Lorenzo Gesaldi: Finding Yourself at Kilometre 150

Lorenzo Gesaldi is an ultra endurance athlete whose story goes far beyond running. Having progressed from Ironman and trail running into some of the world’s most demanding ultra distance events, Lorenzo has built a life around testing the limits of body, mind and identity. Most recently, he completed a brutal 225km race across Réunion Island, with 14,000 metres of elevation, finishing an extraordinary 9th overall alongside some of the elite names in the sport.

In this episode of The Turning Point, Lorenzo shares what ultra running has taught him about suffering, resilience, failure, recovery and the power of turning life’s hardest experiences into fuel. This is not a conversation about pace, medals or podiums. It is a conversation about what happens when comfort is stripped away, when the body wants to stop, and when the mind has to decide who is really in charge.

Lorenzo speaks openly about hardship, identity, post race lows, community, self talk and the strange beauty of discovering yourself at kilometre 150, when there is nowhere left to hide. His message is raw, honest and deeply human: endurance is not about escaping pain, but transforming it into something meaningful.

This episode is for anyone who has ever faced a battle, questioned their strength, or wondered whether they have more inside them than life has allowed them to believe. Lorenzo’s story is a reminder that we are often capable of far more than we think - and sometimes the only way to discover that is to keep moving forward when every part of us wants to stop.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Most people spend their lives trying to make things easier, but what if growth comes from creating discomfort on purpose? My guest today has spent years pushing the limits of human endurance. Not because he loves suffering, but because he's fascinated by what it reveals. Because ultra running isn't really about running. It's about mindset, identity, and discovering who you become when every excuse has been stripped away. Today I'm really pleased to be joined by ultra athlete Lorenzo Ghisaldi to explore resilience, discipline, and what it takes to keep moving forward when every part of you wants to stop. Lorenzo, welcome to the turning point.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Thank you, team. Thank you. Glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me here.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

No problem at all. So how how how have you been?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

It's been uh so far quite well. It's still in recovery mode from Auta Terrest, the last uh crazy experience uh I had the um the possibility to enjoy, I would say. But then it takes time every time when we finish such a crazy experience of it. We never know how long we take to recover. So we need to just uh to be patient and it's always a humbling experience. So all well, uh what about you? All good?

