NE — A marathon is a huge accomplishment, congratulations are certainly in order - in your case x242, holy cow! Running distance is wild for your mind. People deal with it in many different ways, some seek distraction by listening to something, some want to conserve mental energy and some prefer to take it all in. How do you mentally approach a marathon, and has this mindset evolved over the course of the project?

BP — Prior to this project — like, from 2015 to 2022 — I had already done 600 freestyle marathons / 63,000 kilometres by foot across six continents... so all the physical and mental stuff was dialled in. Oddly, I'm not a course racer or a runner or an athlete, and I don’t care about speed or pace. Rather, I’m an explorer and adventurer and wanderer… and the freestyle marathon just happens to be the best creative medium for plodding along and documenting the human condition. Runners see me as a walker, walkers maybe see me as a jogger, and the world probably sees me as someone striding hurriedly like they need a toilet ASAP. Basically, my interest resides in covering as much ground as possible by foot — with a pen and camera in tow — to make myself available to magic or serendipity or interesting interactions with humans. As such, my approach to marathons is to go slow to go far, and operate like a vacuum… not go fast, whizz by things, and risk blowing-out my body. Because the world is my muse, I’m genuinely excited to trek it each and every day… so it provides the motivation. The mind is unreliable, so I pay no mind to mindset. The world? It provides… thus it is offers the ‘calling’ to go out there and trek; whether I feel good or bad in mind, body or spirit. I don’t know anything about mindset, I just operate on vibes and curiosity.

NE — The Near Earth brand story is inspired by the Egyptian tale of Apophis, recounting his ceaseless conflict with the sun god Ra and symbolizing the cosmic struggle between order and chaos. As runners, we certainly know the feeling of trying to be consistent and then all of a sudden getting attacked by the god of chaos. Do you have a good story from last year where you found yourself battling chaos?

BP — Chaos is subjective. For me, chaos would be finding myself in the middle of a natural disaster or a full-blown war…and I’ve experienced neither. However, I was robbed, jumped, insulted, harassed, and had things hurled at me on the Marathon Earth Challenge, and that’s just how things go; if you sign-up for adventure, you must surrender to the full spectrum of what adventure is, and can be. Others may have found my project chaotic - from the schedule to the fuckery on the streets- but it didn’t register with me as that. Simply, some days had problems, and the onus was on me to quickly and decisively solve those problems.

NEAR EARTH — With all the miles you covered in 2023, what do you take from that, how does it shape your approach to running moving forward?

BP — The Marathon Earth Challenge demonstrated to me that we can do hard things. And I’m not inspired by what I did per se, but by what I know resides in the human spirit. That said, I also moved through many places around the world that are defined by absolute hardship… and it was a continual reminder that leisurely taking a walk, hike, jog or run — like, for pleasure — is a very real privilege that few people around the world have. So if you have the means - and live somewhere where you can safely advance this bipedal pursuit - be grateful and cherish this wonderful pastime! Oh, and all of us in the endurance sports space need to do a better job of converting our physical movement into social movement - because exercise is largely self-serving. My one big regret is lacking the courage to have used my project to fundraise for a charitable organization… because I was unsure if I could actually complete my project… and thus didn’t want to bail on an organization. As such, I’m looking forward to doing future marathon projects where I do a way better job at fundraising… because I’d selfishly love to marathon every country on the planet before I die, and make the world a tiny bit better when doing so.