The Floor Was the Finish Line

Jamie Ramsay woke up on the bathroom floor of his office roughly twelve years ago and thought: "this is not normal, we are on a downward spiral, and if you don't do something soon you're going to end up in a bad place". He was 34. A partner in a financial communications firm. Flat in London, girlfriend, good social life. On the outside, all very rosy. On the inside, he was sleeping on bathroom floors after Wednesday nights that didn't end until 3 a.m. Since that night, Ramsay has covered over 55,000 kilometres under his own power — running solo across the Americas, cycling across the USA and Australia, summitting Aconcagua, fast-packing the Pyrenees, hiking the Hayduke Trail, and running across Iceland. He has self-financed nearly all of it. He does not chase records. He does not chase firsts. He chases the version of himself he hasn't met yet.

The city and the mirror

Before there was a continent to cross, there were 10Ks. Half marathons. Then marathons. Ramsay grew up in Scotland, studied economics and information systems he had zero passion for, and followed the crowd to London because that's what you did. His father worked in the city. His brother worked in the city. So he worked in the city — twelve years in financial communications, climbing from graduate trainee to partner.

The running started as a counterweight. "I was always looking for something a bit bigger," he says. "It's a little bit like drugs. Not that I've ever done drugs, but what I understand with drugs is you always want something a little bit more." Each distance was a slightly larger hit: 10K, half, full marathon. On the other end of the spectrum, he was what he calls "over-rehydrating in the pub afterwards." The drinking numbed the pain of not feeling particularly satisfied or proud of himself.

Then came November 2013. A Wednesday night that didn't end. He found himself at a crossroads at 3 a.m. — west was home, east was work. He chose east. Slept on the bathroom floor. Woke up, looked in the mirror, and didn't like the reflection.

"I was like a partner in the firm," he recalls, "and I was literally looking in the mirror and not liking the reflection." He walked out into the office, looked around at the people who'd been there for decades, and made it simple: "I just don't want to be these people in 30 years time and I can't do this for another 30 years."

He'd been watching British adventurers — Ben Fogle, James Cracknell, Mark Beaumont, Sean Conway — and wondered what separated them from him. The answer wasn't talent. It was courage. "They had the courage to pursue what they wanted to do and follow that passion and not care about all this stuff that society makes you care about." So he quit. And set out to run the Americas.

Running the Americas

The idea was almost arithmetic: 30 kilometres a day, at least a year off work. Could you run 11,000 kilometres? The maths said yes. The reality was 17,000 kilometres — solo, unsupported, pushing everything he owned in a baby stroller, from Vancouver to Buenos Aires.

"Adventures are very good at making adventures sound really, really difficult by using numbers," Ramsay says. "But it doesn't matter what your job is in life. If you made it into stats, it would sound horrendous." The trick, he learned, was to build it up for everyone else — then break it all back down for yourself.

A typical day started before sunrise. Ramsay packed the inside of his tent before ever stepping out. Bags out, water on. While the water boiled, the tent came down. Porridge, coffee, run 10K. Find food. Run another 10K. Find food. Repeat. Never plan more than two days ahead. "I was thinking about where am I going to get clean water? Where am I going to sleep? Where am I going to get food?" The brain never stopped working through problems.

By the end, he was running 60 kilometres a day, every single day, for roughly 28 days straight — across the Atacama Desert, over the Andes at 4,800 metres, pushing a stroller the entire way. He ran 69 kilometres while peeing blood. He joined a rave in San Francisco. He ventured into the Darién Gap.

In the Sechura Desert in Peru, after 11,500 kilometres without feeling threatened, other travellers warned him about a 200-kilometre stretch of road. Local police first said it was safe, then changed their mind and offered an escort — then abandoned him halfway across because he'd left their jurisdiction.

At La Paz, the southern tip of Baja California, he had to cross the Sea of Cortez. He hitchhiked a lift from a former Seattle fire chief who had been active at 9/11, developed PTSD, and had attempted to take his own life. Ramsay was raising money for CALM, a charity focused on male suicide. "This was a beautiful moment of connection and reflection on an otherwise crazy journey."

He never contemplated quitting. His mantra was fixed: "You made a decision to put yourself in this situation and the only other option is to return to the life you used to live." When it got hard, he'd sit down, remind himself of that, get back up, and keep going.

He finished in 2016. And immediately wanted to do it again.

Why running?

We asked Ramsay why running — and fair question, why the hell would someone run across an entire continent when you could cycle, drive, or at least walk?

His answer starts where you'd least expect: with hiking. "If you want to absorb the environment, if you walk through something you are hearing everything, you're seeing everything, you're smelling everything, you're less likely to disturb anything around you," he says. "Every time you add something in to the way you travel it takes away something from the experience you're in." Add running — you scare wildlife, you lose human interaction. Add a bike — less hearing, restricted routes. End up in a car with air conditioning and music blaring, and you're not on an adventure anymore.