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Good. No, I'm I'm I'm really well thank you. So I'm training for another Iron Man 70.3. I've actually had a calf train, Achilles calf train for quite some time, and it I'm now finally running again. So I I stopped running for a few weeks. And that's one of the good things about a multi-sport event, is like so when I I stopped running, I I just increased the cycling, zone two, high intensity intervals just to keep the fitness there. So fingers crossed, I will make it to that start line and be fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I'm sure you will make it, and I can just tell you that uh uh I I was doing like tringatron before doing uh Ultra. Uh and honestly, I kept the way of doing X training because as you said, it's the best way to avoid injury and to still be trained while in training and improve your training, still uh even though when you are a little bit injured. So I wish you all the luck and I'm sure you will make it and we'll have a great experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Thank you. So so we we delayed this podcast a couple of times, uh, which is actually probably a good thing because you've now got another incredible story to add to your collection of stories from the 225 kilometer ultra that you've just recently completed. Just tell me a bit a bit more about that.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yes, I was a little bit scared to postpone because I said, what if it goes wrong? Uh it was goes bad. We're always afraid, but then if it goes bad that we will have an experience to tell in another way. I think every time we always, even like when I talk it uh talk a lot about failure as a way of succeeding. But when we succeed on something, we we still we are happier, I would say it. So let's be honest and human. Uh so this time went well. Uh it was 225 kilometers of Reneeon Island. It's an island uh just uh not that far from Madagascar, sort of uh in the middle of uh Indian Ocean. It's a beautiful island. They always say that it's the place where um the real trail running uh experience happened because it's uh it's very technical, very hard, a lot of uh steppes, rocks, uh, rivers. Uh uh, it's it's just uh a jungle, I would say. And it's been for uh I've been running there during the race for 225 kilometers and 14,000 meters of elevation. So it's uh 50 kilometers and 4,000 meters more of Diagonal Defou, which is uh uh the craziest race uh which was well known so far for the uh hard trip that basically all the trail runners face when they decide to subscribe. So I was very scared of postponing this podcast because I'm saying what's going to happen. I've never been there. It's the first time, so a lot of unknown. When I was there, I could just had a few ice with uh with my wife, had no idea of the um the terrain that would have been. So no idea of the pace, no idea of basically it was just like a bit of unknown. I'm training in Paris, so I'm training just going up and down from uh Montmartre, which is like uh I would say 30 meters of education, steep hill. So it's like nothing has much sense on all this, but it went well, so I ended up in ninth, running with pros, professional runners, train runners during this full time. So um, I didn't expect to be there. It was really You came ninth overall. Yes, ninth out of uh so it was uh it was a bit special. I was running with uh Sebastien Richon, which was uh it's well known to have won the spine race, winter spine race this year, having done 3-2 of Barclay, uh Marathon uh running with uh yeah, people like uh Mathieu Blanchard and other people basically who are super well known. He did three times uh winner of the Tour de Glacier. When I saw him at the start, I said like either I'm going too fast or he knows these guys they know exactly what they are doing. So at some point I was trying to start with a friend. Basically, with this adventure was the idea coming from a friend of mine who did the diagonal def, Simon, which is a great friend of mine. And this guy basically said, like, look, Lawrence, it's time to go push the next level, so uh beyond the diagonal. So let's do this without the rest. So we are even climbing the highest peak of Renan Island, which is called Peter the Dash, it's 3,000 meters of elevation in the middle of the island. You have not the chance to do any during the diagonal, so it's even something they're just adding stuff even harder, but they make your the island discovering beautiful. So basically, we met these crazy people, these crazy pros, which were like they knew they know their pace. And so we end up running with them for a little time, and then this friend of mine said at the start, Low and said, Look, we're going too fast. So either you're finishing this race in a crazy way, or at some point you will blow up and you won't make it. So I just said, let's try. So and uh at the end they didn't blow up, not really. Just had a 15-minute nap, hour nap that uh helped me to survive till the end. And I just arrived actually those 20 20 minutes of nap later than Sebastian, who at the end was waiting for me at the arrival, and he said, like, it would have been cool to finish symbolically together. Uh and I think that was the this word was the best gift he could have just uh telling me uh at the time, even better than the finish line. So we start, we do these adventures uh for somehow some introspective uh reasons, and then we end up with uh more than uh just uh the gift of finishing them. That was the case for me this time.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

I love that story. And and um you you you've made a point that say living in Paris, your training is all done with within a city. Um and when I um I I used to do some ultra running uh and I where I lived was very flat. I could run 25, 40 kilometres and and not get any elevation gain where I was living. Um we had one hill in the town called Cemetery Hill, which is 20 metres elevation gain from bottom to top, and I just used to spend hours there running up and down the hill and then come and do these these ultras. So I I can kind of appreciate what what you've been through there. But um, but yeah, you you should you should hop on the boat and come over to Jersey sometime, come and run some of the trails here. We have plenty of hills.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

And now that you told me that's basically like that's what I uh understood, like uh after our brief little chat we had that you have uh even like uh a race there. So it's basically a place where we can find a trail running experience over there in Jersey. So I think that uh why not? I'm not that far from Paris, so that would be a super cool experience to to go there. That's always a pleasure to discover, even you know, those places that are kind of uh a little bit less uh under the marketing uh rather, uh I would say. So they're a little bit uh unknown that uh are actually the best ones because they are local and uh they they they bring uh great communities together to enjoy the experience of the running.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

I think it's it's so the the ultra-amarathon that goes around the island, it's a lovely community race. There's probably 130 runners to it. It's very, very well supported, loads of volunteers, all the aid stations are all local people. I I've done it myself, I've also been a volunteer. Uh and and pe people finish the end of the race, they say that was a good race because you're just so well looked after on the way around. And that there's as you say, there's that community feel.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yeah, that's the thing. So it's uh that's the thing I loved even at the reunion island. It's uh those races which are like uh unknown, start to be very well known, but still like uh there are like some a kind of choice beyond the organization, and the best races that uh are able to keep the the community at the heart of uh of basically the yeah, the of the success of the race are those that they keep the community as a main focus element, and people at the race there are just happy because at the end of trail a train runner, a router runner is someone doing this for um yeah, for the uh for this experience, but the experience comes with the with the people that organize the experience, the volunteers, uh uh the people that support you along the way when you're really like uh at the at the bottom. And uh as we say in life very often, we are very often in situations where we struggle in life. I think it's the endurance thing. So when we are in a really deep of our lives, the thing that we we appreciate the most is the support of uh uh a close person uh that actually made us possible to keep going forward and kind of not end up uh being alone um uh and feel bad. So that that's all we need at the end after I don't know many kilometers, we all need someone telling us you're doing a good job, keep going. Uh this is the same thing in life. So when we're feeling really bad, the only thing we don't want to be is to be alone. So I think it's it's community, it's always at the art of uh should be at the art of uh an organization uh when it comes to car running experience.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Yeah, no, I I I would agree. So what what what got you first into into ultra running?

