The Duratus Mind - Project Vertical - Part 2 Reflections

The Vertical Marathon's reflections.  Gaz interviews Fergus Crawley and Jonny Pain 2 months after they had embarked on their epic quest of 32 ascents of Ben Nevis on 1/11/20 in aid of mental health and the prevention of male suicide.  This was to include; 42,200m elevation gain and 540km of distance travelled each.  ⁣⁣
⁣
Gaz digs deep on what they learned from the experience, what went well, what went really bad and what they've got planned for the future. 
 
#CLIMBYOUROWNMOUNTAIN​

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:37

All right then the Duratus Mind podcast. Um I think it's the first time I've got a part duh and this time it's with uh well this time um it's Johnny Payne and Fergus Crawley as a second part to the vertical marathon project possible. Sorry, project vertical, I should say. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

No, we're not. I mean project project possible was not quite within reach yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

We'd love to be part of it, but we're not.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

That's project impossible for us. Yeah. Um however, yeah, no, all good, all good in my end. I think we're we're both reaping the not the rewards, we're reaping the toils of our endeavour. But uh that was that was my first question, really.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

That was my that was my first question, really. So 42,000 meters of ascent was over over well over 500 miles or kilometers traveled.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah, 540 kilometers. Uh 42,000 meters.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

And no none of that people spoke about the descent. So my first question is, how's your knees?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

My yeah, my my my my left one is fine, which is actually the one I've had an issue with in the past, and my right one is kind of fine some days and then not fine other days at the moment, which is very unpredictable.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

What about you, Johnny? How's uh how's the body faring?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Well, I've I've had to go to the doctors actually. I've got um a tore um which explains a little bit. I've I've torn attendance in both knees, the right knee quite badly, uh, and uh ruptured a burst of sac and the left knee. So everything's a bit it's a bit knackered. So I'm going through a rehab process at the moment, not for the first time, so I'm I'm quite uh well, strange word to use. I'm quite comfortable with it. Uh and before we came on actually, I was talking to you briefly, guys. I'm I'm comfortable now that I know what the problem is. I think beforehand, all this kind of I wonder what's wrong with my knees, can it be can it be real bad, etc.? Because I've had problems before, but now that I know what's wrong with them, I know how to rehab it, so it's just a matter of time. But uh still sore, still can't, still can't run. But walking the dogs is just about all I want to do anyway. So we're we're in a good place with it.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Yeah, no, good. I'm I'm really pleased um that both of you are faring up okay. Some days good, some days bad. I mean, I'm I'm interested in how you're recovering. I think what's really important early doors is we just mentioned just how much money you raised, not an insignificant amount, you know, amazing work for Movember and men's mental health. So, from you know, from me and I'm sure people listening that supported you, you know, absolutely sterling effort before we dig into the detail. It was uh, you know, pretty epic to be fair.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. It was uh 43 grand in the end across all the touch points, which is which is great. Um, real, real big effort from people, not just Johnny and I. There were so many working parts and the behind the scenes that were making this happen and have contributed to the overall effort that has allowed us to raise that much money. So for anyone listening that has donated, massive, massive thank you. Great to hear that people have been able to engage with the message and the cause. But um, the money raised is is a nice number and it will do great things. But I think the engagement and the interaction and the personal messages and open conversations that we've had along the way with people we know with strangers have been what's been most valuable about this for us and hopefully for other people as well.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

There's been a few people that have asked me um privately that have said did they manage it? And I I think it's a really interesting question because you you set out with a with a particular target uh you know, 32 a cents of Ben Nevis, much like the money, not an insignificant amount of a cents of Ben Nevis. Um and that was the goal. However, uh well, do you want to explain? Because you know, I've got my take on did you did you achieve it, if that's the question, because in my mind you've absolutely crushed it, what it was you were trying to achieve, despite maybe the goal changing slightly. Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think um we've both got very similar takes on this, don't we? Really? And that there's there's two angles. One's the physical, one's the well, one's the let's say one's the athletic, and one's course focused. In terms of the athletic pursuit, this was never a big solo, unsupported endurance world first. We're not really that way inclined. I think there's a stage in our lives where we would have been. But the the whole purpose of the project is to encourage other people to climb their own mountain in simple terms. And the vertical marathon was simply the hook to allow people to engage with that message. We chose 32 Ascents and Descents of Ben Nevis as our method of climbing our own mountain to engage and put out the message. But I think where this is probably on me more than Johnny in terms of our calculations, because I kind of took the lead on retrofitting the plans and the strategy as such. But I think what we what we did well was we isolated everything that could go wrong on paper, but didn't necessarily factor that into the overall timings of the project itself, in that we knew we'd have to start icing our knees, we knew we'd have to start strapping our ankles, all this stuff that we just kind of assumed would fit within the break period that we'd already given ourselves. And in reality, it added an hour here, an hour there, half an hour here, where we actually just kind of sat there laughing with each other and lost lost time. We didn't acknowledge how much psychological reset time would be required. And I think the biggest mistake we made, and I'm not going to take all the blame for this one because we both thought we were uh more sleep adapted than we potentially could be. But I think what we learned hard and fast was that we haven't, as humans we have an ability to slog through challenges on little sleep, but there are that there is a point where your body cannot keep up with the lack of sleep, and we figured that out about two days in. So we were two days in on less than five hours sleep a day, having been on the mountain for 12 to 16 hours, and our bodies just started to rapidly deteriorate from that point to the point where it kind of shocked us both because it was so out of character for the way that we felt following training. But I think all in all, that meant that we just adjusted the goal. So the athletic pursuit, if people want to look at it that way, that's fine. We fell short of the arbitrary number that we came up with as a hook for people to engage with the cause. But the cause was the whole reason that we did this and the whole reason that we came up with the messaging that we did. And that was a roaring success in my mind, because what we did was we were faced with an obstacle that we couldn't predict. We worked together as men, openly, honestly, with another group. We actually kind of got told off a few times in terms of wanting to chase down the athletic pursuit more than we potentially should. And as we slowly adjusted to the reality of the situation, we acknowledged the position we were in, acknowledged the mistakes we've made, but most importantly, didn't dwell on them. We just looked forwards, thinking, right, what can we do from here onwards to approach this most logically, most sensibly, and most in line with the cause at hand. And I think once we came to that realization, Johnny, we started to enjoy it, we started to embrace it, and we actually connected with our own message a whole lot more than we had done previously. What I found interesting, everybody on social media has basically said how miserable it seemed for the first couple of days because we were only focusing on the misery because we were told, Oh, be strict with your phones when you're feeling really down, because that's what one people want to see, and they do. But once we just embraced do everything we can every day from here on out, then we were much, much happier. And I think the documentary actually brings that together, shows what it was actually like. First three days were miserable because we were just feeling like we were falling short on the goals unreachable, and then we recalibrated. We still climbed our own mountain, but all we did was adjust the parameters to be able to go at it. And I think that was the most valuable part of the experience that the lessons learnt along the way were enriched as a result of the experience that we went through. And I think that is kind of the message with an underlying across it.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

