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# BENITA WILLIS INTERVIEW - IN THE BEGINNING... RUNS ASICS GOLD COAST MARATHON
- URL: https://www.inthebeginningpodcast.com/benita-willis-interview-in-the-beginning-runs-asics-gold-coast-marathon/
- Published: 2025-04-01T06:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-19T05:55:56.000Z
- Description: Courtney Atkinson and Liam Flanagan on Olympics & 2032, Gold Coast Marathon, shoe tech — recorded on the Gold Coast.
- Author: Courtney Atkinson
- Tags: Episodes, Gold Coast Marathon, Olympics, Running Shoes, #Import 2026-07-28 20:58

*Courtney Atkinson and Liam Flanagan on Olympics & 2032, Gold Coast Marathon, shoe tech — recorded on the Gold Coast.*

## Listen

Listen on [Spotify](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthebeginningpodcast/episodes/BENITA-WILLIS-INTERVIEW---IN-THE-BEGINNING----RUNS-ASICS-GOLD-COAST-MARATHON-e30t2po?ref=inthebeginningpodcast.com) or [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/REPLACE?ref=inthebeginningpodcast.com).

## Full transcript

Auto-generated transcript. Timestamps approximate. Hosts: Courtney Atkinson & Liam Flanagan.

**Read the full transcript** 

\[00:00\] Well Courtney, it is very exciting — the Gold Coast Marathon, as we count down with this. We've got the programme in place, we're going to be following along with it. But we need someone to steer us through this twelve weeks. And it is an absolute pleasure and privilege to introduce not only the person who's going to guide me through this twelve-week programme, but also our very first guest — the greatest distance runner in the history of this country. What a way to start. Benita Willis, how are you?" "Thanks — yeah, that's a pretty good intro. I'm pumped to be the first guest."

\[00:30\] "I thought I might have been, yeah — so, thank you. Very special. But look, off the bat: both born in Mackay." "Yep." "Both went to the Olympics — that's where Benita over there has a lot more accolades than me. Four Olympic Games — we were in London and Beijing together." "Yeah, you were running marathons at that stage. And prior to that you were 5,000/10,000, right?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first Olympics I"

\[01:01\] did was Sydney, and I was 5K — I thought I was going to be in the 1500 and I just missed the team. I was so pissed off that I thought, I'm just going to try my first 5K. I did the trials and won the trial. So I was in the Sydney Olympics for 5K, then moved up to 10K in Athens and the marathon in the last two. "Sorry, that's crazy — that's how you made your first Olympic team?" "Yeah, out of frustration." "In those days you could just show up to"

\[01:33\] the trials, I guess. I knew I was fast, but I'd been training for the 1500s, so I just thought I'd give the 5K a crack, even though I reckon seven of the girls already had the qualifier and I didn't. So I ran the qualifier in the trials to make the team. But I was a hockey player before that — I didn't really think I was that good a runner. I just trained a lot and thought, see how it goes." "I know we've got so much stuff we want to get to here, Benita, but I need to stop for a second — hold on, you're a hockey player who could"

\[02:05\] run a bit, focused on running, you'd been training for the 1500, you missed out on qualifying for the Olympics — where was the 5K time trial? Where was the qualifier held?" "It was literally a day or two after the 1500 final. It was all in Sydney — the 1500 heats were one day, the final maybe two days later, and the 5K final was a few days after that. I must have entered it, you know." "How old would you have been?" "Nineteen or twenty."

\[02:35\] "And I just thought, look, if I can keep up, I can outsprint all these girls in the last lap — even though I'd never have said that to anyone. But in my mind I knew I was faster than those girls, because all the fast girls were in the 1500s — I wasn't up against them." "Do you remember how much you won the trial by?" "I can't remember — a few seconds. But I remember the girls were pretty annoyed, because they'd all been expecting to win. There's nothing worse than some little tacker coming along and beating you."

\[03:05\] "I know that position — I do a radio show with Liesel Jones, who qualified for the Games at the age of fourteen. She was fifteen by the time the Games came around." "I just love that. Can you imagine, today, any athlete anywhere in the world suddenly going, I missed out on qualifying in my discipline two days ago, I'll just have a crack at this other event that goes for two and a half times as long?" "They breed them tough in North Queensland, mate." "That's right."

\[03:37\] "That's right, yeah. Look, I was running barefoot on the track until I was fourteen or fifteen. So I don't think it was something I worried about — just having a go. I was always good when I was the underdog in races." "Grass track?" "You were running on the tartan." "Yeah, I used to put tape over my big toe." "Told you." "And Queensland, you know." "What, why?" "I just hated shoes — I didn't even wear shoes to school until high school. I think I was a bit rough." "A bit, yeah."

\[04:08\] "I'm not surprised by that — we always talk about making cross country great again, right? Because what I've noticed up in central and North Queensland, even now, schools still really put cross country on a pedestal. Was that the same when you were in Mackay?" "I literally left Mackay as a baby, so I claim I was born in Mackay, but that's where it ends." "Soft — I was something like SE Queensland soft, but running,"

\[04:38\] running cross country as a kid — were you going up to Cairns and racing all the different schools?" "Yeah, we did a lot of racing. It usually clashed with the hockey season, but I reckon I did state cross country once throughout high school. I remember one particular cross country where we had to run around cane fields — it was poorly marked and everyone got lost, and I was winning and I got lost too. So they reran it on the beach, which isn't really cross country, but up and down at low tide."

\[05:08\] "It was quite funny — cross country was one thing I loved. But I was really scared of not knowing where to go, because the courses were always poorly marked. Once you get into world cross country and stuff, you know where to go, so it's a bit easier." "We haven't even got to why you're the best distance runner Australia's ever produced, but we'll get there. What I'm interested in — when did you actually switch to running shoes, and why?" "Yeah, that's a good question. I reckon"

\[05:38\] I had to wear them in high school — that was one reason. But I hated running in them. I've seen photos of me running in year nine through twelve in spikes, and old Waffles." "Yeah, those old ones? The green tick Waffles?" "Yeah, I used to wear those everywhere." "So Nike were the first brand." "Yeah, and I used to wear the Air Max for hockey — with the bubble." "The one everyone's wearing again now?"

