Running To The Beat of His Own Drums and Pulling Them 100 Miles Behind Him
Description
Running To The Beat of His Own Drums and Pulling Them 100 Miles Behind Him with Bob Thomas
What started out as a joke ended up being a walk or charity. Can you even imagine walking 100 miles? Now visualize walking those 100 miles towing a drum kit on a trailer. This is exactly what professional drummer Bob Thomas set out to do.
About Bob
I'm Bob, a 23-year-old full-time drummer who also loves ultra-endurance. I'm an Ironman Wales finisher and have become obsessed with ultra running. I have come up with a challenge to combine music and running which is to run a 100-mile ultramarathon towing my drum kit, I will then set it up and play a gig with my band directly after the run.
Donation page: virginmoneygiving.com/100miledrumkittow
Instagram: @bobthomasdrums
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YouTube: Bob Thomas
Full Transcript Below
Running To The Beat of His Own Drums and Pulling Them 100 Miles Behind Him with Bob Thomas
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
drum kit, running, gig, drummer, people, training, bit, trailer, miles, started, eat, minutes, good, iron man, play, couple, marathon, hill, music, problem
SPEAKERS
Bob, Terry, Roy Barker
Roy Barker 00:10
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Feeding Fatty This is Roy.
Terry 00:14
Terry.
Roy Barker 00:14
So we're podcasts that journaling or chronicling our journey through wellness. And no, we've begun to figure out at first we talked a lot about diet, not being on a diet, but just you know what we eat, consume, exercise, but we've made a, you know, we've also kind of shifted into that mindset realm that we have to, you know, be able to change our mindset to to make sustainable changes. And so on Tuesdays, we usually release an episode with the guest either a professional in the industry, or somebody telling us their story. And then on Thursdays, we release more of a personal episode. And we've been talking a lot about diabetes. That's one thing I struggle with, keep in mind under control. So anyway, I want to thank you for being a listener. And if you're new Welcome to the show. And we've got a great guest today. This has been exciting. We've been waiting a couple of weeks to get Bob on here. So Terry, I'll let you introduce Bob.
Terry 01:11
Bob Thomas is a 23 year old ultra runner and professional drummer from West Wales. He's been playing drums since the age of seven, and performing full time at 17. All over the UK. He started his fitness journey in early 2018, when he ran his first marathon and progressed to an Iron Man in 2019. After the lockdown hit in 2020, he saw it as an opportunity to push his limits further and is training to take on 100 miles while towing his drum kit behind him. Bob, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the show.
Bob 01:49
Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Roy Barker 01:51
Yeah, and you're quite the you're quite the contrast. Because typically, you know, we think of musicians and drummers, they they live kind of an ultimate lifestyle up on that. And then, you know, probably, I would say not the best, you know, they're surrounded by probably a lot of liquor, a lot of good food. And a lot of Yeah, so it's like, it's just, it's an interesting concept. So kind of tell us a little bit, you know, about what kind of music that you play first, you know, how you got into music into the band. And then tell us a little bit of you know, about your focus on fitness.