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, so uh basically like it was really by accident, I would say, because uh I I started doing Iron Man. So everything in my life, I would say, even like uh uh when I was moving by experiences for when it comes to my job. So uh I was working in Switzerland at some point for more than uh about uh three years in Zuke in the middle of three surrounded by mountains, but I wasn't right running at the time because they uh they basically like um I I discovered the Ironman distances uh uh and my manager was doing that, so I found it fantastic. So I built like I discovered the end ramps work world at the time. It was uh 20 uh 17, I would say. So I started by doing a marathon. At first, I was super scared because moving from zero to a marathon it was just like, what am I doing? But uh as I heard uh recent podcast uh about a uh a colleague, basically it's it's clear that uh you build confidence by doing things you are not ready. So and this is totally true. So basically, like uh until we don't do things or we think that we are ready, then we uh we don't have the confidence. So when I did this 40 kilometer with the confidence enough to do an Ironman, half Iron Man, and then an Ironman. Um and then uh I end up being the south of France, the south of France, there is no swimming pool. I had basically like uh there was this local race, and even trail running at the time wasn't that known. So Ironman, even Iron Man, was starting to be known in 2015, uh, 17 and 18. Now it's well known. And trail running was really like uh uh exploding, but not really like known yet. Uh so in 2022, basically like uh I joined my local race after like a summer two years of not training. Like I wasn't training at all because I was having an entrepreneurial experience in the countryside, it was very physical work, but nothing about uh training, doing some type of exercising. But then I said it's a way of visiting. So at the time I approached the trail running experience, like I I would visit the region. It was a beautiful race from Uzes to Nîmes. It was the Pont du Gras, Water Itage UNESCO uh monument. So there was ruins of Roman Empire all over the place uh during this trail running experience. So for me it was just like um this is not just a sport when it comes to uh living the uh the endurance, but also because I had no idea. Like, is it running really satisfying this endurance? Let's say this endurance uh uh need that I had to I always love to experience when it comes to Ironman. So I will experience the same just in 70 kilometer running. So the distance looks like but then like for the landscape, why not? I would visit still the place around, it would be beautiful. So at the end, I ended up the race, I was exhausted, exhausted as never before. Like when you keep only one sport, like I was like uh it's like yeah, so either I'm competing in I'm not fit anymore, like that could be that was the case a little bit as well, was a little bit unprepared, but then like uh you even like you discover beautiful places in one day you never discovered before. So it was like wow, so for me it was crazy. Uh this uh this race, 70 kilometer, a thousand eight hundred meters of elevation, and then I discovered that talking with people around they told me, Oh, this is just uh just the start. And I was like, What? You can even do work, and then uh everything started from there. Uh I had to move to Paris uh for work. The training place I had at the time that it was beautiful, I didn't have any more. But then it's uh as we say, it's never we need to think about it, it's never about uh where you train, but how you train and how you figure it out your training plan. So we can actually perform everywhere if we want. So at the end in Paris, uh the best uh I I I came out of my centre, we came out in a place that was not at all the place uh for a train runner, which was in Paris as well. And then the the adventure of train running began. So but it all started with this little race in uh in the south of France.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

