequently runners came from all over the shop to compete.
Around the world?
Not in the first one.
There was just restricted to Australians.
Right.
Second year round,
Yanis Kourou showed up.
Once the message got out there,
everybody from around the world wanted to come to Australia and have a taste of this money and the prize money and the opportunity.
So anyway,
Cliffy decided he would go in this race.
He had trained on his hundred acre property down in Colac in Victoria in gumboots.
He used to,
it's,
anybody that knows that that southern part of the Victorian coastline,
they get a lot of rain.
So the Great Ocean Road,
all that region,
Dean's Marsh,
Colac,
they get a lot of rain regularly and it's great dairy country.
But everywhere where there's dairy country,
there's a lot of cow poop and there's a lot of water and it's muddy most of the time.
And so Cliffy got around most of the time in his gumboots and he would often run into town and back doing a marathon for training.
So,
42 K's in a pair of gumboots.
The media came out to see him and interview him and they saw him running in the gumboots.
And that's where the whole myth began.
Did he run in the gumboots from Sydney to Melbourne?
No,
not the Sydney to Melbourne race.
He had a pair of Puma's running shoes.
And it's interesting,
you talked about his shuffle,
the Cliffy shuffle,
Cliff Young shuffle.
He,
I remember,
do remember him,
his arms were sort of down by his side when he was running.
It was sort of,
it was a,
it was a shuffle and he won it.
Is that because,
did he,
did he not walk at any stage?
I mean,
in this event,
do people walk at some stage or do they run the whole way?
Oh,
you can walk,
you can crawl,
you can do whatever you want,
but you have to get from point A to point B in the fastest possible time.
So it's not efficient to walk,
it's not efficient to crawl,
but you do whatever you've got to do.
And all of us have found ourselves in both those states at different points in time.
So Cliffy's greatest advantage was his ability to go without sleep.
So he would sleep,
you know,
basically 20 minutes inside,
uh,
well for the first couple of days inside the first 24 hour period.
So,
so imagine sitting up in your lounge room watching a TV for 24 hours and somebody says,
you're only allowed to have 20 minutes sleep.
Now let's take you off the lounge and get you out there running and saying,
I want you to run,
I want you to run at your best and then we'll give you a 20 minute sleep.
And that's exactly what Cliffy did.
So he had this ability to be able to go without sleep and push on all of the other runners.
They were racing 140,
160,
even 180 kilometers in 24 hours.
And then they will,
they actually did that in about 14,
16 or even 18 hours.
So approximately 10 K an hour.
And then they would have a long break for four,
six or eight hours.
And then they'd get out on the road and they'd hammer it again.
Cliffy would just get to the stage where he'd catch up to the speed.
He'd get up to them just overtake them and then they'd get back on the road.
So this happened for a few days on in the early start of the first race.
And then they realized it's Cliff Young.
He's never going to beat us.
We're not worried about him.
He's this little old guy.
He's in his 60s.
Was in his 60s?
Yeah,
he was in his 60s.
Wow.
And they,
and they decided why bother?
So then they went back to their regular sleeping patterns and slept a lot longer instead of being startled and getting up early because they thought another runner was going to overstep their sleep.
And they went back to their regular sleeping patterns and slept a lot longer instead of being startled and getting up early because they thought another runner was going to overstep their sleep.
And they went back to their regular sleeping patterns and slept a lot longer instead of being startled and getting up early because they thought another runner was going to overstep their sleep.
And they went back to their regular sleeping patterns and slept a lot longer instead of being startled and getting up early because they thought another runner was going to overstep their sleep.
And that's where they made their mistake.
Typical tortoise and the hare event.
Cliffy got 30 Ks ahead of the rest of the field after three days.
By this stage,
they were getting down close to Nimnebel,
Mbambala,
Cairn River on the New South Wales-Victorian border.
Incredibly cold in the mornings.
This is around Easter time.
So icy cold early in the mornings.
Nobody wanted to be out there,
but you had to be.
It was part of the event.
And so they were worn out,
beat up, broken and tired,
and they didn't push themselves any harder than they had to.
