036: His Mates Called It the Dumbest Idea Ever. He Did It Anyway.

We met Michael Brand by accident. We were organising an event at SaunaHaüs, he happened to be there, and when we asked if he trained, he said he did "a little bit of triathlon." Then he sent us his list.

A self-made Ironman. A 100-miler. Top five at the Prom backyard ultra. Medals at the South African rowing champs. And the Cape 253. A 7.4km swim from Robben Island, a 138km cycle, and a 108km run over Cape Town's 13 Peaks with 6,500m of climbing.

His mates told him it was the dumbest thing they'd ever heard. He did it anyway.

Mike grew up rowing. For a kid with ADHD who didn't quite know where he fit, it was the first place where hard work showed up clearly in the results and the first time he found real confidence. Years later, struggling during his master's year, he went back to that lesson: pick something so difficult that it forces you to lock in every day.

At 12, he'd written two things on his bucket list: do an Ironman without ever doing a half, and run an ultra before a marathon. When COVID shut down races, he didn't wait. He built his own Ironman between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek and added 8km to the run so it would count as an ultra. He weighed 102kg when he started training. His first run was 2km and gave him shin splints. Fourteen hours later, he'd ticked off both.

Then came the Cape 253. On the run leg, three peaks in, around 3am, he partially tore his ITB coming down a rocky descent. He'd trained for ten months. So instead of stopping, he told himself: just one more peak. A doctor monitored his painkillers every two hours, friends joined for every leg, and he moved one peak at a time until he finished. 57 hours after starting.

In this episode we get into why he only picks goals he'll probably fail, why the race itself is never the point, and why an ultra can feel like a whole year of life condensed into 35 hours. We also talk about hallucinating friendly spiders 36 hours into UTCT, why backyard ultras are the only format that gets harder the more you train, his strategy for running one, why "sport is about doing the boring things very well," and the 200-miler he's training for next.

Plus ADHD and endurance sport, injury prevention, and our honest take on David Goggins.

Recorded inside Sauna, Cape Town.

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