Nedd Brockmann is finally home — and now he's feeling everything.
"I'm feeling great, I'm just excited to be finally home, I'm feeling pretty exhausted obviously — as I would," he told ABC News Breakfast this morning.
That's a bit of an understatement because a little over a month ago he left Cottesloe Beach in Western Australia to run 4,000km across the continent.
Over 46 days and 12 hours he pushed himself to the limit, running to Sydney's Bondi Beach, where he was welcomed by thousands of fans on Monday afternoon.
Oh, and Mr Brockmann also helped raise $1.85 million for homelessness charity We Are Mobilise in the process.
"I'm chuffed, I'm elated, I'm tired, I'm everything. Just happy to be home."
Why did Nedd Brockmann do it?
He said he loves to test himself. A tagline for the run was "get comfortable being uncomfortable".
"I love challenging my body and my mind to see how far I can actually go and see the capabilities of the human body," Mr Brockman said.
"And in turn, using that to raise awareness for the issue of homelessness, which is something I want to help.
"And, yeah, it's more just, you know, seeing what I can actually do and pushing those barriers. I feel I have kind of, probably done that."
It's not the first impressive charity run the 23-year-old has completed.
He ran 50 marathons in 50 days and raised more than $100,000 for the Red Cross in 2020.
Did he have many injuries? How did his body hold up?
Mr Brockmann's body copped an absolute beating.
He said there were plenty of injuries along the way.
"It's funny, a lot of people ask what percentage is physical and mental — it's 100 per cent physical and 100 per cent mental," he said.
He said he started the mission in a fair bit of pain.
"I started off, I didn't tell anyone, with some pretty sore knees and the pain was quite ferocious, but no-one died from sore knees and I kept on trucking," he said.
After a week of grinding over the tarmac, he said another issue emerged.
"By day eight, the knee pain went away and I got a severe tendonitis in my shin muscle and it basically, I walked for two days, walked a marathon for one day, and the next, and said, 'we have to sort this out'," he said.
The answer was to drive to find a doctor for injections to relieve the pain and inflammation in his legs.
"So, I drove a 28-hour round trip to Whyalla to get an MRI to get a cortisone injection times two to then come back and run 700k that next week," he said.
"Yeah, it's been a whirlwind and it is just incredible what the body can withstand when the mind doesn't give in."
Understandably, his feet are pretty beat-up.
"[The] blisters were no good, the feet just from the lack of grass and dirt, I was running on [tarmac] every single day, so just the smashing of the tar on the underneath of your feet, the fat pads are just copping it," he said.
"Each night I could hardly walk to the bathroom to go to the toilet. So much pain, but as I said, I'm so glad to be done and get off them."
How did he feel about the support on his run?
It's fair to say that over the past month, Mr Brockmann has become a social media sensation.
Among the thousands of people who have cheered him on, Australian of the Year and tennis champion Dylan Alcott said Mr Brockmann "has real Australian of the Year vibes about him".
But at the end of the day, he said that doesn't get you across the Nullarbor Plain on foot.
"[The support], it's great. But as I have always said, I'm an intrinsically motivated person," Mr Brockman said.
"All these external motivators, they're great but they don't get you through the Nullarbor when you're injured and everything is just in pain.
"I'm just grateful to have that support from everyone but, as I said, without that intrinsic motivation you won't get halfway through.
"To have that support from everybody like Dylan Alcott and Hamish Blake and Matty J and all these guys, it was monumental in helping me to get me across the line and [the crowd] at Bondi especially was out of this world."
What does Nedd Brockmann plan to do now?
Rest, for a start.
Even his arms are hurting from the run.
"I'll be, you know, resting a lot and healing all these injuries," he said.
"Even my biceps, it's hard to straighten my arms because of the pain [from] just holding them up in the flex position all the time. All these things you don't think about."
How does he feel about the milestone?
Mr Brockmann says the support has been mind-blowing.
"Obviously the audacious goal of a million dollars was pretty out there," he said.
"But I knew what I was going to put my body through was going to make some noise.
"I think we had $500,000 raised about 10 days ago and then all of a sudden we got 1.85 million, which is mind-blowing. Hopefully, we get to $2 million.
"That amount of money will just change hopefully in the homelessness sector a whole lot of lives and make some big change."