They gave up on worrying about Cliffy,
thinking that they could overtake him any time it sued them.
But with 30 Ks ahead of the rest of the field,
when they finally realized he was a threat,
it was too late for them and too hard to pull him back.
And he just stayed consistent all the way through to Doncaster.
The numbers of people swelled from being two or three people,
including people like myself,
a young apprentice motor mechanic out the front of a garage at Granville,
watching him run by to being two or three hundred people deep.
There was literally tens of thousands of people lining the streets of Victoria
to see him come over the Dandenong Ranges and into Doncaster in Victoria
and win the first Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon.
And he was such an inspiration to this nation.
And he was an inspiration because he wasn't an athlete.
He was a poor, simple farmer that believed in himself,
had tenacity, was determined,
and just got out there and put one foot in front of the other.
And so those people are a greater inspiration than our great athletes
because you can relate to them.
Everybody related to Cliff Young and thought,
if he could do that, maybe I can do something good with my life.
And that's exactly what I thought.
I was craving for something in those days.
I was a young fellow.
I wanted something.
I wanted to be somebody.
I wanted to make something of my life.
And when I saw Cliff Young do that, I thought, my God, if he can do that,
surely I can.
And it wasn't long after that I realized just how hard it was to actually try
and maintain a pace for a long period of time.
You remember your first one?
Well, let me tell you about the first thing I did directly.
I was so inspired.
The very next day after that event was over, I ran to work from where I live,
which was approximately six k's from home.
I had never done any distance running at all.
Threw half a dozen bricks in the back of a backpack and ran from home to work.
Showed up at work.
With all these bruises all over my back, it was such a silly thing to do.
But highly motivated by Cliffy and thinking to myself, I'm going to do the Sydney to
Melbourne one day. And it wasn't long after that that I got the chance to qualify and
eventually get into that race myself.
Well, that sounds quite modest when you say qualify.
In terms of being able to go on the next Sydney to Melbourne, what's the process of
becoming qualified? So like you have to run a few marathons or what did you have to do?
Well, yeah.
You had to, you had to do an ultra.
So an ultra marathon is anything over the distance of a standard marathon, which is 42
kilometres approximately.
So 50 k's and beyond.
But the race organisers had lined up races like from Parramatta to Bathurst up over the
Blue Mountains. And you had to do that in 30 hours.
You had to run from, say, Melbourne to Colac via the Great Ocean Road up through Lawn and
Anglesey. And you had to do that within 30 hours.
So we're talking, you know, close to 200 k's in total.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
200 k's in distance.
Or you had to run around a 400 metre track, a measured track in a particular race that they
would organise. And you had to knock up a minimum of 160 kilometres in 24 hours.
Around a 400 metre track.
Around a 400 metre track.
Oh my God. That's a lot of, that's a lot of laps.
That's 4 x 160.
That's a head bender.
Yeah, that's a lot of laps.
Yeah, it sure is. But we got to change direction every eight hours.
So it was, it was nice.
And what speed you're running at?
Like.
Well, it varied. Let me tell you about the first one I ever did. So I decided I was going to go in the Sydney to Melbourne race. And so the qualifier was on at Henley Oval at Botany in Sydney, not far from here. And I convinced my family I was going to do this event. I was going to go in the Sydney to Melbourne races and I needed them, the crew for me on the side. So that meant food and drink and lap scoring. So there was a lap scoring tent. There was 30 hopefuls from around the country that wanted to compete in the Westfield run.
Yeah.
We all lined up. The gun went off and I took off and I started running. And I felt everybody else was pacing themselves. And I hadn't learned about pace at that stage. So I just ran. And I ran hard and fast. I was doing 14, 16, 18 k's an hour for long periods of time. And I was running around the track and running around the track and running around the track. And after an hour, the race organizers started putting up the leaderboard and there was I number one.
So I started thinking to myself, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to win this race. I'm going to go home, have a bath, have some dinner. I'll come back, pick up my trophy in the morning and my certificate saying that I've qualified for the Sydney to Melbourne race. And this is a piece of cake. I should have taken this business up earlier. And then the second hour came through and I was still in the lead. And then the third hour came through and I was way ahead of the rest of the field, but I started to feel dizzy. I started swaying from side to side and I moved to the outside lane to the track.
