Scott Britton has never been one to play small. The man behind the global Battle Cancer events is a multiple British and European powerlifting champion, a familiar face on elite CrossFit floors like Wodapalooza, and a lifelong advocate for testing the limits of the human body.
Lately, though, his challenges have looked a little more familiar to the TRI247 readers. In 2024 he took on his first full Ironman in Florida, crossing the line in 13 hours and 12 minutes. Earlier this year he added a 70.3 in Boise, Idaho. And, like so many who get bitten by the triathlon bug, he’s already got the next race marked on the calendar. Only this time, it comes with a twist.
Over the course of just three weeks, Britton plans to complete an Ironman in Japan, fly to the US to chase a seven-times bodyweight powerlifting total, and then – barely a week later – head into the Canadian mountains to tackle a 100km ultra-marathon. He’s called it The Everyman Challenge – a triple-header that would be daunting enough spread across the season, let alone attempted back-to-back.
“It’s the hardest training I have ever done,” he told TRI247. “I have a dual level of being tired – the endurance-kind of tired and then my muscles are really sore because I am also trying to lift really heavy.”
‘I am the most fatigued I’ve ever been, but I’m also the fittest I’ve ever been’
The training Britton once knew was fast and furious – short, brutal workouts designed to rack up as many reps as possible in the least amount of time. Now, his days look very different: long miles on the road mixed with heavy strength sessions. The results are showing. His resting heart rate has dropped to 44, his “health age” is eight years younger, and he’s just run a nine-minute personal best in the half marathon. “I’ve never been fitted,” he said.
But it’s in the mind where he has noticed the biggest shift. “The endurance side of triathlon is a lot of head time,” he admitted. “I’d say that has been one of the hardest parts. I go for many hours on the bike, running, or swimming in my own mind, and training for me used to stop that because CrossFit and lifting is very quick, you don’t have time to think. Whereas, this is a lot of thinking and it’s weird, I’ll remember something I did when I was 15 and found it embarrassing.”
A typical week involves 40 to 60km of running, three swims, and plenty of cycling on top. All this is juggled alongside his day job: hosting events across the globe and keeping up with the demands of a busy social media presence.
Sleep, however, is the first sacrifice. “I don’t sleep that much,” he said. “I average around four hours sleep a night, and I have events that span the world, so I’ll start my calls at 6am, try training once, then I have American call, then we have events at the moment in Singapore and Dubai, so I’ll do calls up until 10 or 11 at night. Some of my training block is two hour rides on the turbo or a run at 9pm. It’s not optimal.”
Britton is the first to admit he’s likely be in even better shape if he slept more. He even laughs at the contradiction – preaching the importance of sleep for recovery while surviving on half the recommended rest. But he knows his tolerance for sleep deprivation gives him the ability to still train hard despite a busy day-to-day life. It is a skill carried over from his previous career as a police officer in serious crime surveillance, where long nights and little rest were part of the job.
Finding new winning moments
Britton’s drive to keep pushing himself can be traced back to his years in the police force. As a detective, he often dealt with suicide cases – male suicide in particular – and spent time truing to understand why people reached that point. “It was usually because they didn’t feel they were winning in anything,” he said. “It was usually because they didn’t feel they were winning in anything, he said. They felt they were losing something all the time, or that they once had status and they’d lost it.”
Those feeling resonate with Britton himself. Age has changed his body, he’s no longer as strong or as fast as he once was. “I was once the best in the world,” he reflected. “And now I am not. But in the other two elements [triathlon and ultra-marathons], I PBed my half-marathon. That doesn’t happen much in my other stuff, so I wanted to show people by doing this challenge that you can set yourself a goal that isn’t your strength but win in it – and that is going to make you feel good about yourself.”
Triathlon – swimming especially – has been the steepest learning curve. When he signed up for his first Ironman, Britton couldn’t swim at al. He had just three months to learn. “Even if you’re pretty sh*t at something,” he laughed, “you can go and do 100km, for example, and enjoy it. I want to try and show people that things can be really tough and it might appear really hard but if you just keep going and you have structure and have discipline even when you’re not motivated, you can do some really cool things and you don’t need to be the biggest, flashiest performer.”
That’s why The Everyman Challenge combines disciplines where he feels at home, like powerlifting, with those where he’s far less comfortable. The swim , like so many age-group triathletes, was the biggest barrier. With an intense swim block and the help of technology like FORM’s smart goggles, he’s now more confident. “I cannot swim in the ocean without that compass,” he said. “At some point I am going to have to overcome it because I’m now very reliant on it, but it makes me feel calm. I wasn’t good at swimming and it took me a really intense four months to learn to just swim at all. Sighting is something I am not great at and it really slows me down, but having the compass is like a massive safety net.”
For Britton, learning to swim has been one of the his greatest achievements to date. What once felt impossible – staring down the 2.4-mile swim of an Ironman as a non-swimmer – became manageable when broken down into small, achievable steps. Each one delivered that same “winning moment” he hopes other can find too.
What triathletes can learn from CrossFit athletes
Britton is quick to point out where triathletes could benefits from a little CrossFit mentality. “I don’t see people who bike or run doing enough weight lifting,” he said. “I appreciate they’re not weight lifting, but for example, I never get pain in my knees, shins, ankles, or hips because I am consistently working on them during front squats, back squats, snatches, clean and jerks. That is all core and strength work which ensures that my muscles and joints are tough.”
That strength, he added, hasn’t just kept him injury-free – it’s carried over into his swimming technique too. The pulling power built in the gym has given him a stronger stroke, showing that lifting isn’t just about durability, but also about performance across disciplines.
The lessons cut both ways, though. “For years I thought I was building a base because I was very good at a zone five heart rate – I could talk to you and be in a zone five – but actually, it wasn’t making my overall aerobically capacity fitter, I was just very good at being in a stress situation,” he admitted.
Slowing training down to true zone two has transformed not just his fitness, but his mindset. “I used to pretend like I had patience, but actually I didn’t. What I thought was patience was just self control. For this training block, I have been doing time-based training, not distance or pace, so I have just had to have the patience to go and run for two hours, regardless of the outcome. I just have to stay in it.”
For an athlete who once believed that “unless you’re killing yourself, you’re not working hard enough”, embracing zone two has been an education, not just in endurance, but in empathy.
“I was a bit of a fraud sometimes,” he admitted. “I would always talk about whatever you do for movement is down to you, but I would always think that people should just go and push themselves really hard. I push myself really hard, people should push themselves really hard. But with triathlon, I have learned that you don’t have to be a certain size, shape, or athletic ability, and in fact, seeing someone people out on the half or the full, who take 17 or 18 hours, like the mental resilience they show to be able to complete that is way more than mine.”
For Britton, it’s those athletes – the 52-year-old a little overweight, the grandmother on the £500 bike in a second-hand trisuit, with no nutrition sponsor – who now inspire him most. “We celebrate the elite who can do an Ironman in seven hours, and don’t get me wrong, it is phenomenal,” he added. “But the people who embody resilience and grit out on the course for so long, they’re the ones I admire.”
Those age groupers have become his greatest source of motivation. And with The Everyman Challenge, Britton hopes to turn the tables – to show that while their resilience inspires him, his journey might inspire them too.
Scott Brittons Everyman Challenges begins on 14 September 2025 in Japan.
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