That's that's a great story, yeah, yeah. And I and I like the fact that when you were saying the kind of the fear and the uncertainty of entering something and and not knowing whether whether you could do it. So when I um when I kind of got back into fitness back in 2024, I'd I'd done a bit of I'd done lots of running before, and then when I took time out in 2020 after some major surgery, I just lost my fitness and didn't run and everything else. And and so I'd I've been running 3, 4, 5k. Um I I quite liked riding my bike and I used to paddle around in the sea. And I and I thought, uh, why don't I do a triathlon? And then I thought, why don't I do a half iron man? So I entered um and then had to then set a training plan, had to learn how to swim because I couldn't swim front crawl at the time uh to kind of learn that. But but now I've got another skill and I've got a whole nother community, a triathlon community that that I'm in and absolutely love it. So sometimes for people it's just taking that step and entering something and then building a plan to actually achieve it.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Exactly. And this is beautiful because the things um the the the best thing happen when we actually we're not planning them. It's just like uh we had something of feeling like the first the first year of this race, I I felt I wasn't ready and I didn't race it. And I regret a little bit because I could have started everything one year before. And then the second year I said, like, okay, I I will move to Paris, I have to do this race, absolutely, I'm not ready. It's okay. So we really have to trust our gut and not being afraid of failing. And if we fail, it's okay, we'll try another time. But we are so scared of failing. Even me, I always talk about like uh failure as a like as a powerhouse or to uh grow, like uh if we don't succeed, it's a good way to then succeed on a second time because we know what we have to do always after the failure. But sometimes it's so hard to set that we can fail that we don't take the um uh the adventure. That was the first time, and the second time I said, no way, now I have to do it. So no, I totally agree with you, and then you end up uh sharing all this with the beautiful community. You discover uh amazing people uh that uh they help you to grow and you have them to grow, and then it's it's just like um honestly, all the people I have now around are people from this community, so it's it's crazy how everything gets shaped, and then it turns out to you discover our passion, yeah. Like sometimes they say like maybe we all done made to be Formula One pilots, but we never know because we never tried, or we couldn't try. So maybe it's uh it's all about trying in life. Sometimes it's good as well to be stubborn enough to keep going, because if you try and you feel like oh I'm not good enough, I want to try something else. It's never about being becoming really good on something, it's about uh uh enjoying what we do. So I was really, even though at the beginning I wasn't enjoying uh not enjoying, but I wasn't, let's say, I don't know doing any kind of position, I was suffering as well. It wasn't really like uh a joyful moment when it comes to to seeding, when it comes to right rankings. But I didn't care because uh it was uh I was living deeply the experience of trail running, and sometimes even when you are in the back of the ranking, you you meet and you discover and you spend a lot of time working or just uh running with the people which live the deepest in the deepest way is trail running experiences. So it's not about competition, it's about living an experience.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

I have a friend of mine who lives in lives in Alaska and he describes himself as a uh very average trail runner and he does ultra marathons and he runs a podcast as well, and he says that the the mid to the back of the pack have the best fun. It's it's they're not competing for a podium, they're they're helping each other, they're waiting for each other, supporting each other, and it's it's you know, when you're um uh 80 kilometers into a 150 kilometre race, you're you're there having fun with people, you're everyone goes through ups and downs, and and that's what he said is uh so he he he agrees with you on that point.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

I I couldn't agree more, and uh it comes from someone like that. I'm even more like uh, you know, uh I feel like even more supportive of what I see because I never heard from anybody. It's just a pure feeling that I really lived uh from the time that I started the running uh and kind of um like uh moving the upper side of the pack uh from the the the one of the the second half. Um and honestly, like it everything changed. But I can say as well that uh even last race at Water Terrest, um I think uh ending up to quite a high uh part of the park, like again to find the same thing I was finding uh on the back, which is beautiful. So I kind of there is a part that's coming between the two, which is a bit of a lot of competition and a little bit less of uh spirit. I really left sometimes people that uh in a situation where they put me like the you know, the pole on my when I passed on my feet, it was just hitting me with the pole at once. It happened once, so I'm like we are just like uh at a ported uh position. So what why why this kind of behavior? So sometimes it can really happen that the situation, I don't know, under stress, under struggle, I have no idea like people react in uh in a weird way. So this is not what we want from train rally, but then like I really like saw the the when I was uh racing, especially the first races. Uh for a long time I was on the on the second half of the pack, and I really enjoyed the experience of meeting uh beautiful, amazing people, supporting each other when I was struggling. You always uh they always have a good word to tell you because they have time to talk a little. It's not time, but they're just another way of racing. So this is just uh fantastic. And I filed it again now in this last race at Utherest. But actually, this pro running at the pro trailer, uh, they are just like uh they race, they have such a high level. There was a guy, it's called uh Gregory Carmelo, he's amazing. This guy, and he was um basically amazing. This guy ended up to be, I think, seventh, seventh of the race, so it's really super good. And since he didn't have enough, I don't know, somehow he's playing me, but uh he had to bring a bag with him, which was super heavy. So he had a huge bag, and I'm like, man, just seven with this huge bag, like and he was talking, it was just all good. So the level sometimes is so high, and people even like they reach high, really high ranking, and they they don't even care about the position. Like sometimes they just race, enjoy the race. They are so good and they have such a great spirit, and they end up on top of the of the race, even with the with the conditions which are not ideal to perform. So I this is like obvious. And then uh, I'm saying, like, wow. So I'm ending to another word, this top 10 uh position, which I discovered, and it was just uh beautiful, and it's kind of finding again the 50% of the backpack uh on the front. And this is like okay, trail running, it's really like it's not just about competition, it's really like uh giving this adventure, this experience, and I had a second time confirmation from the front party, so it goes to beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Yeah. So so you've done uh an Iron Man before, so Iron Man go on a lot about your why, why do you do it? So, in terms of ultrarunning and your race, what what's your why behind actually taking on these extreme distances?