And my brother Bernie came over to me. He was crewing for me. He said, Pat, what's the matter? I know she's slowing down. I said, Bern, I don't know, mate. I can't figure it out. I don't feel well. And he said, well, what's wrong? And I said, I feel dizzy. And he said, well, why? What can we do? And I said, I don't know. But I said, I've been watching the other runners and they've been taking in something to eat and something to drink. Maybe I should have a drink now.
After three hours of running, I'd clocked up almost 40k in the three hours.
And then he says this to me. So he said, well, what do you want? And I said, I can't think straight, but I don't know. Just get me anything. So Bernie raced across the road. He got me a can of Coke and the biggest hamburger you've ever laid your eyes on was dripping with fat and bacon and eggs and you name it. And he came back and I moved to the outside lane of the track where I was allowed to get aid. I grabbed the hamburger. I wolfed it down. I threw down the Coke. My eyes opened up like headlights on a car and I took it.
I took off again and I lapped everybody. And then I went around again. I lapped them again, come around for the third lap. And I fell to my knees in the middle of the track and I just vomited all over this beautiful synthetic track. And all the other runners were running around me and cursing and carrying on. And the race organizers grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me to the outside lane of the track. And there I lay in my vomit and the mess there for seem like hours.
And eventually my brother, Bernie,
comes over again with a bucket of ice water,
chucked it over the top of my head
and said, can we go home now?
And I got up and I staggered around.
I said, no, no, I haven't finished yet.
And I pushed on all the way
through to 10 a.m. the next morning,
24 hours after the race started.
24 hours? Yeah, but
I was barely
awake.
Sleep deprivation,
lack of food, lack of nutrition,
lack of common sense and brains,
all the sorts of things.
That were holding me back.
The only thing that was pushing me forward was my tenacity.
The gun went off at the end of it all.
I collapsed on the tracks and John's ambulance came over,
put me on stretcher, put intravenous in my arms.
And there I lay and everybody was going up,
getting their trophies, their medals.
The race one race organizer came up to me.
His name was Mike Agostini.
He was from Trinidad.
He was 800 meter from a runner from Trinidad Olympic runner.
And he was the race manager in those days.
And he came over to me and he knelt down beside me and he said to me,
Pat, is it true that you've never run before in your life?
And I said, yes.
And he said, is it true that you've never done an ultra marathon or even a marathon?
And I said, yes.
And he said, you've never even done a fun run?
And he said, and I said, yes.
And he said, he looked at me and I said, look, I said, I'm sorry.
I know I didn't do enough kilometers to get into the race.
I had done 126 kilometers in 24 hours.
And I needed to do a minimum of 160.
And he looked at me and he said, I think you've got what it takes to become a great ultra marathon runner.
Now, he could have chosen his words and he could have said, look, you're a bit of an idiot.
But if you learn about food and nutrition and you look after yourself, you know, maybe and you come back and you give it a better shot next year, maybe you might get there one day.
But instead, he looked me in the eye and he said, I think you've got what it takes to become a great ultra marathon runner.
And for me, for a kid.
For a kid from the western suburbs of Sydney that had been put down all his life and never amounted to anything, this was the first time anybody had ever said anything really positive to me and anybody really believed in me.
And that was all it took to ignite the spark inside me that allowed me to go on and do all the many things I've done for the last 42 years ever since.
Isn't it amazing sometimes you just need that one person to believe in you and tell you?
Absolutely.
You just need it.
Yeah.
Oh, we crave it as human beings.
Everybody does.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a bloody great story.
Obviously, you didn't qualify because you had to do 160.
Not that year.
Not that year.
But I'll tell you something that he did do for me.
He put me on the crew for Eleanor Adams.
And Eleanor had come over.
This was the next Sydney to Melbourne race that was on the following year.
And she turned out to be the first female to ever run that distance and the first female to finish it.