\[06:08\] "Yeah, it's all back in fashion. So — we're going to get to more of your accolades, and I want to hear about your transition through distances. But I have a theory that certain people are just born aliens. Like my cycling mate Richie Porte — one of Australia's greatest road cyclists — who jumped in the pool the other week and did a hundred hundred-metre efforts because he's just a freak. Did you always have endurance in the family?"

\[06:38\] Where did the interest in running and this ability come from?" "I don't think there's endurance in our family — a lot of people talk about family trees, this person's gone to the Olympics, that person has, but there's none of that with us. My parents — especially my mum — were really competitive at sport, but mainly things like tennis, jumping and sprinting. So honestly, I don't know where it came from. My sister's been in a few world championship teams sprinting the four hundred, so she's got those fast-twitch"

\[07:08\] fibres I never had. I honestly don't really know. I never grew up thinking I'd be an elite sportsperson — I just thought I'd go to uni and get a job. Even when I went to the Australian Institute of Sport after year twelve, I still did uni full time, because I was still doubting I'd ever be good enough as an athlete." "Really?" "Yeah — it wasn't that I didn't believe in myself, I just didn't"

\[07:38\] think it would be a life or a career for me. So I was doing uni to become a teacher, but I've never actually had a real job." "That's a nice way to live. Have you had a real job, Liam?" "No — well, I had a couple of real jobs for a while. I went to uni too, but again that was more out of not knowing what I wanted to do." "So just quickly — at what point did you, was it at that first Olympic Games where"

\[08:08\] you thought, maybe this could be a thing for me?" "It's funny, actually, because at the Sydney Olympics I just missed the final. I ran a PB in my heat and led it for maybe eight laps or so, and it was the loudest I'd ever heard — that stadium, even louder than the opening ceremony. But I finished, having almost made the final, thinking I'm just not good enough — I don't know if I'm going to keep going." "That's when you nearly walked away."

\[08:38\] "Yeah, and I should have been more positive — I think I just put a lot of pressure on myself and thought I could've been in that final. As it turned out, Sydney was my best Olympics — the other three were rubbish. I never got it right at the other three, as Courtney knows." "Yeah, and"

\[09:09\] so — one of those things where people just assume Olympics means you'll be at your best. When I was young I thought, how can you not do a PB at the Olympics? But as you get older you realise how hard it is to get everything right every four years, conditions included. So I walked away thinking I didn't know if I wanted to keep doing this. It wasn't until the next year, 2001, that I came sixth at the World Indoors, and I thought, I could actually be a challenger at world level. It was after that run that I thought, I'm up there — I could give a few things a crack. Let's go back a step — hockey to running,"

\[09:39\] what was the catalyst? You trained with Nic Bideau — I know you were with Mottram a lot during that time too. But back when you were a kid in Mackay, how did it all happen?" "With the hockey, I was actually in the Sydney Olympic squad for a few years, in Australian teams. I was probably more — I won a few national titles in athletics in years ten, eleven and twelve, in the eight hundred and fifteen hundred — but I was definitely leaning more towards"

\[10:09\] the hockey direction. I went to South Africa for a Four Nations hockey tournament in year twelve, but then they introduced an offside rule, and I was a striker — so really all that meant was people smashing the ball at you and you trying to get a deflection in to score. I lost a bit of interest after that. I'd already got a scholarship to the AIS for running and just wanted to see how good I could get, while doing uni full-time — with hockey I couldn't have done that."

\[10:40\] "Hockey's a lot more hours a day of training, and I'd have had to move to Perth. So I thought I could get a uni degree for free and see if I could be a better runner. That's when, in year twelve, I thought I just want to try something with running, because I'd never actually properly trained for it — only about three months a year, with hockey taking up the rest." "So I just wanted to see how good I could get at running." "I love the idea that this one rule change robbed hockey of Benita Willis, and gave running Benita Willis the runner."

\[11:13\] "But then at the Olympics — I remember the closing ceremony, we'd won the gold medal in hockey. One of the girls, who was a bit drunk, said to me, aren't you disappointed you weren't in the team to get the gold medal? And I said, look, I'm glad — I'm glad I'm running, I don't care about the gold medal, because I've found a real passion for this other sport. Even though I was a bit annoyed with how I'd run — looking back, it was my best Olympics."

\[11:45\] "I love that you walked away from that first Olympics not with a bitter taste, but thinking you'd underperformed and might never get back there." "Yeah, I didn't know what was going to happen. I'd spent nearly three years training a lot, went to the World Juniors, the World University Games — though those were more about drinking than racing, to be honest."

\[12:16\] "So yeah, I still had a lot to learn — more training to do, more to learn about the sport. After that I didn't know where I was going to go, but 2001 was a big year for me and really helped me believe in myself a bit more." "You were training out of the AIS in Canberra at that stage — who was coaching you?" "Dick Telford." "Dick Telford, yeah." "He did a fantastic job — that's really where I learned how to train properly. I'd never run twice a day before,"

\[12:46\] never done a warm-up longer than a five-minute jog, didn't know much about sessions, never really had anyone to train with. When I went to Canberra I was living with a few other runners — a house full of them, some repeating year twelve, some at uni, all sorts of people from across Australia. They don't run those programmes anymore. Without that I'd never have focused more on running. We had nutritionists, massage, physio —"

