The Great British adventure –
Sean Conway takes on UK coastline solo Iron Man

I never had the intention of being an adventurer at all. I was miserable in my previous life, as I call it now. I used to be a school photographer- you know the annoying guy who used to come in and take your portrait? I absolutely hated it. I didn’t go for the amazing National Geographic option with great landscapes and the Peruvian jungle, I chose photographing babies because it paid well. I did that until I turned 30 and realised I was so miserable; so I sold my business for £1 in 2013 and I then spent £4 on a frame to frame the pound coin... so I was -£3, 30-years-old and the only thing I’d ever done was photography. I wanted to go travelling but I couldn’t because I only had -£3 to my name so I thought about trying to break a world record that’s travelling related. There were two reasons behind this thinking: 1) I might get a sponsor to fund it and 2) it will give me a purpose rather than just aimlessly wandering around Thailand.

I looked into various challenges and I found out about cycling around the world. I worked really hard trying to get sponsored and eventually got enough money together to do the race. It didn’t really go to plan - I got run over in America and broke my back, which ended my world record attempt. After that I returned to London a bit depressed and tried to get work for a year. I started to think about swimming the length of Britain, which no one had ever done before. 4.5 months later I finished that and it was only when I finished that I realised I could make a living out of it. 

I’ve done a length of Britain triathlon before, but that was never in one go and that’s where I got this idea from. It was only after then that I got excited about the idea of doing this really epically long iron man. So I have one more Great British adventure, which is a circumnavigation of Great Britain, around the whole coast line. It is actually a lot longer than you think, it’s 4,500 miles- the cycle stretch alone is further than Race Across America! In total it is a 3,500 mile cycle, 800 mile run and 100 mile swim, all self-supported, so on the swim I have to drag a raft behind me with all my supplies on. 

It’s 12 weeks long with potentially no rest days. It’s going to be difficult doing the same thing day in, day out and going straight from cycling into running. That’s going to be tough. Every aspect of this is going to be difficult, but being entirely self-supported adds a whole extra dimension. My nutrition is never going to be optimal; I don’t know where I’m going to sleep half the time, swimming along the south coast when there’s bad weather is pretty dangerous, especially dragging your own raft and with no support crew or boats! If the tide takes me the wrong way I’m not really sure what I’ll do. I have this little GPS tracker thing that if I press, apparently someone comes to help and I’ve never tested it... they say if you press this then you will get charged so I don’t know if you can even test it, you’ve just got to hope! 

Swimming the length of Britain, definitely! No one thought it was possible and I got no support generally because everyone thought I was wasting their time. No one would fund it because they thought I would die, so getting sponsors was really difficult. It was 4.5 months at sea - obviously I wasn’t swimming every single day because of bad weather, but I was most days and it’s a long time to be a cold, wet, miserable so and so, but completing that challenge was the thing that changed my life. My life changed overnight the minute I stepped foot on land at John O’Groats because all of a sudden, I’d got my confidence back and I thought ‘I can actually do this stuff, I’m not that little kid who was rubbish at school anymore, I’m actually a guy who can do it if he puts his mind to it,’ and that really extended to the rest of my life. I’ll always be grateful for sticking that one out, even though it was miserable! 

Today’s been great! I’ve never done any sort of physiological or performance testing before - I have a trainer and a coach and they email me various exercises such as squats, which I’m supposed to do in the gym, so I just go on YouTube and work out how to do it for myself. I’ve never actually had anyone physically give me guided support, so it’s fantastic to be in this environment. Today I was assessed on my V̇O₂max, strength, sweat composition analysis and cognition based tasks. It was all super exciting and I kind of secretly hoped I’d be awesome at it but no, I was pretty rubbish! I’m really excited to see how I improve over the time I train and during the event also. I’ve only got two months of proper training until I begin the challenge - it’s not really that much time! 

Until now I’ve winged it, I’ve really winged it. I’ve relied a lot on gut feeling with no scientific basis at all, so I’m really hoping to make improvements with the guidance and feedback I get from the GSK HPL scientists based on all the results from my assessments. I’m looking forward to having actual facts on which I can base my decision making. I’ll probably find out I’ve been doing it all wrong until now! 

“Wow!”. And then that it’s very, very organised and very professional. It’s also cool being in the same space that some incredible athletes like the Brownlees, Rory McIlroy and Jenson Button have been assessed in as well. I also enjoyed looking at the results data and having actual facts for how my body is performing. Finding out the results in a couple of weeks will be interesting.

It all started when I was swimming the length of Britain - obviously having huge amounts of facial hair and swimming is not ideal but I kept getting stung in the face by jellyfish. I was getting a full on face plant two or three times a day! As time went on I became a bit lazy and grew a bit of stubble... it was at this point I realised I wasn’t getting stung as badly, so I decided to grow a massive beard! I would wear a swimming cap and goggles but everything else would be exposed, but with a beard it was just my nose and parts of my cheeks, which wasn’t as bad. Ironically the jellyfish stinging me were lion’s mane jellyfish, which by growing a beard I looked exactly like!