‘Life in Tandem’ premieres on YouTube on 26th February, 8pm GMT (3pm ET / 7am AEDT on Friday 27th), and will be available to watch from then on.
Escape and escapism mean something ever-so-slightly different for everyone, albeit around the axle of an abiding assumption: a desire or need to get away, usually from an uncomfortable reality, by way of activity or entertainment.
Assumptions typically form the basis of our understanding, a scaffold perhaps, but occasionally, we get it wrong, the blueprint is upside down or inside out. Challenging our assumptions is to see things differently, and Luke Grenfell-Shaw is on a mission to help us all do just that.
A trail runner, adventurer, documentary producer and charity patron, Luke has been on quite the journey. It began in 2018 when he was diagnosed with incurable cancer after rushing home from Siberia, then very quickly started chemotherapy, and lost his brother – all within five weeks. Eighteen months later, after completing a Master's at Oxford University’s prestigious School of Geography and Environment while continuing his cancer treatment, Luke embarked on a several-thousand-mile tandem ride from Bristol to Beijing. It took rather longer than expected to complete, but against the odds, complete it he did, and since arriving home in 2022, he’s become an accomplished trail runner sponsored by Brooks, received an MBE for services to charity, celebrated his 30th birthday, and last week he premiered his documentary film ‘A Life in Tandem’ that tells his extraordinary story.
This young man has defied the odds and is challenging narratives left, right and centre.
Building a mindset
When Escape Collective spoke to Luke, he was sitting in a cafe in Almaty, Kazakhstan, a place he says feels like a second home amidst the chaos of travel and whose mountains have become his playground. He told me about his family, his childhood, and growing up with a healthy diet of exercise, travel and adventure that would prepare him for what lay ahead.
“I was never sporty in a traditional sense,” Luke began. “All the way through school I was not particularly good at rugby or cricket or any of those sports, but from a young age we went orienteering as a family, that was our classic Sunday morning activity. And our family holidays tended to be pretty active: we cycled the West Country Way when John [older brother] and I were I think far too small to enjoy it, and then ditto cycling down the Rhône when I was about 10. I just remember that being one long boot camp to be honest. I think the furthest we went was 40 miles on one day and it felt like an eternity, and at that point, I did not particularly enjoy it – it just felt a bit of a suffer fest, but I think it paved the way for falling in love with it.”
As his body developed and he matured, Luke began to find his own way into exercise around the age of 14, and running became something he did every day. Within a few years, that progressed into triathlon and duathlon – “my swimming was never so good” – and the competitive bug had bitten by the time he headed to university in the north of England.
“When I look at my athletic journey I see it having started before I was 10, and yet only in the past two or three years do I really feel I'm beginning to train properly. Oftentimes I look back and I think why was I so unaware that the top people at that level have already been training 20-25 hours a week when I still thought it was enough to just do a five mile run. I had no idea really what a training regime looked like. And if someone had given one to me, I'm not sure I'd have done it.
“I always thought if I ran hard enough in the race, I could win. So the only thing that was stopping me from winning was going even harder.”
At no point has Luke focused on one thing or been defined by a single output or purpose. At school, he balanced his active lifestyle with a busy academic workload and extra-curricular activities including practising the bassoon and bagpipes – it seems he rarely, if ever, sits still.
After finishing up his studies in Natural Sciences at Durham University, Luke postponed further education or entry into the world of work with a year spent teaching in Siberia, also an opportunity to discover a new part of the world. With a CELTA English language course under his belt, Luke jetted off to Tyumen, Russia.
“That was my first time getting away from home as an adult and forming my own group of friends in a first proper job, and also I did my first ultramarathon there. That was 50 K in the Ural Mountains and I lost to a Russian guy who had run a 63-minute half marathon back in the day. I killed myself in that race, metaphorically, but comparing myself against the competition, I've never been at that level of speed, but somehow I could hold my own in this longer distance. I thank my parents for that, for those long bike rides and active family holidays. It paved the way for what came later.”
Siberia provided a first taste of true independence for Luke, more so even than the gap year of traveling and volunteering after leaving school in 2013, but everything was about to change. The rug was crumpling, ready to be pulled.
“It actually goes back to the September of the previous year when I was noticing my shoulder aching a bit, but it was intermittent. Sometimes I’d notice it running but I’d just shake it off. But the niggle hadn’t gone by March 2018, so at that point I go to the physio who says it's a winged scapula, so I just had to do lots of band exercises. And when that didn't help, I just went even harder on the exercises.”
The relief afforded by the physio’s plan was short-lived, however, and it’s clear that Luke had been at least a little worried as he recalled taking photos of his back which, when the muscles were relaxed, “looked a bit odd”. Before long, Luke was compelled to seek further advice, finally visiting the nurse attached to the school where he was working after finding a bump in his left armpit.
“So the school nurse had me take my top off and when I showed her she was like ‘oh my god’, and it was only then that I realised: right, this is actually something serious.
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