\[13:17\] "I'd never had any of that before, never known what to do with any of it. It really helped." "This is all after you'd already been to an Olympics?" "Yeah, in the lead-up to —" "No, but the idea that you go to an Olympics and then it's almost like getting to a grand final, and the next season someone's teaching you how to kick and drop-punt. It's this notion that you've achieved a life goal for so many athletes, and"

\[13:47\] then you realise you'd better learn how to do this properly if you're going to compete on the world stage." "It's an amazing story." "Thanks. Look, it was one of those things — I was always really hard on myself, and that's probably why I had the really high highs of my career, but also plenty of lows. To get those brilliant performances you've got to put a bit of pressure on yourself, and be willing to risk a fair bit. Moving to Canberra and taking running more seriously was a"

\[14:17\] fairly big risk. I was from Mackay — I hated running in tights or any extra clothes. I always wanted to wear a singlet and shorts. I never even wore proper running gear like bike pants — I always wore these Woody-style shorts my mum used to make, that just looked like running shorts. I never looked legit. You don't think about these things — moving to Canberra from North Queensland, and the weather itself. Why did they ever build the—well, we know why, it's"

\[14:47\] a government thing. But of all places to build the Australian Institute of Sport, the coldest winter place you can imagine. I still feel sorry for the rowers, out on that lake — Lake Burley Griffin, whatever it is." "They should move the AIS here, honestly — as a side point, the Gold Coast is where the AIS should be." "Well, this is my satellite spot — no, but the whole thing should be based here. If you're an elite athlete, the Gold Coast has got to be the best place in"

\[15:17\] Australia to train full-time." "It's pretty good, but it's too hot in summer." "Too humid." "For runners specifically, or everyone?" "I think just runners — Michael Shelley did it, and there are a few guys, like Liam Bowden, doing really well training in Brisbane. The Gregsons are living in Brisbane now too. But I always found the heat and humidity hard in summer." "Right — but I was usually only in Australia a few months a year. After 2001 I was living"

\[15:48\] overseas, mostly in London, and then Font Romeu. Quick segue — why did you move to the Gold Coast in the end? How did that happen?" "I met this guy, Anthony — legend of a guy — online in 2018\. He was living here and I was living in Brisbane, and I thought I'd love to live on the Gold Coast, so I checked it out. That's why — we've been together since 2018, got a couple of kids and a very young baby now."

\[16:18\] "And you've just figured out you're actually neighbours with Liam." "Yeah, we were just saying before we started recording that we live really close to each other." "Less about me, more about you — your first Olympics, the sense of Mackay, taking this seriously now, at the AIS. How was life for you as a professional runner, once you'd fully embraced it — I'm doing a degree, but I've also leant into this, left hockey behind, those gold medallists from 2000"

\[16:49\] can get stuffed, I'm focusing on my running career now? How did it feel to be a professional runner in your early twenties, once you'd said, this is my future?" "It was pretty good. The competitions and travelling to different places is fantastic, but there are a lot of times you feel fairly isolated — at training camps, if you get injured, things like that. When things aren't going well it's really hard; when things are going well it's fantastic."

\[17:20\] "So it's always a bit of a rollercoaster, like a lot of elite athletes — it looks awesome all the time, but behind the scenes it's tough, and injuries are tough. Illness is tough. My father got quite sick during my career and passed away in 2008, and that was really tough — so it's not just physical things that happen to you, but personal things too. Can be really hard. I think to be a professional athlete and have enough money to"

\[17:50\] compete on a really good contract, very few people in Australian athletics get to do that — most are doing another job while trying to compete, trying to get to Europe and race, then getting back for work. I never had to do that, so I feel very fortunate. I mostly lived in the UK, in London, for probably six or eight years, and then in Boulder, Colorado for the last four years or so. I always lived overseas,"

\[18:21\] coming back to Australia for a few months a year. In those days all the races were in Europe or America — the Gold Coast Marathon wasn't as big as it is now, and the focus on elite athletes wasn't there either. So I didn't do many races in Australia, because I got paid to run in other countries, and when it's your career and livelihood and you're already living there, it makes more sense than coming home. Is that — and pardon my ignorance, Courtney can weigh in —"

\[18:52\] is that still what it's like for our track and endurance athletes? Do you still have to move overseas to have a career?" "There are so many more opportunities now — so much more money in the sport here, and you see a lot of our good runners doing the road racing seasons. But the bigger money's still overseas, in the big marathons — that's why I've never run a marathon in Australia, but I've run quite a number"

\[19:23\] overseas, where the appearance money's still bigger than it is here. I think it's the interest too, the TV ratings, and sometimes it's written into your contract — I was a Nike athlete, and had to do certain Nike meets, all overseas. One year I had to race a 10K in Madrid on New Year's Eve — it was fantastic, but it was in my contract. Running up to"

\[19:53\] the football stadium, it was like the Tour de France — people a metre from you throwing confetti and fireworks. Then there was a huge show that night. That night, so — and one year I had to do Prefontaine, when I was training for the Chicago Marathon — Pre's had you run a 1500 leading into it, before I ran 2:22, but it was in my Nike contract. So sometimes it's part of the deal. But I think there's more opportunity in Australia now, and"

\[20:24\] I really wish I'd run more Australian races to build more of a profile here. Looking back, I think it's a good thing that a lot of Australian distance runners are racing more at home to build a real profile — I think that's great for the sport, and I wish I'd done more of it. Twenty years ago the opportunities probably weren't as great." "Did that come with perks — like time at Nike headquarters?" "Yeah, you'd get a shopping trolley and they'd say, get whatever you want,"

\[20:54\] and walk through this big warehouse, piling shoes into bags." "Completely wasted on Benita, because she doesn't care about shoes or clothes — but for every average person like me, that's the dream, having carte blanche through the Nike warehouse. How long were you with Nike?" "Probably ten or twelve years — most of my career. I used to race everything in steeplechase spikes, if you can believe it —"

