Mike Stroud – Keynote Speaker

Professor Mike Stroud is a Hospital Consultant Physician who is perhaps best known for his record-breaking expeditions with Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

Stroud initially qualified as a doctor in London and then spent ten years in a variety of hospital posts interspersed with far reaching expeditions and travel.  He then entered full-time research on endurance, nutrition and survival under extreme conditions, working at both the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine and then the Army Personnel Research Establishment.

He later became the Chief Scientist at the UK Centre for Human Sciences. After returning to hospital medicine and university work he was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Medicine and Nutrition, and Consultant Gastroenterologist at Southampton University Hospitals. In 2017 he was made Professor of Clinical Nutrition and also holds many advisory roles in UK Healthcare.

Stroud first teamed up with Ranulph Fiennes in 1986 on the first of their five attempts to travel unsupported on foot to the North Pole from Arctic Canada and later from Siberia. These included a recordbreaking journey in 1990. Following these Arctic ventures, Stroud and Sir Ranulph then broke several records when completing the first unaided walk across the continent. At the time, this was the longest unsupported walk in history.

Following the 1993 Polar journey, Stroud returned to hospital medicine but continued his interest in extreme challenges, particularly ultra-distance races. In 1994 he led the first UK team to undertake the Marathon of the Sands, (a trans-Sahara multimarathon). He then moved on to setting up more of his own challenges including the first unsupported, non-stop run across the Qatar desert in 2002 (covering 220 km in just 3 days) and the completion in 2003, with Sir Ranulph, of seven full marathons, on seven continents in seven days.

Recently Stroud has continued to break records in sea kayaking and mountain climbing, coupling this with further research on the nutritional needs of extremes. He led metabolic studies on ascents of Cho Oyu in Tibet and Mt. Everest in Nepal and since 2016 he has also been supporting Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ quest to be the first man to complete the ‘Expedition Grand Slam’ – summiting the highest mountain of each of the seven continents to a surface crossing of both Poles.

Stroud is the author of two books, Shadows on The Wasteland – documenting his unsupported foot crossing of Antarctica and Survival of The Fittest which examines the relationship between nutrition, exercise, health and peak performance.