434: Ultra-Endurance Athlete Marcus Smith on Why You Need To Seek Out Challenges, Finding Adventure In Your Life and Pushing Past Self-Created Limitations!

Today on the podcast:

Marcus Smith is an extreme athlete and coach, entrepreneur and motivational speaker.

As a show fan favourite, long-term listeners will be familiar with him from episodes 141 Find Your Everest and Showing No Weakness with Marcus Smith, Episode 207 Marcus Smith – The Intensive Care Unit To Running 30 Marathons In 30 Consecutive Days (which is still one of my all-time personal favourites) and most recently episode 253 on Making Yourself Mentally Tougher and Building The Ultra-mindset.

He is also the founder of Inner Fight in Dubai and the host of the great podcast by the same name.

EXPLICIT WARNING: This episode has more swearing than usual.

Here are some of the things we spoke about in today’s episode.

Episode Outline

04:54 Catching up with Marcus
07:25 Getting personal growth through getting out of your comfort zone and seeking out adventure
12:19 Races vs your own challenges (for any endurance enthusiasts)
14:57 Using ultras, endurance, and difficult challenges as a vehicle for self-discovery
19:24 Getting to the root of real pain point so you can stay motivated towards your goals
27:40 Why Marcus thinks people need to seek out challenges
33:41 The RAKMAN and how Covid planted the extreme IRONMAN seed
41:09 Dealing with pain management and how the body keeps the score

Key Points

When training for races or other endurance challenges, it’s important to first get clear on your “pain point” or purpose behind signing up. Oftentimes, it’s not finishing the challenge that’s the motivator, but the journey of self-discovery that comes with proving to yourself that you can get through it. It’s also likely that the initial motivation will be ego-driven, but we often transcend that surface-level motivator as we progress on our journey.
If you want to begin looking at more sustainable reasons for growing as an endurance athlete, take inspiration from Marcus and seek out your challenges for these three reasons: to explore your potential as a human being, to learn new skills that carry over into different aspects of life, and to honor your family.
The body keeps the score. The more ego-driven we are—the more we believe we can control everything that happens around us—the likelier we are to suffer physically and mentally when things don’t go according to plan. Stress is a fact of life, and when we try to resist allowing ourselves to feel the full spectrum of human emotions, we’re very likely to injure ourselves at the worst possible moments. Learning to relax allows you to better clear emotional blockage, and you’ll more likely enter that sought-after state of flow in your quest for peak performance.

Powerful Quotes by Marcus

If we train the right way and if we train hard enough, the race itself is almost like a victory lap.
The biggest key to delivering the best athletes on the planet is relaxation.