(upbeat music)
- Colin O'Brady, I have a question.
You're an adventurer, you're an explorer,
you're an athlete, you're a motivational speaker,
but how would you describe your day to day job?
- Day to day job?
Wow, that's tough to say.
Well, I'd say most recently, I'm an author.
I'm an author, my book came out yesterday, so.
- (Interviewer) Congratulations!
- "The Impossible First."
You know, I think of myself as a, well, let's see,
How about that?
- Oh, okay, that was really good.
- That was right off the top of the head.
- Yeah, how did you unlock your potential,
because obviously, you're an world record holder,
we all wanna know how to become as ferocious as you.
- You know, for me, you know,
I wanna make it clear,
sometimes people say, oh, Colin,
are you a superhuman?
For me, I'm like,
I mean, I've had some massive set backs in my life.
I write about it in the book.
The subtitle of the book is actually "From Fire to Ice,"
and that's 'cause 12 years ago,
I was severely burned in a fire
and I was told that I would never walk again normally.
The love of my mother,
the support of my wife and my family,
like overcoming those odds,
not only walking again,
but then becoming
I just made history.
Really, to me, the most important muscle
in all of that is right here,
this six inches between the ears.
This was such a hard journey.
- In your latest adventure, you weren't alone.
- Yes.
- You rowed across the Drake Passage.
Why was this something that has never been done before?
It's the convergence of the Southern Ocean,
the Atlantic, and the Pacficic.
So from the southern tip of South America in Cape Horn,
all the way to Antarctica, the Antarctic peninsula.
About 700 miles.
I was with five other people,
so it was a team of six of us.
This tiny little rowboat,
Just a tiny little rowboat.
you know, the whole deal.
Why's no one ever done it?
to think about trying to do that.
- It sounds insane.
What was it like getting along with the crew,
like, what happens if you didn't like someone?
so it's 90 minutes of rowing on,
90 minutes of rowing off, continuous,
so we're never sleeping
for more than about an hour or so at a time
for the entire duration, which was two weeks.
Rowing into the endless, endless abyss, it feels like.
There's these tiny little cabins
that we're having to sleep inside.
I'm curled up basically in a fetal position,
'cause it's so small,
and as the waves are crashing.
Then, a couple of times, the storms got so bad,
that we actually all couldn't row anymore,
so we had to jam ourselves in these cabins.
I'm literally like, spooning on top of this other guy.
We're wet, we're cold, we haven't slept at all.
The boat is like rocking around,
waves are crashing over us,
so not getting along in those moments would be pretty tough.
We had to trust in each other and the teamwork
that we ultimately made it through together.
(Crew cheering)
- Personal question, what do you do if you need to pee
or something like that?
- Yes, the bathroom amenities were pretty limited,
no bathroom on board.
We had a five gallon bucket
that sat right next to my rowing seat.
You kind of tell the guys to advert their eyes
and take care of business and continue on,
so needless to say we got very close.
We were very close.
- What was the scariest part?
- One of the scariest parts
like 40 foot swells,
'til the boat's like, fully disappearing
underneath these swells.
The water is splashing up over the side of the boat.
You know, waves.
There's an one degree water temperature,
basically freezing cold water temperature
splashing you in the face.
Just trying to keep the boat oriented in the waves
and just survive.
- Was there ever a time where you wondered,
like, shit, we should maybe quit,
or I'm nervous we're all gonna die.
- I mean, there's definitely some real risk
involved in this,
and there's a reason that, you know,
no one has ever attempted this and completed it before,
is because it is
Fortunately, we were able to make it safely,
but there were some moments in those big swells,
and also we got really near to some icebergs
and things like that.
We're just going like, wow,
we're right out on the edge one this one, for sure.
So I know sometimes when you take risks,
you go after things, you chase your dreams,
sometimes you fail.
I've had a lot of low moments in my life,
but I think I've hit those high moments,
not in spite of the low moments,
but because of them.
You know, being burned in this accident,
although it was the worst moment of my entire life,
being told I would never walk again,
I actually learned some of life's most valuable lessons.
So I remind myself that
when I'm going through these dark, these hard moments
- Woo!
We did it!
- We did it!
- Yes!
(upbeat music)
- Yeah!