Bob 02:29
Yeah, it's funny you say about that. That's, that's a lot of the reason why I ended up getting into fitness is because I was like out most nights playing gigs, and then having to drive home drive horrendous miles and just eating the worst fast food all the time. And that's where the fitness really came from. But yeah, so I started from a really young age plan. And I learned through school, basically. And I used to get a 15 minute lesson once a week, and then sort of give me a book and say, right, go and go practice, come back. And that progressed up and and then just decided it was sort of what I wanted to do. So I went to bed. Basically, when I was 16. I left school, and did a little bit of work helping out my parents and sort of thought, right, okay, well, let's try and make something of music. And there's like the local city to me is Cardiff, which is about two hours away. And I sort of just went up there on the site, right, let's try and meet some musicians. So I sort of put my head around once this in venues and sort of try to be friendly with some guitarist and bass players and things and eventually just sort of gotten a couple of bands and started playing and then yeah, just just kept progressing, which which is good fun. And it got Yeah, yeah, very good to the point of playing multiple nights a week or so doing lots of teaching. You can see behind me that there's this kicks up that they should be one there. But I had a gig last night so that that was gone. He sat in my car at the moment. So yeah, it was great. And then just just lots of gigs all over the place and learn to read music. So I play for, like theater shows and things. So I didn't get booked for sort of like four to six weeks on, like small theaters or around the UK, where we do sort of like three to five days in a in a venue just multiple shows. But again, it's just it's lots of it's always it's always very intense in a very short amount of time. So usually like my Monday to Thursday is usually fairly quiet. But then it's sort of like Thursday night it's like right okay, well let's pack up the gear and get ready to go then Friday I'm off and it's Friday night gig Saturday to gigs, Sunday to gigs and then hope
Terry 04:47
to be tired. Well as a as a drummer, you don't have a choice. You have to be fit if you want to be successful as a drummer. So I'm sure
Bob 04:57
yeah, just just to get your drum kit from the cost The venue.
Roy Barker 05:02
And, you know, when when we go to concerts a lot, you know, like more smaller venues, especially outdoors and stuff. It's like, you know, you see the guitar guy, he puts his guitar, in his case, and, you know, he walks away. And the bass says the same thing. And, you know, there's this poor drummer back there. He's got this whole big old drum kit, you know, he's trying to move on and offline. So I know I'm always thinking the same thing. I just played the flute that actually
Terry 05:33
led to having stuff. You asked for it, you got it.
Roy Barker 05:36
So tell us about this challenge where you're gonna, you're gonna is it 100 kilometers, and you're gonna tow your drum kit behind you.
Bob 05:44
gnosis is 100 miles, 100 miles. Okay. I think that's about 180 kilometers.
Roy Barker 05:49
Okay. Okay.
Bob 05:51
That's a that's a best guess. But yeah, so it all it was a bit of a weird joke at the start. And because I live right on the west coast of Wales, and it's very rural, I live in political Pembrokeshire. And there's, there's like, there's more cows and people down here. So for me to go, like all my work, I have to basically go to the closest place I can do it is a city called swanzey, which is about sort of an hour and a half drive away, but more of it is done in Cardiff, which is about two hours just over. So I spend a lot of my time driving, but Cardiff is basically exactly 100 miles from my house. So that's where the majority of my gigs up. So when we hit lockdown, obviously, at the start, everyone thought it was going to be like two, three weeks. And I've done quite a bit of training then because about three or four months before that I've done my first Ironman, so relatively fit, close point. And I said to my mate, who's also a drummer, I said, I think I might train, loads of running really focused. And then when I when gigs, come back, I'll get someone I was thinking, like, I'll get my parents to take my drum get to the gig or something. And I'll run and, and then I'll do the gig and it's about 100 miles a bit like it'd be an ultramarathon, so it'd be great. And he sat there and listened to me say all that and he just went, yeah, but it doesn't really count unless you tow the drum kit. And my stupid brain went that's a brilliant idea. He's off the Christmas list now. Yeah. He's, uh, yeah, he is, is a good friend, but also a bad friend.
Terry 07:37
Well, you're actually gonna be calling I mean, you're actually gonna be telling it yourself. Your body. Yeah, yeah. So I, I am the horse to the car. Yeah,
Bob 07:47
it's a bit a bit mad. So it was kind of it was it was great. And it was like, I had no way I could actually do that. Like that would be, it'd be mental. So the first thing I do is start googling. Like, Has anyone done something like this? And there's been a few people who have like pulled cars from marathons and things like that, that looks pretty brutal. And I was like, Okay, well, no one's no one's really done this. So, so what I do, and then the the extra condition is that I that the challenge isn't finished when I end the run, because I have also hired my band to come to the end of the run
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