\[21:24\] they had holes all through them. I did cross country in them too, strapped on with tape, no socks — 10Ks, everything, in steeplechase spikes." "Just because you preferred them?" "Yeah, and I raced in the smallest racing flats too — Courtney would've been the same. These days I haven't even tried the super shoes, I don't think I'm fit enough to try them." "Now you know how I feel — he's got a pair of Alphaflys in a box he hasn't"

\[21:54\] even taken out, because I don't feel worthy to run in them." "I just think, for me to try them I've got to get fitter than I am — the fittest I've been recently was pushing my daughter in the running pram, doing eighty Ks a week with it. I almost bought a pair, and then I accidentally got pregnant with my son." "I don't want to leave this part of your career yet — go on." "No, we've got to get to the main results too, because it gets bigger than this — but what was your favourite"

\[22:25\] Nike trainer? A lot of people who listen are always interested in shoes." "I'm trying to think — the Katanas, I think — a racing flat, sort of Japanese-looking. Did you train in them?" "No, I used to race in them. I'm trying to think what I trained in — around that time the Vomero was still going, I wore a lot of Structure"

\[22:56\] too — they actually got better as the models went on. But I didn't really care too much about the exact shoe — I just always wore different shoes to spread out the different stresses. Maybe Structure in the morning, a different pair in the afternoon, if I was doing two easy runs, and I'd mainly do racing flats for sessions and sometimes spikes — just mixing it up, which always helped with injury prevention. Paula Radcliffe designed the Nike Marathoner, and I used to race"

\[23:27\] in that a lot too — the only issue was if the roads were wet from rain, it got a bit slippery, so I'd have to switch shoes for a wet marathon, especially city marathons with all the white lines." "They were the thinnest shoes." "It's crazy to think where it's gone." "There's so much you've said that's popping questions into my head — we haven't even got to what you want to get to, Courtney."

\[23:57\] "I know where you want to go — cross country, of course. But before that — you mentioned the times, and the evolution of shoes. You were, until recently, the Australian marathon record holder, 2:22:36 from 2006 — you're still second on the all-time Australian list, and Sinead's only about a minute quicker. But everything else in the top ten now"

\[24:29\] is run in super shoes." "Yeah, what do you think — I raced back then without super shoes too, and I'm comparing it to what's going on now. Do you have a view on them?" "Look, if I'd had access to them, I obviously would have raced in them. I think super shoes really help with recovery from training too, so I reckon they help with competing, but honestly, if I could have worn them, I would have. These days"

\[25:02\] you can't not wear them, because it's a real performance benefit. But I also remember doing longer marathon-type sessions in tiny, paper-thin shoes, where you could hardly walk for the rest of the day — it took a few days to recover before you could train hard again. With super shoes, I think you can take one day and feel really good again, so the recovery benefit for training is a big thing for a lot of athletes — not getting sore between sessions. From what people have told me, they do help, and they do make you faster."

\[25:34\] "But I think that's at the top elite level — if you're doing a marathon for the first time and want every advantage, I'd be looking at not overtraining, getting your pacing right and all that, before looking at super shoes, if you know what I mean." "We'll have plenty of time and plenty of weeks to get deep into this — we saw the curtain pulled back, Benita was the coach for a moment, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Just quickly, though — if you knew, in that"

\[26:05\] Chicago Marathon — hypothetically, because Usain Bolt said before the Tokyo Olympics that if he'd been allowed to run in the shoes the sprinters were wearing at those Games, he'd have broken nine seconds for the hundred — hypothetically, what do you think you could have run in a super shoe?" "That's a hard one. I went out in 70:10 through halfway and ran 2:22:36 — I blew up a bit, but it was really windy, wind chill around minus six, and I had some Russian girls swearing at me because I was trying to run behind them, so I didn't want"

\[26:37\] to be leading into the wind in the second half. So I don't know if that was the best race to run fast in, but I'm hoping I could have run faster. Having said that, these days you've got Sinead, Izzy, Jess, Genevieve Gregson, so many girls pushing each other. When I was running, Lisa Ondieki had the record and there was no one really pushing each other to go faster and faster. I think the competition these days is"

\[27:08\] fantastic in helping them get faster — so I don't want to put a number on it." "I'll put a number on it — I reckon you'd have gone under 2:20, but that's a completely uneducated opinion. We're going to get onto the marathon in a minute. It's audio-first, so most people are listening rather than watching, but I'm going to show Benita a photo — I'm assuming this is World Cross?" "Correct." "Liam, describe what you're looking at." "For those who can't see it, you're looking at an image with probably a dozen women in it, and there's one"

\[27:41\] Caucasian — that's Benita Willis, out in front of what looks like Kenyans and Ethiopians, packed in behind her. It's such an iconic shot." "It's an amazing image — what is that?" "Let me get my little spiel out, because I'm sitting here thinking — you are the only Australian ever to win a gold medal in a world championship distance running event, male or female."

\[28:11\] "Yeah, in cross country." "Anything in marathons, halves?" "I think Deek's got one or two of those, but yeah — a hundred percent the only one in cross country." "Female, too — yeah. And in cross country, no one else has ever won a medal — we've got team medals, but no individual medals at all. That's why we're so excited to talk to you about this — for Australians, it's just unheard of, right?"