She finished in third place.
Overall, out of 30 of the best in the world.
First woman and third overall behind Yiannis, only behind Yiannis Kouros and one other runner.
And I learned so much from her on that journey.
And then, of course, the following year after that, I did qualify.
I went in the Sydney to Melbourne races and the rest is history.
I my best placing in that event was seventh place.
And then I went across to America to compete in the Trans-American race from California to New York.
I finished second in that race.
And then my my.
My career just sort of took off after that.
Can you take me through some of these some of the more interesting ultra marathons you've done, like in terms of geography?
Well, the race across America was brilliant.
It was it was modeled off the old Bunyan Derby, which was on in 1928, 1929.
And Harry Abrams, who was one of the runners who competed in the 1929 Bunyan Derby from California to New York, was actually there at the finish line when I finished in New York.
And there's a book called.
Flanagan's Run by Tom McNabb, and it was out with Penguin.
It's hard to get these days, but all the characters in this book are just these amazing characters.
And it talks about this circus that went from town to town and the runners race from one town to the next town, caught up with the circus were hosted by the mayor and the people of the towns that night with a big open air dinner that they would all sit at the dinner tables and all the locals would come and sit down to dinner with them.
And so this race was modeled around that.
And so this race was modeled around that.
And like I said, the characters were the same.
There was some really eccentric, unusual characters.
I'll give you an idea.
When I competed in it in 1995, there was this one guy they called him Mountain Man, and he was from the Rocky Mountains.
And he had a beard that went almost down to his knees.
And he was competing in this race.
And I'll never forget, we came into Colorado.
We just finished in Vail in Colorado, so up this very steep incline for the end of the day's 80-kilometer journey.
He was sitting at the finish line with a great big tub of ice cream and a bottle of Kahlua.
And he would take a scoop of ice cream, then fill it up with Kahlua and then have another scoop.
And I said to him, my God, how can you do that and run?
And he said, I'm just replacing the carbs.
And I just thought, well, two things I made sure of from that point.
One.
That I was never behind him.
And two, that I never touched the same sort of diet as what he did because, you know, he ended up finishing the race miraculously.
But talk about fart.
That guy, man.
He had so much gas coming out that rear end.
He probably didn't care, though.
He didn't care at all because he was in front of everybody else that had to deal with it.
Death Valley.
I mean, I've driven through Death Valley.
And, in fact, I remember stopping off there.
I was on my way to Vegas once from L.A. to Vegas.
And I stopped off in Death Valley.
And there was like a cafe restaurant thing with this massive big thermometer.
It was a really, really big tall thermometer.
And I just remember getting out of the air-conditioned car before I went into the cafe.
And the heat was like, my God, like it's just crazy.
And they call it Death Valley for a good reason.
You rent with it?
Yeah.
The temperatures regularly get up around 50 degrees around there.
And, you know, like 50 degrees Celsius.
It's pretty damn serious.
And, you know, I think I know the cafe you're talking about because I remember we'd finished
our run at the end of that day.
And I came into probably the very same cafe.
There's not much around.
No.
And they had a tin of dehydrated water.
It had a picture of a vulture on the front of it.
And it had dehydrated water on the side.
And you're opening emergencies.
And I thought, that's a quirky thing.
I'll get that.
But what happens when you run through, like, some of those?
You have that ridiculously hot temperature.
I mean, are you drinking water every 10 minutes?
Like, what's your strategy?
Like, is there a process?
Yeah.
The process actually starts with your training.
So this is what a lot of people forget.
You know, if you haven't put the hard yards into the training, if you haven't done the
work there.
And, you know, it's the same with business mentoring.
It's the same with everything.
If you haven't done the work behind the scenes, then you're not going to be successful at
the end of the day.
So it's all about training your body to get used to a minimum amount of fluid.
At regular intervals, when you can get it.
And so it's about training, carrying fluid with you, carrying the bottles with you.
So a lot of people use camel's backs.
I don't like them.
I find that camel's back makes my back very, very sweaty and just the weight of it.
And I chafe on the back and then it's sort of, it's a problem for me.
