Eddie Izzard Ran 43 Marathons in 51 Days!! | Joe Rogan

Well, we were talking before and you were trying to tell me that you were lazy. I'm like, fuck you. I saw that thing that you did, that documentary where you ran a series of marathons in a row with no training at all. And I remember thinking before that, I had this opinion of you and the opinion of you was you're a funny guy, you're a funny comedian, you have good stand up, you obviously work hard at it. But then I saw that and I was like, oh, okay, there's something going on there. Like, this is a different kind of human being. The kind of human being that could push themselves into doing that day after day after day. And I looked at your feet where your skin was literally falling off and you're taping everything up. And that's a person that's got, you have an iron will. That's a very unusual will for a comedian who doesn't really exercise. Like when you were doing, I mean, you were, I mean, you maybe exercise a little bit, but you weren't in shape and you decided to run how many marathons in a row? Was it the UK one? Was it the first one? Yeah, that was 43 in 51 days. 43 marathons in a row in 51 days with no training. At a dev week. I did have training there, six weeks training, which is not a lot. But they did, they said that, you know, sometimes if you run a marathon, you should train for nine months before that. And I thought, well, if I'm going to do 43, that's going to be, I'm going to be training forever. And I can't be bothered with that. So I, but you know, and it's happened in your civil war, in maybe in any war, I'm quite somewhat encyclopedic about your civil war and revolution war too a bit, and it's World War II, but on the spot training, you know, training as you go along. That's what I did. The first 10 marathons trains you for the next 33. What was it like when you got over the first day though, the first marathon? First day is okay. No, first day is okay. Because well, it's all in your head. There's a, it's more mental than it is physical. And so the first marathon, I've heard of people running marathons, run, walk, stagger, not very fast, get it done. Boom. The second marathon is weird because you go, I've done one, I'm on the second. And you can't really rejoice. You can't punch the sky. You can't put a medal right in your neck. You're already, you've got up at five or six in the morning and you're, it's midday and you're, you're going through your second one. And then you're through the third one and then you're through the fourth one. And then it was raining and my feet were shredding. And I, for the moisture? It was, yes, it made it too soft. And they were rubbing on the, on the running shoes and I didn't know how to, how do I fix it when I'm actually wearing on it all the time? So we started bathing it in surgical spirit, which you call something else. It's a, it's a ethanol method. Anyways, it's some sort of alcoholic spirit and it, it takes the moisture out of your feet. And so it became like stones. It's kind of like, anyway, if anyone that looks up surgical spirit, if you Google it now, you'll see what it's called in America, but it's, it's some sort of alcoholic thing that just removes moisture. And so it made my feet, my toes like little stones and kind of tough. And actually that got us through. And then I started, and also apparently, cause I did 27 mountains in 27 days in South Africa in 2016. And that was the temperatures were crazy on that. But it seems that the body will switch on a healing property that we've got latent in ourselves that we don't use and you will heal quicker. You will heal faster the more you get. So I got, you get stronger in both the British one and the South African one. I got stronger as I went on. Really? The first 10 days are the key thing. And after that, it's kind of easy. You're used to it. Your body just adapts and understands this crazy asshole is going to do this crazy asshole. And the brain goes, what kind of mountain shall we run today? As opposed to what the fuck are you doing? What kind of marathon? Yeah. Well, I think that's what the brain is doing. Cause the first day the brain is going, you're going to do what? This marathon. Okay. The second day, the brain is going, now we're going to, we're doing another one. You know, third day, fourth day, fifth day. This is insane. And then day 10, the brain is going, okay, you're on this kind of kick or something. I understand. Let's try a better marathon. Don't push it too hard. You know, the brain starts talking to the body and somehow it levels out. Then it gets surreal. Marathon 18, marathon 23. I remember marathon 31. That was a lovely, just so weird. But it was fun and you own the road. You know, Woody Guthrie, this land is our land, this land is my land. You become like it's your land. It's like, it's everybody's land because you're running on the roads of this country I grew up in and you feel that the roads, the fields, the birds, I didn't listen