So yeah, Johnny, do you want to add some to that, Johnny? Do you yeah?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

No, it's it's quite well encapsulated. I think what what I was uh going to jump in on there was um the the athletic pursuit was foremost, well not foremost in our mind, it was certainly key, something that we wanted to do, uh something that we felt we we had to achieve. And just something Fergus was touching on then was as we got to sort of day two, day three, you know that you were there, guys, but the the uh sort of reality of of what we had hoped to achieve in that physical sense started to kind of be taken away and drift away from us a little bit. And there was a little bit of time, I think, for both of us, for all of us as a group, really, where that kind of we saw that kind of float away in the water, and there was a little bit of grief and and and worry and concern seeing that go away because we had we had an idea in our mind that we wanted to achieve what we'd set out to achieve. Now, as Fergus has said uh uh uh on the video on uh in here, there were two uh factors, two facets to it really. We we wanted to the message was key, uh but we had attached ourselves to this kind of idea of of meeting this goal and and through that getting that message out there. But I think we quickly found or or it we we had to realize that the message uh wasn't really about that, that actually, as Fergus just said, it kind of enriched the message or or we became the recipients of that message somewhat during during that process simply because we realized that we couldn't achieve what we we felt we had wanted to, therefore had to adapt, therefore had to communicate, had to accept that kind of external help from the two of us the the team, yourself, the the group of people around us. And therefore we reached out, we we found that support and and our interpretation of what we were supposed to do, who we were, what we were actually trying to achieve, all changed there therein. So the arbitrary kind of number, although we tried to claw it back a little bit, hold on to figure out as a lot of me, we kind of embraced that a little bit, I think, and uh and the message changed for us, which was uh important, I think, important for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

So I think what I probably failed to mention as well, actually, is is actually just how much of an internal battle I had wrestling with the athletic pursuit versus the cause, because I'm very purpose-driven. I set goals because I want to achieve them, not because I want to rework them every time, otherwise that would be a very fluid way of living. Um, but I think due to the exhaustion, due to the setting, due to the publicity behind it, I didn't want to, I didn't want to see it as something that I said was going to be done and and that we were falling short of. Um I think when we actually just boiled it down, the only way we could have learned the things that we learned or have predicted the things that we could have predicted was by taking that first step and experiencing it for ourselves. And everything worked on paper, but Ben Nevis sadly doesn't care for paper. In case in point, day one, we had to push back the start time because we were facing torrential rain in Storm Aden with 103 mile an hour winds. So we pushed back the start time, still facing torrential rip torrential rain, but the winds had died down to a meager 80 mile an hour. So it got to the it was minus 19 at the top, up to 80 mile an hour, well, up to 100 mile an hour gusts at the top as well for the first two ascents that we did on day one. And they just took as much if we had 100% of energy to give at the at the at the start, and each day slowly was more and more taking from us a sort of a 8%, 9%, 10%. We used up 25% of what we had to give on day one, which just meant that the incremental knock-on effect from that was just enormous. And I think we got so lost in the calculations on paper that, for example, I remember this really well, and I keep laughing about it. We were about three quarters of the way up percent number two, and I felt my right quad cramping. And in my head, I was like, What the f? How is it day one and you're cramping in your quads? This has never happened before. Something's gone wrong, you're not drinking enough, etc. etc. And I said to Johnny, oh, I'm feeling my right quad, rather than saying, actually, I'm cramping and really suffering. And he said, Yeah, I'm and both laughed and like, right, okay. And then only then do we acknowledge that you know what, maybe that's something to do with the fact that every step we take, we're wrestling with our knees, staying stable because of the wind, we're facing torrential rain into our faces, and it doesn't matter what we said we were going to do on paper, we can only work within the parameters that we're facing right now, and this too is gonna claim much more from us than two in still conditions would. So I think the lessons that we learned and the the evolution that I went through from a more realistic perspective was was enormous because up until about day four, day five, I was still dead set on finding a way to get to the finish. And I think to be honest, both of us could have slogged it out one way or another to the point of self-destruction, I reckon, but we could have slogged it out in more days following the finish. But within 11 days, I don't think in any circumstances we ever would have been able to complete the task that we set ourselves. That was a miscalculation on our parts, yeah. And but that's most importantly for anyone that feels that maybe there were errors made of a significant size, is uh we ultimately only could have figured that out and only have the answer to give you because we went and experienced it for ourselves, which is exciting for us, but it makes us better people, I think. 100% learn a lot from it.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