But so too, other people don't like wearing a belt with bottles on it.
And I wear a belt with a bottle on either side, perfectly balanced, a 500 mil bottle.
And I have safety pins, a pin in that to my pants so it doesn't bounce around too much.
And just the style that I run, the way that I run, that suits me.
It suits me as a balance and it's easy to grab and pull out and put back in and that
sort of thing.
So it all comes down to what you're used to.
So physically what you're used to as far as the movements are concerned, mentally what
you're used to as far as the discipline's concerned and knowing that you've got X amount
of water, it's going to allow you for X amount of time, it's going to get you through for
X amount of time.
And your body's going to be able to survive on that because you've done it before in
training.
But do you apply any medical and or science to this?
Do you sort of consult someone to say, okay, I'm 60 something kilos, Mr. Scientist or
doctor, how much fluid do I have?
80% of my body's maybe fluid.
Scientist says, well, therefore, Pat, you need to have in this picture, given the amount
you're sweating.
You need to take a half a litre every half an hour.
I mean, do you get scientific about it?
Yeah.
Look, as I mentioned earlier on, I'd spent a lot of time working with the Institute of
Sport and also-
The AIS?
Yep.
Yeah, the AIS and some of the chief scientists down there.
Dick Telford, a great mate of mine, one of the great sport scientists of the world, based
down there in Canberra.
Helen O'Connor was the chief nutritionist for our Olympians in the 2000 Games.
So people like that have worked with me on my food, my nutrition, my fluid intake, things
like creatine, things like isotonic drinks.
Can we talk about some of them?
Mineral replacements and things like that.
So consequently, I basically work on 500 mils every hour and within the hour, I usually
get between 10 to 16 Ks done.
500 mils, so a litre every two hours?
Yeah, a litre every two hours.
And you just mentioned a couple of supplements there.
So creatine, which is, you know, we see bodybuilders use it, but actually I know a lot of fighters
who use it because it's only a minimum amount, five milligrams a day, because it's actually
quite good for your brain, brain health, particularly if you have brain trauma.
It also helps you to retain the fluids in your body.
Well, that's what I was going to ask you.
Yeah, which is most important because all of your cells, you know, once you get, you
know, dehydration, it's very hard to recover from that, especially if it's a multi-day
event, you've got to back up day after day after day.
So as long as you can keep your body soft, supple, moist on the inside as well as the
outside, it'll function properly.
So creatine helps you, sort of soaks the water up or holds the water?
Yeah, it helps.
Yeah, it helps enormously.
And what about, like, you know, we see all these, I don't want to name the names, but
these drinks.
Look, they're all, they're all, most of them.
We got aid at the end of it, ADE at the end of it.
So Powerade, Gatorade, Staminates, all those.
I mean, the old days, you know, Staminate, everybody used to play tennis and they would
drink the Staminate.
They used to drink barley water.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, barley water was another.
I swear by coconut water, to be quite honest with you, it's natural and that's, if I can
get my hands on that, that's what I have.
So those, let's call them those things that have ADE.
They're mineral replacements.
Mineral replacements.
Potassium, potassium and magnesium.
If you just remember nothing else but those two, potassium and magnesium are the two things
that cause your body to cramp if you're missing those things.
And so you can take a soft banana, but it takes longer to digest, or you can have those
mineral replacements within a drink.
In the old days, you know, our soldiers used to take salt tablets, but the problem is they
were so, the sodium actually dehydrates your body even more.
So you don't want to be taking in sodium.
You don't want to.
Oh, really?
What you want to be taking is the potassium and the magnesium.
So those two constituents mainly.
Because I remember when I was a kid, when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, I used
to work in a factory and it was always, it was really hot.
And they used to give salt tablets.
Yeah.
And when I used to drink it with water, it would feel like puking because the saltiness
was sort of, it felt like I was drinking seawater.
Well, I was the same at school when I was a kid, you know, because everybody swore by
salt tablets.
But where that philosophy came from was basically when you sweat a lot, the salt comes out of
your body.
If you lick your arm or whatever, you can taste the salt in there.
