171: How Jonny Davies Built Confidence for the G1M Ultra

**Nick Bare** (0:06)
Okay, today on the podcast, we have Jonny Davies. Welcome, brother.

**Jonny Davies** (0:14)
Thank you so much for having me on.

**Nick Bare** (0:16)
We are, at this point, wow, at this point, we are just 24 hours out from the G1M Ultra that you've been training for, for months now.

**Jonny Davies** (0:29)
Yeah.

**Nick Bare** (0:30)
How do you feel? I know you're physically prepared, mentally, how do you feel?

**Jonny Davies** (0:35)
Great question.
It's a surreal place to be in because this has been on my mind for the last like six months of preparations. And as much as the physical preparation to any race or any ultra, any challenge is so important, that mental preparation the week or two weeks beforehand, I think is the big differentiator between those that succeed, those that fail doing anything of this sort of scale. It's been fantastic. I mean, one thing I've implemented this year heavily is right back in my training journal and just writing out thoughts and feelings and how I feel like I'm progressing throughout my training block. And then to spend the last sort of week, two weeks looking back at everything from November when I started training for this onwards, it's been so great to see.

**Nick Bare** (1:13)
It's interesting.

**Jonny Davies** (1:13)
Yeah.

**Nick Bare** (1:15)
What key takeaways over these last couple months?
I think it's really cool that you've been documenting and journaling this. Because it's one thing to document on social media, but there's also a performance aspect of documenting on social media. When you have a journal that is just personal, introspective, I think it's a very unique approach.

**Jonny Davies** (1:39)
For sure.

**Nick Bare** (1:39)
What have you in reflection taken away from these last couple months?

**Jonny Davies** (1:42)
Biggest thing, and you're right in saying, when you document on social media, it is, you're thinking of how to, not necessarily curate it, but how to make it appeal more to an audience. Whereas...

**Nick Bare** (1:51)
You package it up.

**Jonny Davies** (1:52)
You package it in a certain way, for sure. And you lose a lot of the nuance. You lose a lot of the levels of introspectiveness to it.
Confidence is an action, not a feeling. That's been the biggest part of this. You know, you don't feel confident. And then go into something, you go into something, and then you gain confidence as a byproduct of consistency of hard work. And no matter how great a week of training has been, being able to put a line underneath it and go, right, once I've put those thoughts, those feelings back onto the page, I'm kind of allowed to sort of separate myself from them. So whether a session was great, whether a session was terrible or average, I'm able to sort of pull myself away from those sessions. And that's been really nice because I think a lot of the time, through previous training blocks for ultras, for challenges, I've held on to feelings of a training session or of a great week or a terrible week. And then that sort of, like you said, the bad blood bleeds through. And say I have a bad week of training or I'm not feeling too great, it's very hard to draw a line underneath that because I'm still sitting with the emotions or the feelings of it, especially as, you know, the race or the challenge is getting closer.
There is often an element of pressure that comes with that. And that's self-imposed pressure, right? It's not nothing external, but unless you're able to sort of take those feelings. And I think the best way to understand the feelings and emotions you often get through sessions is to put it on paper because you're immediately then getting it out of your body, getting out of your head, separating yourself from them. Understand, you know, I'm a big believer in you aren't your feelings, you're the person experiencing those feelings. So as soon as you can get them on paper, this allows you to understand them a little bit better. And also they can go, OK, that's there, have the shower, park the feelings and you can kind of move on with the day and go, right, that session was great, awesome, let's move on. Or hey, that session was terrible. I felt awful throughout it, but I got it done. And that's something to be proud of. And I can solidify that and then move on to the next job I had.

**Nick Bare** (3:30)
Has that approach been different in this prep from previous preps?

**Jonny Davies** (3:33)
For sure.
For the Go One More Ultra last year, it was a bit more chaotic. I still had some body issues from previous challenges from the year before that I was battling. And it was also the first time doing this format. So for me, it was much more, let's go out, let's go with the attitude of this is an experience. Let's see how far I can push myself. But also, this is a new experience and let's learn from what goes on here.