#416 : Don't Be Prey: The 10-Year Battle to Reclaim a Life with Mark Sowerby
2/13/202643 min
What would drive someone to voluntarily swim through the most dangerous ocean channels on the planet — no wetsuit, no cage, no way out except forward?
In this episode, we sit down with Mark Sowerby, one of the few athletes in the world to complete the Ocean's Seven — often described as the Everest of open water swimming — a feat achieved by just 36 swimmers.
His new film, Don't Be Prey, captures a decade-long pursuit across five continents and seven of the most brutal channels on Earth. From the freezing Irish Sea to the shark-patrolled waters of Hawaii, it's r...
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First 90 secondsMark Sowerby· Guest0:00
Yeah, I, well, you gotta have a good reason to do it. It can't... A- and ideally for me, I like layering. I like the idea of having layers of reasons. And, uh, and what, what I found, uh, when I f- when I get into those really difficult times, I start to, um, literally like a y- you know, you picture a Rolodex, the old Rolodex. I'd be almost going through the files of all- Yeah ... of the things in my life, and, and trying to find something to grab onto that is the reason for this swim. And it's funny what matters to you at different times. So having one reason is probably not enough. It might be enough for one swim, but it's not enough for all of them. And so I had, you know, layers and layers of reasons. And, you know, sometimes it was that, you know, I wanted to build, rebuild my courage to go after some of the people that had, that had done these things to us. So, you know, at some level there's, there's justice and there's revenge, and I would picture them in my head and [laughs] all that sort of stuff. The, and all the ... But other times it was, it was very personal or, um, a- and, and or it might, you know, might have been to, you know, for Heidi or the boys. And so y- I, I think having all those layers and then being able in your own mind to choose what's important to you on the day, not knowing what that's gonna be, and it was funny. It's funny. And you throw lines at yourself. So I throw lines at myself. So with the Cook Strait it was, um ... 'cause I was really, you know, not fit enough for that one,