Cam Bostock spent his teens inside. He was homeschooled, played video games all day and had social anxiety that followed him into his twenties. At about 19 he decided to change it: he got rid of the computer, started saying yes to invitations, and made himself walk up to strangers, which he says was the most terrifying thing he had ever done. A mate took him on three nights on the Bibbulmun Track and he was hooked. In 2020 COVID took his job and his apartment in Tokyo, so he went all in on filming hikes and didn't make any money for three years. Last year he set the unsupported record on the 1000 kilometre Bibbulmun. A bit over a week before we spoke he went back for the self-supported one, and at midnight on day one, 95 kilometres in, he stacked it five times on Mount Hallowell in the rain. He walked ten kilometres the next morning, then called it.

In this episode Cam and I discuss that morning, the phone call to his wife Karis before he decided, and why a bloke who a couple of years ago would have dogged it out pulled the pin instead. We talk about why he started a podcast when he reckoned he was no good at holding a conversation. Then Dan and Emma, the two hikers he met on day one of the Pacific Crest Trail and walked 139 days with, and what suffering alongside strangers does to a friendship. I get his advice for anyone who has never slept outside,What his wife, Karis says to him on the phone when an attempt is falling apart, and what he leans on when he's out there alone.

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