\[28:44\] "And it's such a unique situation to see you in that iconic image. Take us through what you were thinking at that stage." "I'm the last non-African to win it, too — it's been over twenty years since. It's heavily dominated by Africans, so" "That's what we want to know — how?" "I'll go back to 2003 — it was in France, and I remember I could see, I was in"

\[29:14\] the short-course race and I thought I was going to win a medal. When you're running and there's nothing more you can do, you can't run any faster — near the end I could see two shadows coming up beside me, two Africans, and I went from third to fifth just like that. I was so annoyed for the rest of that year. I had a really good year in 2003, but that thought — almost getting a medal and not — really annoyed me. I had to wait for the next year, and I think it really motivated me to"

\[29:44\] get a medal the next year. I remember racing Derartu Tulu, the top Ethiopian, who won the 10K at the Sydney Olympics — I raced her at a cross country meet in Japan not long before World Cross, and I beat her. We were warming down afterwards and she asked me, Benita, what are you doing at World Cross? I said, I'm doing the 8K. She seemed relieved, because she said, I'm doing the 4K, so I don't have to race you. I was thinking, this woman won an Olympic gold and doesn't want to race me — and that gave me a lot of confidence going into World Cross, that I was in good shape, when someone that good"

\[30:14\] didn't want to race me. And for me too, I never talked about what I was going to do — it was always just something in my own head. My plan in that race was to make sure I kept up, because in a lot of cross countries I'd lose contact in the third quarter — between four and six K they'd get away from me a bit in an 8K. It was a good course for me — 2K laps, a massive hill at the start, muddy. It was one of those"

\[30:46\] days where you had to wear thirteen or fourteen-millimetre spikes, getting them in with pliers, and I had to strap my shoes on with tape. The Africans weren't happy either, because it had been raining a bit and conditions were tough. But I just kept in the pack for the first couple of laps, and then that third lap — between four and six K — they started getting away, so I had to really bridge the gap. In the last lap, that's when I decided to just go for it on the big hill, because I felt"

\[31:18\] like they weren't very good on that hill in the third lap. So I opened a gap — fifteen hundred metres to go, with a gap — and I was freaking out, thinking, I'm winning World Cross, and I've got all these people trying to chase me down. I was just thinking about the year before, and I didn't want that to happen again. I had a plan in my mind, and my coach had told me: the first three laps, just get them done, and in that last lap, when you make your move, it's like"

\[31:48\] hanging off a twenty-storey building — you've got to hang on and hang on to these monkey bars until someone slides a mattress onto the ground, and then you can let go and you won't get hurt. So I kept thinking like that in the last lap, once I had a break. I always liked analogies when I was running — I was never one for splits, never looked at split times, never even raced with a watch. I just ran on feel, even in all my marathons — never cared about splits. Cross country I loved because it's about the terrain and the competition."

\[32:18\] "And I was hurting — I remember finishing that race and it being the hardest, sickest I've ever felt at the end, worse even than finishing marathons. I think it's the emotion of winning, but also, when you're leading a race like that, you just want to get to the finish. What was the reaction to you winning the race — I'd imagine, being one of the few non-Africans to have ever won that"

\[32:51\] race?" "Oh, at the end they didn't even have the Australian anthem ready — so" "That's great — unexpected. I can just imagine the head of the organisers going, oh, right, well, let's — do we have it ready to go? We probably don't need Australia's now — you can leave that one." "Did they organise it? I think in those days they had them on tape, and they were just like,"

\[33:22\] oh no, we're going to have to find someone — standing around asking, does anyone know how the Australian anthem goes? We'll take the hum. And the Ethiopian girls who came second and third were pretty annoyed — because they usually win, and were probably watching me in the race not expecting me to win. I was also going in just hoping for a medal, not putting pressure on myself to win, but I knew that if I was in a good spot in the last lap I could win it — I'd come so close so many times before."

\[33:54\] "So I just think they didn't like being beaten by someone from a country — was it in the days and weeks after, since you're well known within distance running circles, did you find yourself on another level in terms of opportunities, offers, that sort of thing? What happened next for your career?" "This was before smartphones — I remember going into an"

\[34:25\] internet café the next day just to check emails and things." "Internet café, yeah." "I saw some things about myself online, and people started recognising me — it was pretty cool. In the UK and across Europe especially, running's really big, so people were always recognising me and congratulating me. I had so much support in the crowd, not just"

\[34:55\] from Aussies — it was in Brussels, in Belgium — but from all sorts of different people. It brought a lot of opportunity — bigger appearance money, bigger contracts for marathons and cross countries and everything else. At the time I thought, oh, a gold medal, that's great, you get some money from the IAAF for winning, but I didn't think too much about what it would mean down the track. It really did"

\[35:26\] help set up a good career, though — something I didn't expect at the time, but it really helped with future earnings and everything else." "Nike gave you a second trolley for the warehouse run — allowed to go around and get extra stuff?" "That's one of those things — if you're a world champion they'll often give you your own room at meets and things like that." "That's the important stuff — your own room, with random meets. Courtney, I know you want to ask more about cross country."

\[35:56\] "Do you want to stay on it a bit longer?" "That's not a story you hear every day, keep going." "There's so many questions — I'm interested, because obviously growing up as a kid, loving the terrain — do you think that came from not growing up in a metro area? Because these days we're seeing a lot of runners coming out of metropolitan areas specifically doing well — coming out of Melbourne"

\[36:28\] or Brisbane. I might be wrong, but I'm not seeing a lot of regional runners popping up as distance runners in Australia now. Do you reckon that was part of your advantage in cross country — growing up wild, up in Mackay?" "Yeah, I think so. I grew up running on the beach a lot, doing a lot of stuff barefoot, and I think that really strengthens all your ligaments. I've never had injuries like rolling my ankle — different shoes have never bothered me, never had orthotics, never done"

\[36:59\] biomechanical testing, never changed my style, never been big on stretching or drills or anything like that. I feel like growing up and getting a lot of incidental exercise really helped — we used to ride to school, about forty minutes on the highway in Mackay, and we just loved it." "Not on an e-bike." "No fat bike, no fat fish at all."

\[37:29\] "And backyard sport — you'd play until it got dark. It was heavily contested — I had two brothers and a sister, so there was always fighting over who was winning. I think that competitive side is part of who I am, but also all that exercise, but fun exercise, not organised stuff. I think a lot of kids from metro areas get burnt out by the time they finish year twelve, because they've had a lot of opportunities and too much competition, and by the"

\[38:00\] stage where they could really increase their training and go further in their career, they just don't have the drive and enthusiasm left. I think I was lucky, because I came at it from, what if I do more, what if I could be a bit better — I don't know, it's about investigating things, trying things, but also about taking risks. A lot of kids these days are scared to take a risk because it might not pay off, and that sucks."