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah, so to be really honest, I think it's more like I think like it started in Rince when I was young. It was uh had a very hard time like childhood for multiple reasons, and every time I figured out a way to uh to to make it somehow in anything uh I I tried, I failed many times, but we say we often say we lose the battle, we will never lose the war. In the sense like at the end we don't say uh it's not in the it's really in the in the sense like we fail a lot, but somehow the win that we have to win, we win. At some point, we'll never give up until we uh uh we'll win in life. So it's like I build this thing and at some point I when you are at school, when you are everywhere in life, you always like uh challenge yourself with people that they have different parts different advantages disadvantages etc so somehow I always say like uh I always think like there are people that manage to be the first one the podium one like the the best ones but somehow they they move from fifth position in life to first impressive but not great. For me I would say I move from uh thousand position to tenth so for me so nobody noticed that but I know what I moved through I I passed through so I think there are so many people out there that leap that and these are the people who really uh I think they if they didn't experience endurance yet they have to because that's the thing that's really value or like uh it's the way you can uh you can you can get your payout of your crazy experience in life at kilometer 150. So for me at some point it's not about your genetics your skills any advantage that anybody has had in life. It's 150 kilometers it's all about your mind and it's all about what you train in your life you went through and the R chip etc so I really found this even harder at the next level when I was in um when I was doing Iron Man it happened but I think the next level in time of uh mild uh effort it's really um it's really basically when I have to run more than uh 150 kilometers so and depending on how you train of course everyone has his own level so I would say if you are unprepared very often an unprepared marathon can be harder than a unprepared Ultra. So for me now something hard that's really really hard can be running 400 kilometers 500 kilometers if you ask me to run 120 kilometer I can run I can enjoy but I I don't feel really hard uh because I'm trained uh but if you are kind of moving towards increasing so each of us as a level each of us has to race against yourself but when I talk about like the why it's the I think it's the revenge of life for me as overall that I can really find it only at kilometer 150. So it's not a bad revenge. It's turning about all the negatives in life into positives and I can really do this like I can really enjoy in doing this uh when I run ultra uh and I found this beautiful uh so I can basically like uh kind of uh uh lighten myself of all the burden accumulated through life uh through these beautiful experiences so it's more than just running it's a cure so a friend of mine told me you have to go to the uh Saint Catholic no I'm just like doing this uh I'm enjoying this and uh I'm using all the uh all the energy that I accumulated to my life and turning this energy into a positive one so it can be really useful to many people that's great and I think probably a lot of people can can relate to that and what so when you've when you've set yourself a challenge and you've got an event in the calendar you're training and it becomes your identity for for the whole period of time leading up to it.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

