Britain’s mostinspiring maniacs e a n c o n way

Adventurer and“everyman” Sean
Conway has justcompleted a
triathlon of theUK by runningthe length of thecountry. He tells
Howard Calvert
how whisky got
him through it
P h oto g r a p h y:
C HR I S B RO C K“don’t you darecome near mewith that brush”

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s e a n c o n way

Tturns out cycling thelength of the uk isn’t
always bike-friendly

emerging from the sea
on his four and a halfmonth swim of britain

having finishedhis run fromjohn o’groats“i’m short, notvery good at
sport and i’ve
never reallydone anything
impressive”
It just depends how much you
want it.”He began by cycling the lengthof Britain in 2011. Then, in 2013,
having not swum for 14 years,
decided to step things up several
gears by doing something no one
else had ever attempted: swim

conway withshortlist’s howard
calvert, who may
or may not be hislong-lost twin

5 4w w w . S h o r t L i s t . c o mthe length of Britain. It ended up
taking him nearly twice as longas he anticipated (four and a halfmonths), and is documented in
his entertaining new book HellAnd High Water. He sufferedjellyfish stings to the face (whichis why he first grew the beard –to stop at least some of thetentacles hitting his skin), toes
turning black and deadly rip tides.
But he achieved the feat, andafter that, completing the triathlon
was inevitable.
“I’m just an everyman – if I
can do it, anyone can do it,” hesays. “That was why I wanted todo the run in a way that anyone
who wanted to do it could do it.
As soon as you have support vansand sponsorship logos, mostpeople look at it and think, ‘There’s
no way I could ever do that.’
Whereas anyone can go and buy
a pair of trainers, a rucksack, getsome maps and run. For the priceof a package holiday you could
run the length of Britain. All you
need is four things to go well eachday: food, water, sleep and muscle
management. The key is to findthe best of those.”conway had to overcome
constant physical pain
to complete his run

g o o d by e ,c o m m u t eother explorers
who quit life
for challenges
Alastair Humphreys
The ultimate diversion
home – London via
eastern Siberia. He
completed a 46,000mile trip on pushbike –over the Sudan; acrossthe Andes; throughInner Mongolia. In
2008, he finished the150-mile Saharan
Marathon des Sables– with a broken foot.
Not bad for a one-timeschool teacher.
Dave CornthwaiteThis explorer’s feats area work in progress – herecently completed his
11th journey for hisExpedition1000
project (25 journeys of1,000 miles or more on
non-motorisedtransport). Last seen
kayaking acrossScandinavia, he quit
graphic design to skate
from Perth to Brisbane
and paddleboard theMississippi River.

Run, Forrest

Conway is careful to distancehimself from another breed ofadventurers who “take life far too
seriously”. “They are hardcore
guys who do hardcore things,”
he says. “‘My adventure was harderthan your adventure, look at mewith all my kit, I’m very serious.’
I didn’t want that – I just wanted
to have fun.” Hence the Forrest
Gump look… “I was watching thefilm about five years ago – before
I’d even bought my first pair ofrunning trainers – and at the point
where he goes on the run, Ithought, ‘I like that philosophy.’
He was running just because hewanted to run and explore. It
became an easy metaphor forwhat I wanted to do. And it turned
out I look like him, too.”This sense of getting maximum
enjoyment out of his challenges isshown in requesting a playlist fromhis Twitter followers (his top threerunning tunes? Dropkick Murphys’
I’m Shipping Up To Boston, Avicii’s
The Nights and Springsteen’s BornTo Run) and his love for whisky,which he fostered during theScottish section of his swim. Heclaims two things kept him fromquitting: the fear of failure, andwhisky. “I had never liked whisky. I
liked the idea of whisky: I live on aboat, I look like a pirate, I need todrink whisky or rum. But I hated it.

We reached Scotland on the swim,
and two of my crew loved whisky,
so I said, ‘Right, by the end of thisswim I want to love whisky.’ So they
proceeded to give me to give me
every whisky they thought I’d like,and by the end I loved it.”
The whisky flowed on the run,
too, often during long evenings inlocal pubs refuelling (lasagna was
Conway’s No1 choice forcarb-loading, followed byspaghetti bolognaise, then chilli).
“One night, I got chatting to a guy
who owned the Clansman Centre
in Fort Augustus, and he let me
sleep there. He dressed me up as
Mel Gibson in Braveheart intraditional outfits, which was fun.
He’d had a few too many whiskies,
and all I was thinking was, ‘I’ve gotto go to bed – I’m knackered,’ butfor the next hour he was dressing
me up and showing me swords.”

