An ultra endurance triathlon isn’t the kind of thing many of us will every complete in our lives. But Sean Conway is a different breed, he’s just finished his 102nd consecutive ultra endurance marathon is as many days, breaking a world record for most in a row. We speak to the man himself, on how he did it, and maybe more importantly, why.
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00:00 Day one, day two.
00:02 Yeah, so the first week was horrendous.
00:08 You know, Mike Tyson has a famous quote which is,
00:11 "Everyone has a plan until I punch them in the face."
00:14 And I definitely felt like I was punched in the face.
00:17 The feat has never been done before
00:19 and Sean says it's been incredibly challenging.
00:21 But his team and supporters everywhere have helped spur him on.
00:25 He says making it to the finish line on day 102
00:28 was an incredible moment that he will remember forever.
00:31 Well, the feeling was relief to be finished yesterday, to be honest.
00:35 I'd been dreaming of crossing that finishing line
00:40 for three and a half months, since the 10th of April.
00:43 In my heart, I believed I could do it,
00:46 but really it was just overwhelming and emotional,
00:49 crossing the line with so many people.
00:51 There was about 300 people who came.
00:53 So finishing was just really emotional
00:55 because it's taken me 18 months to get to that point.
00:58 I attempted this last year and got injured on day seven,
01:02 so I only made seven days last year.
01:04 So it was quite a worry whether I would be physically
01:07 and mentally capable of this.
01:09 So it's, yeah, it was amazing to finally have finished.
01:13 The challenge included a marathon every day,
01:16 over 100 miles on a bike every day
01:18 and a 2.5-mile-long swim every day.
01:21 Many of us could barely manage one of those feats on one day.
01:24 So how did Sean manage to pick himself up every single day
01:27 and take on the challenge over and over again?
01:30 You know, everyone was just amazing behind me the whole way.
01:35 And then also the people who came and joined me.
01:37 I had loads of swimmers and cyclists and runners
01:40 all joining me in, you know, on the adventure.
01:44 And it became a real big community effort here in North Wales.
01:49 And that's made it for me, really.
01:51 That's been the best part of this whole journey,
01:54 is the community side of it.
01:56 Sean took on the challenge to help raise money for children
01:59 to gain more access to sport,
02:00 something that is really close to Sean's heart.
02:02 And he says that he hopes to inspire young people
02:05 to take part in all different sports, whatever that may be.
02:08 Yeah, so we're raising money for the True Venture Foundation,
02:11 which is a foundation here in North Wales,
02:14 basically trying to get kids into sport,
02:17 trying sport, staying in sport,
02:19 especially when they leave school.
02:21 There's a frightening number of kids
02:22 who don't do sport outside of school.
02:24 I think only 39% of children do sport outside of school.
02:29 So we really, really are trying to, you know,
02:32 get more coaches involved and people can apply
02:35 for grants for facilities.
02:36 I volunteer for the foundation pretty much permanently,
02:40 so I'm going to be working hard and going into schools
02:43 and trying to get kids excited about getting into more sport.
02:46 So hopefully that number can go from 39% up to 70 or 80 or 90%,
02:51 which would be incredible.
02:53 This world record is beyond impressive
02:55 and shows that with some determination and a dream,
02:58 anything can be possible.
03:00 James Beach Watkins, Local TV.
03:02 (whooshing)