\[38:30\] "The bit you just said — Courtney's told a story on the podcast before about never having thought about the way he ran biomechanically, and then one time someone unlocked that door in his brain — an American expert, I think — and he was never able to close it again. The idea that once you start thinking about how you're running, you can't get out of your own head, almost like a robot thinking about it — before that he never thought about it, and after, he could never run the same way again."

\[39:01\] "So it's refreshing to hear that when you're a kid and you start running, it's just natural — there's no real need to go and change that, unless there's an issue or a challenge." "The idea of just running like a kid, right?" "Yeah — that's what I always did. You look at a lot of athletes around the world and they don't necessarily have the best technique, but I don't think you need to look picture-perfect all the time, or spend hours in the"

\[39:33\] labs working on technique — I'm not big on technique at all, really." "Obviously growing up up there, with your kids now, would you like to go and live regionally again at some point, to bring them up in that environment, versus a metro one?" "Yeah, I think that sort of environment — we're actually building a house at Blacks Beach in Mackay, probably as a rental, but we might go up there for a year or two before the kids start school."

\[40:04\] "It's one of those things — I really think regional areas are fantastic, and you want to get away from how easy everything is now, with everyone on e-bikes. I don't want my kids growing up like that — though I'm an older parent, so maybe I'm a bit more old-school about it." "We could sit here and keep walking through your athletic career and never get bored of it. I do want to touch on"

\[40:34\] the reason you're here — you're also going to be helping us with this marathon thing. Can you talk about your experience with the marathon, when you first got into it, what it did for your career?" "When did I first decide, I'm going to run a marathon now — I probably didn't even really decide. It was after I won the World Cross in 2004, and I got a really good appearance deal to do the New York Marathon at"

\[41:04\] the end of that year. I thought it'd be a good opportunity because it's quite a hard, hilly course — would suit me. 2004 was a pretty up-and-down year — some really good runs, a terrible Olympics, but I won the Great North Run, the biggest half marathon in the world. Then New York came around and I probably overtrained a bit, didn't quite get things right, and it didn't go as well as I'd hoped. But I came away thinking the"

\[41:34\] marathon's a pretty cool event, but I don't know if I'm there yet mentally and emotionally to be world class at it. So I didn't do another marathon for a few years — went back to cross country and shorter races. Actually, I think I did London in 2005 and ran a lot better, then didn't do many marathons for a while after that. When I first did it, I didn't fall in love with it — I was still loving cross country and the shorter races, and I"

\[42:07\] had so much respect for people who'd run a lot of marathons and had that experience, because it's so hard to get everything right in a marathon, and I had no idea what to expect. Coming from the track, you look at a marathon pace and think, that's so slow compared to what I can do at 10K or half marathon — but when you actually do it, there are so many other factors that can go wrong, and it's so much harder. I didn't have the respect, or the understanding, of what kind of emotional rollercoaster it would be."

\[42:38\] "I'm pretty rigid about keeping my emotions steady — I'm one of those people who's all or nothing sometimes, and I had to really learn. That's good for track and cross country, because you get fired up for a short race, but in the marathon you can't stay fired up the whole time, it's too long. So I had to learn a lot. I don't think I fell in love with it straight away — I started to enjoy it more after I'd done one or two. Having said that, my best one was my third." "Do you know what's funny, Courtney — hearing Benita talk about the marathon, and the way"

\[43:09\] she treated it initially, is a bit like how some run influencers treat marathons now — not showing it the respect it deserves." "Training plan, get you ready for a marathon in four weeks, no worries." "Sorry, we'll get into all of that." "We'll get into all of that — but yeah, at the time I didn't. Looking back on my career, I definitely didn't give it the respect it needed. Then I suppose there was a progression — you went on to run Olympic Games marathons, and what was the"

\[43:40\] tipping point for moving on from that, into the next phase of your career, into coaching?" "I never really thought about coaching, but I'd done teaching at uni and really liked helping people. I was at a London Marathon one year — can't remember which — injured and pretty annoyed about it, watching from the finish line as friends and elite athletes finished. Then I thought, I'll just stay and watch the people"

\[44:12\] breaking three hours — then I'll stay to see the ones breaking four hours. It was so awesome seeing people achieve something they might never have thought they could do, maybe a once-in-a-lifetime goal. I think when you're an elite athlete you're quite selfish, you don't really look past what it means to you, and what it means to everyone else doing this thing that might be once in their life. Seeing that, I thought, it would be amazing to help some of these people — that's when I started thinking, you"

\[44:43\] know, I'd love to do some coaching. That was while I was still running a lot — I started a coaching business in Boulder, Colorado, doing a lot of coaching there. I think it was around that same race that I went home feeling like, that was awesome, seeing the emotion of it — and I wanted to help people. That's when I started thinking about setting up a business and"

\[45:14\] doing that. My coaching in Colorado was awesome — I had a lot of clients, and we were based at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, so we had access to physiology testing and things like that. But for me coaching is really about putting the pieces together — a lot of coaches know what sessions to give people, but it's about putting it together, and also knowing people, how they work emotionally. That face-to-face, individual approach is"

\[45:45\] where I've ended up — it really matters, it's more than just handing out sessions." "And that's right — I've never done coaching that isn't individualised. I've never done the big-group thing, a hundred people running the same session." "Where did the coaching philosophy come from — obviously you had Dick Telford, Nic Bideau as childhood coaches." "I think it's probably"