Pain barrier

Inevitably, the highs of yelling“They’ll never take our freedom!”

additional photographs: MIKE HOGAN, JAMES CHEADLE, PA, rex features

he first thing you
notice about Sean
Conway is his beard.
It’s a beast, anorange, swirling
nest of hair extending from his
face down his chest. A pair ofblue eyes flash from beneatha red baseball cap, orange hairflowing out and combining withthe beard. “When someone’s
around the same age as me andhas a big beard, I get a bitcompetitive,” he tells me.
I meet the adventurer on
Hampstead Heath, where we go
for a short run before discussing
his recent ‘ultimate’ triathlon of
the UK and, as the owner of amuch smaller ginger beard myself,
I cannot help but associate withthat beard envy. To use a running
metaphor, his is Steve Ovett in
the 800m final at Moscow’s 1980
Olympics, mine is last-placed
Dave Warren.
This megabeard is theadventurer’s calling card, making
him instantly recognisable tofans as a kind of ginger Forrest
Gump as he made his way on a run
from John O’Groats to Land’s End
earlier this year. The challenge
took 44 days, and the 34-year-oldachieved it completely selfsupported, finding food and shelter
where he could along the way.
That competitive beardgrowing spirit is also a part ofwhat made the former
photographer quit his job four
years ago to live on an old Second
World War boat and take up a lifeof adventure. “I decided to sell
my business for £1 to just go out
and try to push myself,” he says.
“I’m quite short, not very goodat sport and I’ve never reallydone anything impressive. But
it turns out, if you just put yourmind to it, you can do anything.

were interspersed with miserable,
wind- and tear-swept lows.
Conway, who is a self-confessed“rubbish runner”, says that he’s
never been on an adventure where
he’s been in physical pain all day,every day. He began the challenge
averaging around 15-20 miles aday (building to 35 miles at theend) but, as Discovery Channel’s
documentary on the challengeshows, his knee and calf were
giving him constant pain, and a
few days into the run he suffered
severe dehydration. “The idea ofgiving up was enough of a reason
to carry on. It gives me panic
attacks. I hate failure, I’m a bit
stubborn. I fell off the rung before
and know how that felt.” That“falling off the rung” was his
aborted 2014 attempt at the run
after twisting his ankle while trying
to take a selfie a week in.
“You’d be surprised how far you
can push yourself. You don’t knowwhat to expect if you’ve neverpushed yourself before, so people

give up. But if they’d pushedthemselves further they’d haverealised they could do it. There’s
a famous saying, ‘The physicalpain you feel right now will
eventually go away. But theemotional pain of giving up will
always stay with you.’”
But pain – and selfies – weren’t
the only hazards. “I also got lostquite a few times and ended up on
busy dual carriageways with nohard shoulder. In particular, asection near Bodmin, the A38 –that was pretty hair-raising.”
Despite this, Conway’s advice
to anyone thinking of doing thesame as him is simple: just do it. “Ifyou’re unhappy in your job, there’s
no point in doing something thatmakes you unhappy. Life is too
short for that. The idea of doing
something you hate to earnmoney to buy the car you need todrive to the place you hate is justbonkers.”
If quitting your job mightseem a little extreme, there are“the idea ofgiving up wasenough ofa reason tocarry on. i’ma bit stubborn”
other options. “Adventurer
Al Humpreys coined the phrase‘microadventures’; you workfrom 9-5, but you have 5-9. Make
more of your weekends. It’s a longtime from Friday afternoon to
Monday morning.
“Britain is a cool island,” headds. “And it’s not that big.
Scotland is almost half of Britainand people barely go above
Glasgow. Some of the trails in
Scotland were incredible – a lot of
it felt like I was in Alaska.”
Just make sure you avoid
the A38 at Bodmin.
Sean Conway: Running Britain is on
Discovery Channel, 25 June and2 July at 9pm

Kenton Cool
Rather than repay
his student loan, Cool(below) pursued acareer in the Himalayas
upon graduating.
He’s completed 11
successful climbs ofEverest – with two in
one week – plus theLhotse and Nuptse
peaks in a single
ascent, meaning heattained the “TripleCrown” in sevendays without returning
to basecamp.

“well, theforecast said it
might be ‘chilly’…”

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