I um one of the one of the things that I kind of pick up on for out of all of that is you know, you you've spoken a couple of times there, Fergus, about uh what other people might think. There's there's there's absolutely nobody scrutinizing the calculations. There's there's gonna be some people that say, Well, uh you were looking to do a vertical marathon. The questions I got asked was, did they do a vertical marathon? It was like, well, well, well, no, but the what uh what they aim to do was bring people's attention of every single day facing your challenge and keep going at it regardless, because this is your challenge and it's not gonna go away unless you resolve it. And so you just kept walking towards it. And you know, and I think again, using a really, really rubbish mountain analogy, you know, that almost that false horizon false horizon, you know, where you you you're going over that uh thinking you're near the top, and then you see the summit, and you're like, oh my word, we are absolutely miles away from where I thought I was, and it's not the reality isn't changed. If you were able to zoom out, you're exactly where you you were. That's not changed, but it's just your perception. And this is, I think, what people uh struggle with or misinterpret in their own life. They and this is the point in my mind of uh you know, climb your own mountain mountain. It's taking that strategic look at your life and going, well, where am I? And actually, what's my reality versus what my perception is? Because my perceptions can easily be warped massively by pretty much everything around us these days, you know, um, media, social media, friends, family, our own expectations, our own inner critics, etc. So I think it's uh a really good um uh way to look at it. And and one of the things you may or may not be uh aware of, because it's certainly a conversation that I had with a couple of the mountain rescue guys uh at the summit as I was run uh sorry, at the base as I was uh you know watching you guys go up and down most for most of it. Um and I uh they were saying, Oh, you know, we see dozens uh if not hundreds of people a year turn up at this mountain and try and get involved in a challenge and they do a challenge, then it rains, or then it starts to not come to plan and they just give up. And he said it that's normally the case. And the mountain rescue guys were, you know, I don't know if they said this to your face, but they certainly said it to me, just how impressed they were on at the stage about day four, day three, day four, where you realised, you know what, this probably isn't going to come off what we initially set out to achieve. But that didn't matter, and actually what mattered was that you keep going because you've got uh accountability to yourself, you've got accountability to the cause, you've got accountability to the thousands of people which were tuning in to see how this goes. I'm sure some people were looking for you to fail, most people were there in support of you, um, but you just kept going day to day, and and that impressed on them, and it gave me a bit of a reality check of yeah, you know, that's something else that I've not really um thought about. Just how many people set out to to try and do something mad, hairbrain, some might say, but then it doesn't go well, and they go, Do you know what? I'm just gonna stop, reset, rethink this, and come back again another day, but that's not what you did. You know, Storm Aiden was was was there for you when you got there day one and you could have easily gone, uh, is is this the day to start? Probably not. And that's what your heads would have been saying, I'm sure, right? Talk to me about Storm Aiden a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, it was um it was actually we we we met with Brody, who was part of man to rescue and basically the man behind the camera in Fort William about one o'clock on the Saturday. We were originally due to start at midnight on this on the Saturday, sort of on the Sunday, however you like to define that. But midnight that that night, we were looking to set off to try and bash out what the original plan was was four, because we knew we'd be fresh, we knew we'd be ready to go, we knew we'd be full of energy, and all of our misery was yet to come. So if we could get four out of the way, push hard, try and get them all done in under five hours, which based on our experience on Nevis up until that point should have been pretty simple. Um well, simple's the wrong word, but should have been manageable, it would have claimed our souls, but it would have been um it would have been a challenge to sort of get the bulk of it out of the way or put us ahead of the curve so that we can slowly work our way down to an easier finish. And then we were faced with the most torrential rain I think I've ever experienced in the United Kingdom, uh, and got up the mountain forecast and saw I think it was 117 mile an hour gusts at the top, and we just thought, oh my god. A, this is reckless. B, this means that our plan and the framework we've set inside our own heads to get ahead of it at the start and then settle into an easier constant throughout is off the table, which kind of made us a bit like, oh God, are we gonna have to suffer and then go into the biggest thing already suffering? And we were just wrestling with this one. I thought, what there's nothing we can do about it. We'll push back the start, we'll just settle into the constant that we already had planned, and then we'll try and catch up towards the end somehow. So we we were already in that headspace of knowing that we had to adjust things based on the circumstances we were in. But then my god, once we started, I mean, day one, we started at 6 a.m. It was raining the entire day, like it did not stop for a second. And there were points where you genuinely were it was like you were walking through tar facing the wind in your face, and it was stinging you, it was just any bit of exposed skin, it was brutal. And um, the higher you got, the colder it got, peaked at minus 19 at the top, winds just got steadily higher and higher, and once you get past basically corner one on Nevis, you just you're exposed the whole way up, more or less, other than when you turn your back to it and you get a little bit of respite. But it was it was it was like adding it's the equivalent of adding a whole load of weight onto our ascent in terms of the added intensity and fatigue. And uh Johnny, I'll let you explain what happened on on our second ascent. But once we got down from the first, we were pretty spent and a bit shaken off, I think. But went in with good spirits into the second one with an intention of doing a third later that day. But then on the second, we settled into feeling pretty good on the way up, and then we did, we did, yeah. Yeah, that you had to um you had to step in for someone else.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah, it was it was bad storm, mate. It really was a bad storm. We we'd been up there. I think on the first descent we've been up uh uh and uh it was pretty brutal at the top. We we stopped for a few seconds, got some pictures come away again. But like you say, when we got down the bottom, we were tired, but we were still in kind of good spirits. We still felt like let's go again. And we were we were chatting away, feeling good. But I think as we got, I don't know, within a couple of hundred meters perhaps of the summit, it was brutal, that the wind was hard. We were searching around for goggles and things to try and protect ourselves and uh and spot a young girl kind of clinging to a rock or moving very, very slowly. And it was kind of obvious to us both that she wasn't moving very fast uh or or at all. And as we got closer, I think I was just up in front and uh had a quick chat with her and realized that she was um not in a good way. So we made the decision for for me to take her back down, and uh and that that took quite some time, uh quite some time indeed. And and because of the way the storm was and because of the fact that this this young lass hadn't really prepared particularly well, I was kind of doing a a a job of protecting her from the wind as we came down. So she got my I gave her my goggles and kind of stood in behind her and then acted as a as a wind buffer and shield all the way down, and and uh and it meant that I had to kind of come down sideways all the way and kind of work backwards and you know, work out the steps and the footing for both of us. Um, you know, not not to not to labour it too much, but it it was tiring. It was tiring for me. And by the time we got to the bottom, uh we were I was completely sold through. And I know Fergus was when he came down as well. Fergus did some of it. Uh uh, but when we both got to the bottom, we were we were absolutely sold through. I don't think Any clothes could have could have protected us from that. So I ended up with uh stage one hypothermia, which isn't terrible, but I think usually you would take a few days, like a bad cold or the beginning of a flu, you would take a few days just to kind of get better from that.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Normal people wouldn't, mate. Normal people would.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Yeah, we were kind of committed to something else. So it's sort of a case of right, we just have to get up after four hours of sleep in the cold sweats that we were both experiencing and just crack on. So day two was just for me anyway, for both of us, I think. Uh I don't think my having uh to help uh uh Sophie was particularly added much stress, uh, apart from perhaps that little bit of hypothermia. But by the time day two came, we were we were both spent really and tired uh and and it felt very different to how we had expected it to feel.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

And we were walking down the stairs, weren't we? We we caught each other on the stairs and just looked at like uh oh no, like both like but it was like a a a dazed and confused look of are you as I am? And we were both like uh-huh. Uh-huh. And I thought, oh no.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

It's pretty useful to get that moment because uh the way the way that we were set up in our little base camp uh uh home, I was kind of a uh it was a mistake on my part. I was a story higher, so every morning I had a mountain to to to come down just to get down. What was wetter?

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Was it was storm wet saw maiden the wettest, or was it the tears of your of your own your own tears into your own hands every single night when you realised the enormity of what you'd challenged yourself against?

