Everything Endurance #64 | Making Every Moment Count with Steve Bate MBE

this episode was brought to you by resilient nutrition pals pals greetings greetings greetings and welcome to another episode of everything endurance it is as always delightful to have you with us today um delightful to have you with us wherever you are in the world i i was having a look at the analytics that we get sent through from our podcast hosting service and uh it turns out we've picked up our first subscriber in chile so uh greetings to chile hola buenos dias and all that jazz um and also our first downloader in kyrgyzstan which was a bit of an unexpected curveball um i did look up how to say hello in kyrgyz unfortunately i could find the letters but nothing that would show me the pronunciation i really didn't want to mess that one up and offend anybody so just hello to kyrgyzstan may you stick with us um thank you for listening um if you are out there listening to this then please whatever service you're using to listen to it wherever it is you are in the world give us a like give us a subscribe maybe even review an episode for us that would be absolutely fantastic it just helps spread the word and we can start picking up listeners in in more wonderful places around the world which is just really exciting i love that sort of stuff um a bit of business first over at beyond the ultimate towers we have this week announced the uh guest speakers and workshop leaders for the highland ultra this october um if you haven't heard us banging on about it which i'm absolutely sure you have by now because we're excited about this one um we're gonna be adventuring in the uk for the first time a three-day 125 kilometer race on the noidart peninsula like the the most remote and wild and wonderful area of the uk um it's you know it's where they should have shot lord of the rings um we're going to be in there amongst all that wonderful mountains and wildlife and everything else running this october and also in the evenings we're going to be having the likes of mimi anderson gary house christina madsen sunny pertz brett ruckos there's going to be tons of people there leading talks and workshops in the evening so you can come away from the thing with advice that's going to help you be a better stronger faster runner that's going to inspire you to want to take on adventures yourself um so yeah just some really really wonderful people who you're really going to enjoy meeting so if you want to return to adventure get a get a race in your diary this october 21st to the 23rd we're going to be in scotland head to the website now be on the ultimate dot co dot uk and look for the highland ultra okay do that you'll have a great time i promise you um okay that's business dealt with let's talk about today's guest very excited about this um by a complete fluke of scheduling this this absolutely wasn't by design um this week we have another guest who is somebody who was hit with some very bad news had to react to it had to change their approach to life and to the type of challenges they were taking on and have absolutely thrived and flourished as a consequence um the person we're going to be talking to today was you know a keen rock climber and a budding outdoor pursuits instructor looking forward to a life out in the mountains who was told in 2011 that in fact he had a problem with his eyes that was going to lead him to lose his eyesight um just an absolutely crushing blow at the time but this guy managed to bounce back he went and climbed el capitan who went over to yosemite national park and managed to climb el cap which is absolutely astonishing and then through an incredible series of events ended up as part of the great britain paralympic cycling team and has since mopped up numerous gold medals and a world record along the way he's going to be talking to us about all of that today um and he's an absolutely lovely guy you're really going to enjoy his stories he's also going to be talking about a truly truly epic feat of endurance that he's got coming up a world record that he's got his sights set on which is is just phenomenal so listen in we talk about that towards the end of the episode i am absolutely 100 excited about this and you should be as well we are going to be talking today to steve bate mba good morning then steve bate steve how are you yeah very well thanks yeah happy to uh happy to be here yeah well thank you very much it's uh lovely to have you with us this morning um sorry steve a mba no less the i think the third nba i've had on the show do i do i call you sir or or lord or anything i'm just i don't know if i had those letters after my name i might insist on something i i think a duke possibly something like that yeah yeah i think i must admit deep down i really like to be a cbe which is a commander of the british empire i think that's got some that's got some clout to it i think just being a member is cool but being a commander that's that's definitely up a couple of levels in that commander steve bay yeah absolutely i'd be being much more formal coming into this interview right now absolutely yeah um well yeah thanks for chatting with us today it's uh i'm looking forward to this one um for the sake of the people that obviously they'll have just heard me do a bit of an introduction so people know a little bit about you now but it's your first time on the podcast so i'd like to go a bit back further you know into the origins of steve mba were you were you always a sporty type were you always someone who went looking for the the kind of challenges that you've taken on over the last few years uh i think i was very fortunate obviously growing up in new zealand um you know my family were really kind of outdoor kind of um outdoor people you know we spent a lot of time when i was a kid camping over you know kind of christmas holidays which is obviously summer in new zealand um yeah you know by a lake lots of lots of fishing you know we were let loose into the woods and you came back at dark and there was you know that that was kind of you know you made your own trouble you stayed out of trouble whatever so i think i was pretty fortunate in the way that i grew up and my parents gave me that kind of me and my brother older brother free reign to um you know to explore and and i think that's always stayed with me um i think in terms of a sporting context i think being from new zealand as a young lad you know i think i started playing rugby at four years old um and was always you know i always play team sports i think with with rugby and cricket and indoor cricket and uh yeah although i you know i always say i was never any good you know like my brother was um my older brother was always that kind of captain of the team you know kind of best in his class best in school and i i kind of rode his coattails but you know i never made a first team never made the first 15 at school never made the first 11 cricket i was um yeah i was i wasn't really a big big kind of a sporting achiever at a young age i liked it and i tried hard but i was you know i was pretty clear by the time i was in my early teens i was not going to be uh you know a full-time athlete and you know that that wasn't really a career path that was going to be an option for me really so what was data day-to-day for steve bait prior to being steve bay mba commander uh so i left school early i wasn't exactly the brightest kid purely because i used to sit there in in class and stare at the window and rather be outside than in i think um and i think all of my reports used to say that if steve applied himself he could be as good as his brother which uh which kind of made me rebel against that obviously because uh at that time i kind of you know hated my brother and the success because everywhere i went i was i was allen's little brother um but you know in a way it was uh when i looked back now you know that was that was super inspiring and and motivating because he was he was such a high achiever um but yeah so i left school and i did a carpentry apprenticeship so i i started banging the nails and that's you know i i kind of qualified did a five-year apprenticeship because i was kind of pretty the guy that i worked for was pretty old school that's what he did so that's what i had to do um yeah and and just so left school and started building houses and i wasn't really i think i think i played qriket i think i burned off rugby by the early teens and i was kind of focused on pretty focused on playing cricket um but again never to uh never to a high level i never played first 15 at the club always second 15. um and i was all right you know i wouldn't say i was in it you know it wasn't i wasn't going to be a uh you