David Alley Mindset Health & Fitness

28/08/2026

People ask me this more than anything else:

how did I go from zero ultra-endurance experience to four world records?

It didn’t start with talent. It started with a number that made me laugh.

Full story’s in the carousel.

18/08/2026

35 years old. Zero cycling experience. Everyone said it was laughable.

‘Race Around Australia’ was my first big adventure — the start of the craziness. Leesy ran the crew. Both our fathers were on the road with us the whole way, something I’ve never forgotten.

14,251km. Three years of training to get here. 15+ hours a day on the bike, 4–6 hours of sleep a night, for 37 straight days.

Halfway across the Nullarbor. -4 degrees. A headwind so brutal it was almost blowing me backwards — at times it would’ve been faster to get off and walk. Road trains roaring past within metres. Alone, bitterly cold, taking it one pedal stroke at a time. That stretch ate into my lead badly. But I’d made myself a promise — I wasn’t stopping until it was done.

Some nights I had nothing left. One night I had to be carried into the support caravan — total exhaustion, nothing in the tank. Ice baths every day just to be able to get back on the bike the next morning.

2km from the finish, crew waiting near the Hornibrook Bridge, Redcliffe QLD. Years of build-up, the most brutal thing I’d ever done, and the thought of seeing my kids again — I broke down. Took me a few minutes to compose myself.

Then I rode across that bridge in the early hours, flanked by traffic, my Police team beeping horns, flashing lights, sirens going. 37 days, 20 hours, 45 minutes. Beat the record I was chasing by nearly 4 days. Fifteen years later, I still get goosebumps. Nobody gave the underdog a chance — and he pulled it off.

What’s something people told you that you’d never pull off? 👇

17/08/2026

Can you sit down on the floor and stand back up again — no hands, no knees, no furniture, nothing to lean on?

It’s called the ‘Sitting-Rising Test’, and researchers have been studying it for over a decade. The latest study followed more than 4,000 people aged 46–75 for 12 years. The people who scored worst on this simple test were nearly 4 times more likely to die of any cause — and 6 times more likely to die of a cardiovascular cause — than the people who scored a perfect 10.

That’s not meant to scare you — think of it as a starting point, not a verdict. Wherever you land today is just information, and every part of it is trainable.

Here’s why it matters more than most fitness tests: it’s not testing one thing. In one movement, it captures your strength, power, balance, flexibility and coordination — all at once. That’s why it beats things like grip strength or walking speed as a predictor on its own.

The good news — this isn’t fixed. Your score can improve at any age. It comes down to hip mobility, core strength, balance, and simply practising the movement. Most people haven’t lost the ability — they’ve just stopped using it. Life gets busy, floor sitting disappears, and by 40 the pattern’s forgotten.

Go carefully — have a chair or bench nearby if you want something to lean on, and skip it if you’ve got a knee, hip or balance issue.

Try it right now. Sit down on the floor, then stand back up, no hands. How’d you go?

05/08/2026

05/08/2026

20 years in the job. Long service leave. Annual leave. Sick leave. Super building every fortnight.

I walked away from all of it on a maybe.

Are you waiting for a someday moment before you do something about your health and fitness? What are you actually waiting for?

29/07/2026

Somewhere in the middle of the night, exhausted beyond words, I dozed off with the paddle still in my hands. When I woke up, I just kept going.

In November 2023 I set out to break the 30-year-old speed record for kayaking the entire length of Australia’s longest river, the River Murray — 2,278km from Bringenbrong Bridge in NSW to the river mouth in SA. I’d only been paddling for about 18 months. Everyone thought I was mad.

Day one, I capsized and lost my phone in the river — with it went every audiobook, song and podcast I had for the rest of the trip. Just me, the water, and my own thoughts for two weeks straight.

Water levels were down a third on what I’d planned for, headwinds most of the way, temperatures swinging from -3°C to 41°C. To stay ahead of record pace I was paddling up to 23 hours a day. Somewhere in there, running on almost no sleep, I dozed off mid-stroke.

Woke up. Kept going.

15 days, 11 hours and 33 minutes later — I’d broken a record that had stood since 1993, averaging 152km a day.

Couldn’t have done it without the crew who backed me the whole way — Dave Lees, my old man Reg, Gary, John, Andrew, Dallas and Hendrik. Every one of those blokes kept me going when I wanted to quit.

Twenty years of policing taught me the same lesson the river did: you don’t get to choose when things get hard, you just get to choose how you respond.

26/07/2026

The dodgy ham I had at lunch. Leesy (Team Manager) said at the time — “I wouldn’t eat that, I think it’s off.”

Should’ve listened.

Come over a hill somewhere on ‘RAA2’ (my run around Australia) deep in Western Queensland — two caravans pulled over, two older couples enjoying afternoon tea.

That’s when it hit. A stirring in my stomach, then the sweats kicked in…I’d already started the evacuation process — fast, a lot, not solid! 💩

The support vehicle was at the base of the hill, a good kilometre away. I waved frantically. They couldn’t see me. No option but to get there on foot, fast as I could.

The couples waved me over — they’d heard about the run and wanted the full story from this crazy bloke attempting to run around Australia 🇦🇺 faster than anyone before him. I tried to be polite. I was in a real situation. Explained I was on a tight schedule, then took off down the highway toward the support vehicle and a fresh pair of shorts.

I arrived a mess. Explained the dilemma. Looked down. All I could hear was Leesy shouting “NO… NO” as he bolted to the back of the vehicle and came back with a fire extinguisher 🧯

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse — my father, a crew member, pipes up: “Oh no, me too.” Pants down, straight off the side of the highway. He’d eaten the ham too!

