"THERE ARE FOUR CATEGORIES I TRY TO GET RECORDS IN: THE FIRST, THE FURTHEST, THE FASTEST AND THE MOST"
Fresh off the back of his record-breaking, fatigue-defying ultra-endurance feat of 105 Iron-distance triathlons in 105 days, Sean Conway tells MF how he did it
In the space of just three months, Sean Conway burned through almost a million calories of food, 800 litres of water, 12 bicycle tyres and seven pairs of running shoes. Every day, for 105 days between April and July, he completed an Ironman-distance triathlon.
“I may have knackered my body, but at least I’ve got some stories to tell,” says this 42-year-old, who set a new world record for back-to-back triathlons at this distance.
There are two simple questions that immediately spring to mind: why and how?
Torturous feats of endurance are what Conway does. This is the man who, in 2013, swam up the west coast of Britain from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. Two years later, he completed the same journey by sailing boat and set a new world record. It was a world record again in 2018, when he cycled across Europe from Portugal to Russia in just 24 days.
“There are four categories I try to get records in: the first, the furthest, the fastest and the most,” he tells Men’s Fitness just a few days after completing his 105 triathlons. “This record ticked the ‘most of’ category.” He beat the previous record – set by Canadian athlete James Lawrence – by four triathlons. “A lot of people thought James might have his record forever and, to me, that was a red rag to a bull,” he admits. “I’ll show you, world!”
Compared to all of Conway’s previous endurance challenges, this, he says, has been the toughest by far. That’s because he allowed himself no rest days: every single morning he rose at 4.30am from his bed at home in Rhydymwyn, a village in Flintshire, North Wales, and headed down to the local leisure centre where he smashed out 2.4 miles in the pool. Then he jumped on his bike and rode 112 miles on the roads of the borderland between North Wales and Cheshire, before finally running a marathon mainly along the River Dee – all within a cut-off period of 17 hours – every day for 105 days straight.
“The only saving grace was I got to sleep in my bed every night,” he says. “I was getting much more sleep than I did on my other challenges. For the first week, I didn’t even shower when I got home at night. I would come in, eat, have a bit of physio and fall asleep. By not showering, I got an extra 15 minutes of sleep.”
Tunnel vision
Although his running and cycling routes featured scenic sections, after several days he stopped noticing his surroundings.