SPEAKER_00 24:06

I um I took this crying in the bath, so I actually mitigated any of the uh any of the latter. So I I anticipated this question months ago, guys. I'm afraid uh 15 or Johnny to serve.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

I quite a lot, I don't care.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

No, yeah, we we there were there were a lot of moments of crying actually, but um to be fair, day one and day two were torrential, torrential, torrential rain. But then we were quite lucky with the weather um a lot of the time after that. I mean, it wasn't glorious, we had a few days that were absolutely immense, and all that did was draw us more to the mountain, draw us more to the cause, and draw us more to the the notion that a key fundamental element of everybody's mental health, whether they know it or not, and that sounds quite prescriptive and know it all day, but I'm very, very sort of firm in my belief on that that the more time we spend outdoors interacting with it and interacting with one another as part of it, the more we can learn about ourselves and the more we can appreciate what we have. Doug's Doug was project manager for those that don't know, he did an amazing job. Um, he just finished a master's in psychology and he was just really rearing to be a part of it. He supported every one of my Mowember challenges up until this point, no questions asked. Every single one, he's been there. And he has very little experience with mountains. I think he went up one Monroe when his friends from Bath came up to visit one year, and they basically just crawled up it because it was so miserable with weather that they couldn't really see the path. I thought, right, we'll just go up there. But he came up to the top of us.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Yeah, it was day five. He came up, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Yeah, um, and we got to about 800 meters and up above this cloud inversion, basically the whole way around all the summits around us, and you can see all the way to Shahallian, which is about 90, 90 miles away, I think, isn't it, Johnny? So you've got you've got all these peaks, all these Monroe's for miles to sea, because you are at the highest point of the UK, which is very easy to forget. And we had this cloud inversion just disguising everything below them other than the peaks. And it was about quarter to five, just gone five, and we had this radiant orangey red sun sunset just over all the clouds. And we're just standing there looking at it, just laughing, thinking, how on earth is this even something that we're experiencing? Doug was just crying as I was out, he couldn't explain why. He just he was just really, really emotionally attached to the moment, and just really he was really thankful for the experience with with Johnny and I, and we we were in return, and it was just that that learning curve for us was um luckily we explained to him that men shouldn't be crying, and that's a ridiculous thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Slapped him around the face, slapped him around the face.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Man up you he quickly he did the same to us several times. Every time we were whining and crying our eyes out, he was uh he was there to call us fools. But no, there were there were a lot of tears, weren't there? There were a lot of tears, and uh that's not something neither of us are ashamed to say. And actually, as we're suffering days at a time, putting ourselves through hell and crying our way through it, I think that's that's kind of a key part of the message, really, and that we're we're not afraid to accept that what we're doing is difficult, and therefore showing emotions gonna be Yep, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Um, one of the things that I picked up on when I was there on one of the summits, you were you know, we're having a bit of a water stop on the way up, and uh we'd started, we'd started. I can't remember if it was the at the beginning or towards the end, it was one of the conversations that we had anyway, and and we were we'd started the morning down the bottom. We were everyone was pretty shattered. Um, apart from me, I was I was pretty fresh. I just tipped in and was uh trying to motivate everybody and realizing everyone's uh battered. Um, but uh I we were started walking up and uh the the conversation went to the you know it was it was misty when we started, it was rainy, it was cold, and then we got to a certain point, you know, literally within 15 minutes, we were warm, uh the sun was starting to come up. Um, and as the as the morning progressed, we approached the top. And uh, you know, you guys, in fact, it must have been towards the end, and you were kind of nine days in, and you were like, We're still just uh absolutely uh amazed each time we get up here, and you don't get bored of seeing it, you know, that you get to the top and there's just something there's something in with that's connected to us and nature and being outside and um taking that in on a different scale to what we're normally used to seeing. It just has this uh visceral effect on us to get where we go, it's worth it. You forget everything else, you just can spend some time there. And I think you know, you mentioned at the start um of how your time estimation for various different things, such as the icing, the strapping, the breakfast, all this kind of stuff, which you know, as the week went on, it was just becoming more and more laboursome. I think you also didn't factor in the amount of time you needed to stand there and take it all in, um, you know, and and get the memories, because it it was absolutely phenomenal on some days. Even the days I was there, it was absolutely phenomenal. And you know, I think that was one of the things for me that struck me is just how much time you two were still happy to spend taking it all in eight, nine, ten days in.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

I think the but the best example of that, and uh it's I've spoken about it recently, actually, was um Johnny, you remember this well. We stood on the what's called the staircase, it's basically where everyone breaks their ankles on Nevis because it's just a really aggressive, um aggressive little set of big lungy rocks that you need to mitigate and on the way down, and when you're tired, it's just not much fun. It's where I sprained my ankle, so lesson learned there. I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming, but we um we were on the we were on the way down, I think it was day nine, day ten, second ascent of the day. No, it was first descent of the day, I think. Um so it's still light. And we there was the farmer that runs the land was there with the sort of two of them and six sheepdogs, and we just watched this magnificent display of raw base level efficiency unfold in front of her eyes and stood there for about 25 minutes, just being like, oh my god, whistling up there, shouting down here, one dog on the summit, one dog down here by the river, and then there's dogs itching to go, they run in, sobbing for the other one, the sheep's down there, there's one up there that they've missed. Oh, and then the dog's following around. We're just standing there and like, how on earth does this happen? And we were just so thankful that we got to see it because it was just amazing to see. And there would there was no there was no like, oh, we should probably get moving. It was like we are here to appreciate moments like this, and I think again, once we realized that that was something we probably hadn't acknowledged as much in our planning beforehand, it was much easier to acknowledge, it was much easier to enjoy those moments because you never felt like you should be rushing them or cutting them short because they were as much a part of the project as the actual mild recovering was the the way that I view it, viewed it in the end was anyway.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Yeah, I think I'd say there was lessons in life many times up that mountain, and I got sick of saying it to so just because I was sick of hearing my own voice after a while, but I was sick of saying it every single day gave us a very different and and uh unique view, which we hadn't thought about, we hadn't factored in. We had uh talked about how we were gonna get bored of going up and down, and one of the one of the biggest challenges was gonna be managing monotony, was one of the key words we'd thrown out there at the first uh hurdle. You know, going up and down after two days, three days, we're gonna get sick of seeing it, you'll be able to do it with your eyes closed and all the rest of it. And it couldn't be further from the truth because as you said, Gaz, each day was a different day, and it was uh you know, a fresh view, but then also a fresh perspective. You know, we were able to kind of uh stop, take it in, uh uh, you know, enjoy that moment. And in enjoying the moment, we we were kind of learning a little bit about just being present. I think that was something that we hadn't, right? We've got to run through this, this is what we're gonna do next. This is the plan, this is how hard we have to work, we're gonna, we're gonna, etc., etc. And just taking a moment to say, well, here I am. There's there's no other noise around, this is it, you know, I am I am here, was was incredibly important. It's something I've taken away, something I thought I did previously, but but hadn't been doing it, just that kind of mindfulness and that that being in the moment and and just sort of uh appreciating what you have uh you know right now. Uh it was a great great place to discover that, but it's something you can well certainly I can now apply daily, I think.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

And and there's probably both ends to the spectrum of that. There's there's having the presence when things are good to actually take it in and absorb that morale, absorb that good feeling, that well-being, whatever it is, to to be present and to do that. But also you mentioned dread, monotony, loneliness. These are you know your taglines for the for the event, your kind of words, and and it it when my obvious observation when I came up the first time was that already that that had been forgotten because the dread had turned into a reality. The word dread uh was reality, and uh people always talk about um get comfortable being uncomfortable, and uh you know, people can read it on Instagram, they can what flick through it on Facebook and watch these talks that people give and maybe on YouTube, um, and then they can go, yeah, you know, I I'm I'm pretty good at uh getting comfortable in the uncomfortable, and then they get uncomfortable and they go, Oh, I don't like this, and then it then they get miserable and they go, Oh, this is vile. And that's the point you need to be able to become present that that's where you are, and that's the bit you've got to try and work through rather than going, This is way worse than I expected. I expected bad because you guys expected bad, but you suffered, and that suffering is hard to uh prepare for because you prepare for a certain level of suffering, don't you, when you're training, and then the reality of real suffering happens, and you go, This this is horrendous, and so both ends of the spectrum. Um, there's value in in both, but that those dark times, the the when you things were really uncomfortable, what what kind of strategies were you conscious of using to really deal with that in those moments?