\[46:15\] come from teaching and helping people, but also from the coaches I had — a big influence on how I'd help people programme their training, not setting specific workouts on specific days, being flexible with the week. Everyday people have jobs and families — you can't just say, your long run has to be Sunday. That's not how I coach. You've got to have a flexible attitude, and that's how people get"

\[46:46\] the best out of their running — if it fits their lifestyle and what they're already doing. You can't set someone's training based purely on what worked for you as an athlete, but the more people you coach, the more you understand what works generally. Having that experience has really helped." "What do you think about where running is in Australia right now? Courtney and I are sitting here on a podcast that started off the back of a friendship born out of running together, and the podcast has grown"

\[47:17\] out of the boom we're seeing here around the major marathons and other running events. Where do you think it's at?" "It's in a great spot. When I first started, going to my first Olympics, even running in Mackay — I'd run on the side of the road, no bike paths, and people would honk their horn at you, like, what the hell are you doing?" "And who's chasing you." "It's gone from that to"

\[47:49\] training on a grass track with plumbers trying to run you off it, no one else out there — to people meeting at cafes and doing group runs, that whole social side of it. Even the way we went at the World Indoors — I know that's not rec running, but Australian athletics and running generally is really booming. It's great to see people outside doing stuff, and socially I think it's a great thing. But for what I do, it's fantastic to see all these major marathons."

\[48:19\] "It's so hard to even get a spot in a marathon these days." "Yeah — our next one's Ballarat, we're heading down there in a month, and it's selling out too, even as a new event. It's a regional town, so I think the more people out there running — it's an easy thing to do, you just need shoes, and you don't even need those, you can run on the beach." "Well, and who knows, you might end up at four Olympics too. Now, obviously, here on the Gold Coast, you've got"

\[48:49\] Lace Up Running, right — that's your coaching business. We're about thirteen weeks out from the Gold Coast Marathon now. Liam, I told you I'd get you the best coach in the world — here we go. I want to tell the story of how I came across — well, why, when anyone asks me who they should get coached by for a marathon, no matter who it is, I always point them to Benita, because a good mutual friend of ours, Al Stevenson,"

\[49:20\] who I grew up running with around the Melbourne Track Club, back in the Nike days — he stopped running for about ten years, then came to you with a group of his mates and said, I want to go and run. It was actually the Gold Coast Marathon a while back. Benita, obviously I was across this at the time — I was hearing about all the training going on, and pretty much Al went from not running at all — a nearly Commonwealth Games-standard runner as a kid, but out of it for years — and"

\[49:50\] then went on — you coached him and his mates, and they all ran out of their skin at the Gold Coast Marathon. I think he might have even gone second in the Australian championship that year, low 2:23 give or take. From that day on I thought, hang on, Benita — it's not about her racing at the elite level anymore, she knows what she's doing. Then I saw the breadth of your coaching, everyone from first-timers right through to elites overseas, and thought, I want to"

\[50:20\] understand more — and that's where this whole thing came from. When I was talking to Liam, I said, if you're going to run, go with Benita. The other story is my brother — I sent him to you too, and this is a story where he and his mates, he didn't even tell them he was training with you, it was all behind the scenes." "She's laughing — I've spoken to him about this before." "So he and his"

\[50:50\] mates always had this competition going, and behind the scenes he was getting coached by Benita day to day — these guys had no idea. He ended up not only running quicker than he wanted, but beating all of them too. So I've only seen positive results so far, Liam — no pressure." "No pressure. But what we want to do is provide a look through your coaching expertise,"

\[51:22\] with Liam, who's a three-hour-twenty marathon runner — three twenty-one last year at Gold Coast, looking towards three hours. We'll get into that in future episodes — it's optimistic, but we'll see. Again, it's not just about me — our listeners have figured out we don't actually speak to elite runners much, it's everyday runners we're talking to. Like the other week we talked about the average Strava pace — what was it, six twenty-five"

\[51:53\] per K? Yeah, wow — that's what's out there. So that's where we need your expertise to help." "Should we introduce Bronte at this point too?" "Yeah, we can — we've got a bit of audio lined up. I'm obviously shooting for, in my mind, a sub-three-hour goal, which I'd like to aim for, but for a lot of people that number's fanciful, right — there are so many people running the Gold Coast Marathon who are just trying to finish."

\[52:24\] "On that note, for everyone listening — this is Bronte Langbroek. If you haven't heard of Bronte before, she's the host of CFM Breakfast, Bronte and Lakey in the Morning, and she's entered the Gold Coast Marathon for the very first time." \[Audio clip:\] "We were staying at my girlfriend's place over the weekend — we had separate rooms, so I was in the spare room and she was in her bedroom. I thought, for me to be as comfortable as possible, to get a good night's sleep before"

\[52:55\] the half marathon the next day, the best way for me to do that was to be as naked as the day I was born." "I'm assuming that's standard for you every night?" "Every night." "So — a little introduction to Bronte, who's going to jump on with us as we get into the training programme, and I'll let her tell more of her own running story when she joins us. But she's twelve months into falling in love with running, and this is her first marathon — she did a half last year and"

\[53:27\] she's ready for the main event this year. So you'll be going through it with Liam and Bronte, and I suppose the call-out is to anyone else — jump on with Lace Up Running, because we're at that stage now, out from the Gold Coast Marathon, where if you want to get serious and get some proper expertise and help, it's a great time — you probably don't want to leave it any later, right?" "Yeah, that's for sure. We've got quite a few coaches working for us too, who are absolutely fantastic. We just love working with anyone from elites all"

\[53:59\] the way through to beginners. Every year at the Gold Coast Marathon we've got a tent near the finish line, and we really focus on individualised programming — everyone's different. Even with Liam, I might coach someone else trying to break three hours completely differently. It's not just about the time, it's about figuring out what's best for your routine, and we aim to get people to the start line healthy, ready to go and excited to run. I always think you want to"