to any music. It's like a safety thing for traffic, but also you could hear everything that's going on, birds, channel, rivers running. I ran past somebody's house. This is on about day two. And there was a river running there and it went through the back of this guy's garden. And he said, oh, hello. And I said, can I, I went and visited him and I washed my feet in the river. And then I put the socks back on and I carried on running. I thought, you can do weird things. I took blackberries out of the bushes like I did when I was a kid. It just became a feral, this holistic or feral marathons. That's what I was doing. It's not run. It's not people shouting from the sides. No one cares really, which is fine. And I'm just wrapped up in this other place. And it was, it's beautiful. I mean, it's really Zen. Well, it seems like it would change you. Like accomplishing something like that, like on the last day, the last run, when you cross the line, what was that feeling like? Well, there's a picture. You brought up that picture. They put up some flags and stuff. That was beautiful. I tried to do a five hour marathon. Now, if you know the speed, it's two hours is what they're trying to break down. So this is really slow. But then having done 42 marathons, it's maybe it's fair. And I missed it by about 30 seconds, but it was, it was beautiful to finish it. I was really quite strong all the way through. I didn't stop at any time. That was, that was good. In South Africa though, I did 27 in 27 days. Salute to Nelson Mandela was 27 years in prison. Day five, they put me in hospital because they thought my kidneys were giving up. Were you experiencing rhabdo? Is that what it is? Rhabdomyolysis, you know about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Your first brother ever talked to who's known about rhabdomyolysis. Yeah. I got rhabdo in 2012. How did you get that? I was on a anti-cholesterol drug, just a sort of health drug. Your cholesterol is a bit high tech, this thing once a day. And side effect is rhabdomyolysis, which I couldn't spell. Being dyslexic. And I was peeing, brown peeing. And did it, there's no real pain, a lot of lethargy. I was really tired. I thought this is a bit weird. And this is without exercise you were getting in? I was on marathon three, marathon four. So I had trained, had I trained before that? I'd done some training before that one. I'm a bit weird with my training. But yeah, so there wasn't a huge amount of training before that one. But third marathon, and I started peeing a bit of brown peeing. This was not through the whole series of marathons, or it was? No, well, I tried to do South Africa twice. So 2012 was my first one. After day four, on an anti-cholesterol drug, trying to control my cholesterol. And I started brewing brown pee. And then they said, you've got to go to hospital now. The guys, we've got to put fluids through you. You have to go see a specialist. The specialist said, you can't continue this 27 thing, because you have to get all this stuff out of your system. Otherwise, the kidneys, because it shreds the muscles into the bloodstream, clogs up kidneys, kidney failure. Very dangerous. A lot of fighters get it. Really? Yeah. Yeah, a fighter died from it recently in Boston, in the Massachusetts area. Yeah, it's apparently something that happens when fighters over train as well. Like, sometimes they're not doing it scientifically, so they're not analyzing their heart rate, their heart rate variability. And they don't know that they haven't really truly recovered, and they continue to push themselves because they want to prepare harder. Yes. And they have this sort of mental mindset, just train harder and you'll be better off. But that's not necessarily the case if your body can't physically keep up with the recovery. And sometimes they'll go into a fight over trained, and then they wind up getting robbed out from the fight. It's happened several times. It's caused a few deaths. Yeah. Well, they said this. They're running now in 2012, and you won't make it. So 2016. Did you get off that medication? Yeah. I would think that all that running, you wouldn't need that medication. I would have thought, but they check you out and you say, you know, you're close, it was just a touch high. Motherfuckers. Wow. You know, you'd be on this for the rest of your life. That stuff scares the shit out of me, those statins. It goes to a scary place. But 2016, day five, bloods were looking a bit weird. Day off, so day 27, I did double marathon, and that was kind of an interesting day. So you run one marathon, and the last day of your run, you've only done 25 marathons, and it's the day 27. So, and when you go through that finishing, the final flag, you should be waving flags, you've got another marathon to go. And it's just, yeah, my brain, I thought, this is kind of good, but it's 90K you're going to do today. Ignore it, carry on, and it was a rough, rough old day. That's five hours, then another