Chris Burkard isn’t known for his endurance on a bike, but perhaps he should be. Burkard, a photographer whose Instagram account is followed by 3.5 million people, was this week’s guest on All In and shared the lessons he learned while participating in Iceland’s WOW Cyclothon this June. Burkard set a new solo record in the race, completing the 844-mile race in 52 hours, 36 minutes, and 19 seconds, besting his previous record by over 20 minutes. Burkard said one of the biggest takeaways from the race was the recognition that we need others’ support in life.
Read Burkard’s insights in the excerpt below or listen to the entire interview here. You can also read a full transcript of Burkard’s conversation with host Morgan Jones in our show notes.
Chris Burkard: I've always been one of those people that's like, “I can do it better on my own. I can do it myself, yada, yada, yada.” And it wasn't until I did this, really—one of the big lessons, it wasn't in this moment, but it was, “This is just a big eye-opening experience for me. I did this huge bike ride around Iceland. I rode like 850 miles."
Morgan Jones: Okay, we need to we need to stop right here. I was hoping you would bring this up, just so that I can brag to listeners. Okay, 844 miles in 52 hours, 36 minutes, and 19 seconds, which was a record. So, Chris Burkard, everyone! I feel like we should all clap right now.
CB: Yeah. I hope nobody's clapping. Or I hope everybody's just, like, grabbing their bottoms and being like, “Ow, that would probably really hurt to sit on a bike seat for that long.”
MJ: I won't lie, I did think about that. But I still hope everyone's clapping at home by themselves.
CB: So we can, we can talk about that experience, too. But one of the things that was really crazy is that during our experience, I had to ask for sag support. So I had to ask somebody to come in and support me. And the crazy thing is, when I did all this training, all these training rides, like, I didn't really have any support at all. I'd just go solo and ride my bike. I've always been one of those people who, like, the moment that I found kind of, you know, sports that weren't team sports, I started doing those right after high school. And I just, I've tried to kind of never, I never want to burden somebody. Right? And I think that's a guilt thing that I've carried on my back for a long time. I never wanted to burden somebody, I've always wanted to do it myself and always want to take the load on. And what I've realized about this concept of friendship is that, you know, one of the ways we draw closer to others is by asking them to bear our burdens, you know, and not just trying to bear theirs, but at the same time giving them growth opportunities. And so that's one of the things when you ask, like, what have you learned. So I was like, this is what I've learned, is that if you want to draw close to somebody, or you want to see kind of what that friendship is made of or how strong it is, like, ask them to bear a burden with you. And that can mean anything. That could mean something physical, like, “Hey, I need you to help do this thing,” or that could mean something spiritual, like, "Hey, I'm really struggling with this, can you advise me on this?" or that can mean a myriad of other things. But I would say that when—and this is really, it's funny—is that everything connects life. But one of the really interesting things, and when I prepared for my TED talk, was [that] I studied the work of this psychologist named Brock Bastian, and he was a psychologist based in Australia who studied pain. And one of the things that he had come to the conclusion of is that groups of people who experience a traumatic or painful experience are closer or more connected after the experience. And that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be a bad experience. It could be climbing a mountain, it could be, you know, when the wind is cold, or whatever. These don't need to be like, you know, they experienced a death together. But ultimately what it is, is, like, when people have experienced something together and in some ways, incited feelings of hardship, they draw closer. And I've just always thought, “Wow, that's such a beautiful thing.” It's really incredible that Heavenly Father has, like, built our relationships that way. But, like, the people that we struggle with we connect with on a deeper level, like, what an absolute incredible gift to give us.
MJ: I agree. That's beautiful. And I kept thinking, as you're talking, about different experiences that I've had with people that were hard, and it's through those things not only that you grow as a person but you grow closer to the people around you. So I love that you brought that up. Another question in relation to your bike race is what did you learn about enduring?
CB: Oh my gosh, that bike race was all about endurance. You know, it's, it's a funny thing. To go, I went through everything you could imagine. Every sort of emotion process, mental process, like I cried on the bike, I fully you know, went to a place of like, getting angry to try to get through it. You know, every kind of headspace I could even imagine, because I was on the bike nonstop without sleep. And the craziest thing was, was that at about 48 hours, you know, I had this friend who, I, I really wanted him to come and support me. It would have meant a lot to me. But I didn't ask him to do that because I kind of felt, again, like I was gonna, I didn't want to burden that person. And they were like, “I'll be there. I'll be there.” And I'll go okay, okay, okay. And I kind of put it in the back of my mind. And in that ninth hour, you know, that 48-hour mark, he showed up and it was just, like, it was such a gift, just to be there, like I saw him and luckily, it was raining, so they couldn't tell that I was crying. And I was just like, “That was such a gift, your support.” I've never just had seen somebody, and been, like, their presence means so much to me. You just being there means so much to me. And maybe it's because you're in this extremely fragile state. And, that makes you feel things very differently. But one of the considerations I would have is that I learned a lot about the experience of enduring, through the process of training. And the reality is that when I trained, I mean, how do you train to ride 846 miles? You don't. You don't ride that many miles. You ride 200 miles and 300 miles. But what else I found was that it wasn't so much about the length of riding, it wasn't about the strength, right? Like, I'm not a crazy physically fit person, you know, like, I could stand to lose quite a few pounds or whatnot. But the reality is, what I did was I trained, everything else. I trained my mind, I trained—I would go out and ride when I was feeling ill. I would go out and ride after I've eaten a big meal and felt really like bloated, you know, whatever. I'd go out and ride when it was raining. I'd go out and ride at midnight. I'd go to church, you know, spend time with my family. And then when it struck midnight, I would go out and ride. Because I wanted to feel the mental stress of all the situations that I knew were going to come up. And that's, I guess, to relate that to kind of a spiritual sense, is that, you know, I think that this concept of enduring or enduring to the end, it really comes down to our ability to kind of hopefully not be surprised when those things happen. When we're faced with a situation where all of a sudden someone's offering us this or you're in an uncomfortable situation with a group of peers and they want you to be like, like, it seems so easy. But the reality is like, when you run through those things in your head and plan them out in your head, I mean, even, like, prepare for them, it becomes different. Like, the moment I started hallucinating on the bike, I was like, “Well, I'm hallucinating now,” you know, like, you know, it wasn't, like, a shock. You know, I understood and knew what to do because I had been there before.
MJ: Such a good analogy. I love that so much.