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Laughter was the main one, wasn't it? I think uh I mean we joked a lot at how delirious and childish we became, but we really did. We really, really did, and um we just found quite often that dark humour sort of settled in and just really sadistic humor settled in, where we the more we were suffering, the more we were laughing, because it went from being like, Oh, this is a bit shit to this is a bit shit, isn't it? And we were like, haha, yes, too right, let's crack on. It was just a complete perspective shift that went from um I think to use your own language, it went from us not being present in the moment to being present at the moment and realizing that it's not gonna it's not gonna improve unless we change things other than the problem itself to improve the overall existence that we were in. And that's exactly what we did. And we we noted the days where we were most spent and most burst was when we were just chatting the most ludicrous. I mean, the amount of accents and rhymes and just utter bollocks we spoke about was absurd. It was it was it was funny to look back on, but each day we did just have these moments where we stopped and checked ourselves like, oh dear, oh dear. But then again, it's it it functions as a distraction, but it it shows it shows the simplicity of joy as well. That's what it was for us, is that we were we were faced with what was previously unknown levels of suffering, misery, missing of families, all this stuff that we expected, but we managed to find the joy, find the humour, find the moments to cherish from what was an otherwise miserable situation where it was we so easily could have just slipped into this is miserable, that's what it is. Um, but you've all you uh suffering isn't just a mindset, but there's a lot of mindset that goes alongside it that can help sustain suffering or learn from suffering or re-reframe suffering so that it's not a negative experience, it's actually a positive one. And for me personally, the reason I enjoy endeavors like this and why endurance is something I focus on sort of earlier than most people tend to find it in their lives is because I've learned more about myself from when I'm in that hole than anything else in life up until this point has taught me. And that's a fascinating, sort of profound experience that I'm gonna keep chasing for as long as I can, really. Um, because I know that each each thing that I take on, I come at a better, more improved version of myself at the end of it. But taking the first step and committing to learning what it's like to feel uncomfortable doesn't mean you're gonna enjoy it the first time, but it does mean that when you step out of the uncomfort, there's a few things you can reflect on to better prepare you for the next time you step into that ring. And it's it's just uh it's just another greasy pole in the Western world that we all need to climb. But we need to uh we need to take the first first rung in our stride and and figure out how we're gonna climb the rest.

SPEAKER_02 37:34

What about yourself, Johnny? Just on that as well, Fergus, just the uh the Royal Marines have uh one of the tenets of their ethos is humor in the face of adversity. And again, easy to throw away that comment. But when things are dark, when they're black, when they're really difficult, there's there's nothing better when there's a group of you, when there's a number of you to laugh about. Yeah, you can laugh inwardly and you can find humour in any uh situation on your own, but it's not the same when you're sharing laughter with you know someone you trust at your side, right? So, you know, that humor in the face of adversity is is massive, absolutely massive for people. Um, uh provided you've got someone next to you that you can really share that with. Um, Johnny, what about yourself with regards to um uh little strategies that you learn to cope with, maybe not just laughing at Fergus.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yeah, uh well that was easy to do, frankly. But the uh the the I I think I think you're right to that that cheerfulness in the face of adversity was was uh you know tideling that was in my head quite a few times, actually. A model, should I say. But the um yeah, so so humour or or uh and we touched on it a minute ago, just kind of accepting yourself in that moment. Um I think quite a lot of suffering comes from uh guys, you you could probably explain this better, but comes from being in a situation and and either thinking back or thinking forward away from that situation of what's going to happen next or what did happen before, etc. And kind of not being present tends to kind of throw a lot of mess in amongst your your mindset. And I found after a few days, after a kind of a a reawakening, if you like, on day three for me, uh I found that just accepting that this was where I was uh and and being happy about it, choosing to be happy about it, which maybe seems a bit silly to say, but I could be could be upset about it, or I could just accept this is where I was. And I said to my wife a couple of times on the phone, as much as I was missing her, uh it was easier for me to just think, well, this is this is my life now, this is where I live. I happen to live on Ben Nevis and I just have to go up and down it, you know. I described it beforehand as this kind of sisyphus challenge that we were facing, and I kind of thought, well, if we're gonna push this rock up and down this bloody mountain for the rest of eternity, we might as well have a bloody laugh about it. And that worked uh really well, I think, for both of us. Um the other thing that that uh I don't know if I could suggest it as a strategy, but that was key and brings us back to this kind of core message, I think, is that um and you've touched on it yourself just a second ago, is that having each other and then having that um wider support network, and then that even wider support network out there in kind of the the internet world, if you like, where people were reaching in and uh reaching out rather and and telling us they were they were thinking of us and that they were you know delighted for what we were doing or what we were doing and spoken to them. All that was huge, perhaps bigger than I had expected. Um so just from the one-to-one thing, uh Fergus described it earlier on about the quad cramps. Well, that happened every day, whether it was something positive or something negative. Once we remembered to share it with each other, that kind of oh well, me too, uh, helped. Even if it was, yeah, I'm feeling absolutely awful today. Me too. Oh well, it's not just me then, sure, that that makes things easier to carry. So that worked. Uh, and then knowing that there was a team at the bottom, or that we were able to keep in good comms with them anyway, or or new people coming, etc. So so the camaraderie and and the uh huge, uh bigger. But I had gone there thinking, well, I'll just crack on, I'll get on. I've got my own work to do, I'll get on with it, I'll support Fergus, he'll support me, and we'll get on. And the guys at Base Camp, uh, God bless them, as much as respect, couldn't have any more for them. But I had kind of positioned them in my mind as being, you know, they'll facilitate this for us and we'll get on and do it. And very quickly I was uh uh uh you know awakened to the idea that they were as much, if not more integral to it than we were. And that that was good. I enjoyed that, and that helped me keep going more.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

