Ultrarunning
Meet ultra running icon and How To Be Superhuman podcast host: Rob Pope
Get to know the host of Red Bull’s unmissable new podcast, How To Be Superhuman.
Record-breaking ultra runner Rob Pope is the host of Red Bull's brand new podcast How To Be Superhuman – a series that sets out to investigate what it really means to be superhuman and travel to the limits of human endeavour. (Listen and subscribe on Spotify – or via most podcast platforms including Apple, Google and Spreaker.)
You may remember seeing the Liverpudlian athlete running across the US dressed as Forrest Gump in 2016, where he covered more than 15,700 miles on foot while recreating the run Gump makes in the film. To do that, he crossed the country five times, visiting 43 US states over two years.
But does Rob believe this extraordinary feat makes him personally superhuman?
Rob running through the Glacier National Park – 11 months in to his US run
© Nadine Strawbridge
“It was beyond my expectations, so in a non-big-headed way, the cold, hard facts say that it was. I came out of it a better person. Maybe that’s a definition of doing something superhuman – that after doing it, you come out of it a better person.”
The question of what defines ‘superhuman’ is one that Rob kept coming back to while recording the podcast. “Being superhuman means having the ability to push yourself beyond your own expectations,” he says. “Our bar’s set too low, maybe for our own good. I’m glad it’s set low, as people might be disappointed, but the people I interview on the podcast prove you can set your bar, and there’s no limit to where you can put it."
The podcast sees Rob questioning the true definition of 'superhuman'
© Mathew Nans
Rob got into running at a young age, after taking part in cross country at school. “I reached county level, but I never got to the point to where I thought, I’ll throw everything at this.” He continued to run, but it eventually took a back seat to playing football.
Then, in 2002, shortly after Rob had run the Virgin Money London Marathon, his mum died of cancer. “Before she died, she said one thing that stuck with me: ‘Do one thing in your life that makes a difference’.” At the time, he was working as a vet, and an opportunity to take a job in Australia came up, so he snapped up the opportunity.
“In Australia, I joined an athletics club and trained a lot more. I took about 15 minutes off my marathon PB, so I was under 2h 30m at this point.” He went on to become Australian marathon champion. “That was surreal,” he says. “I came 10th in the Sydney Marathon, and as I finished the coach said, ‘Congratulations! You’re Australian champion.’ I said, ‘You know I’m not Australian, don’t you?’ and he said, ‘You’ve been here long enough.'”
When he's not running, Rob practices as an emergency vet
© Nadine Strawbridge
He came back to the UK three years later and, while working in a job that made him miserable, his mum’s words began to ring in his head again. “I’d read a fantastic book about this British fella called Nick Baldock who ran across America,” he says. “It sounded amazing and I thought, I definitely want to do that. I thought about running across Australia, and even bought a stroller to put my kit in, but I never got round to doing it. A pal said, ‘Are you actually going to do it this time or just talk about it?’ If I was going to do it, it had to be for charity, and so I thought it should be as creative as possible, so I looked for things that had never been done.”
Maybe that’s a definition of doing something superhuman – that after doing it, you come out of it a better person
That’s when the Forrest Gump idea came up. “I’d thought about it before, because anyone who does a long run, or runs with a beard, gets ‘Run, Forrest, run!’ shouted at them, and, when I looked into it, I saw no one had done the run he does in the film.”
The Gump Run
Rob near Carrington, North Dakota – just over halfway through his US run
© Nadine Strawbridge
Rob took his research for the run extremely seriously. “I wanted to do it right. I didn’t want anyone saying at the end, ‘You ran all those miles, but you didn’t get to Santa Monica Pier, you didn’t even grow the beard.’ So I made sure I went for the full Marine buzz-cut and cut-throat shave in a barbershop in Mobile, Alabama before I started. Greenbow doesn’t exist, they made it up for the film, and in the book Forrest is from Mobile, so I thought that was a legit place to start.”
Rob got in character before his run by having a Forrest Gump-style haircut
© Nadine Strawbridge
He also found out the exact day Forrest started his run. “It was September 15 – you know that because he runs past the barber’s shop and they’re talking about President Carter doing a 10k race, and that was September 15, 1979.”