So with you what happens when you've completed that event you talk me through the days after yeah that's a very good question. So uh this is more I think a physical one uh because um uh for example uh you get you are on the clouds you're super uh excited and then all of a sudden back to this back to normal life and then uh so basically back to normal life and it's very hard hit uh depression a little depression but it's a temporary one and the best way it's always like to you know you have the next race the next adventure so you understand that uh this time went well maybe next time uh we'll won't go the same but it's okay we'll be ready so it's just like it became a lifestyle but it really hit a little depression after the race honestly like uh and sometimes it takes time to recover so now I have to do a 120 kilometer end of June 25 of June I could do it uh really well but uh the thing is that my body I really see it takes time to regenerate not only on a physical when it when it comes to muscular part it's okay I felt strong etc but when it comes to the nervous system so this got hit very hard after this experience so it takes a longer time to recover so I really hope to make it by the 25th of June otherwise it's okay I will enjoy the experience I will be on the second half of the the pack uh hopefully if I will finish I still like we need to think that we do this ultra running not just for performing but uh for an uh for a bigger purpose and uh whatever the pace we we have uh if we don't uh like if we're not running injury with the risk of uh destroying our full uh years ahead of us we have to keep going because at the end it will be even for a professional like it will be hard or for I think someone very high level it will be hard to uh finish 120k 120k RAM we will arrive exhausted so we we do this in ultra like we do this for the experience for the purpose for the uh so we will always have this or whatever whatever so I will do my best to finish this and uh even though the recovery I'm still in full recovery it's very hard and the nervous system is not the ready and you hit this little depression and uh that's uh it's interesting because a lot a lot of people feel the same a big race consumes your life beforehand and then you complete the race you finish and and you have the the joy of crossing the finishing line that medal looking at the photos and the videos and then you go back to the hotel or on the train and you go home and you're like okay what now I've I've finished that and then your mind starts thinking and you maybe start googling other races and things and I I one of my uh another guy who I know very well from the States he um he he does marathons half marathons and he's always running he again he's got a very interesting story so he battled with alcohol for a long time but he actually tried to to take his own life back in 2021. Now for him running and having running events keeps him sane it helps his mental health and and he has to always have running events in in the calendar just to keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Yeah no it's honestly it's exactly as you say like I think these people are amazing. Like I think you take as I was saying before the negative of your life and you turn into positive and these people who lived crazy experiences they're just doing this and uh I think we we talk a lot we confuse sometimes endurance we put together three athlone with uh running 10k 5k I don't know whatever like it's there are people doing this as a cure and there are people doing this for the sport. I'm okay sometimes to mix them up but honestly like I think sport can be a cure. So we can do it as a leisure of course enjoying doing this like okay let's let's go out and run and see the landscape. I do this for this as well because I to be false not to say the same but these people like we are in the position of saying like for for us it's a cure from what we lived in our life and it's the best way to keep saying valuing the experience the artship experience of our life because uh even when you live artship in life these guys like they live crazy aspect like drugs algorithms whatever's uh uh like depression uh anything and this when you came out of this you came out strong so sometimes you don't even come out it's so hard in the experiences of the life put you in but when you come out you come out super strong and when you come out strong uh but it's it's like a training like you you reach a level that you I think it's it's worth to entertain this mind training that we developed to survive in the true archery so I think uh this is the thing that you can use on Vulture running Iron Man and all this endurance any kind of endurance experience and this is the thing that you need at kilometer 150. If you have this you have a little bit less legs but you have this you can go so far and the farther you go and the farther you can use this special uh skill that you develop through life. So I would be uh disgusted if I wouldn't have found something in life that could have allowed me to use these skills that I developed on kind of surviving skills. So kind of surviving through hardship. So and I think it's super useful and we can use in many domains but it's super easy to use when it comes to water running or any kind of other experiences. So I think it's super it's beautiful because it can turn negative but uh these people as you share uh turn this into something super positive and this is fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

Yeah no I I I would agree with that. So in your um in your experience what when you are in that 120 130 kilometer and you're reaching you know the in the in the darkest points of an ultra when your body is telling you we need to stop how does the self-talk in your head actually sound like and what gets you through?