There were different different tiers of perspective that came with that as well, weren't there? Because we we had each other, but we were both in a similar position in terms of exhaustion perspective, the way we're looking at things. And we had Doug, who was viewing it from a very objective point of view, and then we had Matt and Rescue, who are kind of somewhere in the middle where they had a lot of experience on the mountain, they kind of better understood what we were going through and what setting we were in, but still had that rational thought that we could so easily abandon being in the place that we were. And I it just as you said, it just comes back to that support network that we all need, but making sure that you don't place yourself in an echo chamber full of sycophants that just agree with you in everything. Because if you're if you're perpetuating negativity and you've got people around you that are just going to agree and not challenge you on certain things, then that can be a bit of a slippery slope to to moving in the wrong direction. But we we were so blessed and so lucky to have the support that we did, and it that's my biggest takeaway from it personally, is actually just how lucky I am to have Johnny, to have people around me, but more importantly to really acknowledge how important depth of support network and the sort of mutual access that comes with that. Um, because everyone that was involved now knows now is each other on a different level, on a deeper level. And that means that whenever we're facing strife challenge in the future, we'll be better served to help the other. And that's that's the beautiful, the beautiful thing for me. That's that's from a personal point of view, that's the my biggest takeaway.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

Yeah, you say me too. You've got you've you've got a new context, haven't you? You've got new perspectives, and those new perspectives help you deal with the the normal um bumps in the road, so to speak, because you know how how big can a problem be when you've you know struggled with some of the stuff over the last few months um up on Ben Nevis. So, you know, that's that's awesome. And Johnny, you mentioned there about um being present and and uh there's something I talk about with people quite a lot around catastrophe bias, and and we're all guilty of it. And so you're all you both suffered with your pain niggles, but probably more significant than a niggle. I'm doing an injustice there, but your your severe pain in your various different joints on your body, and and for people to try and get context to that when we're talking about being present. Well, uh, we feel the pain, we feel the knee pain, we feel the ankle pain, but we don't necessarily worry about the the physical joint pain. What we do, especially when our identities are around physical specimens, you know, for some people wouldn't care less about this, but for you for you two, that's important that your your identity is built around your levels of fitness to some extent and physical fitness as well. And when you know you've got an injury, your brain immediately goes, Well, I'm doing myself some long term damage here, and that is going to affect and this is what you find yourself worrying about, or um you know, you might never recover from this. You start imagining yourself um, you know, never being able to compete or never being able to challenge yourself for anything ever again in the future because of this. This damn ridiculous challenge that you're in right now. And this is the kind of conversations that you can find yourself in, I'm sure. I mean, I I I got a little bit of that from yourselves, but again, would you want to elaborate on that somewhat for other people that have probably felt the same?

SPEAKER_00 44:46

Yeah, it's it's a good way of putting it, actually. I mean, you've kind of paraphrased or even verbatim said the same thing that I was going through and saying out loud to Johnny at points in that the whole point, the whole point of the project wasn't self-destruction. Um, but we we felt at points like we were potentially falling into the trap of because we placed so many eggs in the basket of this project that we had to find a way to get to the finish. But then in the broader context, this challenge is just one stepping stone on a bigger process to try and get the cause out there to as many people as possible, in simple terms. And there was then that constant wrestling of is continuing this the right thing to do. And I feel that we probably actually, in the end, approached things exactly as we should have done and didn't push beyond our means. We have medical medical advice that basically was a green light or a red light, and we we acknowledge before we even started that that's the qualification that we will take because whatever we want to do, we need to pass the decision over to someone else because we won't be in the most rational headspace to make it happen. But I think a key part of it as well was that turning point that we discussed earlier, where once we acknowledged that the task had changed and that the goals, the parameters of the goal had changed, our perspective became completely different on how to approach it. And doing everything that we could each day was the goal. We achieved an awful lot. And from a from a fitness point of view, we did 205 miles each and summited Ben Nevis 21 times within 11 days and covered 26,500 metres of elevation, which is 17 miles up the way, give or take, which is in my mind a ridiculous thing to have achieved. But for a few days, I was thinking that that was absolutely pathetic because we'd set ourselves a different goal. And it was once we considered, once we went from considering the current goal in its entirety to placing it within a broader context, we were much better off.

SPEAKER_02 46:47

Yeah, so so easy to self-destruct. And again, this is one of the things some people listening will be able to relate to when their their things aren't going the way that they expected them to go. To to press that self-destruction button and to get yourself out of there, the fight-flight response kicks in, and not be able to manage your self-control in that moment is uh is a is a key skill for all of us. So yeah, nice one. John Johnny, you got anything to add to that, mate?

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Yeah, the the the injury uh part of it for me came a little bit earlier. Uh well we were both concerned about it. We we were both bloody sore. Um as I banged on about too many times. I started this thing.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

Can confirm, can confirm.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

The knee's been uh a problem for me anyway, it's been reconstructed a couple of times. But I was carrying a little bit of stuff that actually was um wasn't apparent to me until until a few days in, that was dealt with so well that that that I'll I'll explain. So because the knee was really, really bad, I think I think it was day three, Fergus, where I was, you know, almost panicking at the top of the top of the hill and had to come down. And there was calls down to base camp to try and figure out how to how to how to help me, etc., which which became kind of quite comedic. But at the time it was it was horrendous for me, you know. And what was what was bothering me the most, or two parts to what were bothering me was was um obviously I was concerned about injury, uh, and and I thought I was gonna I was already at a point where I wouldn't be able to continue without doing myself damage. I'd actually relatively settled into the idea that I might just do the damage and have to be pulled off the mountain, and that's fine, I could I could accept that. But it was upsetting me, and this is what you you see in the video, what what was upsetting me most was that then I would become this kind of drag behind everybody else, you know. Okay, yeah, that's right. And I would have to, you know, I would hold Fergus back, I would hold the project back, I would kind of spoil things. And a little bit of that came from previous events that I'd been on where I'd been on one where were mile four, I'd broke my leg, and and I continued, I'm I'm capable of pushing through the pain, but I hadn't finished it. And and there'd been three pretty key events that I tried to attend that I hadn't finished because of pretty catastrophic injury a couple of times. And I'd just gotten to the point on day three where I've gotten so involved in this what if, what if, what if scenario in my head that I'd kind of lost sight of everything apart from the what if. So when we got down to the down to the uh basic uh well, down to the truck at the midway at the summit on that particular day, uh, we had a conversation in in the truck and and we all we talked, Doug talked, Brody, the camera, Fergus talked, and and we reframed it for me in such a way for me to understand that where I to stop that minute, it it isn't a failure. Whether if I stop that minute, the project isn't over and my involvement isn't over, I just become part of this kind of evolving support team. And reframing that and understanding that I was kind of obsessed with this what if and having it taken away from me and it explained to me, you don't need to think that way. It changed the whole thing for me. And I think I think you would agree, even yourself, Gaz, the from those kind of early days right up to the end of it, the perspective very much changed for me, where I kind of settled into this. Well, there's no point worrying about the what-ifs if you if you if you're here, if you're present, if you're there, if you're supportive, if you're acting as a as part of that larger support team, then you've already achieved it. So by day three, day four, I'd kind of accepted that we'd already won, we'd already done it, we'd already gotten to the end in a certain sense, and we just had to keep marching forward and doing as much as we could. So the injury, uh not to be too woolly about it, kind of gifted me something. I was still injured now, but it kind of gifted me a little bit of uh perspective that maybe I hadn't taken with me. Uh, and I'm I'm very grateful for that. Grateful to the guys guys for what they gave me, but grateful for the moment uh and and for the pain, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 50:40