\[54:29\] slightly undertrain rather than overtrain — there's a fine line, but you always want to sit just under it." "Slightly undertraining won't be a problem for me, Benita — I'll be able to hit that mark no worries. Lace Up Running — this is really exciting, and we'll be talking to you a lot more, because we're right at the beginning of this. But today, getting an insight into Benita the athlete, who's led to Benita the coach, has been"

\[55:01\] absolutely incredible. Courtney, I know you've still got things you want to ask before we wrap up — quickly." "I've got one — I heard on the grapevine you're not the biggest fan of flying." "Not really, no." "I've flown so much, but I hate the little planes especially. I remember flying to a 10K in Ostrava, in the Czech Republic, and it was really bad turbulence, and people were laughing because they"

\[55:33\] were loving it — some commentators on the plane who worked for Eurosport were loving it, and I was just trying to pretend I was fine." "But no, not particularly — and I've done so much flying, there was some reason —" "Can I rapid-fire a few at you? Favourite Olympics?" "I'd have to say Sydney — the home Olympics, where we ran the 5K." "Unexpected though, because you'd think you'd want an exotic location for an Olympics." "That's why I'm so excited"

\[56:05\] about Brisbane too — Sydney was just absolutely fantastic, they did such a good job." "Favourite place to race?" "I'll say Spain — I raced there so many times, particularly cross country, but track races too, and a few road races. The people are just so into it — like that race where they're throwing firecrackers and confetti, they get right up close. That atmosphere is awesome." "Most starstruck moment —"

\[56:36\] throughout your career, meeting someone through running who left you thinking, did I seriously just meet that person?" "We used to see Usain Bolt around all the time — he'd get treatment at the same place we did in London, back before he was a big star, still a junior, running really well. It's one of those amazing things. There were a lot of top Kenyans with Sky Sports, and we lived in London and"

\[57:08\] didn't have it, so we'd go to their place and watch, and make them homemade pizza — they were absolute legends of the sport. I think it's those sorts of people who lived in the same area as us in London back then. The drug testers loved it, because all these elite athletes lived together — the testers working for UK Athletics got paid something like thirty pounds a test, so"

\[57:39\] they'd come and pick everyone off in one go, and we'd all get tested while eating pizza." "Most amazing off-track opportunity — something you got to do away from an event, because of the career you were having?" "That's a good one — one year we were training in Saint Moritz, and had a meet on in Lausanne to get to, and we flew by helicopter, a convoy of"

\[58:09\] three helicopters, over the Alps to Lausanne — would have cost a fortune, I didn't pay a cent, but it was awesome. I wasn't too worried about it at the time, but yeah — the helicopter tipping through the Alps. I've been on a few helicopter flights, one in New York too, but that one was so cool." "Feel free to jump in with any rapid-fire questions of your own — Benita hasn't missed a beat, though if it were me it'd take half an hour for each one. Benita, would you be interested in co-"

\[58:39\] hosting a podcast?" "They've got a bloke who can't even work the buttons — I could probably run those, that's about it." "Any regrets from your running career?" "I think I wish I'd raced in Australia a bit more, and supported Australian events more. Because I lived in Europe it was always harder to get back — I was usually overseas through our winter, never in Australia unless I was injured. I remember being in Melbourne for a month in August, and it felt like"

\[59:10\] the coldest place on earth, because I just wasn't used to being in Australia in winter. So I wish I'd done it more, wish I'd run the Gold Coast Marathon when I was at my best. But your career goes so quickly — mine spanned four Olympics — and a couple of the marathon girls, like Lisa Wightman and Sinead, are older than me and still running fantastically. So I wish I'd run a few more years into my career."

\[59:40\] "I think I retired around thirty-two, but I just didn't have the passion for it anymore — I had a passion for coaching and helping people instead." "Amazing. Quickly, one more — we could sit here and talk about your career forever, but we're going to move into Benita the coach mode. Gout Gout — when you see someone like him, who's on the tip of everyone's tongue right now, hitting the mainstream with what he's achieving — how excited are you for Australia to have a running"

\[01:00:10\] prospect like him?" "He's brilliant. I remember — I work for Queensland Athletics, one of my other jobs, for Q Run, and we've seen him coming through as a younger athlete, and what he's doing is just incredible. A sprinter, too — so often we get jumpers, throwers, but seeing a sprinter come through like this. LA's still a few years away, so he could even be right up there by then — you always think it'll take"

\[01:00:40\] longer, and obviously Brisbane 2032 will be fantastic for him. But he's brilliant, and people just need to watch what he does, and have the right people around him managing his career — I think that comes with time. Just brilliant, and doing it on Australian soil too." "That's the exciting part — historically a lot of people have had to move overseas to further their careers. Hopefully we can keep him around as long as possible." "Well, the exciting part is we've got Benita to keep asking these"

\[01:01:12\] questions for the twelve weeks leading up to the Gold Coast Marathon, so —" "Full disclaimer, if any more questions come up before the next episode, we'll be asking you other things." "It's exciting." "And the next phase is you get the whistle round your neck, the stopwatch in hand — Benita, it's not about you anymore." "Right now it's about me — well, it's not just about me, it's about everyone out there going into the Gold Coast Marathon. And Bronte, as we said, is going to be coming along for the journey — she's a first-time marathon"

\[01:01:42\] runner who's thrilled, honoured, and genuinely excited to work with someone of your calibre — though I imagine she probably feels a bit underqualified." "Oh, no — I have so much respect for anyone I coach. I'm excited to coach Bronte and look after her programme. Having two kids now, having a life that isn't just focused on running, is hard — so I love coaching people, given everything else they've got going on in their lives, and figuring out how they can"

\[01:02:13\] still get their training done and focus on what they need to do." "Amazing. Alright, we'll see you in the next episode of In The Beginning Runs Gold Coast — In The Beginning Runs Gold Coast, stay tuned."