know a county cricket player or anything like that but you were playing for the joy of it yeah yeah like you know i loved it i love i love being playing part of that team um and and you know and just having having a crack with uh with the lads which is always you know kind of a big motivator and that sort of thing isn't it you know um and then i think at 22 i think was when i left new zealand and came over to the uk where my brother was again kind of following in his footsteps he had come over for the two-year kind of i guess in the uk we call it a gap year um and was in london and i was just about to build a house for myself in new zealand i'd seen a bit of land that i was going to buy and i decided that i would um go and see my brother for six weeks and and see what kind of the northern hemisphere had to offer and i'm still here mate i never went back you you came here from middle earth and you decided to stay yeah yeah i'd soon realized pretty quickly that actually uh daniel brown new zealand's an amazing place you know it's a it's it's it's a real kind of adventure playground but nothing really happens in new zealand you know um they they play rugby they say our boats pretty well and they they play netball pretty well but other than that you know they um not what happens you know everything that happens is in the northern hemisphere and and i think when i came up here and realized you know one thing that i took completely for granted was just history you know like of of you know there's houses around where i live now in west yorkshire that are older than new zealand you know older than western new zealand which is you know that's kind of mind-blowing isn't it and so i think i think when i came up here um started going into europe um you know we went to crazy events like running in the balls and and beer fest and all these things and you know and i just thought you know what there's this there's something that's pretty pretty extraordinary to be up this end of the world so um yes i've kind of made it my home for the last 20 20 odd years 22 years i think amazing well welcome you know it's good to have you yeah i actually think at the end of this month i would have been i would have lived in the uk longer the next year i lived in new zealand so um so i i think that kind of almost justifies me being pretty much british now i hear you i'm i'm at what two thirds of my life now being in the north rather than the south of england and i'm just about accepted as northern now so you you should be getting close to being accepted as british at this point exactly i mean the nba has got to count for something yeah well yeah i mean that that obviously yeah that that helps fantastic um well look where it's hard not to come to 2011. so where where were you at that point and for the benefit of the people who are listening why do i keep coming to 2011 what's what what happened there so yeah so the the 14th of june 2011 was a bit pivotal for me really um so at that point so i once i moved to the uk i kind of worked as a carpenter for four years uh i'd moved to scotland so i was living in the north scotland up by inverness and i had discovered rock climbing so i'd left kind of team sports behind and discovered rock climbing and uh that was a huge passion you know like i spent as much time as i could dangling off rock faces and again i wasn't great but i had an incredible worthy you know work ethic i wanted to learn i wanted to get better so you know every weekend i was i was finding the the driest rock to climb on and that was a big part of moving to scotland was you know that i think uh that in that country of scotland they've got more rock types than any other country in the world you know which is amazing as a climber um you know the geology up there isn't phenomenal um and the the other that well probably the real reason is um i really want to move to france but i couldn't speak french so you know i've been that one i bring that one off pretty quickly just about handle scottish though yeah yeah i thought i could learn that a bit easier they couldn't understand me i couldn't understand them so it was great um so yeah so i realized that actually i wasn't interested in building houses anymore i really wanted to become a outdoor instructor and climb as much as i could that was the uh that was the thing so i started volunteering for a charity that worked for disadvantaged young people a good friend of mine was running at the time and that led to me basically going back to doing an apprenticeship for a year gaining out to qualifications and becoming a outdoor instructor which was incredible um and over that process i think i realized that being in the mountains was where i really wanted to be and where you know i want to spend all of my time so then i decided that i was gonna try and become an alpine guide and and and you know take people into these amazing places around the world so that was my you know for me at that point coming up with a five-year plan was kind of like pretty game changing really because i was never really cared that much about my future or investments or anything like that and i thought right i'm gonna invest all my time in climbing and mountaineering and and you know i'm gonna i'm gonna try and get on the guide scheme um so that's what i was doing i got my uh i got my mia i was working you know working through these qualifications you know like in the normal kind of approach that you would you started doing the winter equivalent to that the mic i think that they've now changed the names of those but uh yeah and then obviously june um june 2011 uh i went in for a eye examination which we had agreed with the charity because we drove van so much you know it's they were free in scotland so it makes sense to make sense to do that every year yeah and i kind of came out of that being told that i shouldn't drive home that i had a really kind of i had really bad eyesight and that in fact i shouldn't be driving anymore um which was a bit of a shock and then kind of i guess about a month later after seeing a couple of specialists i had the diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa which is basically tunnel vision which is this degenerative eye condition so uh yeah it was a bit of a game changer really that dream of becoming that alpine guide all of a sudden went up in smoke and uh and you'd just gone in for a routine for a routine eye check you know just just a tick of the box for the company that you're gonna be working with yeah pretty much yeah like i i knew over the last couple of years that my eyesight wasn't wasn't great you know there was something going on like i can still see okay but it's just what i could see was you know i just saw oh you know like walking out of the mountains with with my with my best mate after a day's climbing and we'd be walking out on a path and there'd be one rock sitting in the middle of the path and i'd trip over it where he'd walk around it and at this at the beginning i think he thought i was just taking the pistol like oh that's pretty funny you know good one but then as this kind of happened more and more regularly and and as uh certainly in you know during winter climbing where it would get you know the daylight hours would get really dark and i'd really struggle in the dark um you know all of a sudden i think he started to realize there was there was something going on as well so um i mean it was a shock but not a massive surprise there was there was something going on because i just felt like i was getting more and more clumsy you know which was really frustrating for me um but uh yeah in a way looking back it was almost like a um a relief that there was something wrong you know it wasn't just me being clumsy and useless it was actually hey you know you've got this issue the downside is we don't have a cure and you know they said the worst case scenario is you'll you'll be blind in four years so wow that that kind of hit me pretty hard as a as i was kind of i think in my early 30s at that point um fiercely independent fiercely male um and and yeah and all of a sudden the thought of having to you know not being out of drive uh losing this dream that i've worked you know probably four or five years for at that point to kind of you know just build up to getting on the guide scheme and you know and probably if i reflect back now i maybe never would have made it anyway but you know it was it was certainly everything i was i was kind of putting my hopes on and um yeah all of a sudden all that went yeah like i say up and up in a single comment where it's like yeah i don't think you should be driving anymore mate um so yeah i uh wow i mean what a day it was uh you know like i was