Yeah, no, so suffer is a privilege, you know. I think that's a a term that a lot of people have used in the past, you know, that um that that privilege of of understanding suffering. Again, it goes back heart back to me saying around you get a new context, you get a new perspective, and it refra that reframing is another way of saying um a new perspective on on uh your reality, and it doesn't have to be the way you're thinking. And this is we're all guilty of it. Get stuck in our roots of thinking, and uh, and it sometimes needs that uh those brothers, those people around you to pull you out of that root, and uh that's important that we've got those people. Um I'm keen to start wrapping this up, guys. Um it's it's I could go on for ages, but uh there's one of the things that um I'm keen to ask you, uh a bit of a hot potato. Just as we've been talking, there's a few times it's popped into my mind, but um I related the challenge in some ways to the Hills on selection. Uh it's similar, it's not the same, it's similar. And without a shadow of a doubt, the hardest moment for me on the Hills process, conscious it was well over 20 years ago now, um, as what I remember it was the alarm going off in the morning and uh pulling the duvet back and getting out of bed. And that might sound ridiculous to some people, but by miles, it was not the day, not day two, not day three, but day seven, day nine, day ten, pulling the duvet back and getting out of bed is incredibly challenging because your body doesn't want to. So just talk to me a little bit about that each. Would you because I'm imagining that was uh one of the challenging things for you as well, the starting the day, because what did you had most days? Five hours, maybe six hours sleep?

SPEAKER_00 52:25

At best, yeah. And I think um, to be honest, the biggest internal battle that I had of the entire thing was the continuous process of getting out of bed. It it genuinely at points seemed impossible. And I remember um I think it was Euro speak to guys on this, was I think it was only day three or day four because we were spent and burst from the first couple of days that had been more challenging than we'd expected on paper. We'd had less sleep than we expected on paper, whilst at the same time in our calculations, not accounting for the necessary amount of sleep. So we were just way off where we should have been in many ways. And uh we were just miles miles behind in terms of what was required. And I just found it so, so difficult to get moving in the mornings, and I was looking for ways to slow things down, sort of just lying there, not really wanting to go back to sleep necessarily, but just not wanting to exit the duvet. It was kind of like a symbol, it's like putting on a uniform. It was I didn't want to, I didn't want to change my presence.

SPEAKER_02 53:24

Yeah, you didn't want to accept what you needed to be doing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Yeah, and um honestly, I I it's where where those sort of battles of actually you're not up to this, you're you've expected too much of yourself, you you you think you're better than you are, all these little vicious little thoughts crept into my head when I was lying there in bed staring at the wall, thinking this is grim. And what slowly came into play, and this probably isn't the case on selection because of the duration of it, but I managed to slowly register that once I got moving, once I was on the hill, once I was interacting with people, once I didn't have a choice anymore, I was having a great time at points most of the time. But when it was meeting a new person, making a stupid sadistic joke here or there, just getting moving and getting away from any sense of safety, comfort, once I was out there without having it within touching distance, the battle with myself in bed didn't seem to matter anymore. And I think the more that I learned that, the easier it became to mentally get out of bed, but physically it was getting more and more difficult because my body needed more and more sleep. And towards the end, my feet started swelling up. There was no um venous return at all. And there was one night where I we got to bed with sort of two hours extra in the bank, and I slept less than I slept any night before. And then I was just woke in the morning lying in bed, furious that I hadn't been able to sleep properly, and then my tiredness was compounded by rage. And Doug actually came in and found me asleep on the floor with my feet up on the bed 45 minutes after I was meant to be out of bed because I just fallen asleep on the floor trying to drain my legs out in a in a V sit in a V sit position. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should uh buy my 19 fitness DVD to go into it in depth. Um but no, it was honestly, it was it was miserable. I mean, we started we both started getting cold sweats, didn't we? And it was just it was just a craving for the craving for comfort and sleep and warmth and a duvet and just being wrapped in bubble wrap and called pretty by your mum, all this stuff, it just seemed so so essential in that moment. Um, but we uh to be honest, that that's what I'm most proud of. I think what what I'm most proud of us, most proud of myself for doing is managing to keep showing up because I know internally, I'm not never I'm never gonna be able to express it. Nobody other than me is ever gonna be able to truly understand it. Johnny obviously have a very similar experience, but we're all individual, we're all unique, and I'm really proud of myself for continually getting out of bed when I know how much of a battle there was going on inside it. Second biggest takeaway was we are capable of more than we realize, even when it seems really, really difficult. And it's just conditioning. It's I mean, I got better at getting out of bed by battling to get out of bed, but day one, day two, day three genuinely seemed impossible.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Johnny, I didn't find it a problem at all. I just needed the toilet and then got on for my day. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I probably repeat a lot of what Fergus said. Uh I'm conscious that we're probably running low on time here, but the uh the um no, the fact of the matter was that that was that was brutally tough each day. Uh there were parts of it, and I guess it's an easy it's easy to think about the the bed as being uh you can picture it, it's easy to picture for everybody. Everybody struggles now and again to get out of bed, don't they? And that's you know, knowing what you're about to knowing what you're about to do next uh uh made it worse. But there was there was parts during the day where that kind of came back again. So each time we we had to, you know, if we come down off the mountain, we're going back up for another summit, you would get that moment not dissimilar to bed where you think, I need to go and get another drink first, I'm just gonna nip to the toilet, I'm just gonna do this, I'm just gonna do that. There was a person over here I need to speak to, and this kind of procrastination that you then have to stop yourself uh uh uh entering into is constant. So I think as Fergus says, we we kind of got a bit better at it, uh worse at times, but you just have to practice. And I think it's it comes back down, and perhaps this is a nice way to sort of wrap up some of this. It comes back down to that kind of first step. You it as brutally horrible as it is, as much as you don't want to do it as much as Fergus has just described, you want to be cocooned and safe and warm and not have to face these struggles and this suffering. All you have to do is just pop one foot out of the of the duvet and maybe sit that on the floor, think about that. You've done one, might as well do the other, and just slowly kind of lean yourself out. And by the time you're stood up, you might as well take the next step and get yourself into the bathroom wherever you need to do. And so each one, you know, before you know it, we we were at the bottom of the mountain, ready to head off, already laughing and giggling, and and going back to what Fergus said, there became an awareness of that pretty quickly. By a few days in, it was a case of, well, I know that if I get up, it's still gonna feel as shit as it did all the other times. But I know what's at the other end of it, and I'm more willing to continue and take that first step. So I think it boils down to that repeating itself over and over on the hill, in the in bed, wherever we may have been, sitting in the truck was one. Do I have to get out of this bloody truck now? I've got a great big coat on and it's warm in here, and there's music, and we've been enjoying ourselves, and now you gotta get out, you know. So uh yeah, we got better at that, but it's uh it's a good life lesson, too.