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Honestly I I gave you an example it was very fun there was a backyard race it's not even in my records but uh there was a backyard race mid-March and it was a crazy format. You never stop that backyard they decided to do 24 tour and at the end of the 24 tour and the fastest one of the of the tour win the race. So basically you can have been the the one making each loop at 50 minutes but then you finish the last loop at uh I don't know which speed and then you win. So basically we had a bin 10 13 last loop and the last loop you have 140 kilometer in your legs you have 24 hours because sometimes even uh so it's uh 140 kilometers you can do clearly in less than 24 hours if we want we can do it but then you have to wait like 15 minutes in time that each lap starts again so you accumulate hours and kilometers. So we were super tired. So everyone was like are we supposed to run this final loop so where do we find the energy so our mind was clearly loud voice speaking to everyone telling us guys you you cannot run like just uh the the the last the first zombie will arrive but you will all be kind of zombies and then somehow there was one guy uh or like the more experienced train runners those guys that they they are physically capable of doing things etc uh even I think mentally quite ready for sure and then he said I'm going to do this final loop that normally this loop you do in uh 46 50 minutes 55 I'm going to do this final loop in less than 30 minutes I'm like what less than 30 no that is not possible like it's not and then I said to my friend let's let's go all in and then let's see if we are gonna if like the the worst case scenario we are gonna we're going to blow up and at least we will have lived a super experience um then we said to our body like you shut up you're gonna run like that that's it like you're gonna do it like yeah and then I I I I like accelerated like crazy in front of everyone everyone was like what they are going so fast so I I like I inflated completely the race at the start thinking like we are going to keep this pace like crazy so all the favorites as well they started to accelerate even faster than they were supposed to do. I had my stomach that was kind of dying I was like uh like like not possible and and that's the time I said like no you're gonna shut up you're gonna do it that's it like keep going keep running you don't think you just run that's it that's all you have to do and then the more I was running the more I was pushing the more my body was just saying like okay let's do it we're ready it's really like if that time if you're not giving the command to your body at 100% sure that you're going to do it your body will win. So it's really like I didn't think at that level but that level was really impressive. I finished fourth at the end really like far from not that far from the ponding I was uh I did it in 29 minutes 30 uh 40 seconds so I was so I I could have actually the first one did it in 28 or something so and the guy was kind of clearly a professional and I was like what did I do like and it's and I'm not a speed guy I then think I'm more astonished about myself because I got the kind of speed guy and I did it at a speed that I was like what like after 140 kilometers and no like it's all in your mind. So I'm thinking like I don't have the VO2 bugs I don't have this I don't have that we have what it takes it's really like the mind can go so far so far and that's the time that even at Union Island at some point it's it's such a long distance that even we discover each time I I could have been even faster if we wanted but there was a time I remember I had to run and I said Dorian shut up at the time you said to your mind run and you made a super a crazy time of 29 minutes. Now you cannot run this you're going to run and then I ran and then I was feeling better I was even feeling better when I was moving faster than when I was moving slower. So that's the fact of the mind you can have in your body. So it's it's crazy. It's just like uh it's beautiful because it's a sense discovery experience and and this is the best way you can really tell you like what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

But so many people don't I mean I I with the men who are in my coaching group we talk about your subconscious mind it just wants to keep you safe it wants you to take the easy path and your your subconscious is really it's programmed to uh eat food stay safe and to reproduce so sta stay on the sofa eat food and and make children all day that that's what that's what it's programmed to do. It's not meant to put you into hardship it's not meant to make you grow and but so many people spend their life living in that comfort zone because they think they can't do anything else. But if you can actually take control of of that subconscious and tell it to you shut up like you said that we are running we are going to do this that's great.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

No it's it's it's definitely that like and it's um and it's beautiful how I don't know I didn't find any other way like uh living my life where I can actually feeling like the touch in my soul on my body on my mind like really like this kind of effect that it can really feeling make you feeling alive because you really like uh you have more identities of yourself and you basically like uh make them somehow not keeping control but even discovering them and every time push them to the next level so it's very important for me to say as well that as you say it's very interesting what you say because sometimes I'm thinking like should I push farther in training? Should I put far farther all the time? And this is the real question is pushing farther all the time making us progressing? I don't think so I think we have to choose our time of progression because this experience can really like push in a deep position like so far I really see that progression comes from selective experiences and so um I train my trainings if you look strava man like you say this guy cannot do this right it's impossible. Like I run sometimes I never run less than uh 530 minutes per kilometer even like most of my run at 630 737 minutes per kilometer uh it's it's like I'm I'm going upstairs walking all the time working upstairs down downstairs I yeah I I train mixed mixed training and do a lot of swimming pool like the last two weeks you say how this guy is supposed to run 120 kilometers in two weeks it's like I think it's very important to discover our body and to build our body for the physical effort but then during the race you will ask your body to the besides the physical effort to do this mental effort which is for me is not built in training. For me it's it's people build in training people as mental coach for me it's just like okay let's use all your experience to push to execute on the race day. So it's really important that I think to say to distinguish to ask uh a body like effort and a mental effort. I I think the truth I'm still a little bit into the discovery like how far I can go and I just like from myself experience I I really see that if I train too hard the wrong way with the hardest the the higher the risk of injury in the sense that is the high the risk you have to be careful on how you are training because the more you train the more you expose to be but if you do the right thing why not you can even your body can even evolve even more but I think it's better to I always say like you ride 90% ready and then on the race day you give it all when I was a kid I was swimming and I was always the guy in the front of the pack four kilometers per day for I know many I don't know many days many years but then in the race I was always the last one of my team and I was just and retrospectively I was thinking like okay so it's basically me that I was just training the wrong way so it's very important to think about this sport on two sides mental side and physical side but the two things are separate they should be separated but for me they come all together only during the race that's the time that your mind say no today you have to go you have to move forward and this is the like that the thing that's the time that the two things that should be worth for me that I work separately comes together and evolve together to the next level because we always say as well very often with people even talking to to Paul Raneno I see that um uh even like races of that kind that I did are part of the it becomes part of the volume of the training these guys they really see like even uh I see in three other one people that they do like so many races that these races is part of their training.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

