Zimbabwean Born Man Starts A Triathlon Every Morning For 105 Days
Adventurer Sean Conway feels sorry for people stuck in cities their whole lives. He lives for the outdoors and “big scary goals”. That’s why Sean, based in north Wales, has just completed an epic challenge: 105 Ironman distance triathlons in a row. To put it into context, that’s a 2.5-mile swim, a 112-mile bike and a 26.2-mile run (a marathon) every day for 105 days to set a new world record. He surpassed the previous best of 101 set by American triathlete James ‘Iron Cowboy’ Lawrence in 2021.
If you put all of that together, the man from the Welsh mountains travelled a staggering 14,351.4 miles during his three-month journey of endurance. More than double the distance between London and Cape Town and raising £70,000 so far for children’s charity True Venture which aims to get kids involved in sport..
“No one has ever done it before,” said the man who’s bio reads “Firsts, Furthests & Fastests. That is all.” In 2016 he became the first person to run, swim and cycle 4,200 miles around the coastline of Great Britain – thus completing the longest-ever triathlon. It took him 85 days. If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, he did the whole trip without a support team, wild camping at night in football fields or under upturned boats and carrying his tent and equipment with him.
“The most of something was something I didn’t have,” he said on day 11 of his recovery from his latest endeavour. “James Lawrence had the record and I thought: ‘That has my name all over it’. People said no one would beat his record and I thought right, I’ll show them.”
Crossing the finish line of triathlon number 102 catapulted Sean – with his visibly exhausted face mostly hidden by a shaggy mane of ginger hair and beard – to public attention. His wife Caroline was the first to congratulate him: “She’s a trooper,” he said.
She must be, to have effectively been rendered a single parent to their two boys for three months while he spent 15 hours of every day swimming, cycling and running. “I’m a better person when I do these challenges,” said Sean. “I just get agitated. I lose my spark if I don’t have big scary goals in life.”
His daily routine began around 5am in a leisure centre in Mold, and saw him battle all weathers plus chest infections and an assortment of muscle injuries. Each day finished around 7pm – leaving just enough time for physio, family time with Caroline and his two children, and sleep. Before, of course, rinse and repeat. Having surpassed Lawrence’s record of 101 and raised more than £70K for charity, Sean had achieved his scary goal. Even so, he carried on for another three days to get to 105.
Sean is someone chasing something that might not even exist. Born in Zimbabwe and brought up on a game reserve in South Africa, perhaps it’s inevitable that a childhood filled with wilderness and hippos and elephants means adult life will never be enough.
He arrived in the UK aged 20. He worked first “cutting cabbages in Ely, Cambridgeshire” before saving up money to move to London, “sharing a bedsit with six other people – it had a bunk bed, a double bed, two people on the floor; the last person had to sleep in the hallway”. He started working in a photography shop and then as a school photographer. It was well paid, but, as the years went by, he became more and more miserable. “I just wasn’t happy. But I had no A-levels or training – so what could I do?”
Eventually, desperate for a change, he sold his share in his photography business to his partner for £1 and decided to go travelling. The only problem was that he had no money. “I wanted to do something difficult and bonkers to reignite a spark in my life. I thought if I broke a record I could get sponsorship.”
Up until his twenties, Sean didn’t do sport himself. It was a combination of being miserable in his job and “the wanderlust of going off and doing something difficult”. “I hated indoors,” he said. “I just wanted to have a bit of fear in my life,” he added. “I was bored of living a boring mundane life.”
“Doing that wasn’t making me fulfilled,” he said. “I decided to go off doing challenges and that got a bit out of hand.”
In 2012, he set off for a hugely ambitious 16,000-mile round-the-world cycle ride Things started well. Three weeks in, he was averaging 180 miles a day. Then, one day, he was hit by a car. Sean was spun off the bonnet of the vehicle, which had been travelling at 50mph, and thrown into the dirt. He was left with a fractured spine, torn ligaments and concussion. Despite these injuries, he refused to give up, completing 12,000 of his 16,000 miles with a broken back, in heat of up to 44C.
Back in the UK, he took on new challenges – cycling between and then climbing the highest peaks in England, Wales and Scotland. After that, he cycled from London to the Alps. Then, in 2013, he became the first person to swim the 900 miles from Land’s End to John o’Groats. The furthest he had swum previously was three miles, and many people thought it couldn’t be done. Along his amazing journey he swam with seals and dolphins – and grew his now-trademark beard, after being stung repeatedly by jellyfish, to stop their tentacles reaching his face.
Today, he makes his living from his adventures, writing books about them and being sponsored. He leads a “simple life” and drives “a really old Land Rover”. He volunteers full time for the foundation he raised money for, which aims to inspire kids to be more active. “The figures are pretty terrible regarding kids doing sport,” he said. “Especially after Covid.” He added: “The only way I can do this effectively is by leading from the front.”
His own children – Monty, 4 and Sebastian, nearly 2 – are too young to understand what their daddy has just done.
“I would like them to have an outdoor life,” he said. “It would k!ll me if they choose not to do outdoors things as hobbies.”
He and Caroline moved from North London to North Wales, where Caroline is from originally several years ago. He has no intention to return to South Africa, where his dad was a game ranger. He remembers elephants drinking water out of the paddling pool in the garden. “It was a mad outdoors ranger life without electricity and pretty rustic and rural,” he said. “A hyena came into the house once because we left the door open. And there were deadly snakes sometimes curled up in the hallway.”
He added: “I miss being a kid in Africa but adulting in Africa takes away from the fun stuff. It’s outdoorsy and the weather is better, but you might get murdered every day.”
He first attempted to do 102 full distance triathlons in a row In 2022, but things didn’t go according to plan: “Sadly I came off the bike and injured my ankle forcing me to quit,” he said. “I really struggled with this injury and the long term impact on my athleticism. Getting knocked down can be a huge motivating factor if you let it. No point on dwelling on the what went wrong. Learn from it and get stronger.”
How did he approach his second attempt? “It was baby steps,” he said. “At first I couldn’t get out of bed each day but I knew that as soon as I swam a couple of lengths I would feel better. I just made everything non-negotiable. I had to do it. There was no other option. There was no plan B.”
Sean needed considerable fuel to get him through this feat of human endurance – consuming between 6,000 and 8,000 calories per day including pots of double cream, Welsh cakes, biltong, bananas and a ton of pasta. Afterwards he said: “It’s been by far the toughest three months of my life. I wouldn’t wish what I’ve been through on my worst enemy but I’m so proud of what the team and I have achieved….I hope to inspire a new generation of ultra-endurance athletes. I couldn’t have done it without my dedicated support crew and the incredible backing of the community that followed the challenge on the road and online. You kept me going and I can’t thank you enough.”
What comes after 105 ironman triathlons? For now, Sean is content to slow down a bit. “I finished Sunday and I felt really good on Monday and Tuesday,” he said. “But on Wednesday and since then I’ve just been exhausted. My body has just given up.”
“If I didn’t do this I’d be unhappy for two whole years”, he said about his 105 ironmans. ” I’ve scratched the itch now and this will keep me happy for two years.”
To date, Sean’s effort has raised £70,000 for True Venture; a charity which aims to help kids TRY sport, LOVE sport and STAY in sport. To donate, visit trueventure.org.uk/donate.
–WalesTimes–
