Rob Pope is the real-life Forrest Gump.

When you think of running a REALLY long way, there is only one reference point: Forrest Gump. To honour a promise he made to his momma to “do one thing in your life that makes a difference”, he set out to see if it was possible to complete the longest run in United States history. 15,621 miles, 43 states, 422 days and 33 pairs of shoes later, Rob was able to say he was “pretty tired” and go home, with his feet just about intact.

In 2025 he became the first person to run the length of an AC/DC tour – 1973km in less than 4 weeks, Melbourne to Brisbane, Australia. Rob holds two world records, was the 2015 Australian Men’s Marathon champion and the top northern European in the world’s toughest desert race, the Marathon des Sables. He is the first person to run across Ireland in a day and in the last year he has run from Melbourne to Brisbane and Scotland to Brighton raising over £100,000 for charity.

The proud father of a little girl and – most importantly – a veterinarian, Rob has also made time to commit his story to print, in the best-selling book from Harper Collins entitled simply, “Becoming Forrest”, and is the host of the acclaimed podcast from Red Bull: “How to be Superhuman”.

Rob is bringing his experience of being able to excel under pressure whilst also allowing room to follow your dreams. By sharing his secrets of resilience, time management and making the best of whatever life throws at you, he is transforming people’s attitudes to what they can achieve and creating happy and successful work and home environments.

He is looking forward to speaking to friends – both old and hopefully new – at this year’s conference! He’ll see you down the road…