Brian Keane
speaker
176 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Brian Keane’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
So my eyes looked like a zombie or a vampire from the redness in my eyes because they were bloodshot because I couldn't blink. So I went into the tent and there was this local indigenous Samir tribe and they had their reindeer soup and things while they were sitting there. And there was a medic and she was looking at me going, you're done. She was like, your Achilles is torn.
And I asked her, 97-year-old rule, I asked her, I was like, okay, well, what happens if I keep going? She goes, well, you'll be in a lot of pain and you might finish or you'll rupture it. They're your two options. I said, okay, back to my same exact scenario when I was a teacher. I was like, okay, if it ruptures, what happens? She goes, well, you have to be flown out of here in a helicopter.
I'm like, but you can get me. She's like, yeah. I was like, all right, check my GPS. Just make sure it's working. And I said, strap it up. So they strapped up my leg. They gave me codeine as a painkiller. And for 86 kilometers, I just pulled my leg behind me and got over the finish line. And again, it sounds insane now, but several months before this, I'll never forget this moment.
I did the Sahara in April 2018. I signed up to run a race in Barcelona, an ultramarathon. It was only 72 kilometers, so not long in comparatively speaking terms. But I thought I could do anything after the Sahara. I was confidence was sky high. Lots of business people and entrepreneurs are about to connect to this in a moment. That success drug where you're like, I can do anything.
I'm bulletproof. So I landed out to Barcelona in what I thought was a 72 kilometer road race. It was a trail race with the start of it running up Mount Tibidabo, one of the biggest mountains in Spain. I did the 40 kilometers into it and I went the wrong direction and got lost and then doubled back and was about to time out. And I was like, this is crap. I'm done. I was like, this is horrible.
This is the wettest November on Barcelona record. I had the wrong gear and shoes. This is horrible. I hate this. I'm not doing this race anymore. I'm done. And it was only a training race for the Arctic. And then I did what happened to a lot of people who at any point in their life quit something that they regret. I was back in my hotel room. I was washed. I was fed.
I was no longer sore, lying on my bed thinking, you should have finished that. You should have finished that. And I had that realization there and then that if I go to the Arctic in a few months from now with this preparation and mindset, I'm actually going to die in the Arctic. I really need to get my things together and get my head right.
And it was the seeds of failure planting the tree for future success. And it comes back to what we talked about earlier with the business and the entrepreneurship.
People see the finish line, Irish flag coming over the Arctic Circle line, but they don't see me in a bedroom in Barcelona questioning what I was doing and tapping out and quitting to something that I definitely could have finished if I had the right headset for it or mindset for it. And it's interesting because you don't always see the things below the surface.
And a lot of that, when my Achilles tore, I thought back to Barcelona and I was like, I can't do this. I was like, I have to keep going. I can't have that feeling again. Like, I don't want to be able to turn. And I was using, you know, my daughter was a big motivation for me that I
pain is temporary in a lot of cases, a lot of scenarios, pain, the work deadlines, the relationship, the ultramarathons in this case, the pain is temporary in most cases and will eventually at some point go away. And you have to keep that in your mind.
And I remember thinking there and then in the Arctic, in this minus 30 degrees with a load of reindeer tribe people around me going, I can't go back to Ireland until... My daughter, who was only four or five at the time, but I was picturing when she was older that when things get difficult, you keep going.
You can't say that. And that hypocrite feeling that I had felt before, I would have felt like a hypocrite. And again, everyone has their why. Some will have children, some will have partners, some will have something completely different. That's their why. But if you can tap into it, it can become a superpower in so many different scenarios.
Oh, definitely. And it's interesting because my why even for those extreme challenges has changed because in 2020, right before the lockdown, I did a hundred mile ultra marathon. So it was a hundred miles without stopping, took me 26 and a half hours. And I remember at the end of the Sahara, I felt like my confidence had gone to a complete new level.
At the end of the Arctic, I had a completely different relationship to pain and that I could back myself regardless of what the external circumstances looked like. When I did the 100 miler, my knees were a little bit sore, but I didn't get any personal growth from it. And what happened, my brain instantly after crossing the finish line went... well, this feels a bit hollow.
Maybe I should do 200 miles, you know? And the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. I realized then and there that the extreme side, the benefits I was getting are now actually starting to have diminishing returns.
And last year, because you mentioned mountaineering, I actually brought a group of my followers up Kilimanjaro, the highest freestanding mountain in Tanzania. And that now is something, you mentioned Nepal, next year I'm bringing a group to Everest Base Camp
I'm so excited. I cannot wait. But what's so interesting about it, Alana, is it ends up going from a me to we. It was all about me in the beginning. And I was like, well, this is feeling hollow. I want to be able to give the feeling that I got to other people. And Kilimanjaro, the highest freestanding mountain in the world, one of the seven summits,
The last night of that is a very, very, very difficult summit. And the people that I brought with me got that experience that I got in the Arctic, that I got in the Sahara, that, oh my God, I can do anything. And I was like, this is my path now. This is it now.
And it's interesting because having a daughter and my daughter Holly has kind of helped skew that because the training for these crazy ultra marathons, they take a lot of time. And although I don't regret them and I love that I did them and they were a season of my life that I enjoyed.
Showing 141–160 of 176 · page 8 of 9
← Previous
Next →