So there's no two ways about the sodium is coming out, but when it's coming out, it's
bringing out everything else as well.
All that moisture, all the potassium, the magnesium and so many other different things.
So because they could taste the salt, the sodium, they thought, oh, we'll throw that
back in.
But that, then your body dehydrated even more trying to dissolve, trying to utilize the
potassium, sorry, the sodium.
And consequently, you dehydrated even more.
I mean, I guess it's sort of like a semi-trauma to you in some respects.
You're putting your body through a bit of a trauma, depending on the conditions, particularly
external conditions like that, you know, like where you are, whether it's in Death Valley
or it's in the Antarctic or whatever the case may be.
Which has been the most challenging for you in terms of physical conditions?
Like, is it rain, heat, snow?
What is it?
Oh, it's the cold for me.
The cold.
Like, I can deal with the heat.
It can be as hot as hell.
Well, definitely is.
And I'll just live with it.
I'll just, like, I don't like it, but I'll live with it.
But the cold, there is nothing more painful, nothing worse than the cold.
How do you mean?
Well, you get temperatures of minus 30 degrees.
What are we talking about now?
We're talking about the North Pole.
So I did a run that I was dropped off by Russian helicopter in the North Pole.
I dragged a sled out of there all the way through to Canada.
And from there, I made my way down.
I went through Canada, United States of America, all the way down through Mexico,
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, all the way down through,
even through the Darien jungle and then out the other side to Colombia, Ecuador,
continuing on down through Chile, Peru, Argentina.
To the bottom of South America.
And then I was flown across from there to Union Glacier.
Union Glacier is basically a camp behind some mountains in the South Pole region.
And then from there, I dragged, or basically ran out from there down to Hercules Inlet,
hooked around from there and head back up into the South Pole.
So basically north to South Pole via the Americas.
And during the course of that journey, you know, a lot of people,
because they're familiar with it, will talk about the South Pole.
But there is nowhere more inhospitable on this planet than the North Pole.
The North Pole is an ice cube that floats on the ocean.
It's just an ice cube.
And it just floats.
It just floats there.
And because it's like that, it is moving all the time.
You get a warm current come through underneath and it will melt before your eyes
and all of a sudden you're looking at the ocean below you.
If you get a hot current, sorry, a cold current come through,
it's like something out of a Superman movie where you've got all these icebergs
forming in the ocean underneath you, underneath the ice,
and then smashing their way through the ice in front of you.
So it's continuously groaning, cracking apart, forming back together,
from one day to the next.
And then on top of that, you've got the snowstorms, you've got the Struge,
which is the hard ice that is blown in a certain direction that you're tripping over
almost because it's so damn hard and you've got to get over the top of that each time.
So it's just the ribs and the ice basically.
But when you're tired and you're pulling a sled that weighs 100 kilos and you weigh,
as I did when I came off the ice in the North Pole, 49 kilos.
Now, we spoke earlier on about my ideal weight.
You know, when I made it through to Canada, I weighed 49 kilos.
There was nothing of me.
I was just all skin and bones.
And I was, you know, how I made that, I'll never know.
I look back at it and I just think to myself, you know,
it was the most horrendous time in my life.
And that North Pole, it's like hell on earth.
It really is the most inhospitable place on the planet.
Do you ever feel like you've got perilously close to,
um, death?
Oh, yeah, yeah, without a doubt.
And there was actually a moment within that run itself where I was, I was, I would have
been very happy to give up my life and just lay down in the snow and ice and just close
my eyes.
What keeps you going?
It was, uh, well, what happened with that was, um, imagine we're all, you know, I'm
all covered up.
I've got all my gear on.
I've got a neoprene vest over my face, uh, over my face, a mask over my face, got the
goggles on.
I've got the beans on, got three sets of clothing on, all special clothing, three sets of gloves
on, et cetera, et cetera.
Uh, and I had finished the end of a day's journey that, uh, what this one day, and it
was a snowstorm all day and outside.
And I was setting up my tent, uh, and I was there with two guides, uh, and I was setting
up my tent.
