Big Adventures On Average Talent: having a growth mindset super power

How do you have ‘Big Adventures On Average Talent’? I spoke to Mark Gillett, and my conclusion is: growth mindset. I will write about growth mindset in another blog post, but essentially, someone with a growth mindset is all about seeking opportunities for learning and growing. They don't believe that their abilities are fixed or limited, they see failure as their personal tutor, and risks or challenges are their classroom. Have a read of Mark's story below, and see if you agree with me that his growth mindset is his super power.

Mark has always been drawn to adventure and challenge. He came to realise that he was choosing to take on adventures that other people would not sign up to, if they were in his position – with his ability, means and resources. He started his Instagram and YouTube channel ‘Big Adventures on Average Talent’ to inspire people, so that even if they see themselves as just ‘average’ (you might argue that Mark’s ability is not just average, but his point is that he is not elite or professional, nor at the level you might think you’d need to be to take on the level of challenges that he does), you can still get out there, challenge yourself and find your own big adventures.

For Mark a key moment was becoming the joint first person to complete a running Everesting challenge in Thailand. This meant over 18 hours running up and down ‘The Patong Wall’ until they reached the cumulative height of Everest. They avoided the snow and altitude problems that come with the real Everest, but running in Thailand comes with its own problems. First there was the heat, running all through the day, and then came the challenge of running by night without stepping on snakes, in the middle of a tropical storm. For Mark, this showed him that he could take on things that were big – bigger than him. “I probably had no business attempting [Everesting], it was far too big an adventure for me... I guess a good question is what made me think in the first place, I could do Everesting. And if I'm honest, I don't really know, it was just it really excited me, I thought I had a good shot at it. It seemed feasible, but hardly possible. And that was the first time I ever ran a marathon distance. And to do that, while ascending the height of Everest was a really big leap for me.”

Everesting got him started with the big running-based adventures, and since then he has taken part in a number of ultra-marathons and Fastest Known Time efforts: “After that, then I had the confidence to go and take on these other ones and the knowledge that my mind will help me push through when it gets difficult”.

Although hearing about the distances he has run and the terrains he crosses, you might think that these are physical challenges, but Mark is clear that it is at least as much about the mental challenge as the physical.

“A lot of them have involved running throughout the night, sometimes by myself in the jungle in the dark, and sometimes through a tropical storm, which is how Everesting finished. And it's these additional challenges that make the adventure, a true adventure, and really test the physical and mental capabilities, and also lead to growth.”

He concedes that he seems to have mental strength but argues that a lot of it has developed through the experiences themselves. Just like he conquered the Everesting challenge step by step, and hill by hill, with each adventure Mark’s mental strength has grown along with his confidence in his ability – mental and physical. And this is why he thinks “everybody should get out and do these things. Because they're so difficult and challenging. And through facing and overcoming those challenges, then you lead to true personal growth.”

One thing he has learnt from experience is that "there will always be a dark moment where you feel like you can't go on". Expecting it and recognising when he’s in it helps him to accept it and stick with it until it passes. Planning can help, for example Mark plans his running nutrition carefully to manage the ‘avoidable’ lows. But even so, it is normal to expect that at some point you will have a period of exhaustion, worry, and a feeling that you can’t go on. If you know it’s coming you can think ‘here it is, the dark moment’ and it’s more likely that you can ride through it until it passes. I know exactly what he means: in my own, much more limited running experience, once I recognised that I always have a point when I think I can’t do it, and that it always passes, it is much easier to calmly keep going and before long I notice that the feeling of struggle has turned to strength. I also think, as I hear about people’s journeys with their own challenges and goals, whether starting a business, relocating, putting on a theatre production – whatever it might be – it seems inevitable that there will be points where it feels certain that it’s not going to work. I suspect that being able to anticipate that and go, ‘oh here is that dark moment’, makes it easier to ‘surf the wave of despair’ and keep going on the other side.

Mark has plenty of stories of things going wrong, that can suddenly tip him into a moment of despair when things had seemed good. At around 3am whilst running in 3rd place at a 55km overnight jungle ultramarathon in Thailand he got lost and ran (hard) for 4 km in the wrong direction. Finally he got back on course but had descended so far from his position that he felt like it almost wasn’t worth it. He had the added complication that he had packed the wrong kind of spare batteries for his head torch and by this point the head torch was running out of battery. It took a lot of effort to refocus and remind himself that his main aim had been to go out and enjoy it. He had unexpectedly found himself in 3rd place, but that didn’t mean he should change plans. The plan was still to enjoy it, have an experience, an adventure and a challenge. He found that once he got re-focussed on what he was there to do, he naturally started to overtake people, and finished up in 2nd place, having really enjoyed his experience. He says for him, this was a “really clear example of just remembering to focus on yourself and your experiences rather than other people’s positions or anything like that.” Related to this, Mark says that “doing it with your own values in mind is extremely important” and this “will help you push through when it becomes difficult, because you’ve got a really good reason why.”

