via Matt Johnson / ALP Pouches
Matt Johnson Ironman Project 7 Doc
Matt Johnson has run across Texas twice. He knows what a multi-day sufferfest feels like. So when he woke up in the middle of the night with the idea for Project 7, he figured he knew what he was getting into.
The idea was seven full Ironman-distance triathlons in seven straight days, based out of Avalon, New Jersey. Each day meant a 2.4-mile swim and a 112-mile ride. Then he had to run a full marathon.
ALP Nicotine Pouches presented a documentary about the attempt, and it’s now streaming on YouTube. It’s a beautiful film, and it’s one of the most honest endurance stories I’ve seen. My colleague Cass jumped on the phone with Matt for a long interview after the event. The film shows what those seven days actually looked like.
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“I used to think that strength meant never reaching that point,” Johnson says early in the film. “That if I was tough enough, disciplined enough, and willing to suffer enough, I would always win.”
Day one went great. He swam faster than he expected and jogged out an easy marathon. “I think there’s more of a chance than not that we can coast right through this,” he said that night.
Then he started shaking in bed. By morning his Whoop showed a 1% recovery score. “I’ve ran across Texas twice with a Whoop on, and never in my life have I seen a 1%,” he says. On the bike his heart rate wouldn’t climb above 90, even after 300 milligrams of caffeine and a couple of donuts.
Day three got scary. He coughed into his hand at the pool wall and saw blood. “I think that was the first moment where I was like, I’m scared,” he says. “And I was like, if I show that I’m scared, it’s going to worry everybody else. So I was like, I’m going to keep swimming.” His medical provider later suspected he’d breathed in pool water before the start, which led to aspiration pneumonia.
The film also shows what Johnson kept private going in. After Ironman Texas in the spring, an EKG came back abnormal. Months of cardiac testing followed. The final results arrived while he was already on the road, and they cleared him to train only at zone one to zone two. He didn’t tell the public. “I didn’t want to have a crutch that I could lean on,” he says.
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The days kept getting longer. Day four took 16 hours, and that night he prayed because he wasn’t sure he’d wake up. Day six took 19 and a half. Running home from the pool, he kept drifting toward the curb. He ended up running circles around a cul-de-sac because he couldn’t find his way back. He finished at the house and collapsed.
On day seven he rode over the bridge, sat on a rock by the water, and cried. “I couldn’t do what I said I was going to do,” he says.
What makes the documentary special is where Johnson goes from there. He talks about leaving the military and sleeping on the floor of a duplex in Austin three years ago. He talks about the darkness he was running from. He’s frank that every bigger challenge grew out of a fear of going back. “When you’re sleeping on the floor and you have nothing, you don’t have a choice but to attack everything,” he says. “I’ve now transformed into I have things to lose.”
Project 7 raised more than $50,000 for Valorfit, the veteran fitness nonprofit that gave Johnson a community when he got out. “Dollar for dollar, Matt has fundraised more in the last 3 years than we did in our first 5 years before that,” a Valorfit leader says in the film.
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By the end, Johnson has found some peace with how it went. “I can be broken. I can come up short because I’m a man,” he says. “I tried my best. I really did. I gave it everything I had.”
Watch the full Project 7 documentary, presented by ALP Nicotine Pouches, below or on YouTube. For more on what Matt learned and what’s next for him, read the BroBible full interview here.