We're into about day 10 of the journey, uh, um, which ended up taking me 39 days to get
across the ice, the 800 kilometers of the ice from the North Pole out to Canada.
Uh, and I was, uh, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was,
I was, uh, and, um, I'd got in my tent in my haste, I'd, I'd stripped off my, my mask
and I'd left it on my, uh, on my sled.
So I got inside my tent.
I went to, went to sleep in my sleeping bag, my only sanctuary.
I remember looking outside of my sleeping bag, which still sustained you through temperatures
of minus 40 degrees.
It was the only bit of sanctuary I had, uh, and I would look out at my clothes that I'd
taken.
Uh, and I would look at my clothes that I'd taken off my sleeping bag.
that day and they were just covered in snow and ice and covered in ice and there's nothing you
could do about that and they're the clothes that you have to put on to try and start the day each
day so you put an ice on just to get into the ice every single day and it's a miserable thought
thinking about that and I remember I got up the next morning and I was ready to go again and I
started getting dressed and I put on my three sets of gloves I put on my thermal underwear and all
the rest of the gear and everything else with it and I was looking for my mask and my my guide
outside is yelling out to me hurry up you know because there was a there was still a storm outside
and they you know they needed to get going uh to try and stay warm uh and I was looking for this
mask everywhere and I couldn't find I was getting really frantic and I finally I I looked out the
the flyer the the tent outside and here was this patch of snow over the end of my
my sled which was
basically just a cut down kayak. I raced out there, I grabbed it, I brought it in and that
was my mask. I dropped it on the ground. It was like a piece of steel. I grabbed my thermos that
had melted snow in it that I was using to drink for through the day. And I tipped that over and
I tried to belt the ice off my mask and the guys are yelling out to me and I'm ready to go and I'm
not ready to go and I'm anxious and I'm worried and I put it on my face and all of a sudden I
stepped out of the tent to pull the tent down and then it stuck to my face. Oh my God. We got moving
and all day long it was just stuck to my face. After about two hours of dragging my sled through
the snow and the ice that morning, we finally got behind a little bit of an iceberg and the guys
were taking in their olive oil and they were taking in their sustenance, which was basically
butter and olive oil. Just fat.
Yeah, fat. And so I grabbed mine out of my sled. I had my butter there and I had my
olive oil and I couldn't get my mask off. And so I had these icicles, we call them
snoticles hanging down from my nose and I ripped one of those off and tried to force the butter up
through my nose because I couldn't get the mask off my face and my mouth was covered.
And then that was too difficult. Then I started trying to pour some olive oil up
through my nose and it was very difficult. And in the end, out of frustration, I grabbed the mask
and I ripped it. And when I ripped it, the skin came off the front of my face as well with the
mask and my face was bleeding and then the blood froze straight away. I threw back some olive oil
and I looked at my mask in horror and I put it back on. I didn't have a clue what my face looked
like. It was pretty ordinary. I put it back on. I'd finished that.
I'd finished the day of that journey and I got back inside my tent that evening and I was ready
to die. I was in a mess. We're only down to day 11 of the whole journey. I was planning to run from
the North Pole all the way down through the Americas to the South Pole and I was only on day
11 of the whole thing. I was in a world of pain. My face ached like nothing else. I was bloodied
and broken. I looked a mess.
The skin was ripped off from my ears across my nose and the other side of my face.
And I was, like I said, I could have easily just laid down.
But what kept you going?
Well, my kids. I have Brooke and Dylan, my two children. My wife passed away a few years
before that, quite a few years before that. And so I was their chief carer. And the only thing
that kept me from doing myself in or just lying down and closing my eyes was a simple
fact that my kids needed me. And you might think to yourself, well, and I don't blame
people for judging me, for saying I shouldn't have even been there if they needed me that
much. But Brooke was in boarding school. Dylan was in boarding school. I had put things in
place to make sure that they would be all right no matter what. And I was in a point
in my life where I just needed to do something that nobody else on earth had ever done before.