This quiet stretch of the A1 briefly resembled a crime scene.

One empty fire extinguisher, one new pair of shorts, and I was back on the bitumen. I had a record to break.

Tell me I’m not the only one with a “the ham was off” story from a long run or ride 👇

24/07/2026

HIT BY A CAR…..TWELVE MONTHS LATER — I SURVIVED. DID THE DREAM?….💭

My last memory is riding toward Kingscliff. My next memory is waking up in an ambulance.

In between, I’d been hit by a car. Two blokes in a sedan had pulled half onto the shoulder, and as I rode around them, the driver opened his door. I hit it at speed, went over the handlebars, and landed head first on the road.

A collapsed lung. My helmet split open. Ten stitches. Concussion severe enough that I still get vertigo and memory issues from it — and to this day, I still don’t remember the crash itself.

This happened almost twelve months to the day before I became the fastest person to ever cycle around Australia — around two years into a three-year build toward the record. When I first started out, I had zero cycling background. Going through a divorce. Three kids. No home, no money, no sponsors. Working full time shift work as a Police Officer.Most people laughed when they heard the plan. My inner circle believed me. That was enough.

I’d driven down the coast from Brisbane for a training block, staying at my brother’s place. Day one was perfect — dry, sunny, light traffic. That’s the last full memory I’ve got before the ambulance ceiling.

Three days later, I was back on the bike.

My doctor had told me three weeks off. I gave myself three days. Not advice, and not something I’d tell you to do — i got lucky more than I got smart.

My lung re-inflated that night and my head stitched up. Groggy most days. But the dream hadn’t gone anywhere, and the crash didn’t change what I wanted — it just meant starting again slightly more broken than before.

Twelve months later, I completed the record. Fastest lap of Australia by bike, ever. Every detail’s in the last photo.

This isn’t really a story about me, though.

Almost everyone has their own version of getting hit by a car right before they were ready to start — timing, bad luck, something completely outside your control, showing up right as you were building momentum. The setback was never actually the test. The test is always what you do in the three days after it.

19/07/2026

Day one….Alan looked at me and said:

“I’ll do what you ask. Just don’t get me to run.”

Fair enough. Plenty of people walk in with a line like that — something they decided about themselves a long time ago and never questioned since. We worked around it. Strength, conditioning, everything except running. No pressure.

A few weeks later, Alan came back and said: “I’d like to add in some running.”

Nobody talked him into it. He talked himself into it — because the rest of it was working, and at some point “don’t make me do that” quietly turned into “actually, let’s try it.”

He’s been training with me since November. Had a Dexa scan done a few days ago — proper body composition scan, not scales. The numbers are in the photos, but here’s the part that matters: he’s lost fat and gained muscle at the same time. That’s the hard combination to get right, and he’s nailed it!

Same scan showed something else worth mentioning: at 56, his bone density came back above the average for someone in their 20s.

He’s also told me more than once that I’ve cost him a small fortune — most of his wardrobe doesn’t fit anymore, and not because it got bigger!

But if you ask me what I’m actually proud of, it’s not the numbers on the scan. It’s a bloke who swore off running now choosing to do it. Look at that photo - the pride, the personal satisfaction of a man that’s done the work and earned the results. Happy, confident and a role model to those in his circle & beyond.

Most people don’t need convincing. They need enough small wins stacked up that the thing they swore they’d never do starts to feel like their own idea.

What’s something you’ve told yourself is “just not for you”? Drop a comment — I’d genuinely like to know.

And if you’re sitting on your own version of Alan’s day one, message me any time, no pressure, just a chat about where you’re actually at.

15/07/2026

A DOCTOR TOLD ME THE RACE WAS OVER….

I was 6,000km into a 14,000km run around Australia.

I’d been on pace the whole way — blisters, injuries, the usual carnage of 80km a day, but on pace. Then my big toe started hurting. Nothing dramatic. An ingrown nail, I figured. Within a couple of days it was worse. Then the redness progressed up my leg. Then I was throwing up on the side of the road, and I passed out.

My crew got me to hospital in Port Hedland, WA. Couldn’t have been further from home. The doctor’s assessment was blunt: admitted, antibiotics, a week in bed. The record was over….

I discharged myself that night. Slept in the van on the side of the road just out of town.
The rules said I had to cover a minimum of 20km a day or I was disqualified — hospital bed or not. So the next morning I went back to the exact spot I’d stopped the day before, and I limped 45km.

A mate of mine — an actual doctor — flew from Brisbane to Port Hedland, got picked up by my crew, and met me on the side of the road. Treated the infection properly, out of the back of a caravan. Then I kept going.

174 days. 80km a day. I got home with the record.

Here’s the part that actually matters, though — it’s not really about the run.

That doctor wasn’t wrong. The infection was real, and it got treated properly, the whole way through. But “this is over” was his assessment of the situation, not a fact about what I was capable of doing next. Those are two different things, and most people treat them as the same one.

I see it constantly with people who come through the PT Studio. Someone gets told a number — blood pressure, a scan result, a BMI, whatever it is — and they hear it as a sentence instead of a data point. “That’s just how it is for me now.” “I’ve left it too late.” It becomes the whole story, when it was only ever the starting line.

Take the information. Treat it seriously. Then decide what you’re actually going to do with it.

(Got a few photos from that week — fair warning, they’re pretty rough. Drop a 🦶 below and I’ll send them through.)