five hours. Five hours plus? It was. Another five hours plus. In the end, it was six. I took 11 hours and 50 minutes to run 90K. So I did double marathon in 11 hours, 10 hours. That's damn good. Yeah, it was good enough. And they got a comrades' marathon in South Africa, which is 90K, and they got a 12-hour cutoff, so I said, I will do 90K in 12 hours. The double marathon was at 84, and then I did another 6K after I'd finished. That last moment must have been orgasmic. When you finished, it must have been incredible. Finishing the 84 was beautiful. You finish at the steps of Nelson Mandela's statue where he was made president, and that was beautiful, and rough. I'd had to speed up at the last hour because of complications, so I actually got faster. I don't know if you've ever done a thing where you're knackered and knackered and said, now go. Why'd you have to speed up? There was a wind, it was a thing called sport relief I was doing it for, so I was raising money and I wanted to finish inside the camera window. They had a window till 3.15 South African time. These escorts were needed at certain bits, otherwise you'll get carjacked things and you won't survive this big. I said, can't we just ignore the carjacking thing? No, you can't ignore it. I said, okay, stop the clock, put me in the thing, drive me to Pretoria, stop me off, and then I'll run there, and we'll just continue it on there. We had to do that, so we got behind because I wasn't running, because I had to be driven across this dangerous period of point of road to be dropped to Pretoria, and then I just had to run the kilometers off. They have a carjack area? Yeah, they have certain areas where it's kind of out there, there's no one really out there, and you just go along there and they'll, you know, anything can happen. So my field producer, Fixer, he was just saying, we don't do this, just you can't go there. So I said, well, just get me closer to the finishing line and then I'll just run around. It doesn't really matter where I'm running now, we know it's Pretoria, we know we need to finish, I need to just run that distance. So I ran the distance off, but the time had got behind, so I had to speed up from 7.5 kilometers an hour to 10 kilometers an hour. So an extra third of the speed, which was kind of evil. I moaned a lot that day, I was just a moaning, whining, God, I can't do this, but I was never considering not doing it, and I got there. The live feed to London finished at quarter past, and we got there about 13 minutes past, we had about two minutes, and they just caught it before they went off. It was like, you know, like in a film, you know, it was perfectly designed. I just knew if I got that, probably I get more money, I raise more money, an extra 100 grand because we've seen this idiot finish, he's actually doing it, you know. So that was beautiful. And then I talked to the, this very interesting thing, because you know, if you're talking to, it was a press, I talked to the press after that, but it was a Sunday. And so they kept talking, normally they say, we can't talk anymore, we've got two minutes, and then we've got to talk to important people, go away. That's what normally happens if you're talking to live press, national press. But I was on the thing, and they just kept talking to me, because obviously a slow news day, nothing was happening. And they say, we've got this idiot who's just run, you know, 27 marathons, and they kept asking me other questions, and what favorite color do you have? And how big are your legs? And what, I said, I like your legs. Yeah, I just, I don't know what they were asking me, but in the end, these two interviews I did with national press, I just said, I'm going to go away now, I'm going to stop this. I had to stop my own interview, which I've never done in my life, and I realized they've just got no one else to talk to. They're desperate. Did you notice a big change in public perception of you once you completed those marathons? Yeah. The, yeah, the certain community, and if you're a transgender guy and you come out, certain people go, woo-wee, but I crossed into a line of, well, if you're going to do that, and you, I hate, I know you do some comedy, you do the drama stuff, we think you're a bit, you know, bonkers and out there, but fair play, I got this sort of, I got to pass a fair play to you if you're going to do that. And I was trying to do selection, you know, SAS, they have selection, your Delta forces, Navy SEALs, they all have this thing that, can you just go on and on and on, and it's the stamina thing. Yeah. And that was my civilian selection for my own whatever, civilian special forces. Just to understand yourself. Yeah, I, uh... You're out there running around. I would have, uh, there was a guy with a gun next to me. That would be a good shot. He said he knew how to shoot things. I don't know, I played my cards, you know, sometimes you play your cards. Well, it must have been kind of exhilarating