um i can't remember at that point actually if i was engaged to caroline my wife now or not but you know that just the things that were running through my head you know like if for people listening if you know if we see it right you can't drive anymore you know just the the impact that has on their lives like we didn't have children we still don't um but you know just it's it's it's a bit of a crushing blow you know like i thought well i can't do my job anymore because obviously a big part of that was driving people into into the outdoors into these remote places i didn't know what they would you know whether i'd just be like you know used to us you've got to go um i didn't know you know it sounds stupid but i didn't know whether caroline was going to love me anymore because all of a sudden i wasn't this kind of independent bloke i was all or something i was going to have to rely on people um you wonder what your friends think about you you know as as i think as men um we never want to show weakness you know we we don't want to be that person who's disabled or we don't want to be the the one who slows everyone down it's you know it's never it's never a fun place to be so i just had this you know that day and certainly the the months after that i just had all these kind of weird emotions of just not not being who i wanted to be you know this this wasn't fair this you know it it was always you know i was fit i was healthy i didn't smoke it and drink excessively i you know i was an outdoor guy and and all of a sudden that looked like it was it was all gonna be taken away um so yeah lots of process i can only imagine how tough that was and i mean was there a was there a period of time there where you weren't coping with it like how long did it take you to get to a point where you were like okay i can make a new plan there are still things i can do yeah i think it was probably i don't know probably like four to six months of just you know like i stopped climbing couldn't you know like i just i wasn't interested i thought well if i can if i can't be the best i can be at it what's the point in doing it you know i just had a real defeatist attitude and and my whole mindset was focused on the things i couldn't do um which is a um a really bad place to be you know like i i wouldn't say i was i had depression but i was certainly pretty pretty down on myself you know like at no point i got to the you know point where i thought i want to end this you know i i never got to that stage thankfully and i i had an amazing support network around me like my family uh caroline was incredible um i mean that my brother was great when i phoned him and said oh listen mate i'm uh i've just lost my driver's license i'm going to go blind there was a silence down the phone he had moved back to new zealand at this point there was a silence down the phone and i was just kind of thinking oh god this has hit him really hard and he just came out with like oh don't worry steve you're a driver anyway yeah that's just kind of like yeah what you'd expect from your older brother you know right yeah so supportive um so there were things like that you know and i i think the pivotal moment was when i spoke to a good friend of mine karen dark and you know for those of you who know me and heard my story you know you've heard this before but um i kind of went to speak to karen because karen's in a wheelchair phenomenal woman if you don't know karen dark find out about her you know google she's phenomenal um she had a climbing accident at 19 or 20. fell off the c cliffs and aberdeen broke her back ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of her life um and so i went to karen because i figured she had gone through you know this kind of life-changing experience and i kind of figured you know in some random way that i was you know that we had this thing in common and and straight away when i said to karen i'm going to go blind my you know this adventurous lifestyle that we're going to live as is over and done with and you know and she just said to me you know get a grip of yourself mate you can't see you know like you can race on the back of a tandem and come and ride with me for paralympics gb um and you know i was just i know karen i can't do that okay you know it's all over for me it's 11 and she goes ah you know come on listen to yourself and i think i think at that point it's um it was kind of yeah i guess yeah it's it's kind of pardon the pump it kind of opened my eyes to actually what what how am i living here and it's negative you know i'm looking i'm focusing on everything that's negative and actually what can't i do the only thing i can't do is drive but nothing else has changed and in the minute that i realized that all of a sudden i thought well hey i can do anything and then there was this real desire that if i was gonna go blind in four years i had to make the most of that four years you know i had to make it so if i did go blind um i wasn't going to be stuck on a couch you know and look back over those that previous voice and go well all i was miserable and blamed you know everyone else and myself that this has happened to me and poor me i thought you know what i need to make these memories that in four years time if i go blind i can look back and go well hell that was an incredible four years you know i made the most of the rest of my eyesight and that's how i've chosen to kind of um frame my life from from that point really and that's kind of led into the things that have followed and and will follow you know while i've got the eyesight that i've got even though it's getting worse um i've got to maximize it maximize the opportunity because it's not always going to be there well i i think we're about to come into what you've been doing over the last few years i think people are about to see that you absolutely have been maximizing what you've got i i what i mean that's somebody else who i absolutely need to speak to there karen has been inspiration for you by the sounds of it and yeah i mean to be fair she she kind of like i'd known karen for i've known karen for probably oh i don't know maybe 15 years now yeah and i met her not long after i moved to scotland and she's always been incredible you know like i think when i met her she'd just hand skate across the green and ice cap you know with the team and it's just like a sit skid sorry across the green lights cap and just think like wow that is like that's mental you know and just just the attitude her attitude to life and living with paralysis is like you can't help not being super inspired and be like wow that's you know she's kicking ass if she can kick ass i can kick ass you know but yeah she's um yeah phenomenal character incredible i know it was she partly the catalyst that led you on to el capitan um i think not i don't think karen um was kind of the at her time she was um her partner was andy kirkpatrick um who's obviously a famous you know one of the british probably most famous alpinist and certainly um he's a bit of a legend when it comes to el cap he's probably climbed the thing 30 odd times but um it was an off the off the kind of cuff comment he made when we caught up one day and he just said oh you should you know even if you go blind you're going to climb el cap you know there's hands florin guided this um this guy uh what's his name eric weimer who's quite a quite famous guy you know he's blind got a first blind walk up everest kind of climb and cup you know so yeah you can you can still use you can still climb el cap but you really should solo it before you lose your sight and as a climber you know like i'll catch the holy grail everyone wants to go and climb lcap you know it's it's incredible but it's a pretty daunting prospect um which is why most people make excuses not to go and climb it um i'd just like to give some scale here to anyone who's listening to el cap and isn't necessarily sure what el capitan is are we we're talking over 3000 feet of of rock face is that right and yosemite national park yeah yeah in california so to to give people a concept i mean i guess most people listen to this have probably seen the eiffel tower maybe been up the eiffel tower so so it's three times the height of the eiffel tower wow it's um same with the london chard same thing you know the shard three times the height of that so it's um a significant rocket yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um so yes i think it was andy who kind of planted that seed about not only climbing it but soloing it and uh and he was you know at that point he was the man when it came to soloing and you know with a rope you know protected soloing head you know he had spent all sorts of uh long