So hiking is the purest form. But Ramsay likes the tempo. His two go-tos are ultra running (or fast-packing) for intimacy and big distances, and bikepacking when he needs to cover more ground. "If you want to trail run, carrying everything on your back — it takes a certain type of psycho to do that and I just love it."

But his adventures have never been confined to one lane. After the Americas, he never trail-ran before — until someone in a PR office mentioned the Transalpine Run. He'd never heard of it. "And then he was like, Oh, yeah, we have hotels and massage person. I was like, what?" He entered. First year, broke his partner. Second year, came third as an elite. Went solo, came third again. "I'm just like a diesel engine — I'll just go at the same speed for six, eight days."

He climbed Aconcagua in Argentina with no guides, just a friend — despite being scared of heights. He flew to Utah, hiked 800 kilometres of the Hayduke Trail, started with his mate Al, split after 14 days when their styles diverged, and continued solo for another 20-something days. He ran across Iceland. He fast-packed 740 kilometres of the Pyrenees — east to west, against the flow, because he didn't want to walk with other people. "People were like, that's really clever and really rude at the exact same time."

On two wheels

If running is Ramsay's first language, bikepacking is the dialect he reaches for when the distances demand it. His first bikepack was from São Paulo airport to La Paz — 3,800 kilometres, never bikepacked before. "That was quite fun."

In 2019, he cycled across the USA. He did seven and a half thousand kilometres in 49 days. Took one day off — to watch Top Gun: Maverick at the IMAX in Las Vegas. He hardly posted on social media. Made no films afterwards. "At the beginning I was like, you know what? This is my adventure. I pay for it. I'm going to do it my way."

That same year — his peak, he calls it — he climbed Aconcagua in January, hiked across Utah in March, ran across Iceland in July, cycled across Australia in September, and was about to run the length of Madagascar when injury stopped him. He'd done zero cycling before crossing Australia. Run maybe five or six times before crossing Iceland. He was so fit he could roll into anything. It wasn't sustainable. But it showed him the engine.

Starting out

Ramsay is blunt about the barriers to entry — and who puts them there. "I can see that all the barriers to getting into adventuring are slightly put there by the people who have ventured before them," he says. The old guard made it sound elite: I did this thing and it was so difficult and you can't do it but you can read my book about it. The truth, he insists, is more democratic: "If one person can achieve something, then anyone else can do it — it just will take them a lot longer."

Step by step. Build your skill set. Know your purpose. "It all comes down to what is your work ethic and how badly do you want it," he says. Start small. Start cost-effectively. Find your vibe and your tribe. You don't have to go out and do something epic to validate things — you just have to start.

But above all: know your why. Ramsay had his written down. Every time the road got hard on the Americas, he'd sit down and read it to himself. "Your options are you stay and you grit it out or you quit and you go back to that life you really didn't like." That clarity made the choice automatic.

He also wishes he'd believed in himself past the first adventure. "I wish I had mapped out a very rough plan for the decade. I should have believed in myself past the first adventure. If I had done that, I would have formed a structure to adventure with more direction and in a way that my resources would have lasted longer." The lesson: don't treat the current adventure as the main one. The next one is the main one. This is just training for it.

The road and the people

There is a tension in Ramsay that he doesn't try to resolve. He craves solitude — went against the flow in the Pyrenees specifically to avoid other hikers — but the further he gets into nowhere, the more he needs people. Then he finds them and immediately needs to get back to solitude.

"When you're somewhere alone, if you're happy, it's solitude. If you're unhappy, it's loneliness." Pushing hard occupies the mind. You're happy in the solitude. But arrive at a hostel after weeks alone, running marathons daily, sleeping next to someone doing cocaine off the end of your bed at 4 a.m., and you feel more lonely surrounded by people than you did in the desert.

People ask him how he's so mentally strong. He flips it: "Adventuring is easy — that is routine, that is doing something I love. Real life is difficult." Sitting at home, worrying about money, paying bills, being responsible — that is what demands strength.

What he wants you to hear

Ramsay worries about what adventuring is becoming. "I worry that people are taking on adventures to get clicks and likes, firsts and records. Adventures like these are best experienced for joy and discovery." That's why he self-finances. That's why he went years without posting. The adventure is for the person doing it — not the audience.

And then this: "I have travelled 55,000 km in over 30 countries, nearly all solo, and I have never had a bad interaction with a human being. There is a lot of negativity in the world, and politics can blur perceptions. But humans are inherently good and there to support the humble traveller."

He has a two-year-old now. He's sharing what he's learned with schools and businesses. And in July 2026, he has a UK-based challenge: 1,600 km on the bike, 300 km of trail running, 113 summits — all in 14 days — raising money for Cancer Research UK. The engine is still running.

"We are all capable of achieving amazing things if we dream, plan, execute and know our why," Ramsay says. "But that doesn't have to be an adventure. It just needs to be an endeavour."