So at the end it's it's really about uh we need to be careful uh what I'm saying about the mind that that's why it's but there is a point that in Ray you have to arrive brain in races to make sure that the mind talks to your body your body it did the all your best and then it will just follow I think you can also train your mind uh independently so even things like so I will go in an ice bath I go in the sea in the winter just to take control of my subconscious mind and and in the winter when it's cold and it's raining uh and I stand and I look at the sea my mind is saying don't go in the sea why why would you? Because it's cold I say no we're going in and we go in and we stay in for 10 minutes and and we get cold and we go out and then it's if you're doing that regularly you can just take control of your subconscious and another preparation thing that I do for races which I I work with some of my guys I coach as well is is pure visualization. So people often think I'm not looking forward to this part of the race or I if it's a triathlon I my legs can never cope with the run because they're always tired on the bike. You have to turn that round and start visualising. So for me the swimming because I I couldn't swim before I started training and I spent hours just visualizing watching swimming videos and just visualising myself swimming and coming out of the water really calm and then it was quite incredible because before the swim um we were all queuing up and you know what it's like everyone's quite heightened anxiety um and I I just did my breathing techniques and I lowered my heart rate down to 40 and I was like so calm and almost in a meditative state before getting in the water and then swimming and and it's I'm hopefully going to do that next next time round as well but just taking control of your mind is a real skill isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Yes honestly thank you for sharing all this and learning so much from you. To be honest like this part I still have to improve a lot. It's not that I still have to improve a lot um it's that I when it comes to visualization as you say great work I think there is a lot about great work that uh can be done to help people to relax to end up in this meditation state that can really help people to just succeed and perform and don't get stressed or overwhelmed by um random thoughts that can really like become a struggle when performing so I I completely agree on this one and even like uh let's say the the part of uh visualization I think this can be very useful for some sections you see sometimes I'd say like oh if I knew that it was like that you know and I'm already I'm kind of uh you know for the first thing when it comes to meditation and control I always say like Lorenzo you live so much in your life that this is okay so for me that part it's it's it's okay but I I can understand that it's important to to do that. Um but then there is the part of uh as you say the visualization every time I think like I I I could have visualized better. I even though I I keep track especially what it's this is the kind of thing that I realize I do a race of 225 I I'm really good at visualizing to the thing until the 200 kilometer and then the last 25 kilometer I'm just like okay it's finished. No no this is the most important thing next time I will start visualizing from the end towards the beginning now that you every time you do the same mistake and I you know sometimes in uh in the profile of the courses you think like okay this is a little up it will go down or even the worst you have the feeling of it goes downhill all the time it's just a downhill and then when you do it your 180 kilometers it happened in your you feel like okay just downhill your mind is focused on downhill it's okay and then urine is never just the same so you're just like downhill a little bit up downhill a little bit up down and I'm like no like what what is this so I was just like oh I lose so many times in this kind of session as you say not because of the I wasn't ready physically and mentally because of the visualization. It was so frustrating so honestly like I I totally agree on what you say when it comes to triathlon even when it comes to running visualizing when you changing exactly that's why even when you go in a race the second time same race it's just massive games most of the times you feel in good shape.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Awesome no that's great Lorenzo we we've covered a lot today I've really really enjoyed our conversation thank you very much and and best of luck for your uh next race at the end of um end of the month thank you so much team thank you to you as well for your race in Sable d'Olon good luck you will make it and uh after all you told me I'm sure you will be successful and you will achieve whatever you want to achieve