days on el cap you know by himself you know phenomenal again super inspiring and um so yes i think at that point i had nothing going on and i thought well hey that's that's going to give me this really you know good thing to focus on and what i've realized over the years is actually if i've got a goal and i'm working towards something i'm super motivated but when those goals fade away i'm kind of just a lazy punk like everyone else you know so i i really lose my direction in who i am and what i want to do and when i get these big targets it's kind of like right all in game on you know i'm i'm really single-minded really focused and and that's probably part of the reason why i've achieved what i have because it's you know it's not through talent it's just through a skill set of learning about something investing everything in it and and you know committing to it 100 well it seems to have worked out for you el capitan obviously ended in a success you you got up there was it six days that i read to to climb that rock face that's an enormous amount of work yeah it's it's really funny when people um you know when people say that or you know find out that you've uh you've you've climbed el cap solo and and obviously the alex honda film freestyle has made made it kind of mainstream you know everyone's kind of seen that film and everyone's blown away without like i didn't do it that way you know like i climb with the rope you know with the portal edge old school haul and all my stuff well i think it took it took alex less time to climb el cap than it took me to climb the first pitch of 16 you know so there's i'm in no way comparing myself to alex honnell the guys are you know phenomenal um i'm just some punter who turned up who struggled my way up there and that and that's really you know i was so close to not starting um you know i mean i'd phone carol and said listen i think i'm going to kill myself like even i even thought the day that i went to start i um you know i was thinking about breaking my ankle as an excuse just to not do it you know like i was not in a good place when i you know when i started walking up to it anyway i mean once i once i pulled onto the rock and stuff i was i was going at the top um so yeah it's it's uh like i say i'm i'm no i'm no super talent i'm no phenomenal client you know like i'm an average climber in the uk you know i'm not i'm not some superstar not and by any means it's just a um probably a a stubbornness i think that um you know once i want to set my mind something i really want to achieve it hi everyone sorry to interrupt just here to remind you that this episode was brought to you by resilient nutrition and you can find their full range of elite long-range fuels exclusively on the btu store now the elite long-range fuels are a series of delicious nut butter products with micronutrients and supplements designed to give you exactly what you need when you need it they're delicious they're great for fuel in your whatever your adventure is and you can find them on the btu store and nowhere else right now store dot beyond the ultimate dot co dot uk store dot beyond the ultimate dot co dot uk okay let's get back to the podcast so how did this stubbornness get you onto the olympic team then how how did we get there because we've we're now we're now a climber we've done el capitan we've done this amazing thing how are you then an olympic cyclist what happened next because you you have not taken a very direct sort of cr career trajectory here no so at this point i was probably 36 i think um and i think just before cap you know karen's words kind of came back to me where she said oh you could race on the back of a tandem and at that point climbing wasn't in the olympics or paralympics and i yeah so there was kind of you know i was like oh could i couldn't i don't know you know it's a it's certainly something new and then right before i went actually went out to wildcat i did a it just worked out that um british sight and were doing a talented day in glasgow so i went down to that and karen said to me you know when i phoned her the night before and said oh listen i'm in glasgow i'm doing this telling you that she's all good they're only looking at two things and and that's what you have to realize one of them is that you're kind of athletic you know and you're not like some sort of you know kind of 25 stone you know um monster that they're going to have to do a load of what you know that like you look athletic so you've ticked that box when you walk through the door the other one's your power production you know that's all i'm interested in how much power can you produce on the bike so she she said something like if you can walk out of there you haven't done yourself justice you want to ride your leg you bury yourself mate you know the score um so i did that i mean i wasn't again you know i don't think those uh those um coaches that day looked at me and went oh here's our next here's the next prodigy um i think they saw a uh determination hard work um and somebody was organized you know like i i was the first one to turn up um i had my shoes my the pedals and they said oh we can't fit them on these stationary bikes i said here's a pedal spanner you know and they're like oh great we'll swap over so you know i was just super organized um on time and and showed a willingness to kind of learn and try you know and and try really hard um and then they said i will get back to you in a week and of course in a week i didn't hear anything so i was like oh well you know didn't come to anything not bothered i'm going to well cap you know next week it's fine um and then when i came back from lcap i emailed the manager because i said to them listen i'm i'm going away for for a month um i'll give you i'll get in content when i get back thinking you know basically i'll bring them off they're not going to be interested and then when i came back from lcap they said oh yeah be good to have a look at you again we've got a training camp the development training camp which we'd like to have you as a guest on in three weeks time you know we're we're going to be in wales for a week can you come down to that and because after working at this time so i just had a month off work you know ponching around in california and and then had to go back in and say hey listen guys there's a there's this opportunity to go you know do a week with british cycling um can't you know is what the chance i can get the time you know time off for that and and they were you know the charity i worked for up for murray were fantastic and said yeah of course you've got to go um so yes i went went down to the the kind of um week with the development squad and met some incredible guys um who are still on the team and my mates now had a great week and and yeah they just sort of said well you know yeah you know there's potential um but i think the the thing that was the kind of game changer for them is what i didn't realize but everyone kind of at british cycling and knew that i'd climbed el cap so that you know that that had gone around the office and just like oh this this new kind of stoker guy we're looking at on the back this is what he's just done and i think there was a connection where they thought you know what if he's if he's mad enough to do that he's probably mad enough to race on the back of a tandem so um yeah so kind of four months later that was the beginning of 20 must be in january 2014 i was bought onto the program and introduced to adam douglas who's my who's my pilot who we've ridden together ever since so uh yeah it was a bit of a um again not not kind of really in the in the game plan but i think after sitting on the top of el cap having just achieved that in six days i i guess i kind of understood my potential i realized that actually if i it's just that simple thing if you you know if you focus everything you can on a goal you want to achieve um and work your ass off you know that just proves me it was achievable um and i think then going to you know then all of a sudden the paralympics comes on the radar and you know at that point i thought well i'm 36 years old like there's no way i'm gonna make it as a full-time athlete now you know like people are retired from a career of cycling at 36 you know it's just it's not possible but there was this boyhood kinda you know this kid inside me going but isn't it worth a try you know isn't it worth a shot because yeah and if you take this recipe you've just learned from alcap and apply it to cycling and the difference there was i had the whole support of recycling i wasn't doing this on my own you know emailing andy asking how to tie into certain things or you know how to learn to rope