SPEAKER_02 58:48

I think it's yeah, massively worked well for everyone massively. It goes back to uh that getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, get comfortable being uncomfortable, and all of the above, because I thought exactly the same when you're describing that, you know, the first day I turned up, you guys came downstairs, you looked broken. And I was like, Oh, didn't expect that. I expected you know, day day two buzzing, and I was like, wasn't what I was met with because bed and getting out of it had been such a struggle already. And Johnny had an extra flight of stairs to come down, which you know, you made me laugh earlier when you said we passed each other on the stairs, as though, and people might listening might be thinking that'd be a quick moment in time, but no, it took them two minutes to pass each other on the stairs because that's how fast they were moving at that stage each day, and uh and I think just again, hopefully people listening can understand, and and and they're not joking when they say this, just that getting out of bed is the day's challenge because each step you take forwards from that moment on um does become there's new challenges, but there's less challenges, you know. With they had a they had a brand new um defender, Land Rover Defender, beautiful car. But in in many ways, it was uh it it was poison in the sense of you got in there, it it was heated up for you before you got in there, the seats were warm, the air conditioner was up, there was music playing. So, guess what happened when we pulled into the car park of Ben Nevis? Well, the last thing you wanted to do was crack that door. And I I've got to tell this story. It was uh it's just popped into my mind. There was uh there was a moment when um they thought they'd they thought they'd forgotten their water bladders for um for going up on the mountain. Gators, it was gators, gators, sorry, gators, yeah, it was gators. They thought they'd forgotten the gators, like as if they couldn't manage without gators, right? And uh and uh there was that realization that something had been forgotten, and that then and then uh Doug would have to go back um and go back to the house to go get the gators, and that might give them an extra half an hour in the car before they stepped off that day. And the joy, they didn't express it openly, but the joy in their eyes that the gators had been forgotten, which as Doug um quickly sort of furrowed around in the back of the car with much like pulling out Excalibur from the stone, found the gators, and I can't I don't have the vocabulary to explain how broken they both look because they weren't then getting the extra half an hour in their warm, comfortable 60,000 pound motor. So uh again, just understand people listening that just how challenging doing these sometimes quite simple things are, and if you're not feeling like you want to do it, just understand that that is everybody most of the time. I I can't remember the last time I sprung out of bed. I never want to get out of bed. Um, but you know, we we need to, we need to make those steps, and and as the day goes on, um things things get progressively easier. So, so yeah, um it was good time. I mean, again, so many again. I I got a snapshot in time for me seeing you guys, and I thought it was uh uh incredible what you were doing. It was great to be for me just to see it be a part of it. I'd never been to Ben Nevis before, it was amazing to get up there. I was again felt lucky the few times that I went up and down. Um, that um you know the scenery is absolutely epic, and you know, I I I realize that I I certainly need more of that. Um my house is pretty comfortable, but uh comfortable is not always what you need, and uh it certainly reminded me of that. But no, um, I don't know if you've got any kind of final comments. I'll say that uh for each of you. Uh yeah, go final comments.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:34

I just um for anyone that's listening to part duh and has also listened to the first instalment um that has any takeaways, insights, anything they've resonated with as part of the journey as a whole, we would both equally love to hear from you and please don't feel that you need to sugarcoat anything or need to be brief or concise. We'd uh we'd love to hear if there's anything you take away from the project. We we've got a lot of profound lessons that we've learned, but this wasn't a personal endeavor. We we everything's a good byproduct for us to take away, I guess. But the aim was to to understand how basically to better understand how we can try and invert perspectives, change perspectives, have an impact on people's lives so we can keep keep engaging in projects like this in the future to build a bit more momentum, to to get that first challenge out of the way, to to sort of use that analogy you just used once we've once we've built a bit of momentum in terms of engaging the message. We hope that we can continue to do so. And yeah, just if anyone's got anything to share, we'd love to hear it. But no, thank you again, guys, for having us. Thank you for coming along. It was very insightful and uh useful just to have another fresh face to call us more runs and laugh at us hobbling down the stairs.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:49

It's uh brilliant. It's been a while since I've been told I've got a fresh face, but I'll take that, Fergus. Johnny, do you want to uh close up, mate?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

Yeah, yeah. I I think the key thing that that I've gotten from it that I'm very grateful for uh is that the um the the idea was that we were there in order to to uh try and try and deliver a message, try and try and uh help people uh in one way or another, in our own little way, really, try and reach out and say, you know, we know what the message is now. Uh and and through that process, uh we received so much back um ourselves as individuals, there on there with the support team, uh, and and through the messages and through the through the feedback on social media that the whole thing became a huge gift to us. Uh, we we we went out there hoping we could do something for others, uh and we hope we can continue with that, but we got so much from it that I think this kind of message of service, if if we if we can offer out and do out what you get back from it from giving is uh you know is twofold, threefold more. Uh and that sort of reciprocation there was really underlying for me, and I know it was for Fergus as well. So I think there's a message there for people, I won't hammer that home, but um uh our gratitude uh can probably never be conveyed uh enough uh and and just working to each other, I think, and up through that group to the people that were there on and to yourself and the support that you've given us, it's been immeasurable, and then to everybody that that that donated for sure, uh and and people that just spread the message and fed back to us uh personally. Uh I think we'll be eternally grateful uh for those moments and for the gift it's given us. And uh so yeah, thank you everybody. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

Yeah, awesome. And I'm sure there's a lot of people, and I speak on behalf of a few that have messaged me around this topic actually. Just you know, you mentioned about how you can help people. Well, you've helped people by inspiring them in lots of ways to to think about their issues and to think about what might be their mountains and the things that they're not facing. And you know, this this will probably be the same again with listening to you guys talk about it as in your reflections, just how um how positive uh on reflection and experience it was, even though at the time it seemed pretty dark. And uh, you know, you've you've done you've said I know for a fact you've inspired tons of people. Um there's been thousands of people watching what you've been up to, uh, and I'm sure a huge portion proportion of those have have been have taken stock themselves and and and and will learn from your experience and do something themselves. So amazing stuff, amazing challenge, amazing amount of money raised, lads. Well done for me, and uh I guess until next time, uh we'll speak again. That's what I'd say.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:33

Thank you guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:34

Cheers guys.