Although Mark often does pretty well and achieves a lot, and enjoys having goals to work towards, it is not the outcome that he focusses, on but the experience. And the possibility of failure is enticing, rather than off-putting.

“When I'm choosing these challenges, I’m deliberately looking for something I think I've got a good chance of failure at. I remember … thinking, ‘You know what, it's more likely I will fail on this, than succeed’. And that was a huge part of the drive for me to take it on. Because it was something that scared me. Especially when I started making it public and talking about it. And I've always been looking for those ones that are right on the borderline, because choosing something I'm going to succeed at isn't really pushing myself out there. And failing, it wouldn't have been a bad thing - I would have done my longest ever run, or got super close to this, or raised money for charity, and found some limits. So I'm always looking for that point where I've reached a limit. And I think that means that I'm focusing on enjoying the experience, at least as much as the outcome. And looking forward to the experience itself. I've got a big aim to get there, but it's not a foregone conclusion. And that's ok, it doesn't matter… not reaching the end is hardly going to be a problem for anybody unless it's the fact that I haven't made it back to a point where I can get picked up - then there's some logistical challenges! But it doesn't matter whether I finished a run or not, in the grand scheme of the world. But I know that for my personal growth that having those challenges and pushing towards them will mean that I've had a better experience. I will come back stronger and better than I ever could have done before, for something in the future.”

Mark believes that his mental growth through his running adventures has also led to mental growth in his life overall (he is a senior leader in education and a father in his ‘real’ life, so having mental strength comes in handy). These adventures have given him “confidence and patience”. And he has found that in his personal, professional and sporting life he can “focus on a big goal that I've chosen wisely or chosen because it matches with my values… and I can stay true to that and be consistent and just chip away at it and keep making progress towards it over a longer period of time… That's how I've approached training and doing these big races. And I think it also gives a feeling of confidence - and that confidence is not just in physical ability, but it's also in the mental ability as well.”

So how can other ‘average’ people start having their own adventures? Mark likes to talk about crossing the ‘doorstep mile’ (an idea he picked up from Adventurer, Alastair Humphreys): “I think for most people, the hardest thing is getting out the door. And for me having a really big clear goal that I'm really excited about helps me get going with that. Because then it's all about the bigger plan, not the individual session. So once I've got my big goals, got excited, then I'll sit down, I'll write out a training plan of what I want to accomplish each week. I really enjoy that part of the process, of thinking about what training might lead to, being ready to reach that goal… By the time I’ve done that, it’s already happening, I’ve done the difficult part of signing up. And once I've got my training plan and my goal, then I always make that public and share it on Instagram and on YouTube… And I think that sense of accountability, and also the sense of support that you get from sharing publicly will help me … get out there and get going.”

Once you’ve decided on your adventure, made your plan and told everyone about it, there is still plenty of room for things to go wrong before you actually begin your adventure. In this too, Mark has plenty of experience. In the build up to the event there are “so many times when you feel like it's gone wrong, and you're not even gonna make it to the start line. And there's no point carrying on. A good example of this was training for the jungle Ultra during the summer, which is one of my series on YouTube. And the start of this training was massively derailed, repeatedly. I had Covid, and then I had an IT band injury, I fell off my motorbike and was bruised up, and then after that, just when things seem to be getting back on track, I slipped over and cracked my head open at the end of a run. And trying to recover from all these things whilst getting actually ready for an ultramarathon. It seems almost pointless carrying on with the training. But I adapted my plans, stuck to it, got myself to the start line. And then despite getting lost and taking the wrong head torch batteries, I ended up finishing the race in second place. And that really taught me that you can just keep going through these things. And you can reach your goal. I did adapt my plans and reduce my pace before the race, trying to take into consideration what happened, but still I went out there with a plan to go and enjoy it. And it ended up being a really, really great experience. I'm so glad that I did keep going even though it seemed like it wasn't worth it.”

Since relocating from Thailand to the UK two months ago, Mark’s most recent adventure has been taking part in the first UK edition of the Berkeley Marathons (inspired by the Barkley Marathons of the US –known as ‘the race that eats its young’). Once again it was a challenge beyond his station as a runner, a training period derailed by circumstances, an event with unique challenges such as challenging terrain, stiles to climb over, spiral staircases, being chased by aggressive cows in the dark, and yet an event with lots of enjoyment and unexpected successes. You can find out more about the ups and downs in his YouTube series about it.

At the start of this blog I said that I thought Mark’s ‘growth mindset’ is behind his ability to have these big adventures on average talent. What do you think? Are you an adventurer yourself? What’s your own super power? Or perhaps you are dreaming of adventure. In that case, what will help you to turn your dream into a real adventure?