solo i you know i was going to uh you know this machine that churns out medals to go hey listen do as we say and you'll get a medal and that's kind of just how it happened you know i just i just committed to it 100 adam committed to it 100 and two and a half years later we're um yeah stood on top of a of a paralympic podium having just broken a pursuit world record and winning a gold medal so it's um it's kind of like it doesn't seem real if i'm honest you know it just doesn't seem like that's that's what happened and then of course you come back from that um we went straight to patagonia because after two and a half years of being in a pressure cooker i was just like i need to escape so karen who also won gold medal at that games which was awesome um we went with another guy off the team and my wife caroline went to patagonia for kind of five five weeks or something just to like decompress from all of that and get wild again and then of course while we're out there i get a letter uh i saw an email from i think caroline actually looked at her emails and my mum had messaged her saying uh i've just been around at one of the guys who went to rio's houses with their parents and he's just got an mbe you know just being sent a letter saying would you like an mbe in the new year's honors list and so my mum was super excited saying oh my god get him to check his email and of course we were away so i was just like oh yeah i'll look at it when i get back it's like oh no he's got a reply by a certain time so she was freaking out that all of a sudden i was going to miss this opportunity of getting this mbe so uh but yeah all of a sudden then you just you know and to be honest i i thought about i thought about you know not accepting it because it was services to cycling and i thought christ i've i've just you know for two and a half years of my life i've um i've got into cycling but i will you know it just felt you know i know people have worked in the charity sector for their lives and have done extraordinary things and and haven't had that you know kind of um level of of kind of um of accolade i suppose to show what they've done made a big impact in their communities and and countries in some cases and i just ridden a bike around you know ran in circles really fast and all of a sudden you're getting this accolade and i kind of thought well i don't know i don't deserve this you know there's there's far better people that deserve this and it's a um yeah it's a funny thing to get your head around that yeah you're kind of you've been given this accolade but all i've done is my job yeah and and of all you know that that's what i'm paid to do i'm paid by you know uk sport to um and the lottery funding to win gold medals so all i've done is done my job and i'm getting this incredible accolade and you think well christ do i do we really want this you know do do you know like obviously it's uh it's extremely flattering um and yeah i i guess in in some ways i got kind of talked into it by the people around me just saying you're an idiot if you don't accept this you're an idiot you know take it grab it with both hands because it's something that you know um not many people you know not many people will ever get not i mean you know many people want them but you know it's um it's a recognition of what you've done and i think the thing that changed it for me was someone said to me oh you'll like you'll never know how many people you you've inspired and and i don't you know like it's not like there's a counter on an app on your phone yep exactly yeah so it's kind of a it's kind of a funny thing you know um i i can understand the the sort of level of imposter syndrome that would have you standing there going i've only been in this sport for a couple of years but what you've done in that time that that total dedication of your life to it and at the end of that process gold medal world record i mean if that's not deserving of an mba i'm not entirely sure what it is yeah yeah it's um like i said it's like that i think that period um if relief i think is the game so everyone says oh what's it like to win a gold medal it's just relief you know it really is like the the kind of higher that comes later once it kind of you know once it sinks in what you know what adam and i achieve but at the time you just you know you're just thankful you've delivered this performance because you know we're just where does the dude's on the bike you know there's like 40 staff that have all invested the same amount of their lives into us going fast so it's just kind of like you're just glad you pulled it off you know for them really it's um yeah it's pretty yummy and you talked about a sort of two two and a half year process there in a pressure cooker and such so that you had to go off to patagonia for five weeks to calm down afterwards uh what well yeah it wouldn't take much of an excuse to get me over there either but you had a good one well what i mean there's only so much detail you can give in a little podcast like this but what was that two and a half years like i'm trying to build up a picture in my head of what the work schedule for someone who's going for a gold medal is like what did your life become in that time um at the start you know it's all brand new so yeah you know you're making you know big gains and in your performances i mean adam was already an elite cyclist in his own right you know as he was winning races excuse me he'd already been a national champion on the track so you know this guy is a really high caliber rider you know and and here i am a climber jumps on the back with them and all of a sudden i've got this incredibly high standard that adam's sitting not only himself but me as well to to kind of achieve so you know i was just like well again you know when there's two of you on a bike you don't want to be the worst one you know you don't want to be the weakest link um so it i just you know i just buried myself completely and and it was fun you know it wasn't you know it didn't feel like work christ that you know i'd gone from building houses to working a nine to five and weekends in an outdoor charity all of a sudden all i was doing was riding my bike you know and and i think the weirdest thing was when i started um i i thought i was going to be like yeah 30 hours a week on my bike and in the gym and you know having to do all the stuff and and what you realize very quickly when you're professional athlete you're kind of being paid to recover you know obviously the hours get you you do more hours you build up to more hours on the bike but the reality is you know recovery is where the magic happens and that's you know i learned pretty quickly whereas because i was just like i need to do everything because i need to get better and the coach was like whoa whoa whoa hang on hang on calm down lad you know like your body needs to adapt and to adapt it needs to recover and rebuild and grow so um yeah it wasn't until like like we didn't know until the june of 2016 where you know we've been selected so everything happens you know we started creeping onto podiums at world cup level um we'd never got anywhere in world championships um you know and i think in 2015 we won our first world cup time trial and i think at that point i think it became a reality that actually we've got we've got a genuine chance of making this paralympic team you know because at that point we were surrounded by incredible athletes and you know like jody cundy and and neil fakie and sarah story and you just look at these people who have spent their lives in the sport and dominated it and here you are some sort of bum climber you know on the back of a bike with some professional guy in front of you and you and you're kind of not making it up as you go along but you know you're just kind of in it for the ride kind of thing and and i think as soon as we won that gold medal in that time trial you realize you've got potential and all of a sudden it like everything went up again and then coming into 2016 i was like right i'm not drinking this year at all to the games i'm not going to eat you know food i'm going to really kind of invest everything in and i remember i think about six months before the games it was looking pretty good um we had some of our best results um everyone else in the team who was kind of like we were where we going to go weren't we gonna go we were kind of doing better than everyone else so it was like oh okay yeah you know we've got we've got more results in the sky but you never know you know british i can really keep you on a knife edge in terms of you know to get the best out of you really you know it's not yeah i bet they want to squeeze every drop out of you