too, there's something about it, right? Well, there, there was, I was talking to the zebras, I just, I went out, because obviously they were not dangerous, there's a whole load of non-dangerous ones. It was actually the first day on the, it was about marathon, 10 or 11 or something, and I felt, you know, once you're over the 10 mark, and I'd never got there, you know, if you'd done the whole South Africa thing and failed, and people were tweeting about me, Eddie is a, you know, Africa kick your ass, you know, you just go, TIA, you know, this is Africa, you're gonna take us on, we're a huge fucking continent. TIA, that's what I was saying? Yeah, you know, how's that one? Is that Africa? No. Yeah, it's a big Africa, and because Africa is... Did you tell them, hey man, I was on medication, my fucking problem. No, it didn't really matter, that was just in that whining. So I just had to come back, and I tried three times to come back, and then I came back, and uh... Three times? And can we set the data, can we get back and do the thing, but no, we weren't... Okay, I haven't got enough money to be able to do that, I won't be able to set up, okay, okay, and then suddenly it's on, it's on, it's on, and I didn't... I couldn't train again, and so I thought let's just go, get it done, and then day five was in hospital, day six was in hospital as well, for how... after two-thirds of the marathon on day six, I had to go to hospital, so for what? Well, it kept... What happened? My train, my doctor had gone away, but my trainer thought, he thought I just didn't look good, it was, you know, 35, 38 degrees, whatever, you know, and I'm used to... What is that, like 120 Fahrenheit? Oh, sorry, yeah, I'd say 110, 115, somewhere up there, and I was not used to that, and so I was, I would have made it, I feel, but he didn't, he felt, he wanted me to see an expert, so I saw a nephrologist, I didn't even know what the word meant, but that is... A nephrologist is a kidney expert, I thought that would be a renal expert, but no, it's a nephrologist, and this very cool black dude, and he was there in South Africa and East London, it's called, is the city, so it's the big place, and he's going, what are you doing? Who are you? I'm running for Mandela, what? And well, I'm doing this thing, and okay, and he said, it's okay, we've checked out your kidneys, you're all right, your blood's, it's your hydration, hydration is terrible, so we're going to put three liters into you, and you'll be peeing like a horse, all night, and I didn't pee once, so yeah, that's what you're saying, you need some hydration, and after that, it got better, and so day 11, I got into this national park, so there's no one else there, just me and animals, and there's, you know, the security people and whatever with me, and it was kind of beautiful, it was just beautiful, and the sun was great, a sunset going down, and there was a rainstorm as well in the middle of it, there were wild animals out there, I don't know, I just felt, okay, this Zen weird place of beauty, and also knowing I'm getting stronger, I'm getting stronger, I've gone through the barrier, and I also, because I'd run four marathons, then a day off, and then the sixth day, I ran two-thirds of a marathon, so I'd run four and two-thirds marathons in six days, which is not good numbers for your head, you need five and five, or something and something, but four and two-thirds marathons in six days, it just didn't work, and then I'd run another marathon, and I'd say, hang on, I've got to run a marathon in a third and get these numbers matching up, so I caught up the third marathon, and then it was always, it's day seven, and I've run six, eight marathons in nine days, it was always one day behind, so I thought, last day I'll do a double marathon, and that'll be a good climactic end of my South African thing. What is going on with your mind when you're doing this, because you're not listening to any music, and you're in this sort of meditative state where you're just left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. I'm saying it's kind of Zen, but it's not in a kind of like I'm listening to my heartbeat or anything, it's more like, I just feel, it's just some sort of beautiful thing of maybe, because that's what we used to be as humans, maybe I'm reaching back into some past memory, we humans just used to be out on the plains, and we were looking for honey, wild honey, or berries, or some root stuff, and if we could trap something, I don't know what it is, I can't quite work out what it is, but I just find it beautiful, and I do know that you're getting vitamin D in, you're getting stronger from that, somebody once read my hand, I never do the hand palm reading, but I was at a Halloween party, and there was a palm reader, and I said, I'll try it, I'm in a good place, let's read my hand, and I can't remember what she said, except, you need to get out more, you need to get out outside more, and I thought, okay, I always