He decided to raise money for the WWF and Peace Direct for a very specific reason. “When you see Forrest run over the Mississippi for the fourth time in the film, and he’s getting chased by reporters, they say, ‘Are you running for world peace, women’s rights, the homeless, the environment or animals?’ and between those two charities they cover all those bases."
Rob running along Old Route 66 during the second year of his Gump run
© Ian Beamish
Rob finds it hard to list the highlights, as there were so many, but as a U2 fan, one moment stands out. “Running through the Joshua Tree National Park was incredible. It was part of an unintentional pilgrimage. I listened to the album eight and a half times on loop as I ran through. The actual Joshua Tree isn’t actually there though, so I still hadn’t found what I was looking for...”
Eventually, Rob did find the Joshua Tree – on the way in to Death Valley
© Olivia Anstaett
Despite the highs, there were plenty of lows, and Rob was close to quitting every morning. “Especially in the winter, when temperatures went down to minus 18 degrees Celsius, and I’d be running through Wyoming for 40 miles where there was literally nothing.” His rule was, if he had three bad days in a row, he’d quit, as no one wanted to hear him moaning. “I had a load of injuries – achilles and tibial tendinitis, piriformis syndrome, I tore a quad. I had to have steroid injections in my butt on the last leg – I could have easily quit, but not when I was that close to the end.”
Rob spent two years running around 40 miles per day
© Simon Lapish
The finish will always remain etched in his memory. “It was incredible. It was on the Navajo Reservation straddling Arizona and Utah. I had 40 people running with me – it was like the final scene in the film. I refused to say the line ‘I’m pretty tired, I think I’ll go home now’ until I got to the very end. I turned around, said the line, everyone was high-fiving, then I proposed to my girlfriend. That was a definite highlight.”
"I love you, Jenny!"
© Rob Pope
What can you expect from the new podcast?
“I was honoured to be asked to host it,” says Rob. “I initially thought, 'why me?' Maybe they’d seen some of my videos and thought, 'this guy sounds like fun'. It’s an opportunity to meet some incredible people. The other day, I posted a photo of an interview we did with Tim Don. He’s always been my favourite triathlete, so when we got him on, it was amazing. He’s a treble Olympian, and you imagine people like that to be James Cracknell-esque figures, but he’s just like me, sizewise [Rob is 5ft 7in]. He’s the perfect example of a superhuman, as he’s a little dude who can run, swim and bike faster than everyone else. If that’s not inspiring, I don’t know what is.
Tim Don ran a 2:49 marathon 6 months after breaking his neck in an accident
© Patagonman
“We’ve spoken to people from diverse backgrounds, such as Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini, the swimmer – she almost drowned escaping from Syria and nearly got blown up while training. There’s Diana Nyad, who came from a more privileged background, who swam from Cuba to Florida through swarms of jellyfish. Then there’s Mark Beaumont, who’s like the new Phileas Fogg. He reacted to someone beating his round-the world record by trying to cycle around the world in 80 days. And he did it. He also nearly died trying to row across the Atlantic.
Every interview on the podcast has made me want to go and change the world. I want everyone who listens to have a twinkle somewhere that makes them want to do something crazy
“It’s not just classic endurance athletes – I also interviewed motorcycle rider Dougie Lampkin. I remember watching him when I was little, and thinking, 'wow that’s amazing!'. What he does is beyond hard. It was so much fun speaking to people who I wouldn’t normally associate with endurance sports.
“You’ll be inspired. There are some great technical tips, and there’s a common theme running throughout the guests: they put in a load of hard work, they’re extremely driven, the rewards of the hard work are incalculable for them, and they are all inarguably normal people. Take Jasmin Paris – she was a brand new mother when she took 12 hours off the men’s record in the Spine Race. And when you’re talking to her, it just sounds like she’s gone out for a training run.
“You don’t have to change who you are to become one of these special people, it’s just a case of making the best of whatever your thing is. Tim Don giggles whenever he tells you about one of his achievements, almost as if he’s embarrassed. They might be superhuman, but they are all most definitely human.
Rob chats to Dougie on the podcast about his record-breaking wheelie
© Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool
“Every interview on the podcast has made me want to go and change the world. Once the guest has gone, often me and the producer look at each other, open-mouthed and go, ‘Oh my God, that was incredible.’ Especially because their achievements appear to be within reach. I want everyone who listens to have a twinkle somewhere that makes them want to do something crazy.”