yeah yeah absolutely um so yeah we went and sat into like a team talking in chris hoy so chris hoy came in and and sort of said you know six months before games it was very easy for me i i everything i did i asked myself one question and that was is this going to make me faster yes or no if it's yes i did it if it's no i didn't do it and that was a really key ingredient for me because then it made it dead easy you know everything i did you know i missed weddings of friends i miss parties and you know people go to the booze on a friday um you know and caroline was incredibly understanding um because i was just like i can't go like me getting a bad night's sleep i'm not going to recover you know me drinking staying up all night speaking of friends um you know we've turned friends away who'd come to the house because their children had a cold it's like nope can't deal with that i can't be here you can come in but i gotta go you know that that's how that's how serious we were you know we were we were taking it um and then i think once you get then get selected in that june then i'd gone from the whole dream was to become a paralympian like i wasn't even really focused on winning a gold medal it was just to be a paralympian that'd be awesome to go to a games have that experience be awesome and then all of a sudden you get announced in that team and straight away like that it was like i have to win a gold medal you know and again it just went up another gear the focus became now and i pretty much became a recluse you know you're just you're living breathing eating riding your bike and training and you're not interested in anything else you know that is outside of that and you know it's very i guess very fortunate my uh my like caroline and my friends allowed that to happen yeah you know they didn't go hey you're being a dick yeah you know you're not talking to us anymore what's this about um so yeah you know again when you win you're kind of uh paying all that back i think it's a bit emotional speaking about it really funny yeah i i bet this is it's absolutely huge and it's wonderful that you had that support around you while you while you gave yourself to that in the way that you did so i you talk about a moment of relief can you can you put us there when the first gold what how on earth did that feel yeah yeah yeah yeah relief like where were you yeah well i think just just to take back so just before the games we go into what's called a holding camp yeah so for two weeks beforehand we we go to basically a camp which is just the just the games team um and that is kind of a prep thing you know there's there's kind of media training you know you're still obviously training your ass off but everything's starting to kind of like right all the hard work's done at that point now we're trying to maintain it and not get ill is the key ingredient there you know you just like so you're removed away from the public you know you're in this little bubble of this holding camp and during that holding camp i think it was probably three or four days before we flew to rio um you go through you do a full race day prep on the track so we rode the pursuit the individual 4k pursuit 16 laps of the track from a sounding start and so we went ran through our race day so it's the same time as what you're expected to go off so you know you can get up when you need to eat what you think you're going to eat go through all the motions get on the bike and and you know put in this performance um full gas you know you're in the games kit for the first time the you know the skin suits the fast wheels all the stuff that you've been dreaming about for ages which is the ice absolute icing on the cake and so we got up and that day that we were due to do our race day prep was at newport velodrome and that was the day that they allowed the public to come in which was the only day during that time they could come in so you know there was probably that's not a very big grandstand but probably 200 people maybe and you know there's someone announcing you know but there's no timings up on boards or anything like all that's kept really quiet and so our names got called up and of course adam and i we've warmed up we've got on the bike and and we ride and i knew it went well but i didn't know how well because of course we couldn't see splits in the la and i kind of as we were rolling around um after we'd finished i i kind of just you know went you know to my coach and he just gave me a thumbs up and i thought oh that's good that's gone well and decent you know happy with that and by the time we rolled into the pits everyone was kind of buzzing you know there was definitely a a good vibe going on and we've just broken the world record at that point so you know in a training camp you know like in a training situation we've just broken the world record by i think uh by three seconds so then thumbs up thumbs up so then it's kind of like all right okay this is actually this could happen you know if we get this right on the day this this could really happen and obviously pursuiting you never know how fast anyone you know is gone either you know in other countries but we knew we were in a good place your best we'd ever gone and i remember the head coach john norfolk coming over and said don't tell anyone this goes nowhere don't put this on social media no one knows about this and i messaged carol and my wife and said oh my god so that was the first ride and then because in a pursuit you do a qualifier and then the two fastest bike race off for the gold medal so we reduced to a second ride in the afternoon and riding so we rode back to the hotel we were staying in and riding back one of our carers a great bloke named aim and dean i was obviously you know pretty excited probably started running my mouth about how we're going to smash everyone and he just rolled up to me and said excuse my french here for earlier this but wrote up to me and said you haven't won anything yet mate and they're just like it was perfect it just brought me back down to back down to the the level i needed to be just like he was absolutely right we hadn't won anything we've done something somewhere but it wasn't where we needed to do it um so yeah just that kind of reset me to think right you know like i've still got a week and a half before we race i can still work my ass off um so yeah on that day obviously you show up to the track and you're thinking right you know i know we can go fast and we were the s the last heat to go off against the current world champion kieran modra who was in who's unfortunately passed away but he was an absolute legend in the sport and i always wanted to be that i guess the thing is at the games is you're on the biggest stage in the world and we were against the best guy in the world at that time you know so the stage was like mate this is it if you want to test yourself perfect you know if you want to be a big game performer this is your time so we got to watch everyone else go in the heats before us and you're just watching these times and i knew i knew the olympic uh the paralympic record which was 417 from london was going to get broken before we got a chance and i knew the world record was probably going to get broken before we got up as well so in my mind like psychologically i was like right that's going to happen and that's fine but if that happens it means we're going to go fast as well and i know we're going to go faster than four or nine when we're in the holding camp and i remember the first dutch bike that came up they rode for about a 4 12 or 4 14 you know of course the crowd erupts new paralympic record and they are punching the sky and i just remember thinking good luck boys enjoy this moment because it ain't lasting long you know and it wasn't arrogance it was just this confidence that i knew would go well and then the second dutch bike um who we ended up racing in the final went 409 and literally i turned around to adam who was warming up next to me and said good someone's come to play this is good you know and then it was just the case of we're going to get a in the medals um it was just a case of how how fast karen was going to go and uh you know i guess fortunately for us he was on a bad day and you know so we rode 408 broke the broke the world record that the dutch had just broken and qualified fastest to go into the gold medal write-off and for me at that point it was kind of like right job done broken a world record um being a world champion yeah you know it's like i i don't you know we get even if we lose the final we're going to get silver you know so i knew we had a medal and i thought perfect i don't really care you know like excellent we've got a world