And this was a moment that I thought would have been a good choice to make. And it's
that when I was up there on that particular day, that particular journey, it was probably
the worst choice I could have ever made in my life. But somehow, someway, I made it through
that whole journey. Ten months, 13 days later, I finished at South Pole.
I mean, that's a pretty hectic story, to be honest with you. Like that is, I mean, you've
done some, we talk about adventures, but it's sort of like nearly masochistic in some respect
because you know you're going to have some sort of drama. I'm sure you don't enjoy it.
But it is nearly masochistic. And your mindset must be, your brain, as well as your body
being in a perfect position in that way, in that you know exactly where your body's got
to be to be competitive and to continue doing it. You're still doing it. You did last year
during the Yes campaign. But also your mind. You talk about homeostasis. You must be able
to sort of get your brain into or your mind into a homeostatic position.
Yeah.
Like where you know, forget about your body for a second. Like your mind must be, you've
got to be able to keep your mind level. In other words, you're not going to give up.
You're not going to lay down and die. You're not going to do something worse to yourself.
You've got to just, just keep it measured all the time. That sounds pretty tough to
me mentally.
Yeah. It's, it's, it's, Mark, it's right on the edge. It's right on the edge of losing
everything or getting done what you need to do. I've got a lot of mates that are ex-SAFs.
And they're, they're, they're very similar. We, I think that's why we're such good mates
because we understand each other. Sometimes you got to do stuff that really pushes you
to limits that you never even imagined or in a normal life you couldn't even imagine.
Like I look back at these things now in my, my normal day to day things and I never want
to be there again and I could never imagine it.
Yeah.
I keep, I keep doing this sort of stuff. So there's something in me that makes me,
makes me crave the unattainable. But, you know, like I've heard sayings and, and this
is so true, you know, if ever you get in a fight with somebody who's not afraid of dying,
they are the most dangerous force on this planet because once you take fear out of the
equation, then they are very, very dangerous people.
Yeah.
And they are, they, they will, can do anything and will do anything. Whereas most of us feel
the comfort, the creature comforts. And so we pull back when we feel that we're getting
close to that edge. And I see time and time again, you know, I see a lot of great athletes
and they'll be winning a race and then something will happen and their pride gets the better
of them. And they go, well, you know, I've got this reputation to hang on to. So, you
know, I'm, I'm gonna pull out now with this injury or whatever, rather than you know, rather
than finish in second or third or fifth or 10th place. Whereas with me, it's always finishing
is the prize. Getting the job done is the prize. For me, it's not about first place.
It's not about the gold medal, the Prize purse. It's not about the status. It's about knowing
within my mind, Well I suppose it is the status, know within my mind that people can rely on
to get the job done.
I want to talk to you about that.
It's just get the job done.
It's a thing I often think about myself and I wonder why I'm a CCO,
like why I'm still doing what I do.
And I have this mission and I have this view you've got
to complete the mission.
And I have a sense of duty and I don't know where I got it from.
I have a sense of duty and my duty is to complete the mission,
whatever my mission is.
And I don't want to say it's purpose or whatever.
How important is your sense of duty and where did that come from?
And how important am I saying the same thing?
I mean I'm not an extreme athlete like you,
but am I saying the same thing to you as you're saying to me?
Complete the mission at all costs.
Yeah.
That's your duty.
Yeah.
No, I think you are and I think we're probably more alike
than either has realized to this point because it's exactly that.
It is exactly that.
It's almost like comes a time in a person's life where they either keep going
along with the...
The crowd and the herd or they find defining points about themselves
that help them to set up a set of rules in their life that they live by.
And those rules don't always make sense to other people,
but to them they make all the sense in the world.
And to them it's the basis of God.
It's the basis of what they really believe in.
And so they never break.
They never break those rules.
No matter how much it's going to harm them,
no matter what's going to happen, good or bad,
they stick by those rules.
And I think people like you and I and numerous other people,
we set up a set of rules for ourselves and we just stand by that.
And for me it's very simple.
I don't take a backward step.
I never take a backward step.
And I spoke about this when I finished the run around Australia,
the similarities between our coat of arms and the way that I believe life should be