"There are four categories I try to get records in: the first. The furthest, the fastest and the most"

Fresh off the back of his record-breaking, fatigue-defying feat of 105 ultra-endurance Iron-distance triathlons in 105 days, Sean Conway tells MF how he did it

- By Dominic Bliss

In the space of just three months, Sean Conway burned through almost a million calories of food, 800 litres of water, 12 bicycle tyres and seven pairs of running shoes. Every day, for 105 days between April and July, he completed an Ironman-distance triathlon.

“I may have knackered my body, but at least I’ve got some stories to tell,” says this 42-year-old, who set a new world record for back-to-back triathlons at this distance.

There are two simple questions that immediately spring to mind: why and how?

Torturous feats of endurance are what Conway does. This is the man who, in 2013, swam up the west coast of Britain from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. Two years later, he completed the same journey by sailing boat and set a new world record. It was a world record again in 2018, when he cycled across Europe from Portugal to Russia in just 24 days.

“There are four categories I try to get records in: the first, the furthest, the fastest and the most,” he tells Men’s Fitness just a few days after completing his 105 triathlons. “This record ticked the ‘most of’ category.” He beat the previous record – set by Canadian athlete James Lawrence – by four triathlons. “A lot of people thought James might have his record forever and, to me, that was a red rag to a bull,” he admits. “I’ll show you, world!”