record and we're going to get silver medal at worst like winning you know it's great so we rode back to the hotel or the games village and riding back it was just you know i remember warming up and my legs felt amazing which is pretty rare um because normally in training they feel terrible and i just remember thinking to myself like because i said you know like i was sort of saying i don't really care you know we've got metal awesome you know great you know two and a half years of work and we've got this medal which i never thought was going to be something and then something in my mind clicked when i was sitting in those chairs while we were waiting to go for the final race it's like mate you need to care about this because this is the closest you're ever going to get to a gold medal you know this matters this really bloody matters um and yeah and obviously we we got up and we and we bet the dutch bike by you know pretty much writing a i think we're half a second off our world record so it was you know it was it was amazing it was like in terms of executing a race plan it couldn't have gone better you know it was like everything was nailed on perfect and like i say it was it was just relief you know it really was but it set us up to then go into the time trial super relaxed because we had a medal and you know we we wrote terribly in that and we managed to win somehow so um you know so you got two races two goals how terribly can you have rode and still come out with it it's like you know it was by far not our best performance and time trialling but um you know we're obviously best of a bad bunch on that day um and then yeah two days later for the last day the games were in a road race and and at that point i was pretty burnt out you know as i was starting to feel the effects of kind of the last six months and certainly the three weeks of building up to this and you know road racing's never been our strongest point and um we were in the league group uh got dropped on the last climb and um you know we knew that there were three bikes ahead of us and we knew that not you know we looked at the terrain and thought it's rolling at that that kind of suits us the climb didn't but the terrain suited us so we uh we worked our arses off and and managed to catch the uh spanish bike about probably maybe just over a kilometer from the finish line and um yeah and i knew at that point i knew we were as soon as we caught one you were gonna win our third medal which was going to be bronze but you know it was um it was yeah pretty great way to finish off really you know three races three medals it's like just like unbelievable incredible and thanks it's it's amazing hearing you talk about it it really sort of put us there that what an incredible moment and what what vindication of two and a half years of putting your entire life into that yeah yeah so you know like it's you know like i spent a year training for lcap and you know full-on invested in that and you know it's it's not easy you know it's not telling us not easy you know it's a massive part of that like i said the support we had um you know so uh yeah just kind of feeling incredibly fortunate i i think you've made a lot of your own good fortune here i really do um well i it's a shame to move on from the paralympics because this is absolutely fantastic but obviously you now you do win medals for a living which is absolutely incredible but there's another big challenge coming up for you isn't there i don't know i really want to talk about this because this sounds like it's going to be absolutely incredible so without giving away too much yeah well the next big thing coming up is obviously the games in four months time and totally yeah i've got i've got that to uh you know what expectations to live up to which is going to be interesting um so the pressure's kind of like yeah you're certainly feeling the effects now it was funny i was talking to one of the younger guys on the squad the other day um and sort of saying that at the moment in your career you know he's um he's at a point where he's learning his craft and you know people just are you know expecting him you know the team are just expecting him to get better and grow as time goes on and i said you know wait until you get that expectation once you once you start winning medals and then there's just this expectation every time you get on the bike you're expected to win and it's a very different place to be and he wants to be in that place obviously because he wants to be winning medals but you know it's kind of taking him a step back and going just just enjoy this process mate because you know in a couple years time when you start dominating you know all of a sudden that comes with another a whole nother pressure which um you know obviously no one ever wants to disappoint their team and their teammates and stuff like that but you know it's um it's certainly you know going into this games far more experienced as a rider and and certainly being you know like i'm the oldest guy on the british sighting team now um so there comes like a a a kind of a hat that you wear that you know people look to you if you know kind of supporting things who have been on the program longer than you and i guess it's just through life experience and what i've achieved in the time i've been there people kind of you know i get i guess it's very humbling value value your opinion which is you know which is which is lovely but you kind of think god i should be you guys have been here longer than me i should be asking you these questions not the other way around but uh yeah but anyway so i've got to get through this games which will be amazing you know it's obvious glossed over tokyo there because i was yeah so so you know that that's been it was interesting because i actually i came very close to retiring to be honest when it was delayed last year um i've kind of i've kind of had this this next project we'll talk about kind of in the pipeline for a couple of years so you know it's just like off that delay if the game is delayed that you know is that going to put that in jeopardy and and you know like um i'm 44 this year um and the you know the desire to put myself through the ringer every day is is kind of starting to fade if i'm honest um you know i'd i've the commitment you know that i've shared kind of takes away from other aspects of your life and and i kind of uh in many ways i i want that aspect of my life back here you know to do adventures and mess around and you know meet me mates at the pub and and have a beer without feeling guilty about it and so i i think i've definitely um you know like i i think the other the big the big kind of moment with this was my 44th birthday is on the opening ceremony of tokyo and i took that as a really positive omen that actually if if tokyo gonna throw me a party i best turn up um so that kind of made me reinvest and think it's just another year it's not gonna be an easy year but you know it's it's another year and you know you get get motivated you can do it you know finish what you started kind of thing um however after that um very exciting is a guinness world record challenge that i have set my sights on which is racing my bike solo from cairo to cape town so length of africa going after mr mark beaumont's guinness world record which is uh yeah gets me pretty excited just talking about it yeah i can see you've got a like rye grin on your face as soon as you've started talking about this one i mean should we talk through some of the maths just quickly what sort of distance are we talking about and what sort of daily distance are we talking about here yeah so this is actually the first time i've really spoken about this in public um i have been being a busy beaver trying to get this funded for the last year um through mark's help uh who's been absolutely incredible but so the rough rough numbers are six and a half thousand miles um from corridor cape town uh through eight countries seven border crossings and i am aiming to do that in 25 days so that is around about 260 miles a day for 25 days wow that is astonishing yeah so the the basic plan is is to use mark's record of when he raced around the world in under 80 days so he was trying to average or did average uh 240 miles a day for 16 hours a day so i wrote four four hour blocks very short break in between fully supported um to you know and he did that 79 days phenomenal um so i plan to take that that style um if if i can get the funding and there's a big effort if i can get the funding at the moment um take that style to africa and you know try and try and break his record which currently stands at 42 days um i think 40 41 days 10 hours and 22 minutes that's