felt that I need to be out back doing stuff, because when I was a kid, I lived for soccer, for football, I used to run like a crazy idiot, I loved that game, and then from the age of 12, I went to a school that didn't play it, and I never played sports, this is one of my gifts to myself, accident, I think, from the age of 12, you know, in your teenage years, your bones are really moving and setting, and at that time, I was hardly doing anything, so I think, my knees have never gone, people say running on the knees, my knees have not gone, I wrote a whole theory about the heel of the foot, which it should never, you know, sprinters are always on the toes, all running should be on the toes, and I think if the heel hits, that's what it causes the knees to scroll, and it could be wrong on this. No, no, that's correct, that's not how people are supposed to run, that was actually changed by Nike, they developed a running shoe with a fat heel, and they changed the way people run, they changed their gait, and it's responsible for a lot of injuries. I think, and I noticed on horses, if you look for the heel of a horse, it's right up by their bum, because the toes, you know, the hoof is the toes, and then you go all the way up that leg, and right by the bum is that's the heel, it's just an enormously long foot, and you go, well that's never going to hit the ground, and dogs don't do it, cats don't do it, we are the ones that use this heel thing, obviously to, initially to, for walking, to make us balance when we went from the chimpanzee, go real stage into the, you know, we need to balance. I mean, most people, if you just give them, if they're barefoot, like children, for example, like one of the things that I was reading this book about barefoot running, and how important it is to develop this, and that most people that have problems from that, they're really having problems because their feet don't have strong muscles in them because of the atrophy, and the way they were describing a regular running shoe is essentially like a cast, and that you're so used to being protected in this cast that everything sort of just gets mushy inside of it, and then you're also striking down on the heel, which is a very unnatural thing, and when I watch my kids run, like my kids will run with me sometimes, and they naturally know to run on the balls of their feet, that's how they naturally run, and when people start running heel first, that's where all the problems come, it's just not a normal way for people to run. Yeah, and I was also, initially in South Africa, running on certain road services where they just dropped, instead of doing a tarmacadam kind of covering, they had just put rocks, obviously some lorry had come along, this truck had just dropped rocks out of the back to sort of hold together the mud in the rainy times, and very uneven surface, very hard on the foot, and I was doing these very thin sole, running in very thin sole shoes. What kind of shoes are you running with? Well, I kept changing them now, so I, but there were the Vibrams, and then there were Vivo barefoot ones, and... So you were running in barefoot, were we running marathons in barefoot shoes? Well, initially I was, and then my trainer, it just got so hard that my trainer said, look, you're going to wear these, and then I left it to them to choose my physio at whose Olympic level, so he said, right, these are going to be better for them, I prefer you not to be in these, so I said, okay, you tell me what shoes to wear, I'll take care of running the marathons, but I do remember seeing little South African children running on the roads next to me, where they come, hey, what's wrong with you? And they had completely nothing on their feet, and they could deal with these sharp rocks, I thought were really sharp, I was, every few steps was going, whoa, ow, ow, and they were just, yeah, and they were just, they had, they were laughing and running along, because their feet had built up, like, in this very, this very, I said, I see South Africa, yeah, is it weird to watch this? No, it's kind of fun, because I go right back, I ran with flags, that's, that's a beautiful thing and I was running in the Eastern Cape and they're looking at a white guy, was a white guy doing, and this is very rural area, so I led to say, Morro, Morro, that was in the African national park, that was the rain, that was the, the day where the rainstorm happened, you could see the thunder and lightning, that's the, that's the truck there, on the left you can see the thing and this guy just turned up out of the blue to track me down. What did he give you? He just gave me a letter saying, thank you for doing stuff, but if I ran with the flag and I said Morro to people and I led to say, how are you in, in, in Cosa, Cosa. This guy seems like he's wearing women's clothes as well. Yes, he's wearing a skirt and I think he's a transgender guy with less hair than me and Yeah, he's bald, but he's a transgender guy.