a hell of a dent you're looking to put in that record then yeah yeah i um i figured if i was gonna go after it it was it wasn't it wasn't gonna be to shave a few hours off it you know i'd really like to um potentially put it put it out of reach for for quite a long time um but again you know mark's been pivotal in this kind of these big endurance racing challenges around the world and you know his africa thing he's written america's and stuff so this is becoming more and more mainstream and i think i think we're going to see more and more people taking on you know these big challenges but in a supported way uh when mark did africa he was unsupported okay you know so this will be a very different record you know this isn't like for like this is very different um guinness the guinness world record um they they they don't stipulate between supported and unsupported ra like kind of record attempts because it's too much of a gray area where you draw the line you know it's um is unsupported completely unsupported not taking a phone with you sorting everything out as you go or you know like um mark generally when he raced around the world and raced down africa you know he had his um as his mum who was his kind of manager at home who you know who pulled strings when he needed stuff delivered could get it dropped off you know further down the line you know and there's an argument well is is that fully self-supported if you've got support from the outside world so you know it just becomes a huge kind of greater and an argument most of the time which i'm not really interested in um all i'm really interested is is seeing again you know what i can what i can do um so you know i mean i think with border crossings you know that many border crossings and certainly hostile areas um it's going to make that 25 day kind of target a real challenge yeah um i've been told the the ethiopian kenyan border they can you know with that that's can be quite hostile so they can just shut that for 48 hours at a drop of a in a drop of a hat and that's it there's no kind of like oh yeah we'll let you through because you're going for a world attempt i'll be stuck there for 48 hours um wow so that so like 25 days is is kind of best case scenario that that's at allowing an extra amount of time for if we get stuck you know at borders um well best case scenario you know we kept like a couple of hours and you threw a border you know if we can hit all of those in a dream run it'll work great but the reality is i think um probably if i can go sub 30 i'll i'll be i'll be pretty stoked on that with you know with weighing up but you know that many border crossings and and yeah i mean it's about i think there's a over over 50 000 meters of ascent um as well so it's um you know northern northern ethiopia as beautiful as this is really mountainous you know it's when i started looking at the route and mark said to me oh check out check out ethiopia you'll love that and yeah it looks savage it looks absolutely savage surprisingly lumpy country yeah yeah so i think uh i think there's there's certainly days where i'm not going to achieve that target and you know like mark says it's an average so if you're if you're trying to ride 250 miles each day you'll never achieve that as an average you know there'll be days where i'll probably strike significantly under but hopefully there'll be those days on on those long straight roads where you know with a with a tailwind that i'll um you know get get a few get a few miles on the bank so yeah it's it's super exciting um pretty intimidating um so yeah the la the last kind of two years i've been stretching myself by doing more mad things on my bike in terms of distance wise and stuff so um yeah i think i'm i think i'm in a pretty good place to once i get get out of these games to to kind of then re-tune the engine slightly from kind of racing it you know that kind of um high intensity to uh to winding that kind of winding that dial back to being a bit more sat in the saddle turning it out for you know middle fingers a day yeah i incredible and when is it you're sort of aiming to take on this challenge wow as soon as that fantastic so it'll be it'll be a pretty quick turnaround after after the games um i mean after rio i kind of took four months off the bike and you know partied like uh like i hadn't for two and a half years and dude got got pretty fat if i was like i wasn't really an athlete at all by the end of that four months um whereas this time actually i'm you know it's gonna be quite a long haul because i'll come back i'll probably enjoy a couple of weeks off the bike and then um you know i think a lot of the uh a lot of the great kind of homecoming parades and things like i'll probably forgo this time and and you know to focus on again you know that that recipe of committing 100 and you know going after it um i don't i don't you know it's a proven record so far so i don't think there's any need to change that it's just a case of getting back in that mindset for a few months and and um yeah cracking on really to to hopefully have success amazing i i thoroughly look forward to uh bugging you and trying to get you to appear on the podcast again after you've completed that challenge i think it'd be absolutely easy to speak to you again and i i'll be looking out for the uh paralympic results after tokyo as well because that's just the best of luck man no worries um and thank you for spending the time with us today it's been a genuine pleasure to talk to you steve absolutely mate yeah now it's been been great it's always uh always nice to share a journey and hopefully um you know that's uh yeah gets people motivated to do stuff um i think after this you'll be able to add quite a few more names to the list of people who've been inspired by what you've done steve genuinely yes like it's a really interesting thing uh the the term of inspiration and there was a um i can't remember that one of the guys who went to rio who wrote a blog about inspiration afterwards he i think he was maybe a wheelchair basketball player or a botcher player i can't remember but he he basically said is um you know as an inspirational speaker if if you listen to me speak and you're inspired and do nothing then you've wasted that inspiration and you know and you just said you know me me coming and speaking is a waste of time if if you think about it oh that's really good i'm really motivated but then do nothing with it and and i kind of got right on board with that because you know it's easy to be inspired it's easy to sit there and listen to a podcast or watch people like oh that's incredible the hard thing is getting out your door and using that inspiration and i always say to people like hey if i've inspired you don't tell me tell me what you've done with it you know drop me a message or you know an email or whatever contact me through marissa and say hey i've just gone and done this because i heard your podcast or i watched your film or you know that that's when i see the value that's when it feels really good you know just having people go oh you're really inspirational oh yeah cheers for that you know like yeah that's lovely but what you're doing with that inspiration you know wrap it up take it home and do something with it and tell and then tell me email me and tell me because i'll be stoked i'll reply you know i love it when people come to me and say hey i win a road on my bike for 20 miles today because i listened to your podcast and i just had to get out and that's awesome you know you don't have to go and break world records or win medals just do something you know make you know take the inspiration and you know jump on your block or go for a run or paddle or whatever it is you do you know use it use it while it's there and it's kind of flowing through your veins because it disappears pretty quick doesn't it yeah yeah quite so uh and you know what steve have you got a website we can send people to so they can send you the results of their inspiration and maybe learn a little bit more about your challenges yeah so my website is just stevebatembe.com uh that's b-a-t-e um and most to be honest the most thing i'm active on is instagram which again is the same handle steve bay mbe um so yeah drop drop us a message and um yeah i you know i'm sure after this podcast there'll be thousands of people messaging me so i'll uh i'll i'll get back to you all i promise just uh it might take a couple of days yeah so no pressure if you're listening to this but steve is expecting to hear from you awesome well just once again thanks very much steve it's been an absolute pleasure this morning and you enjoy the rest of your day ride on cheers all the best and you you